Of course we all need to be schooled, that is to be educated, but what I'm talking about is schooling by choice. Now I've never homeschooled my own children other than helping them with homework and kept their educational interests over the summer break. I have however, taught children who were homeschooled prior to my teaching them. With all of my 10 years in teaching adding to that my two children's education in a very public traditional/compulsory environment and now seeing my three grandchildren's experiences in traditional education environment this is my experience of school choice.
There is a new buzz word out and what I'm talking about is UNschooling. I've never heard of it but I recently read an interesting article about how UNschooling is performed.
In reading the article and snooping around for more understanding I found first of all that history shows us education is experimental. Schools in America started out as a need to become a demand as parents left that part of raising their children up to others...and many still do. Once traditional or compulsory, brick and mortar type schools began showing order and control over children, parents either allowed it, agreed with it, or despised it. For the control meant unification, equal opportunity, fairness, and like minds were to be produced. But as the centuries progress especially now in our 21st century we are able to see equality in a rather different form.
I believe this is where UNschooling takes the stage.
Homeschooling offers parental control but the children are still not in control of their own destiny, the likes of education. The parents still based their children's education on what the parent wanted not what the child wants. Frankly, most of us believe it is the parent's responsibility to control and conform their children's lives through the path as they, the parents choose. But now as traditional/compulsory, and homeschooling has shown us the good, bad, and the ugly of education through teaching and learning we have unschooling!
Unschooling is about freedom for the child says a father and author living in the state of Vermont.
Ben Hewitt says of the labeled name Unschooling, "But “self-directed, adult-facilitated life learning in the context of their own unique interests” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so unschooling it is.
Sounds earthly to me and I love it.
What Mr. Hewitt and wife Penny have created for their two sons is an environment that only one can receive if lived in the country. Because in the country you have freedom to explore, to hypothesize, to create, and so much more than in a budgeted classroom of 15-30 children or at one-income home in the suburbs waiting for mother to introduce the next homeschool curriculum. I wonder how these two boys' behavior are. I mean my experience has been once a child gets the chance to make their own decisions they are out of control. They are everywhere but where they ought to be. They are children that need direction.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in choice for school. That is why I do not teach at a district school anymore and that is why there is a teacher shortage in this state I live in.The compulsory, brick and mortar has met it's match.
I believe in choice, parental choice though.
However, I cannot hold a child completely to their own choice of education let alone without a structured curriculum of any kind. Mr. Hewitt's curriculum it seems is based on nature. Sounds awesome, no books, no rules, no teachers, no classrooms! But he must have instilled some form of structure onto his two children for them to be so self-directed, reliant, and confident in learning, exploring, etc.
So it really is a parental control over education. Lucky and blessed families get the countryside as their educational backdrop. But many living in crowded cities and areas still leave education up to the "experts".
But we all know the experts should be the parents!! Don't we? Yes, they should be!!
If I had to do things over, it would be nice to have home schooled, or even lived in any open area to create an unschooling environment. But I chose what I had in my life's pocket and my kids seem damn fine. Will Mr. Hewitt's children become the Bill Gates of their time, or the inventors of our next century? Hope so, I hope our history shows us as it has before great Americans from all over the likes of learning modes have/had made a huge success out of their lives despite their life. Such as George Washington Carver; botanist and inventor who was born into slavery, lived with a couple who bought him but whom instilled education unto Carver... He made it and so will your children. IF you parent with respect to the education given.
Not everyone wants to become the famous success. Some just want to live a decent life. Judging others' education will not equal the outcome. What will equal will be choice of opportunities given in small, medium, or large doses regardless of the environment.
Traditional, home or unschooling, it is education guided by a parental force and lead by children. We all need to show our country education is a community effort, parents and teachers must become a unit to instill inquiry, exploration, and open the minds of all children to lead us into our future. It may not be in the countryside of Vermont, it may be in a shack in the ghetto. Either way education has to be given with an understanding that our furture is at stake so move forward as a parent, guardian, educator, neighbor, whatever. Make the right choice and follow through as an adult guiding a child to their future.
