Home education does not have a single method, and among the possible ways of approaching it is the Unschooling.
It literally means "no schooling" but really the path that follows is that of freedom of learning. We must have great confidence in the natural curiosity of human beings and in that, the child is able to choose to learn.
Of course parents are present helping the child to find the information they require according to their interests and guiding the process. The parents answer their questions, offer educational resources as the child requests respecting that he neglects them, speaks to him and offers new experiences and new topics in which the child may or may not want to deepen.
Learning, then, is considerably more intense, more experiential, more meaningful. It is taken advantage of since the child has a real interest in learning about that issue. The child will gradually expand his interests or, from an initial topic, will be introduced into new ones.
Children learn to read and write and mathematical operations when they care to do it, and with less formal work than when it is done without their internal desire to do so. On the other hand, knowledge comes slowly, demanded by them, as they learn new things, and guided by their own interests.
He Unschooling, as a way to focus learning is based on the theories of John Holt, American educator of the twentieth century. His work "Teach Your Own" laid the theoretical foundations for something that our educational system seems to have forgotten: that children want to learn and that desire is demolished by leading methods.
Innate quiriosity makes children (and adults too) want to learn things and understand them, it is part of human nature, which has led us to this day, the true engine of progress and knowledge.
Children, to educate themselves, do not need previous methods or agendas. What they need is space, experimentation. They need the physical world and the real world, and the trust of those who accompany them that they will ask to learn what they need when they need it.
If you opt for the UnschoolingOf course you have to offer them an environment rich in stimuli. Books, maps, conversation, documentaries, resources available. And adults by their side to help them when they ask for help and offer them new fields in which they can decide to enter.
This, applied to schooling or home schooling, means that the learning system is much less structured than the one we are used to. The resources and the adults have to be there, open to the child and also showing them in an experiential way life forms and broad interests.
He Unschooling As a teaching system it has great advantages. The child has much more freedom to decide and it is not necessary to structure the agendas and times beforehand, because the same student will decide and show us when and how to do it. The child also becomes a person with confidence in his ability, who investigates for himself, who learns with love. A self-taught able to think for himself and decide what he wants to do.
On the other hand, it is necessary to be prevented to be able to offer enough stimuli and leave some important matter aside. The parent or educator may feel insecure, since he himself has not learned that way and does not have the security that programs and qualifications give us.
I give you an example, not complete, since my son also receives formal education, but in his learning it has been his interests that have made him really learn and want to learn more.
When I was less than two years old I asked the letters and what the written words said. He learned to read at his own pace and would have learned when he wanted to. Actually, he stopped when they started telling him what he had to learn every day. As soon as they sat him down to make chips. And they forgot that human puppies learn by playing and learn by themselves.
He is fascinated by animals. Since I was a child. It has hundreds of books, first children's, now huge encyclopedias. He has been choosing the themes that were opened, to which each one of the previous ones took, throwing himself excited to them, until dominating them according to his interests.
From this fascination was introduced in the Natural Sciences, not only animals. He knows what the geological periods of the Earth are, he knows hundreds of prehistoric animals, how man influences the climate, how are the ecosystems and climates in each part of the Earth.
He has learned Geology and Geography of the World, Astronomy, Biology. He has asked about how the human body works and how life is born. The genes, the atoms, the Nature of the Universe, the Big Bang.
Reading was necessary to learn more. Carefully paint the animals that interest you, researching their diet and behavior. He wanted to know about the origin of man and our ancestors.
And from that, he entered History. Rome, America, Egypt, the Bible, Islam, the History of Christianity, great inventions and discoveries. Now he is in this, learning every day, asking me to teach him things, to look for information, to tell him what I know and what I, hard-working, learn along with him.
Now he asks me to talk about Chemistry and Philosophy, to understand the reasons for the things he knows, how they work, where they take us. He loves to learn and choose his learning path. Now he is eight years old, but the whole learning process was developed since when he was three or four years old, he began to demand topics that interested him, and, without guiding him, he designed his own personal curriculum.
All this has served him a hundred million times more than what he has learned in a desk, than what he has repeated in an exam. He is eight years old and knows things he has decided to know.
When I think about what it would have been like to learn like that, freely, I feel frustrated. I wasted so much time learning things that mattered to me nothing, doing repetitive exercises overflowing with weariness.
And instead, it was so rich to learn what I wanted, searching through my father's library, reading and letting myself be fascinated by what interested me, that I conclude that nothing I learned forced has left me any trace. History, Philosophy, Music, Literature, Science, everything I remember, I decided to learn by myself. Doesn't the same thing happen to you?
That's why I have great confidence in him Unschooling, especially in younger children. Relying on their natural desire to learn, to ask about life and their surroundings, they can get them to learn with pleasure and interest. When they are older they ask for structure, organized content, according to their interests and even ask for things that cost them effort, because mastering knowledge will allow them to move more and more.
