By Kelly Lovejoy
My son Cameron (16) and I recently started
sitting in on a college Sociology class. He asked for and received electric
guitar lessons for his birthday. Mondays he goes to a nearby school and takes African
drumming lessons. He's taking a weekly film class starting in March, and we'll
be sending him to a weeklong film school in
Cameron said the other day, "For Unschoolers, we sure are taking a lot of schooly classes!"
That got me thinking...especially since we
are one of those families that discovered unschooling
after years and years of schooling.
I think that there are three "Stages of
Unschooling."
The first stage is the
longest and most difficult and involves getting rid of all school-think, which
includes classes and "instruction" and school-speak. We have to rid
ourselves of the reliance on schools and teachers and testing and book-worship.
We need to look deeply into the difference between "teach" and
"learn". We ban classes and structure and nagging. It's accepting
that grades and requirements and diplomas and curricula and extrinsic
motivations truly have no meaning in an unschooling
life. It's realizing that the whole world is related and inter-related: it's
about NOT dividing the world into subjects: math is science is art is history
is literature is FUN! It's a time for reflection on how we've learned the
things that really matter in our adult lives. It's hard to let go of all that
school-think, to go beyond what we've been *taught* was important and to value
ALL learning as important.
It's realizing that we learn what WE believe
is important WHEN we are ready. And it's realizing that what's important often
changes. It's about abolishing coercion in learning and about the freedom to
change passions. It's understanding that learning doesn't stop.
Face it, almost all of you reading this in
2004 went to school---at least for 12 years, maybe as many as 22 or 25 years!
School is so ingrained in us, that it's hard to think any other way. We
appreciate "straight A students" and "AP" classes and
college prep high schools and term papers and "higher math" and high
SAT/ACT scores. "Good" students are given preferential treatment by
everyone: pizzas for reading and Chuck E. Cheese tokens for good report cards.
Even our child's car insurance is lowered if we have an "A student"!
Stage one is about ridding our minds of
those things, about really thinking about learning in a holistic manner. It's
about examining how we learned what truly interests us---especially those
things that didn't require a "teacher". What are your passions? HOW
did you learn to do those things? In a classroom?
Two of my passions as a child were dogs and
horses. Dogs and horses are NOT taught in any grade, middle, or high school *I*
know of. But I wanted to learn everything I could about them. My parents gave
me dogs and horses. They bought me books and paid for me to take riding lessons
and dog obedience classes. They paid for dog and horse shows and equipment. My
passion threw me into reading every book I could find (there were no videos
back then—or "Animal Planet"!). By twelve I could identify every
breed of dog and horse that I had ever seen or read about and tell you how it
was developed, where, why, and by whom. I spent every weekend and every
afternoon at a dog show/horse show/event/trial or just hanging around the
stable or kennel. I asked thousands of questions and "got my hands
dirty". Many of my friends were adults with the same passions. Training,
breeding, grooming, showing, husbandry—all of these things I learned because I
was consumed by them!
But, of course, dogs and horses are NOT
school subjects—and are completely unimportant in the school world. What if I
had waited for a teacher to come along and say, "Today we are learning all
about dog and horses"? Not only would I have waited all my life, the teacher
would only have given me a "taste" of the subject!
OH! And you *can't* make a living with dogs
and horses—right?
Once you are comfortable
with the idea of immersion learning—and you're over wanting or needing classes
and structure, you're finally over the deschooling
hump and are actively in the process of UNschooling.
Stage two involves really immersing
ourselves—and allowing our children to immerse themselves—into passions and
even into slight, fleeting interests. Seeing connections and making connections
and yet realizing that some things *might* not connect for YEARS is the most
important part of stage two.
Connection: I remember lying in my bed when
I was about 11 or 12. My bed was behind the door, so that, when open, the door
obscured the head of my bed. I had tied a string to my doorknob. I would try to
shut my door with my finger at the point of the doorjamb; then I would open the
door back up with a pull on the string. It took *a lot* of pressure (and pain!)
to close my door at the point of the jamb. But every inch closer to the door
knob I got, it would be easier and easier to close, so that by the time I was
right at the edge of the door (by the knob), I could almost "blow" it
shut. I had "discovered" torque—but it had no name!
School's idea that children should be given
the definition of torque and then have it explained is backwards. It was so
simple for me to understand the definition of torque because I already had made
the personal and meaningful connection with my bedroom door.
Passion: There are people who invest their
time (and many even make a living) studying Elizabethan fashion or
reading/writing about the works of John Steinbeck or
determining whether an 17th century chair is a forgery or watching birds make
nests/feed their young or , as I heard on the radio
yesterday: there's this guy who's getting his Masters degree in Soil Science!
Go figure!
If allowed (and often, even if not
allowed!), a child will pursue his career by following his passion(s). A wise
parent will encourage this pursuit of passion, because it may be what the child
decides to devote his life's work to. Maybe *more* importantly, that wise
parent will step aside when a passion becomes "old" because the parent
will know that *some* connection has been made with this fleeting passion.
From 10-12 years old, Cameron was a
magician. I actually thought that he would become the next Lance Burton or Jeff
McBride (who once referred to Cameron as "mini-me"!). He was so
passionate about magic, he would practice and perform
ALL day! Insert here: "If I let him, Cameron would sit around and do magic
ALL DAY!" Well, he DID! Until the day when he quit.
I was stunned! He'd lost all interest. We'd put thousands of dollars into
costumes and tricks and gimmicks and conventions and tapes and books and
private sessions with famous magicians—and he just up
and quit.
At first I was incredulous. Then I realized
it was just an intense, fleeting passion. We still have a huge box of magic
upstairs in the attic. He can come back to it whenever—or not. What's important
is that it inspired him and f ed a passion and
entertained him (and us and hundreds more). He met some truly fascinating
people and made connections that will last a lifetime—because he had an
interest, a passion.
Stage one, deschooling,
is a very uncomfortable time! It's a period of intense questioning and of
challenging yourself to think differently. This is difficult, but it can be
done—as with all learning: when you're ready to!
Stage two may be even more uncomfortable,
because you're actually putting the ideas into action: you're allowing the
passions to take over and you're not pushing the three "R's". You are
beginning to trust that the child will learn and you're respecting his choices.
You're UNschooling! And the more you do it, the
easier it gets!
Stage three is freedom and joy and trust and respect and desire: Radical Unschooling
The third and final stage is when we can honestly and sincerely look at ALL learning as
equal and not hold one "method" or style or subject or means
of obtaining information above another. By stage three, we live and breathe unschooling---it's such a part of our day-to-day living
that we can't separate it from our lives: it's not just the
"educational" part because *everything* is educational. We can apply unschooling principles to bedtimes and eating and video
gaming and TV and "chores". We know that our children will learn
because it's what they were born to do; they're hard-wired to learn. Learning
is how the human species survives and progresses and succeeds.
This is the stage when we can effectively
and confidently start giving out unschooling
information to the uninformed or misinformed because we "get it." We
can live our lives joyfully because we're not worried whether Susie will pass
her algebra or whether Johnny will be able to get into a good college, because
they WILL if they want to. We know that they will pursue their passions...well,
passionately! And that each day will bring more connections and learning
opportunities.
This is the stage when classes and
instruction may eke back into our lives, as it recently has in our family's. We don't give more weight to the learning that is
happening in Sociology-101 or karate or bee-keeping just because it's happening
in a classroom situation. A class is just another means of pursuing our
passions, making the connections, and receiving the information. Learning
happens all the time in all places—*even* in a classroom!
I don't want to give the impression that
acceptance of class/book learning automatically makes
you a Radical Unschooler. Stage III cannot "just
happen": you'll have to go through Stages I and II first. For those of us
that attended school, deschooling will always exist
at a lower level throughout our lives. The next generation (our unschooled
children) will not have this stage to work through: they'll be able to see all
learning as equal and good from the get-go.
It's a process: getting rid of the
school-think and structure, becoming comfortable and implementing immersion
learning, and *then* accepting ALL learning as equally valuable.
Kelly Lovejoy, 2004