UnSchooling - The Freedom To Learn

You’ve probably heard of the term, “homeschooling”, but have you heard of “unschooling”?

If you think about it. Learning should be life-long. It shouldn’t begin at a certain time and end as the clock dictates. Learning is fluid, non-linear and individual. It should be passionate and alive with the curiosity born in everyone.

From the site, Zen Habits, (I’ll put a link below), in an article written by Leo Babauta, he offers nice nuggets of wisdom to give a little sampler of some of the attributes that “unschooling” might contain, but again, unschooling is about freedom to learn, the possibilities are so riveting, it makes for interesting discussion on future trends in education.

While school has classes with subjects, unschooling doesn’t. While school has goals set by teachers and the school system, the unschooler sets his or her own goals.

While in school, knowledge is handed down from the teacher to the student. In unschooling the student is empowered to learn for himself. While school has specific books or sets of learning materials, unschoolers can learn from anything-- books they find, things on the Internet, siblings or parents, the outdoors, museums, people working in interesting fields, anything. While school is structured, unschooling is like jazz. It’s done on the fly, changing as the student changes.

While students in school learn to follow instructions, unschoolers learn to think for themselves and make their own decisions.

While students in school are asked to learn at a pace arbitrarily set by administrators, unschoolers learn at their own pace.

While in school, learning happens in the classroom at certain times, in unschooling, learning happens all the time and there is no division between learning and life.
I might add, also, this kind of self-directed learning is not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea; however, some impassioned learners like it best, not restricted by certain sets of texts and curriculums etc...

One of the points that Leo Babauta makes: It’s much more natural. He writes: The school system is a fairly modern invention, and isn’t how humans have learned for
the majority of our history-- including by people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mozart, Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.

I recommend checking out this site no matter what age you are. And the best part: Even more links are offered within! So if you’ve got the hankering...    

UnSchooling

SANDRA EL