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learn best when we, not others, are deciding what we are going to try to
learn, and when, and how, and for what reasons or purposes; when we,
not others, are in the end choosing the people, materials, and
experiences from which and with which we will be learning; when we,
not others, are judging how easily or quickly or well we are learning, and
when we have learned enough; and above all when we feel the
wholeness and opennesss of the world around us, and our own freedom
and power and competence in it. What then can we do about it? How can
we create or help create these conditions for learning?
~John Holt
"What Do I Do Monday?"
things that we love. This varies so much from each individual and family,
that it's hard to say "unschooling looks like this", because it will look
different in each house or person as they joyfuly pursue their passions.
But the underlying philosophy is one and the same; humans learn best when
the learning takes place because of an internal motivation. External
controls like rewards (grades) and punishments do nothing to assist the
learning process, they only damage it.
Some of us came out of institutionalized schooling without passion, without
joy or curiosity. We learned how to jump through their hoops and that's
about it. Unschoolers have reclaimed that joy of learning, in hopes of
protecting our children from that mind numbing government experiment,
oops,... I mean experience.
Learning happens because humans are born to learn. That instinct is so
strong, it can not be shut off easily (lots of schooling and coercion will do it
though).
My children learn in peace and joy, without the impending doom of grades or
materials they aren't interested in, without lack of sleep and heaps of shame
loaded onto their interests or abilities.
They learn because they've always learned, from the moment they were
born. They connect bits of information to everything in the world, slowly
making a model of their universe.
They learn with excitement, they learn amazingly, efficiently and
naturally.....the process never ceases to astound me.
Each life is unique. Each human's journey is an adventure meant for them to
navigate in their special way. School can not provide the information or
knowledge meant for an individual journey. The only way to truly support our
child's interests, all of them, and honor the child completely with respect, is
to embrace unschooling. Maybe that sounds a bit simplistic, or evangalistic,
but I believe it or I wouldn't be speaking and writing on this topic so much!
~Ren
Links:
Unschooling.info;
great message
board, list of
articles and other
information.
Sandradodd.com;
Easily the most
comprehensive site
on the topic of
unschooling.
Sandra speaks and
writes eloquently
on the topic.
Unschooling blog
ring; A group of
blogs about
unschooling, my
blog is part of this
group.
Learning in
Freedom blog; Our
family's blog.
Unschooling photo
ring; See real live
unschoolers in
action.
Live and Learn
conference; A
unique, yearly
event all about
unschooling. Put
on by and for
unschoolers. 2008
will be in Black
Mountain NC.
Joyfully rejoycing;
Joyce Fetterolls
expansive and
incredible website
which answers
every possible
question ever asked
about unschooling!
Unschooling basics;
A list owned by
myself and Kelly
Lovejoy designed
for the new
unschooler, or the
unschooling curious
Five Free Birds:
A site owned by my
radically
unschooling and
formerly RV'ing
sister and her
family. They are
now Alaskan
autodidactic
adventurers...
IT IS, IN FACT, NOTHING short of a miracle that the modern
methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy
curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from
stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it
goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to
think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be
promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the
contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy
beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the
aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even
when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such
coercion, were to be selected accordingly.
--Albert Einstein
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it
within himself
--Galileo
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the
questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the
watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the
loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound.
Fortunately... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did,
it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably
lead to acts of violence. in Grosvenor Square.
--Oscar Wilde
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful
and tyrannical.
--(1777) Thomas Jefferson
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be
teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent
which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at
home by myself.
--George Bernard Shaw
I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man.
--(1800) Thomas Jefferson
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of
servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go
home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds
you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity
forget that ye were our countrymen.
--Samuel Adams
I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men,
because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.
Petronius, Satyricon
I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was
always at the foot of the class.
Thomas Edison,
quoted in Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (1959), page 20
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of
human existence.
H.L. Mencken
[Schools:] vast factories for the manufacture of robots.
Robert Lindner (1914-1956)
Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports
to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for
everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
Malcolm Muggeridge,
quoted in The Observer (1966)
