Unschooling: Adventures in Letting Go

This post originally appeared on www.katiespencerwhite.com in Autumn 2011.

A lot of folks have been asking me how the homeschooling is going.  I'll be honest - it is a lot harder than it looks, especially when one is working with a young person who has specific needs.  It's not that it is particularly difficult.  It's just that it isn't taking place quite how I imagined.  Somehow, I thought our kitchen table would come to look like a classroom, covered in textbooks, atlases, laptops, graphs, bits of science equipment, pencils, and all the rest of the usual detritus that makes one feel like one is engaged in "official" learning.  But it isn't like that at all. 

William and I have been unschooling for almost three weeks now. For those not familiar with the term "unschooling", it was coined by educator John Holt in the 1970's to describe a way of homeschooling that is child centred.  It's led by the child's interest, at their developmental speed and level.  As a parent, my role is to facilitate his learning through accessing resources, making suggestions, and actively discussing his interests. Actually, it is homeschooling that doesn't resemble a classroom in any way, shape or form.

And that is what I'm finding difficult.  In my vision of our homeschool, I set the curriculum, I chose the subjects, I set the schedule, and I sourced the materials.  I'm sure that's how most adults envision a homeschool.  Think about it: if you suddenly decided to homeschool (for whatever reason), you would probably fall back on what you know.  For most of us, that is the traditional classroom.  Like me, you would probably envision you and your child sat at your table, learning much as you did when you were in school. You would start the day with math, move on to English, then maybe add in some science, then after lunch you might study Spanish or do some art.  The only difference to your child between homeschool and regular school is that he or she doesn't have to leave the house.

Like me, you may also spend hours selecting textbooks and teaching materials and drafting extensive plans. As a former teacher, I had the traditional methodologies drilled into me.  For each subject I set out exactly what William needed to know and be able to do.  I did the same for each unit and then for each lesson. This way I could continually assess his progress and revise learning as required.  The plan was to use both formative and sumative assessments to target his learning in the most effective way possible.  In simpler terms, we would drill vocabulary, and complete exercises.  We would analyze, discuss, and evaluate. And all the while I would keep copius notes and records so that I could demonstrate to the local education authority that William was receiving an effective and appropriate education and making adequate progress.

What a fantasy that was!

You see, my vision was for me, not for William. I forgot that William has Asperger's syndrome and that the entire reason we are homeschooling is because the traditional approach does not work for him.  It causes stress and extreme anxiety.  For William to learn anything at all, he needs to be given freedom - freedom from tests, assessments, plans, exercises and requirements.  So after a rethink, that's what he's getting.

Here is the essence of unschooling: children are naturally curious.  They want to learn. But they develop differently and they have their own tastes and preferences.  If you tap into this wellspring of curiosity and allow children to follow their passions, they will learn at a remarkable rate.  And they will go on to be lifelong learners with the skills and confidence to pursue anything they like and to become anything they want.

For most of us, our education never resembles this.  That's because most children survive the one size fits all system of western education.  We go on to become law abiding, tax paying members of society.  But few of us retain our early zest for learning.  Have you ever known a  four and five year old who couldn't stop asking "why and what and where" all the time, to the point it drove you mad?  Why is the sky blue? Why are leaves green? Why don't penguins fly and if they don't are they still birds? Where is the North Pole? Why don't planes fall out of the sky?  The world to little people is amazing!

These bundles of curiosity are then sent off to school and within a few weeks or months, they stop asking questions. Most of us don't notice because we are too busy getting to work on time or making sure dinner is cooked or ferrying our kids to soccer and piano practice.  But an important shift has occurred.  Our little explorers become little robots - learning and doing what they are told. Those who do it well are successful and go on to nice colleges and safe jobs. Those who don't are failures who end up on benefits or drugs or worse.

William did well at school for a long time.  For a few days, I tried to impose that system here at home.  But William is not the child he used to be.  He responded just as he has for the last two years: he shut down and refused to engage.  He became nervous and anxious. It was definitely a backward step.

So I stopped trying to tell him what to do and started listening.  I started letting him set the pace and the agenda.  Watching crazy shows like the BBC's Rough Science or Discovery's Mythbusters gave him loads of ideas about physics, chemistry and engineering.  Reading a new novel we picked up at a discount inspired him to analyze effective strategies for writing novels. He opened up. Together, we started learning.

Here is what William has studied in the last few weeks:

1. Catapults: Their history and construction (including physics and design).  He has redrafted his design a few times in response to available materials. This topic led to conversations on gravity and the difference between mass and weight.

2. Splitting water molecules: apparently you can do this with graphite, electricity and copper plate.  He now wants to generate electricity using magnets and copper wire.  Also, he has learned that if you make the water more conductive using salt, you will likely have a secondary chemical reaction which will not result in the splitting of the hydrogen and oxygen.  If you use baking soda, however, you can avoid this reaction.  We are gathering the materials in order to replicate the experiment.

3. Writing novels: William is in the design stage and is using a "snowflake" model. We have also discussed characterization, plot and theme.

4. American history: we have looked at the pre-Columbian history of the Americas, the Columbian exchange, and early American history.  Since he has had little exposure to these topics in England, it's all new to him. He says it's like reading a novel.

5. Math practice: he has consented to some workbook drills while his sister does her homework (she's still in regular school).

6. T-Rex: was he a hunter or a scavenger? Certain fossil evidence suggests he was not the great hunter of popular myth but was really a scavenger of already dead things.  William is particularly interested in their bone structure and is trying to discover if there is additional evidence to persuade him one way or the other.

7. The Renaisssance: William wanted to know it's time period and we discussed the ideas and events that moved us from the middle ages to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.  William had never heard of Copernicus, theology, Guttenburg, Martin Luther (the priest, not the civil rights activist of whom he had heard), or the Inquisition.  This last was particularly interesting to him because the idea of a corrupt church and institutional preservation had relevance to the novel he is writing.

William has also read extensively because he likes it.

I had no idea about the science stuff - it isn't in my area of expertise.  It doesn't seem to matter much.  We explore together and we bounce ideas off each other.  We have discussions at the hardware store and on long walks.  In relation to the catapult, we had a discussion about gravity and the rate at which things fall.  William thought that bigger items would hit the ground faster than a smaller object.  So I picked up a rock and a pebble and we tested it out.  They hit the ground at the same time.  Now, William could have sat through 90 minutes of lecture on Galileo and completed a similar experiment, but we did it 5 minutes. And while we were discussing it, we were also outside looking for herons. Then we moved on to discuss how one determines how far something will travel when heaved from a catapult.  William directed the conversation; I kept up with William rather than William keeping up with me.  Sometimes it's hard to get a word in. He loves it.

Most importantly, William seems inspired.  He's and Aspie and he has many interests in which he can spend hours in happy exploration.  He comes up with all kinds of ideas of things he'd like to explore - if he's writing a fantasy novel, how does he come up with a creative idea to reconceptualize magic? What resources can he access? Where does one obtain a spring for the catapult (we decided a mattress spring would be effective)? How does one make a traditional meat pie (important detail for writing his novel)? Should his novel be set in a traditional medieval time period or in a Renaissance inspired period (and what details would distinguish them - see above discussion)?

The hard part is stepping back and letting him get on with it.  Instead of force feeding him a steady diet of approved learning that is methodical in it's approach, I have to trust that his haphazard style will lead to concrete results.  That's not easy for a traditional educator and lawyer like myself.  We like systems and forms and structures.

But William doesn't.  William needs freedom.  Forcing him to conform is like caging a wild animal.  He may survive, but he won't be happy.  He'll shut down and hide in a corner.  Been there, done that, not doing it again.

So for now, I'm letting go.  I have no idea if it's working.  I can see learning taking place, and I'm keeping a daily journal of our conversations and William's work.  I'm asking Will to keep records of his designs, to write down instructions for his experiments and to work on his novel.  What I don't do is impose a schedule. We don't have a traditional classroom.  He's not bothered for the moment with my lovely textbooks or with completing exercises in them.  But he's happy. And he's getting out and about. And yes, I believe he is learning.

He's also wonderfully, vibrantly alive and the world which once scared the pants off of him is once again a place of endless curiosities.

What I have learned these past weeks is that William's education, this journey into the unknown world of unschooling, is primarily his journey.  My education is relatively complete and, as William's teacher/facilitator/guide, I must ensure that William has the knowledge and skills to survive without me.  How he acquires this knowledge is not static - there are many paths we can take to achieve this goal.

I am also his mother and for the rest of his life, his journey will also be mine, though, as he grows, I will fall further and further behind until I am but an interested observer, and, if I am lucky, a trusted confidant and advisor.  There will be times, like now, when our paths seem as one.  But a time will come when our paths will separate and William will go his own way.  My journey, for the moment, is to prepare William for this split.  And, in a small way, to prepare myself.

I am reminded of Kahlil Gibran's thoughts on children from "The Prophet".  It is worth remembering the gifts of our children and our role as their parents:

On Children

Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.