Why Homeschoolers May Want to Avoid Schooling

Jun 5, 2011
Sara McGrath

Homeschool Learning Science - S.McGrath

Schooling can happen at home as well as in school buildings and it can hamper your child's natural learning behaviors.

I use the word “schooling” rather than school, because I’m referring not only to the schooling that happens in school buildings, but also to the schooling that happens in many homeschooling homes and more broadly in conventional parenting practices in general.

In my article, "Does your homeschooling support natural learning behaviors?", I suggested that conventional schooling methods may penalize children's attempts to learn. Are homeschooling families susceptible to the same mistakes?

What is Schooling?

Let’s say that “schooling” refers to making kids do stuff via force, coercion, or threat. In schools and many homeschooling homes, teachers give assignments. They decide what the kids will learn, how they will learn it, where and when they will learn it, etc, based on the assumption that kids don’t want to learn what the teachers have deemed important. Then the teachers evaluate and judge the children’s knowledge and performance on those topics.

This is where the basic idea of unschooling (not-schooling) comes in.

What is Unschooling?

At first glance, unschooling may not really sound like an approach to homeschooling. It may sound like doing nothing. The term "unschooling," meaning simply "not-schooling" doesn't help. That's why I suggest that we first understand schooling as I've described it above.

Thus, unschooling isn't about what you do, because that will vary from child to child. It refers to what you don't do and leaves the rest up to your imagination and inclination.

In my article "What does unschooling really mean?" I did go into the definition a bit more thoroughly, including some discussion of what educational experts often think it means.

What Unschooling Is Not

Unschooling is not an environment with no rules, no guidance, no learning. Unschooling is not uneducating, as it has been called. Unschooling is not hands-off.

Unschooling may be child-led, but it's not child-leading-the-parents. It's child-led learning goals. Unschoolers, themselves, decide what’s important to learn and when, where, and how to learn it.

Schooling operates under the assumption that learning is a bitter but necessary pill, and children won’t want to do it. Unschooling philosophy acknowledges that children do know what’s important to them and sees value in whatever they decide to put their efforts toward.

Unschooling parents don't school their children. They don't make them pursue someone else's idea of what should be important to them and what they should put their efforts toward. Unschooling parents help kids toward their own goals through direction, instruction, guidance, resource finding, or any number of ways.