Child-Led Learning Defined

Child-led learning is a form of unschooling. As such, children are the ones that decide how their learning environment is set up and what materials (i.e. books, resources, the natural world) they will use to learn that which they desire to learn. All of this is done because their parents believe that they will learn best whenever they are permitted to freely explore, as they feel led to do so.

The child-led learning environment is one that hones in the child's interests. It also hones in on what the child prefers to learn and how they want to learn about these topics. As such, children are not forced or coerced into learning anything. Instead, the parents do their best to follow their child's lead and provide them with the resources, support and instruction that they desire.

Proponents of child-led learning believe that a traditional education dulls a child's interest in the world around them. These people also believe that children shouldn't simply be taught those things that are on the test because then, when the test is over, they will simply forget everything that they were just taught.

On the other hand, opponents of child-led learning actually question whether or not children will ever be able to learn anything whenever they are left to do so by themselves. These opponents also believe that children will miss out on learning those things that they simply are not interested in learning about. Furthermore, some of these opponents will even go so far as to question whether these children are ever going to be able to function within a structured environment.

What a lot of opponents of this educational philosophy fail to understand is that those parents who choose to homeschool their children in this way actually spend a lot of time to create a rich, educational environment for their children. Some of them will even go so far as to establish some structure within this environment as well. Providing children with lots of books, games and other resources does this. Television is also limited most of the time so that children will have more time to spend engaging within their environment.