The Phenomenon of "Unschooling"

While attending the Texas Association of School Boards convention in Dallas, I ran across this Dallas Observer article entitled "Wild Child."  It discusses the phenomenon of "unschooling" which has been described as "learning what one wants, when one wants, in the way one wants, where one wants, for one's own reasons. The learning is learner-directed; advisors or facilitators are sought out as desired by the learner. There are no curricula, lesson plans, schedules, or agendas. Most of the learning is quiet, even invisible, as there is not a focus on creating a lot of 'products.'"

Think this isn't a real phenomenon?  A Google search returned 357,000 links to the word "unschooling" including this handbook on unschooling available at Amazon.com.

I found the article interesting though it was somewhat disturbing.  I admit that I initially viewed "unschooling" as a curiosity until I ran the Google search.  Apparently "unschooling" and even the type of "radical unschooling" described in Wild Child is anything but a mere curiosity. 

Then I started thinking about "unschooling" in the context of the Visioning sessions Spring Branch has recently conducted, and I realized that some of what "unschooling" involves are similar to the concepts we have envisioned for SBISD in 2018, including much more self-paced learning, project based learning, learning occurring many places including outside the classroom, teachers as facilitators and mentors, etc.  While I wouldn't be happy if my son went dumpster-diving with a schizophrenic to survive as is described in Wild Child, I think the freedom to learn concepts of "unschooling" that overlap our visioning discussions are interesting and could have applicability within the existing school environment.

Comments

[Ron]

I wrote a paper a few of years ago titled 'Unschooling for Adults'. You can read it here:

http://atypicalhomeschool.net/general-information/unschooling-for-adults/

We would be interested in your thoughts/comments. Its basis is in adult educational theory and its compatability with unschooling.

[Carlotta]

It would be fascinating to see if the evident epistemological superiority of learning that which one is motivated to learn, that which is the subject of active thought, could possibly be applied to a more school-like context.

There have, of course, already been a number of efforts to achieve this, (in the UK in places like Dartington and Summerhill and a number of state schools in the 70's), but these projects tended to fail in some ways, often because there was insufficient awareness of the importance of the facilitator's role, which resulted in a laissez-faire situation where good theories were not offered.

Perhaps IT will make the difference and personalised, intrinsically motivated learning will become a genuine classroom possibility in years to come, but till then, "unschooling" will probably retain that title.