Unschooling; Would Your Child Learn Anything, Does it Matter If They Learn Anything or Not?

There is a new trend called unschooling that has been brought to my attention via Good Morning America and a channel that I subscribe to on You Tube. The commentators on the channel The Young Turks, continue to bash unschooling for the mere reason that parents are not parenting and allowing their children to do whatever they want. Apparently this is not just your traditional homeschooling, where parents make up their own curriculum or utilize other curriculum at home outside of the public school system but a system in which the parents are not giving their children any education whatsoever. It sounds interesting, as well as a recipe for disaster, but there must be more to this story.

So I checked out the Wikipedia entry on unschooling to get a better feel for what this is all about. The philosophies inherent are similar to those in more liberal and experimental schools within the public school system that suggest that children learn differently and formal testing, grading methods, and traditional curriculum are all counterproductive to the learning process. Forms of unschooling are already being practiced in some schools anyway, in particular within elementary and preschools, the only real difference is that this occurs at home and continues throughout the years that an individual would normally attend school.

I can appreciate what the parents are trying to do because I had a lot of difficultly with school myself and never could adapt to the current models that exist. I am one of those individuals that actually needs to practice a task in the real world and could never memorize material and consistently failed tests that measured if I had learned anything. At the same time though without any external influences I would never learn tasks at all.

The problem with unschooling is not that children are not being prepared for college it is that most parents are not going to provide the correct amount of guidance to encourage their children to want to learn anything. Education does not exist within a vacuum and the only reason any of us learn anything is because we do not want to suffer the consequences for our ignorance. Those who did not go to school at all or dropped out of school in the third grade, as many of my parents generation did, still learned skills the hard way because they were forced to do so in order to make a living for themselves and succeed. When kids are released into the society having learned little, if nothing at all, they have a lot of catching up to do.

Sure it is true that the majority of the white collar positions that unschooled kids may want to do require a college education and without any practical work experience to back up the fact that they never formally educated they will be at a disadvantage. However unschooled children could be encouraged to start up businesses and how to learn the ropes in that they would have some ways of becoming self-sufficient. A lot of individuals made it in this country without the skills that are taught through formal education, but an unschooled person is going to need the drive and resolve to pursue their own path. Without it they will end up at your local 7-11.

Someone who was unschooled should learn how to engage their creative side and how to make an honest living through becoming passionate in those areas. They could become writers, musicians, artists, and need to learn practical skills on how to conduct business so that they understand that just because they are passionate about something does not mean that they will not get taken advantage of. An unschooled individual could learn how to use and program a computer; it is great to be able to take advantage of the methods that are used in a traditional college to learn computer programming but there are plenty of books that can be read on the subject in that one could teach themselves. The real problem with the unschooled is ignorance because you can practice something a million times and learn how to hustle your way around it and come up with something great but that is no substitution for the perspective that is taught in the classrooms.

The wisdom of teachers is only imparted in those that are willing to listen. If you are just trying to get through that class you will be book smart, full of facts and figures clearly having shown the aptitude to learn, but you can be as ignorant and optimistic as the unschooled if you do not have any practical experience. The unschooled may never get any practical experience because no one will ever allow them to work on anything, so they need to create their own opportunities. At the same time, you do not need formal training in a subject to become good at it.

The educational system in this country is supposed to develop skills and sharped those skills. It is supposed to inspire individuals to challenge themselves to want to find something they will need help on. When the same individuals are simply trying to pass a test and are not challenged they get bored with the process and disenfranchised. So you have to invest in those that are learning, and the concern is that those who are not being taught at all, and are receiving no guidance whatsoever, will never aspire towards anything. At the same time we honestly do not know if that is going to be the case as every child is different. Discipline is a huge part of the process of learning, and when the consequences of being ignorant is not felt until a child is well into his twenties, you are doing your child as disservice. However we do not necessarily know that every parent that is into "unschooling", has left their children to their own devices ...