Unschooling Wikipedia. Unschooling emphasizes free, undirected play as a major component of childrens education. 1Unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschooling students 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. 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, conventional grading methods, and other features of traditional schooling in the education of each unique child. The Top 50 greatest nonfiction books of all time determined by 114 lists and articles from various critics, authors and experts. The term unschooling was coined in the 1. John Holt, widely regarded as the father of unschooling. 2 While often considered a subset of homeschooling, unschoolers may be as philosophically separate from other homeschoolers as they are from advocates of conventional schooling. While homeschooling has been subject to widespread public debate, little media attention has been given to unschooling in particular. Critics of unschooling see it as an extreme educational philosophy, with concerns that unschooled children will lack the social skills, structure, and motivation of their schooled peers, while proponents of unschooling say exactly the opposite is true self directed education in a natural environment better equips a child to handle the real world. 3PhilosophyeditChildren are natural learnerseditA fundamental premise of unschooling is that curiosity is innate and that children want to learn. From this an argument can be made that institutionalizing children in a so called one size fits all or factory model school is an inefficient use of the childrens time, because it requires each child to learn specific subject matter in a particular manner, at a particular pace, and at a specific time regardless of that individuals present or future needs, interests, goals, or any pre existing knowledge he or she might have about the topic. Many unschoolers believe that opportunities for valuable hands on, community based, spontaneous, and real world experiences may be missed when educational opportunities are limited to, or dominated by, those inside a school building. Learning styleseditUnschoolers note that psychologists have documented many differences between children in the way they learn,4 and assert that unschooling is better equipped to adapt to these differences. 5People vary in their learning styles, that is, the preference in how they acquire new information. However, research has demonstrated that this preference is not related to increased learning or improved performance. 6 Students have different learning needs. In a traditional school setting, teachers seldom evaluate an individual student differently from other students, and while teachers often use different methods, this is sometimes haphazard and not always with regard to an individual student. 7Developmental differenceseditDevelopmental psychologists note that just as children reach growth milestones at different ages from each other, children are also prepared to learn different things at different ages. 8 Just as some children learn to walk during a normal range of eight to fifteen months, and begin to talk across an even larger range, unschoolers assert that they are also ready and able to read, for example, at different ages, girls usually earlier, boys later. In fact, experts have discovered that natural learning produces far greater changes in behavior than do traditional learning methods, though not necessarily an increase in the amount of information learned. 9 Traditional education requires all children to begin reading at the same time and do multiplication at the same time unschoolers believe that some children cannot help but be bored because this was something that they had been ready to learn earlier, and even worse, some children cannot help but fail, because they are not yet ready for this new information being taught. 1. Essential body of knowledgeeditUnschoolers sometimes state that learning any specific subject is less important than learning how to learn. 1. They assert, in the words of Holt Since we cant know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever must be learned. 1. It is asserted that this ability to learn on their own makes it more likely that later, when these children are adults, they can continue to learn what they need to know to meet newly emerging needs, interests, and goals 1. Many unschoolers disagree that there is a particular body of knowledge that every person, regardless of the life they lead, needs to possess. 1. Unschoolers argue that, in the words of John Holt, If children are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world than anyone else could make for them. 1. The role of parentseditParents of unschoolers provide resources, support, guidance, information, and advice to facilitate experiences that aid their children in accessing, navigating, and making sense of the world. 5 Common parental activities include sharing interesting books, articles, and activities with their children, helping them find knowledgeable people to explore an interest with anyone from physics professors to automotive mechanics, and helping them set goals and figure out what they need to do to meet their goals. Unschoolings interest based nature does not mean that it is a hands off approach to education. Parents tend to involve themselves, especially with younger children older children, unless new to unschooling, often need less help finding resources and making and carrying out plans. 5The required paradigm shifteditUnschooling opposes many aspects of what the dominant culture insists are true. In fact, it may be impossible to fully understand the unschooling philosophy without active participation paired with a major paradigm shift. The cognitive dissonance that frequently accompanies this paradigm shift is uncomfortable. New unschoolers are advised that they should not expect to understand the unschooling philosophy at first. 1. Not only are there many commonplace assumptions about education, there are many unspoken and unwritten expectations. One step towards overcoming the necessary paradigm shift is accepting that, what we do is nowhere near as important as why we do it. 1. Criticism of traditional school methods and environmentseditUnschoolers question schools for lessening the parentchild bond and reducing family time and creating atmospheres of fear, or atmospheres that are not conducive for learning and may not even correspond with later success. Often those in school have a community consisting mainly of a peer group, of which the parent has little influence and even knowledge. Unschoolers may have time to share a role in their greater community, therefore relating more to older and younger individuals and finding their place within more diverse groups of people. Parents of school children also have little say regarding who their instructors and teachers are, whereas parents of unschoolers may be more involved in the selection of the coaches or mentors their children work with and with whom they build lasting and ongoing relationships. According to unschooling pioneer John Holt,. Proponents of unschooling assert that individualized, child led learning is more efficient and respectful of childrens time, takes advantage of their interests, and allows deeper exploration of subjects than what is possible in conventional education. Unschoolers may question the school environment as one that is optimal for daily learning. According to Brain Rules by John Medina, If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would create something like a classroom. According to the Victorian Institute of Teaching here 1.
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