The fact that it works for one set of children is no guarantee of un-schooling succeeding in your home. It’s an innovative and completely unconventional mode of educating your children by letting them do what they want to and learning life skills in the process.

It’s much more difficult to follow than sending your kids off to a traditional school every morning and helping them with homework once they get back at the end of the day. For those parents who are drawn to the system but not sure if they or their children are up to the task, here are a few tips to help you decide if un-schooling is the best option for your family: 

 

·        Un-schooling is all about choice, not one made by you, but a decision taken by your child. You as the parent can only guide and help, not direct and control. If your child opts to go to a regular school instead of staying at home like his/her siblings and being “un-schooled”, respect the decision as part of the un-schooling process and enroll him/her in a traditional education setting.

·        Some parents, once into the process, express doubts and reservations because their child does not seem to be doing anything productive even after a few years of un-schooling. In such situations, the best recourse is to have faith in your child’s ability to be able to decide on his/her own and wait out the indecisive phase. After all, isn’t that what un-schooling is all about? It needs a lot of patience and faith in one’s offspring since success cannot be achieved overnight using this method of education.

·        Parents must be knowledgeable themselves in order to be able to teach and guide children in whatever subject interests them.

·        They must have a thorough knowledge of their children’s ability to grasp concepts and learning styles and speed. 

·        Parents should be ready to accept that force and punishments are not the way to go if children are to be un-schooled.

·        They should be ready to take on the responsibility of caring for and being around the children all day long, a process that can become very demanding and nerve-wracking.

·        Parents should be willing to accept a loss in income if one or both of them must stay at home for the sake of their child’s education.

·        Rather than thrust their ideas on children, parents must be willing to step back and offer help only when asked.

·        If the children express a desire to go on to college, get a head start in exploring options open to un-schooled children.

·        There are no rules to be followed in un-schooling – just going with the flow and pace your child sets should be enough.

·        Parents must take the effort to document the child’s activities throughout the day and categorize them into traditional subjects – learning how elections are contested would qualify as Civics and so on.

·        There’s no hard and fast rule against using text books from recognized curricula just because your child is un-schooling. If the shoe fits, by all means, walk out of the store with it.

·        Parents must avoid comparing their child with other children who are being unschooled. There’s no common ground or standard to justify such a comparison.

·        Children must be provided access to alternative sources of knowledge like libraries, books, field trips, the Internet and others.

 

Un-schooling is akin to unstructured art – you throw a whole lot of colors on a blank canvas and hope that it turns out to be a masterpiece. The end result, even if just a blotch, is often wondrous in both the eyes of the parents and the child, simply because they both made the choices that went into creating the picture.

 

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This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of accredited college degrees. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.