What is Unschooling?
Unschooling is a lifestyle that requires us to reprioritize what we have learned about learning itself. It’s prioritizing the needs of our family first instead of an institution or a curriculum where our children must obey the teacher and we have to obey the schools. Our goal is happiness, freedom of choice and the reckless pursuit of our passions together as a family with the knowingness that learning is a natural byproduct not something that needs to be categorized, controlled, analyzed, and measured.
It requires a deep respect for our children and their capability of discovering their own path of interests and passions. Its core is founded on peaceful parenting and allowing our children to have the freedom to choose what, when and for how long they want to explore any given topic.
Our life and this world is our classroom without constraint.
Is Unschooling Legal?
Yes, absolutely! Find a Board in your region that supports the unschooling philosophy.
We still meet with a home education manager twice a year, who is the liaison between ourselves and the government, in order to sign off on reimbursements and planned outcomes.
What's the difference between homeschooling and unschooling?
Homeschooling styles vary but they usually embrace a set curriculum made by an outside institution or set by the parent. It typically goes along with what other schools are doing relative to age and grade, but the parents facilitate the learning at home.
Unschooling is self directed by the child, they choose what they want to learn when they want to learn it and how much. Parents act as allies to provide resources and experiences that the child has an interest in rather than facilitating their own agenda.
Unschooling is self directed by the child, they choose what they want to learn when they want to learn it and how much. Parents act as allies to provide resources and experiences that the child has an interest in rather than facilitating their own agenda.
How do children learn when there's no curriculum or teacher?
Children like all humans learn everyday, naturally by experience. You have been unschooling your child since birth until the day you handed them over to an educational institution. By nature, you taught them how to eat, speak and care for themselves, without direction from anyone outside of your home or an outside curriculum.
Unschooling is just the natural continuation of what you have always been doing, being an ally for your children and providing them with rich resources and experiences in life.
How will your kids learn to socialize?
My kids socialize all of the time, with other unschoolers, homeschoolers and schoolers. They socialize with varying age groups as is the same when we are an adult. If you think about it, institutionalized settings are the only place where humans are expected to socialize in the same age and grade. In real life I have friends younger than me and decades older. Socializing happens for us regularly by interacting with life and all the people who encompass our day.
How will your children be employable in the future?
Unschooling is not a training camp to become a worker bee. It is a philosophy that depends on a deep respect for our children’s process and passions. We are not in the businesses of creating employees rather helping them find their own abilities to be creators and entrepreneurs by pursuing happiness first.
There is more room for self exploration and life experience when you choose the freedom of unschooling. Unlike school where curriculum is set for you on the basis of what someone else thinks your child ought to know.
In order to thrive in this lifestyle, one must have a deep respect for their child’s “soul’s path”. When we ask a child if they are interested or not in a subject, respect their answer and follow their lead then we are speaking to their soul. If we do not ask them and force them to learn what we think they “ought to know” we are really saying “you cannot trust yourself or you inner to compass to lead you”.
Tasha Fishman
Coach, Mentor, Advocate
Sign up for our UNCENSORED Newsletter!
