Unschooling
Unschooling is an informal learning that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Often considered a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, believing that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood and therefore useful it is to the child. While courses may occasionally be taken, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, fixed times at which learning should take place, conventional grading methods in standardized tests, forced contact with children in their own age group, the compulsion to do homework, regardless of whether it helps the learner in their individual situation, the effectiveness of listening to and obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, and other features of traditional schooling in the education of each unique child.
The term unschooling was coined in the 1970s and used by educator John Holt, widely regarded as the father of unschooling. Even though unschooling is often seen as a subset of homeschooling and homeschooling has been the subject of broad public debate, unschooling in particular has received relatively little media attention and has only become increasingly popular in recent years.
Critics of unschooling see it as an extreme educational philosophy, with concerns that unschooled children will be neglected, miss many things that are important for their future life, lack the social skills, structure, discipline, and motivation of their schooled peers, and will not be able to cope with uncomfortable situations. Proponents of unschooling say exactly the opposite is true: that self-directed education in a non-academic, often natural and diversified environment is a far more efficient, sustainable and child-friendly form of education than schooling, which preserves the innate curiosity, pleasure and willingness in discovering and learning new things, invites children to be part of society, shows children how to deal with their surroundings and own existence in a self-determined and yet responsible manner,makes children understand why certain properties, skills, abilities, values and norms are important rather than just telling them to obtain and adhere to them, rewards and supports creativity, individuality and innovation, teaches how to acquire new things and find your way in unfamiliar situations quickly, and better equips a child to handle the "real world" outside of school.[1]
The term unschooling probably derives from Ivan Illich's term deschooling, and was popularized through John Holt's newsletter Growing Without Schooling (GWS). Holt is also widely regarded as the father of unschooling.[2] In an early essay, Holt contrasted the two terms:
GWS will say 'unschooling' when we mean taking children out of school, and 'deschooling' when we mean changing the laws to make schools non-compulsory...[3]
At this point the term was equivalent with home schooling (itself a neologism). Subsequently, home schoolers began to differentiate between various educational philosophies within home schooling. The term unschooling became used as a contrast to versions of home schooling that were perceived as politically and pedagogically "school-like," using textbooks and exercises at home, the same way they would be used at school. In 2003, in Holt's book Teach Your Own (originally published in 1981), Pat Farenga, co-author of the new edition, provided a definition:
