Unschooling

Discuss unschooling, eclectic, the unit study approach, or any other "unusual" homeschooling method.

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Miyu
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Unschooling

Postby Miyu » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:02 am

Could someone give me a good description of what, exactly, unschooling is. The subject has come up an another message board that I post at, and I don't think they have the concept correct, but I don't know enough about it to respond.

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Postby Theodore » Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:48 pm

My impression is that unschooling is focused more on learning period, not so much on learning a certain list of subjects on a set schedule. Almost anything your kids do can be turned into an education experience, but you're somewhat more laid-back about doing this than with, say, the unit study method.

The downside of unschooling is that there's always going to be a few necessary subjects that your kids hate and just won't study on their own, so you can't rely entirely on unschooling to provide a well-rounded education. Some things are just best done using an "x pages per day" method.

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Postby Kitty-Cat » Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:02 pm

There are a lot of unschoolers on another board I frequent. My impression is that it is giving your child an enviroment rich in learning materials, sharing things with them, answering questions and facilitating there learning but also trusting your child to learn what they need when they need it. They do not believe in sitting down and doing parent directed lessons. Some have no tv or video type games while others believe in free rein of such things. I also get the impresion that many of them are not concerned with what others call 'necessary subjects'
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Theodore
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Postby Theodore » Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:26 pm

Assuming you want your kids to graduate from high school, however, the core subjects will end up being mandatory at some point. Reading, writing, math, history, and science all need to be covered fairly well. Given, it is better to get your kids interested in something and have them learn it on their own, but they aren't interested, that doesn't mean the state gives them a free pass.

I would say that unschooling is a good method to use by default, but not as your sole homeschooling method.

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Postby WAHMBrenda » Sun Dec 31, 2006 7:58 am

I border on unschooling. We do about 30 minutes of schoolwork each day and get all the subjects in each week. The rest of the time we play file folder games or play with the learning rich toys that I've stocked up on in this home.
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Re: Unschooling

Postby Ramona » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:37 pm


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Postby WAHMBrenda » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:12 am

I think you're right Ramona. I have a friend who unschools and follows her daughter's interests. She says she won't use workbooks. I don't know how she'll be able to pass state evaluations though since we have to maintain portfolios. That is what really confuses me and causes me not to completely unschool.
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Unschooling

Postby janzeiger » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:43 am


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Postby Theodore » Fri Jan 05, 2007 1:51 pm

I disagree with the second paragraph though because children *can* get a well-rounded education when they're unschooled. In fact, as a teacher I can tell you that my children's education is probably more well-rounded than that of the children I taught in public school...

Yes, but the reason a lot of people homeschool is because their public schools are totally incompetent. Can you really say that children are properly educated just because their education is better than that of children in public school? You have to reach for somewhat higher goals :)

Also, I wasn't debating the well-roundedness of unschoooling. Unschooling is good at covering a large variety of topics. My point was that there may be specific, but necessary, core subjects that kids just don't want to do, and an unstructured approach to those makes it too easy to miss large chunks of material. Unschooling is all about motivating children to learn on their own, but what do you do if your motivation techniques fail? Ignore those subjects?

I can think of a number of subjects I would have happily skipped if I'd had a choice in the matter, but then my education would have ended up sub-par.

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Postby jeanasmall » Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:31 am


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Postby Calla_Dragon » Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:41 am

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

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Postby cdprop » Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:17 pm

I know some people who unschool, and the results have been totally disasterous. However, I don't know what, exactly, homeschooling entails, and there is always a possibility that they're doing it wrong. I don't know to what extent they try to surround their kids with learning opportunities, limit TV, video games, etc.

I agree with the general principle that it is very difficult, and often counter-productive, to force children to learn things that they don't want to learn. It's a no-brainer that kids will learn more quickly and thoroughly if they're actually interested in the topic.

But I don't know if letting your children set the agenda is the right way to solve the problem. Pardon me if I am mischaracterizing unschooling here, because as I said, I don't know exactly what it entails, however I do think that if you care about your children, you are going to want to make sure that they are equipped for everything they're going to encounter in the real world at each stage in life, and the idea that kids will want to do these things on their own, at the appropriate time, without ever being pushed, is idealistic and incorrect.

But I do think that it is incredibly easy to get kids interested in almost any topic, with a little imagination and creativity. One of the unschoolers here mentioned cooking as an excercise in math, and I think that's great.

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Unschooling

Postby janzeiger » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:28 am


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Hmm...

Postby janzeiger » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:33 am


janzeiger
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Unschooling in High School

Postby janzeiger » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:35 am



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