Monday, November 13, 2006
unschooling explained
from joyce f:
> I guess I don't really know the difference between homeschooling
> I guess I don't really know the difference between homeschooling
> and unschooling.
Homeschooling is the broader term. Unschooling is a type of
homeschooling. Homeschooling covers all sorts of individual styles:
school at home curriculum to curriculum based around particular
values to unit studies to eclectic (which pulls together various
resources to teach subjects based on the child's interests) to
unschooling.
On the surface that's the difference. But in essence they're entirely
different. Most homeschooling styles focus on getting skills and
information into kids just as schools do. Unschooling is absorbing
those skills and information as a side effect of living life,
exploring interests, and playing.
Unschooling is to homeschooling as toddlers picking up English as
they go about living their lives exploring and playing is to sitting
in a classroom trying to learn Spanish.
Schools (and curriculum) teach kids how to hammer so that if they
want to build something one day they'll have the skills. In schools
the skills are separated from their use so they're much harder to
learn. (Which is why people have the impression that learning what's
"necessary" is hard.)
Unschoolers build things that a child wants to build and learn
hammering (and a huge chunk of other stuff about wood and
construction and the people they're with and whatever things they
talk about and ...) as a side effect of creating something. Life
isn't divided into discreet skills. Life draws on this and that and
everything. And that's how it's natural for humans to learn.
Curriculum is about pushing skills and information into kids that
they might need one day.Unschooling is about a child pulling in what
they find fascinating and forming connections. To schoolers that
seems iffy because they know their kids would only play or only do
the things that interest them and their learning would be lopsided.
But the results are much different than imagined.
Unschooling looks nothing like school. It looks a lot like
playing. :-) Just as absorbing English as a toddler looks nothing
like a Spanish classroom.
# posted by Anne @ 6:16 AM 
