Where Did the Notion of Unschooling Come From?by Andrea Hermitt | More from this Blogger 23 Dec 2006 11:18 PM John Caldwell Holt wrote How Children Fail and How Children Learn in the 1960's. His ideas are credited for getting a lot of people to consider homeschooling, and more specifically, unschooling. John Holt started out as a teacher, but quickly became disillusioned after participating in a joint teaching/observation project, where one teacher taught while the other watched. What he observed was that children did not learn out of fear of being wrong or ridiculed. John Holt is quoted as saying, "It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."In 1977, Mr. Holt founded a magazine called "Growing Without Schooling" and started a bookstore where he sold educational materials to homeschoolers. John Holt died in 1985, but his legacy continues. I had the pleasure to meet Pat Farenga at a homeschooling conference I attended in 2002. He had recently discontinued the publishing of Holt's magazine, Growing Without Schooling, and was working on several of his own homeschooling projects. Since then, he has had Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling published and was touring and speaking on unschooling in the United States. He has also published several informational recordings on homeschooling. I also met Peter Kowalke at that same conference. He was 23 at the time and had unschooled his entire life. While he had attended college,he did not believe a diploma was necessary to succeed in life. Like his previous education, he did not feel any need to take classes outside his realm his curiosity level. At the time, he was working on Grown Without Schooling a documentary on homeschooling. I found him to be highly intelligent and articulate. If you want to know what the first batch of homeschooled adults is like, (homeschooling became popular in the late 1980's), you may want to purchase this video. Peter continues to advocate and speak to and for homeschoolers, and according to his website, he is currently looking for a magazine editing job. While not all of the outcomes in the video paint the brightest of pictures, it is still painfully obvious that these kids did learn and blossom in a way dramatically different from children in public school. Personally, I feel that different can be good. While I do not unschool my children, I have to admit that what I have read and heard from these people definately intrigues me. I try to work some time into every day for free exploration for my children. Learn more about Andrea Hermitt  Andrea Hermitt is a native New Yorker currently residing in GA. She has been married for over 16 years and has two teenage children. Relevanthomeschooling tags User Comments  Fatherofeight (2475) 23 Dec 2006 11:55 PMThe only person that I have met who says she is unschooling is really not doing anything. She says that she only makes him do school when he wants to. Well, guess what? He usually would rather sleep or watch TV. Thanks for your article because from my only experience, I had a bad taste in my mouth for unschooling.  Valorie Delp (49340) 24 Dec 2006 05:41 AMIf we did not live in a state that was so highly regulated, I would strictly unschool my son. Probably not the girls. . .they seem to need a little more 'structure'. But my son thrives in this type of environment. By the way Ed, he's not allowed to watch T.V. save for 1/2 hour a day and he almost always would prefer to watch Magic School Bus. There seems to me to be almost 'two' branches of unschoolers--those who are radical in what they believe and set no boundaries whatsoever and those who set up as much educationally enriching stuff and then let their children choose. I've only met one radical unschooler and I must admit I'm not impressed. . .but I've met others whose kids are equally as educated as I would consider my own to be. . .just had a different means of getting there. Thanks Andrea for the blog.  Andrea Hermitt (5512) 24 Dec 2006 12:35 PMFor the successful unschoolers I know there seems to be a "trick". The trick is to lessen or eliminate stimuli that will fry the brain like mindless TV and violent video games, and to make abundantly available items that will positively stimulate the brain like classical music, good books, educational programs and learning toys. Then they just let their kids "have at it", so to speak. In cases where a great deal of documentation is needed, the parent then basically follows the kids around and journals everything he or she does, as the child gets older, he or she learns to journal their "education" themselves. But when you have to write goals at the beginning of the year like Valorie (and other New York Homeschoolers), that would still be difficult. Valorie Delp (49340) 24 Dec 2006 07:12 PMAndrea--I know a few New York unschoolers and they do what I do on occassion--re-write their IHIPs which is legal. However, I do not know ANY unschoolers who have 5 children to re-write IHIPs for! They only have one or two kids--and of course there's the big difference. It's a lot harder to be 'creative' in your documenting when it's for 5 different kids who go in 5 different directions.  Julie Gentry (5915) 19 Jan 2007 02:04 AMValorie, I find unschooling to be contrary to Scripture. We are RELAXED schoolers. I think the difference is where does the final authority lie? Who makes that ultimate decision as to education? The unschooling definition is providing the children a rich environment and then getting out of the way (okay, that's a paraphrase). Children need a balance of what they want to learn and what they need to learn. Either extreme is wrong IMHO. Andrea Hermitt (5512) 19 Jan 2007 10:19 PMWhile you or I may not agree with unschooling, as homeschoolers we need to be careful about being judgmental of the educational approaches of others, lest we come under fire too. Discuss this article
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