More musings about guarantees...
I hosted a little "Intro to Unschooling" a couple weeks ago (coinciding with the James concert because some really amazing unschooling voices were gathered together for that). I gave a little talk about some unschooling basics and then my fellow concert-goers plus Heather and TJ and Frank formed a panel for a nice little Q&A session.
During my talk, I touched on how some unschooling newbies are looking for guarantees. "Do unschoolers go to college?" many ask. My personal question back in my own newbie days was "What if I ruin their lives?????" (Who's a drama queen, me? Naaah.) The answer to my question was, "What if you leave your kids in school and that ruins their lives?" My answer to the college question is, "Do high school kids go to college?" Some do, some don't. Unschooling is no different and offers no guarantees (except that your kids will know a lot more about what they want and enjoy than your average high school grad).
What I didn't address and wish I had is the question of whether unschooling provides an equivalent education.
Short answer: Not even close.
Longer answer: Schools offer a pretty limited set of classes. Much is typically* excluded from the standard high school curriculum. Here are just a few examples:
- Philosophy
- Comparative religions
- Art history
- Accounting
- Japanese
- Organic chemistry
- Hula hooping
- Peaceful resolution of conflict
- Gourmet cooking
Unschoolers might learn about one or all of these instead of taking a class on biology. Or they might learn copious amounts about some specific aspect of biology (e.g., cellular mitosis) instead of taking the "quick dip" survey-style course that was all that was offered at my high school.
But the way that an unschooling education is decidedly not equivalent to a high school one is that everything our kids learn is grounded in their real lives, driven by their own interests and experiences, fueled by the love, support, and creativity of their parents, and enhanced in immeasurable ways by the resources offered by the unschooling community. That is something the schools come nowhere close to matching.
2 comments:
I love this post and will be referring people to it! The difference between unschoolers and traditionally schooled kids and whether or not they go to college or not- is most likely going to be that IF an unschooled kid goes to college, it will only be because they actually want to go! Because they will know how to wield the freedom of choice they have always been trusted with! Besides that once an unschooler always an unschooler- college, most of the time, is not what it is cracked up to be!
hear hear!
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