A View on Un-Parenting

the Christian Unschooling blog...Unschool myth...unschooling is unparenting 


Excerpt - One of the biggest misunderstandings I’ve found that people have with unschooling, particularly in Christian Unschooling, is the question of guidance.  People seem to jump to the conclusion that unschooling = unparenting.  It’s a BIG problem.  Frustratingly so.  Christians assume that if you’re unschooling it means you’re not guiding your children or “training them up”.

 So, for the record, let me very clearly state – the parenting philosophy behind unschooling typically involves a LOT of guidance, y’all!

 In my opinion, a large foundation of unschooling is based on guidance.  Being a guide for your child, sharing your experiences and interests, your opinions and your beliefs.  But not forcing a bunch of unnecessary baggage and schedules and lessons on them.

Blogging an unschooling morning..

Friday morning here.

I was set to work outside the home one to six in the afternoon so there popped up a free morning ....which is rare. 

My alarm was set for early so I could go to mass at Tyburn convent with the Benedictine nuns. Ah, peace..

Came home, kids were exercising, showering, Facebooking...

I did a few chores and chatted to my twenty year old about stoicism.

And then my sixteen year old started making pancakes for breakfast.

With that smell in the air I did a Taebo workout ..Cardio Scilpt. Go Billy Blanks!

And then made and had some pancakes myself. 

We talked about our plans for today and for the weekend ( youngest son and I taking a bus to Canberra to stay with an older son who works there in Parliament and going to the Renaissance Exhibition at the Art Gallery).

 Kids reading (those old Donna Parker books that I was addicted to as a girl, Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy INight, finishing off Dante's Divine Comedy, a book on Stoic Philosophy, a book on Catholic Bioethics by our Bishop, A Wrinkle in Time as its the 50th anniversary of that book!).

 I went into laundry, emails, talking, planning on doing banking for Kumon and taking whoever wants to come to the shops with me, reading Ten Habits of Happy Mothers.

And we  looked at the saint book for today.. Sts Fabian and Sebastian.

 And two sons started a game on Playstation 3.

That's our unschool  morning .

Anyone else?

No curriculum

A great read. On why you don't need a curriculum.

You don't, you know..

From Linda Dobson:

A curriculum is a course of study. It might help if you think of it as a highly planned tour through learning. If, in your exploration of do-it-yourself education reform, you feel more comfortable using such a tour guide, then by all means use a tour guide! There are many sources of lists and general outlines of what someone somewhere has deemed that children should know and in what order they should learn these things. You can use the information to see where your child is and where your child will go.

Traveling the Learning Path Independently

But what if, in your learning journey, you begin with no particular place to go? What if, instead of being a professionally planned excursion complete with an itinerary some travel agency thought would be worthwhile, your family’s trip becomes more like a jaunt on a beautiful spring afternoon, taken not to get anywhere in particular but only to enjoy being free to enjoy? Instead of getting on a bus with forty strangers, you might decide to walk, or ride a bike, horse, or four-wheeler, or drive around in circles stopping at inviting places along the way. You may not see every classic site that those on the guided tour witness, but if they are among the places that interest you, you will visit some. You will also have under your belt experiences of value to you personally. For example, let’s say you’ve tried fly fishing a time or two and enjoyed it, so for you, a visit to that funky little fly fishing museum is in order. While there you pick up ideas for new flies to make, talk with the proprietor about a few streams to try, and take home a couple of specialty books you’ve never seen elsewhere in order to learn even more at home. Had you traveled with that professional tour, you might not even know the museum exists because it wasn’t on the itinerary.

Learning Happens Within

You see, learning happens whether or not it is directed from without. I would say that more learning (and remembering) occurs when you follow your interest to a meaningful destination than happens among those strangers who take the much more traveled route. This is why curriculum is not the necessity that the educational bureaucracy makes it out to be. John Gatto said, “You can be trained from outside, but only educated from within; one is a habit of memory and reaction, the other a matter of seizing the initiative.” (emphasis added).

You don’t necessarily require a curriculum at home, because you’re addressing education instead of training.

I can’t prove it at this point, because it hasn’t yet been done, but I would bet that children who are guided by education mind, whose “learning time” was filled with activities like those in The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities, as well as the subsequent explorations these activities would engender because their time is their own, would wind up as educated people.

Adapted from The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities by Linda Dobson

I don't have time to do record keeping!

I don't have time to record learning!

Neither do I. 

We are too busy living and  learning, to record that unschooling living and learning.

Yet I need to keep records for the state.

My solution? Download the objectives, the outcomes, the syllabus for the required courses of study. Keep in a file.

And keep an (almost) daily log. Brief. To the point. Curriculum areas and  children assigned via initials. 

Example?

A. (Anthony in other words)
21/11/11
*Games Day with other homeschoolers (M, T, PD....Maths, Technology, Personal Development)
*Kumon Maths (M)
*Chores and life skills (PD, WE...Work Education)
*Work at Kumon Centre (WE) 
*Make a custard tart for the Presentation of Our Lady and read about the history of the solemnity (H, FT...History, Food and Technology)
* Reading Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold (H,E...English)
*5BX Fitness (PE..Phys Ed)

23/11/11
*Read Catholic Apologetics by Fr Laux (E, H, PD)
* Read and discuss The Christian Gentleman..values, social mores of different times and cultures (PD, E, H)
*Kumon Maths (M)
*Practice piano and guitar (Mu...Music)
*Drama class (D..Drama)
*Watch Breaking Dawn and discuss movie, characters, the plot, the techniques, values and emotions (E, PD, F&T...Film and Technology)

If the activity pertains to several I would write their initials at the beginning (A,T, N) or use my generic grouping (OK or YK...Older Kids or Younger Kids)

Very, very simple. In journals or exercise books or on the computer or a blog.

And if you want more simple record keeping ideas, see the bookAnd What About Colleg? by Cafi Cohen. 

A few unschooling ideas

We are often asked what it is that unschoolers do all day.

Our usual glib answer...we live and learn...just doesn't cut it when someone is looking for the nitty gritty. The how to begin. The how to recharge or get out of a rut.

Check out this great, well, checklist if homeschooling. A virtual cornucopia of ideas.

The ABCs of Unschooling by Mary Gold.

I love...X: x-rays, xylophones, X marks the spot on a pirate map

Y: yoga, yodeling, yarn dolls, yo-yo's, Yahtzee

Z: zoos, zithers, Zoom

A Day in the Life

Would you like to share a day in your unschooling life? Not a Typical Day. But just a day.

Today?

Here is a day from last week....

Three older sons are home for study week for university. I and one son get up

 early to workout then others start waking up. My second son Greg, a postulant for the

Conventual Franciscans and in Chicago for postulancy and novitiate for two

years, phoned to talk so we all take turns chatting. It's getting cold there...

And summer is starting here! Contrasts!

We talk a lot about the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson, the 1920s art

and literature references. Kids get breakfasts and do workouts and as Anthony,

our high school age unschooler, eats some fruit cake and cheese for breakfast I

remark that the cake was marked down at our local independent grocer. He says he

will walk down now and get another at that price (99c!) and count the walk as

fitness for today.

I start in on work for my Kumon Education Centre and also discuss food and

 recipes as the older ones are doing a cook off with friends from university. They look

through our cook books for ideas.

I keep up my work while chatting. Anthony comes back from the store and we talk

 about Blessed John Scotus ( tomorrow! A Franciscan! A philosopher! The doctrine

of the Immaculate Conception) and Marie Curie ( would be her 144th birthday

today).

I ask Anthony to sort the laundry and perhaps do some maths and Physics. He does

 the washing and maths and is sitting on the sofa about to look at his Saxon Physics text, leftover from hid older brothers, when his friend's dad arrives to take him to games at a friend's house. We

alternate houses for games on Mondays.

 I go to mass at university with one son who is dropping off an assignment. I visit the

 university library for philosophy books for my essay and find a book called Philosophy

 and Movies... I borrow this for Anthony as he, like all of us, love movies and we

can read and discuss the related philosophical discussion together.

 I rush some lunch at home and go to pick up Anthony and his friend to bring them

to work for me at Kumon. Three other sons arrange to meet me there. I discuss an

afternoon women's retreat with my friend when picking up the kids... Can we both

go?

We work at Kumon 2.30-8pm then some sons go to Theology on Tap ( George Wiegel)

 and some sons and two of my Kumon assistants and I got to 7 Eleven for our free

 slurpies because today is 7/11! We pick up a DVD from the rental on the way

home.

 Leftover for dinners, the kids watch a DVD, Anthony practices piano and begins

 writing for Nanowrimo as he and his friend and I were chatting about this in the

 car. I do work for the MI (Militia Of the Immaculate) and talk to others about

Wiegel when they get home from TOT.

 So that's Monday's Unschooling day!  

I wish unschooling for everyone...

A re-post...but friends asked me to share...so here goes!

We recently had a discussion on our Unschooling Catholics email list...on that ubiquitious statement, oh so familiar to all homeschoolers with an unschooling bent...Unschooling sounds great but *I* could never do it.


Maybe the speaker couldn't. Or shouldn't.


Or maybe they should and could...if they are willing to step out of their box.


I'm on my seventh teenage unschooler here.. And my thought and experience is that unschooling works with relationship and time.

Time because a child who does not pick up a book at age eight can become a a teen studying liberal arts at university and reading and enjoying philosophy and theology... And yes, I am describing one of my sons! I would strew books that he would never pick up unless they were non fiction full-of-pictures DK and Usborne books. However, we kept reading aloud and listening to books on CD and watching movie versions of books and letting him follow his interests... Which when he was young was all about the outdoors and activity. So I think Unschooling works best over time. 

Time because it takes awhile for "no strings attached" strewing to take... By no strings I mean that I really don't mind if no one takes up my strewing but instead strews their own stuff. And with expectations off, my sons have been more likely to explore new ideas and activities and books.

Relationship because that has been the way Unschooling works in our house. It has enhanced our relationships because we spent time together not doing school but reading aloud, watching movies, drawing, cooking, going to parks and outings and talking. It's this quantity time that is sometimes missing when mums and kids are rushing to do school and then to homeschool activities. And yet this quantity time has been the biggest aid to our learning... so one son, who used to make a big fuss about any sort of formal work when young is the one who is now  at university, writing essays and talking to me about chastity and celibacy and how he doesn't think celibacy would be so hard as your mind, his mind, is on other things.. At the moment Cicero. (!) Now, he was the one who you could have said would not be a poster child for Unschooling, would spend oodles of time on computer games and make a big fuss about chores and really did spend a year or two around age sixteen or so just playing games and hanging out ( and doing chores and serving at mass and helping in the parish). 

Or let me give an example of another son ( did I mention I have seven sons...thus many examples!) who was also a non writer and often a non reader. But who grew, however,  into reading Shakespeare as a teen, who has a degree and now works  in politics, works hard, long hours and yet still finds time to go to mass or confession on weekdays as well. 

Are they perfect? No.


Were they the perfect poster unschooler kids? No.


Were we the perfect unschooler poster family? No, not with our problems, financial problems, moving many many times, mum's health problems and miscarriages, unemployment, extended family crises, months where we did nothing but chores and watch movies and read and cook and eat. And I went through stages of let's try this (  CM or classical or curriculum) but we always came  back to just living and learning.

Where am I going with this?


That I would wish Unschooling for everyone.


That blossoming of self and interests and relationships.


Unschooling tweaked to suit each family but Unschooling where the child and family are more important than is he reading, is he doing maths, can he meet these outcomes? Ad infinitum.


 In my experience, the unschooled children can meet outcomes, over time, with a good relationship ( "darling , for uni you will need more maths and writing so how about we try x and y... "...Easily suggested and more likely to be taken up when relationship in place) and with tweaking to suit each child and family. 

Unschooling has brought me to my knees, to my Faith, to the sacraments , many many times... Heck, I became a Catholic! Me! It's that trust in Our Lord, in the Holy Spirit's workings in my life and in the life of my kids, in the graces of the sacraments. 

So my answer to is Unschooling for everyone is.. It's up to the parent!


Are you prepared to read more, pray more, live with your kids, daily give more of yourself, move out of your comfort zone, educate yourself, give it a good long try, no strings attached!?


For Unschooling requires effort as the vocation of mothering requires effort .. Effort and prayer... It's just that the effort is spent in time with the child and family and not with curriculum and programmes. 

And the rewards are manifold.