A Very Nearly Tea

Looking for some reading or find something you'd like to share? Unbridled Learning is another community for sharing sites you come across with others. Their main focus is unschooling, for those of you who unschool or are curious about it. I've never really considered myself an unschooler, but I do feel honored that someone thought one of my entries worthy of sharing.

Edited to add a correction: The site isn't specifically about unschooling. A commenter corrected this, stating:

In fact it is not about labels at all, but about learning... how it happens best, which is when it is freely engaged in. Not necessarily when it is fully planned and initiated by the learner

Unschooling was actually the first approach I researched when I began homeschooling and was leaning in that direction until I joined a yahoo group. They managed to scared me off of it in a very efficient fashion, but I have since met some very nice unschoolers. There are certain principles of unschooling that I like very much, although I know there are some who will say that is not possible. To adhere to certain principles of unschooling is like adhering to certain principles of vaccinating your child, as someone told me once. Leaving that aside, however, there are some things I think I do strive to accomplish in our little homeschool:

The parent as facilitator.
Learning as a natural process.
Respect for the individuality of the child.

I think the main difference I have is that I'm not really a fan of the idea of "child-directed" or "child-led" learning, depending on how you define that. I lead the education of our children. But that does not mean I dictate. The verb "to lead" has its own interesting history:

lead (v.)

"to guide," O.E. lædan "cause to go with one, lead," causative of liðan "to travel," from W.Gmc. *laithjan (cf. O.S. lithan, O.N. liða "to go," O.H.G. ga-lidan "to travel," Goth. ga-leiþan "to go"). Meaning "to be in first place" is from c.1380. The noun is first recorded c.1300, "action of leading." Meaning "the front or leading place" is from 1570.

There are two definitions in Webster's which relate closely to my views on educating children:

1. To guide by the hand; as, to lead a child.
5. To precede; to introduce by going first.

A leader goes first, inspiring others to follow. That is my proper role in educating my children, as I understand it. I do not dictate their learning.

dictate (v.)

1592, "to practice dictation," from L. dictatus, pp. of dictare "say often, prescribe," freq. of dicere "tell, say" (see diction). Sense of "command" is 1621. The noun is from 1594. A dictator (1387) was a judge in the Roman republic temporarily invested with absolute power.

For the metaphoric, here is a beautiful performance my children have enjoyed very much: The Unbridled Stallion:



Hopefully I did not butcher the general philosophy of unschooling too much, but those are my thoughts. I wrote more on my thoughts of the nature of knowledge, the role of the teacher and the role of the child in the first part of my educational philosophy if you are interested. And feel free to post any links to sites you think explain unschooling well. The one thing I have learned over the past year is that there seems to be about as many definitions of unschooling as there are people using it.