Why Unschooling Is the Next Wave of Home-Based Education for Kids
by Mary McCoy
Photo credit: rmt/Pixabay
Imagine if your child’s school day started with him packing his lunch, grabbing his canteen and marching off into the horizon.
It’s an experience that is available to families who choose to forego more structured forms of education for the opportunity to unschool their children. When I first heard about unschooling, I felt a little suspicious of the practice. How could children meet their educational needs if they were truly self-directed in their learning? Wouldn’t they just sit around and watch television all day?
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Unschooling and attachment parenting coach Laurie Couture is adamant that the exact opposite occurs when children are truly free to explore their educational interests. She unschooled her son through his adolescence and all the way to his high school graduation, and she observed him reap incredible benefits from his nontraditional education. “There were few ‘typical’ days in our adventurous family,” she says. “As a single, working mom I built my career around my son and being able to open the world up to him.” Their weeks consisted of involvement in home-school groups, exploring natural habitats and involving themselves in the neighborhood through art, speaking engagements, volunteering and spending time with extended family.
According to The Natural Child Project, Couture nailed the unschooling trend with the style of her son’s education. “Unschooling is a unique opportunity for each family to do whatever makes sense for the growth and development of their children,” the organization explains. “If we have a reason for using curriculum and traditional school materials, then we use them.” Any curriculum used in unschooling, however, is a supplement to the learning experiences that children and their families undertake on a daily basis to foster a lifelong love of learning and fascination with the world.
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The constant stream of field trips and fun experiences certainly sound fun, but Couture states that they also served as a foundation for her son’s life and future career. In fact, she sees unschooling as an effective way to set a child on course for the career he or she will want as an adult. “My son ran his own business starting at the age of 12 and began his music career at the age of 14. He had media interviews, he joined me for public speaking gigs around the country and he recorded music,” Couture says. She believes that he would have missed out on these creative career opportunities if he had been pigeonholed into a one-size-fits-all public education. “He was safe from the bullying of public schools that especially target boys for negativity, labels and failure. The vibrant and dynamic life experience my son has had would have been impossible in the traditional public school system,” she says.
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But what about college, and what about a child losing interest in his or her own education? Couture states that if a parent undertakes unschooling effectively, these questions answer themselves. “When a child follows his own passions and interests, there is no need to force him to stay engaged in his learning,” she says. “Learning happens naturally.” She also added that her son’s unschooling perspective helped him compete and earn college scholarships for his continuing education.
If you want to learn more about this interesting educational perspective, Couture suggests that parents check out Life Learning Magazine for a crash course in unschooling and self-directed learning.
