Ten Unschooling Myths Debunked

Unschooling is a specific approach to learning outside of school. While it falls under the umbrella of homeschooling it differs from it in many ways. There are many styles of home education. Most of them involve the parent assuming the standard teaching role, and they often have a lesson plan that the children are required to complete.

Unschoolers see learning as a natural result of living that needs no force or requirements. Families that choose to unschool believe that children are naturally driven to learn about the world they live in, and when given the right balance of guidance and freedom they are more than capable of doing just that.

1. Unschooling is illegal:

Home education laws vary from state to state but homeschooling is legal everywhere in the United States. Unschooling falls under the wide definition of homeschooling, and it is absolutely legal.

2. Unschooling is impossible in some states:

Some states require more regulation than others about notification, testing, and content standards. Some of the more regulated state laws can make unschooling, which uses no mandatory lessons or curriculum, seem out of the question but there are unschoolers all over the country. The trick is to really understand what the government is asking for and then think about creative, outside the box ways to get that done. Do they require you to have a certain number of physical education hours? It's no problem if you consider all the time your kids spend riding bicycles, running around the yard with the dog, climbing trees in the park, playing Frisbee, or swimming. Are they asking you to log some home economics time? If your children ever help you cook, shop for groceries or household items, manage an allowance, fold laundry, feed pets, or handle phone messages you'll have no trouble meeting that mark.

It's all about how we interpret the things we do in our day to day lives. Unschoolers clearly see the learning happening in all of them, and if you can phrase it correctly, into something I call "eduspeak", other people might see it too. Eduspeak draws the education out of those every day things and frames it in language the state can understand. Playing soccer with friends in the park becomes learning to work as a team and cardiovascular exercise. Grocery shopping with a parent in eduspeak can be money management, menu planning, and learning about nutrition as you read labels together. Mad Libs, writing emails, scrabble, and blogging are language arts. It can take some practice, but soon you'll be able to see the learning that goes on in just about everything.

3. Unschooling is a cover up for neglectful parenting:

Unschooling is often mistaken for laziness or neglect. While unschooling may not be for everybody, it just doesn't make sense that a parent who wasn't interested in being present and engaged with their children would choose an educational approach that involves them being home rather than at school for six to eight hours each day. This myth grew out of the mistaken view that children with freedom over their education must mean the parents have completely checked out. They haven't checked out, but they have stepped aside to be a trusted resource for information and a co-learner.

4. Unschoolers won't learn everything they need to know:

Not every person needs to learn the exact same things. Unschooling takes a radically different view of education than what most of us have grown up with. It takes the "musts" and tosses them out. We do not say "Children must learn this kind of math in the second grade and they must be able to read by age six." Instead we see the math everywhere and we learn about math and language in a fluid natural way that suits us personally. There are never any power struggles about what needs to be done, because what needs to be done is up to the individual.

We also reexamine the idea that the same depth of subject matter must be achieved by everyone. It's very easy to see that we all do not need to be master mathematicians or historians. Unschooling parents have no problem sharing the information they value with their children. For example, I told my unschoolers that I thought typing skills would likely prove very helpful to them because computers are everywhere and here to stay. Because they have been given the freedom to use the computer whenever they like they are both very accurate and speedy typists. Learning to type was never required and it was never a lesson. It was skill they found useful and just a natural result of doing the things they enjoyed such as chatting, using Myspace, or writing stories in Word documents.

5. Unschoolers can't get into college:

This is one of the myths I hear most often about unschooling, and it is absolutely false. Colleges have come a long way over the last twenty five years or so when it comes to admitting alternatively educated students. In fact, many colleges are thrilled to have them. Most of the misinformation stems from the fact that unschoolers typically do not receive high school diplomas which are necessary for college enrollment.

Families have different options when it comes to college preparations. Some parents and college bound unschoolers will create a portfolio that highlights the different subject areas they've been involved in for the last few years. They can show volunteer work, awards, special interests, club activity, or focus on their best skills such as writing or music. A common route for unschoolers is to start at the community college level. My unschoolers will earn their GED at our local community college where they both plan on earning associates degrees before deciding if they'll want to move on to a university, into the workforce, or both.

6. Unschooling doesn't prepare kids for the real world:

Where is this real world located? Unschoolers live, work, learn, and play in the real world every day. They make decisions about how to spend their time, what they need to get done, and how to cooperate with their friends and families. They have the freedom to go down the roads they want to go down, and to learn the lessons from those decisions with mindful parents standing by. Parents who are not handing out orders but giving opinions and helpful information become respected and trusted resources rather than objects of resentment.

Some people fear that kids who are not forced to meet deadlines or grade levels will fail in college or career settings. Unschoolers understand that the world we live in sometimes involves doing things we don't really enjoy but that must be done in order to make things work properly. Unschooling teaches us to ask "Why am I doing this? Why does this need to be done? What will it do for me?" We need to show up for work on time or we will lose our job. We need to feed our pets or they will get sick, be removed from our care, or die. Our college assignments need to be turned in if we desire credit for them. We need to get through the boring science class we have no interest in to get the degree we do have interest in. It's pretty simple once you look at natural consequences. We decide what we want and what we don't, and then we get on with it the best that we can.

7. Unschooling is only for "hippies" or religious people:

It's true that early modern homeschooling was made up of a lot of religious families. Today unschooling families can look like anything from large suburban families to single child city dwellers. There are a wide range of lifestyles represented with the unschooling community. You're just as likely to find secular families as you are to find religious folks, and the politics will vary as well. The reason for this is that unschooling is made up of people, of course, and people are interesting and diverse.

8. Unschooling keeps children too sheltered:

The socialization issue is probably the biggest worry people have about home education. There is this fear that kids who aren't forced to go to school will become terrified of people and totally socially incompetent. The idea that children cannot learn to relate and work with different people if they are not forced to be around them each day is not something that unschoolers worry about. We find that being around a variety of people of different ages and lifestyles provides opportunities we might miss if we were grouped in a room with thirty other people based on nothing more than the year we were born. We learn about our own personalities and conflict resolution in a natural way.

9. Unschooling only works for gifted students:

Unschooling may or may not be right for an individual family, but it certainly is not just for those who have been labeled gifted or advanced. Unschooling is available to everyone because the learner is in control of what they will do and how they will do it. One of the most wonderful things about home education is the flexibility to work at whatever level and in whatever style suits us best. Because of this we are never bored because we are stuck with material we already know and we are never frustrated by being forced to work on material we are not ready for.

10. Unschooled kids won't learn if they aren't forced to:

I can't tell you how many times I have heard a parent say that their child would never do anything educational without being forced to. The first thing I always say in response is that there is no way to prevent someone from learning. It's simply a condition of being alive. There is so much fear present in our standard educational model. Something that people who aren't familiar with unschooling do not understand is that the definition of "educational" is not limited to the standard subject list of math, reading, writing, science, and history. Unschooling families see that every single thing we do has educational value. We learn from television, movies, music, news programs, magazines, books, nature, art, sports, and even the conversations we have. There is always something new or something reinforced when we take in the world around us. Instead of bribery and consequences we have peace and space to navigate our interests, needs, environments, and relationships. These things have so much to teach us.