unschooling

[Jody & Scott Arnold family]

Hi Michaele!

At 11:58 PM 3/10/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi...my name is Michaele, I'm interested in homeschooling my two toddlers
>when the time comes but have not yet decided. I would be interested in
>hearing some thoughts/debate on unschooling and other approaches.
>
>May I throw out a few questions?
>
>How does the lack of structure in unschooling prepare a person for the
>imposed structure of most of the work world? e.g. having to do a task
>whether you are interested in it or feel like it at the moment or not,
>meeting deadlines, etc.
>
>What do unschoolers do to develop a disciplined lifestyle in their
>children...or is that even a issue for you?

In our family we develop self-discipline, etc. through chores and family
responsibilities. We have a pretty structured family life; we're just not
terribly structured in our schooling. With a few exceptions, we don't make
the how and when of learning a point of discipline. Instead we try to learn
from daily life as much as possible.

The exceptions are generally skill areas that I feel are essentially to
daily life that I don't feel are being practiced in normal life. I
generally say something like, "Kids, for my peace of mind I need to know
that you can __________. Let's figure out some way to show mom that you can
do this or are working on this." A few years ago we did this with writing.
I wasn't sure how well my middle schoolers could write, so I had them write
for a while until I was reassured that they could. Now they are writing
enough to keypals that I'm not worried about it.

We've used textbooks for math and for handwriting, but I've generally
delayed to see what they could learn on their own. Although we play a lot
of math games. And we watch instructional tv quite a bit.

It's not a very secure feeling to not be doing a lot of "schoolwork"; I must
admit to some fears about how they would turn out. But Vjera (15) and Luke
(14) are in the second year of a community college Japanese class, and I've
received high compliments from their teacher on all aspects of their
classroom behavior and learning. They are also volunteering one afternoon a
week at the library. I asked the librarian who supervises them how they
were doing, and she said they were intelligent, alert, and hard-working.
She only has to explain things once, and then she can just leave them to
work unsupervised. They know when to ask for help. She generally doesn't
like young volunteers to work more than a one-hour shift, but V & L work 3
or 4 hours on the computer. And they do good work. (Isn't it nice to brag?)

>
>Looking back at my education, there are many subjects that I can't imagine I
>ever would have learned voluntarily, despite their importance. How do you
>address these areas as your child progresses but never wants to study certain
>things?

I've discussed this a little above--if I feel it's really important and I'm
not willing to wait any longer, then I tell them it needs to happen NOW.
But this is pretty rare.

What I hope to do as the kids grow older is work out goals with them,
agreeing on the long-term goals (e.g., college entrance exams & college) and
mapping out what is important to reach those goals. I don't really think
this will be that hard, but then I haven't done it yet.

One of the hardest things for me about being fairly unstructured
academically is all the time they don't seem to be DOING anything. I want
to see some results, some accomplishments, some bookwork. It takes a lot
of patience to wait to see the fruits (instead of pulling up the plant to
see if it is developing roots!). So it's really nice when people praise our
kids.

Hope this is helpful.

BTW, I have the text of a talk I gave two years ago posted at the
"Homeschooling in Lane County" web site mentioned in my sig line. I think
it is under "How we homeschool." It would have lots more info about this,
since I was speaking to new homeschoolers about unschooling.

jody

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The Arnold Family: Scott, Jody, Vjera, Luke, Hope, Thad, and Simon.
Lane County, Oregon
E-mail: jo...@efn.org
Interested in homeschooling? Check out: http://www.efn.org/~light
*******************