It has been a few months since reading The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith but since its contents are still resting on my mind, I thought it worthy to share its qualities with others.
As a unconventional home schooler as a child myself, I was very intrigued in this insightful style of learning when first hearing of unschooling a few years back. But I didn’t do much research because I had no children at the time. After our daughter Ani was born, the passion for learning was sparked in our house and I really wanted to know more about this “unschooling method.”
Its really quite easy to understand, at least it is if your main desire is for you children to learn well, enjoy learning and know how to learn. If your main goal is to compare your child with standards, fill up workbooks, have readers at age 5, and other conventional ideals then unschooling is really hard to grasp.
I love how Mary Griffiths shares with her readers that children as well and adults for that matter learn best when allowed to pursue their interests and curiosities in their own time frame and environment. Everyone has a natural desire to learn but tend to loose much interest when forced to learn a certain subject a certain way, within certain time frames and while sitting still. Unschooling makes the WHOLE world your classroom. No unschooling family matches another unschooling family in their use of books, crafts, science experiments, media, the great outdoors etc. As each child is different all families learn differently and at very different time tables. Some children who unschool will only master reading when they are 8 but the concept is that THEY mastered it because they wanted to and because they put forth the effort they mastered it well. Mary Griffith does an excellent job compiling first hand accounts from unschooling students and parents as well as helpful resources for those interested.
Parents and skeptics are worried that some children will just be plain lazy and never amount to anything if not forced to some degree. But according to Griffith and the many families who contributed to the book state that all children can really go only a short time before becoming uncomfortably bored with sitting around watching tv. Eventually all children run to activity, inspiration, discovery, and learning. Also, many claim that parents don’t have to do anything to help their children grow and learn when they unschool. But the truth is quite the contrary. The parent must be the facilitator and make the commitment to learn with the child. Curious questions from little voices can not be ignored even if the parent has no idea how to answer. The parent must be willing to search out the answer with their children.
The Unschooling Handbook has chapters on reading writing, math and science as well as a resource chapter and info on college bound youth. Griffith includes ideas from parents from all backgrounds as well as single parents. It is a fascinating and yet simple book that really ignites the passion for learning in the whole family.
From my own experience with unschooling so far I must say I am so impressed and inspired when I see its results. My daughter will be three tomorrow. We read tons of kids books from the library and I read chapter books out loud some nights while she listens. She draws endless pictures of people and animals. We explore outside when weather permits and visit our goats. There never seems to be enough puzzles in the house. We do watch movies on netflix and youtube. We do crafts everyday and play together with her little babies. I spend many rest times telling her stories. In all of these areas I have not pushed or had ulterior motives, I simply exposed a few things to her to see if she was interested. What she shows interest in has changed a little every month and it is fun to see her blossom in new things. At one point I tried encouraging her to play with magnetic letters, teaching her sounds, but she wasn’t interested. So I let it go and kept the letters on the fridge. It is amazing now to watch her walk over, grab a letter, mention the name or sound after she sees it in a book I’m reading her. It amazes me when she grabs a book and pretends to read to me. And to top it off, a few days ago I saw she had drawn a bird and next to it she wrote “Bid.” I have never taught her that bird started with a B nor have I ever taught her how to spell it. Somehow she took note of the word when it was associated with a bird. I look forward to the days ahead and will update our unschooling news as she grows.
I just watched this program on this man who came up with a self directed learning program for computers. Children, using his program, were learning things way beyond their years, simply beacause it was interesting to them. That simply exposing children to things can tap into that primal thirst for learning, allowing them to control what they learn, they instinctively learn “more”. I hadn’t heard of this theory before, but was unknowingly doing it with my little girl, and I giggled a little when you wrote about 5 year olds reading, mine will be 5 in May and she is already strating to read. I didn’t do any real teaching, just reading and encouraging her to try(after she started asking me what nearly every word she saw was), last week she played teacher with some other kids and read them a book. Anyway, love your posts.
Thank you so much for your post. This is my second year homeschooling my daughter and we are taking and unschooling approach this year. Last year (“kindergarten”), we did a very inexpensive curriculum that was very laid back called Five In A Row. My daughter hates to be forced into anything so I figured a laid back curriculum would be best. Needless to say, she started boycotting our lesson time after we read our story for the week. She liked listening to me read, she just began to hate our discussion time afterward. So this year, I through all caution to the wind and decided to be guided by her interests. I know she can read, she knows the sounds and knows how to sound out words, she just flat out refuses to do so when she is asked. She will only do it if she has a real interest in learning what the word is. She is also doing mental math (something she could not do last year) and I have not had one formal lesson with her yet this year. One of the main reasons I wanted to homeschool was not to be bound my conventional methods of measuring a child’s intelligence. My daughter is a bright child and has no developmental issues so I know when she is ready, which may not be until 8 or later, that she will pick up a book and read it without any stress or trouble.
Thanks again for your post!
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