The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [34]
Unschooling demands a great deal of faith and trust by the parent, which can be difficult for those of us who are used to the American habit of judging and comparing our children’s grades and test scores. Learning happens according to the child’s schedule, not ours, and an unschooling child can appear to the casual observer to be doing “not much” or “nothing at all.” Most unschooling parents, though, who try logging every single activity their kids tackle over the course of a day, or a week, find themselves overwhelmed and impressed by the amount of actual learning that occurs even in the most casual approach to education. And because it is undertaken at the child’s instigation, it is neither rote nor boring, and it is understood more deeply and retained far longer than material learned because it was assigned by someone else according to an established formal curriculum. Unschooled kids can quickly exceed their parents’ knowledge of or energy for a particular topic and may need outside assistance.
Advantages
Learning becomes a natural part of life for unschooled kids, not something someone else does for them or something confined to a particular place or time.
Unschooled kids tend to be curious and tenacious at finding ways to satisfy their curiosity.
The informal nature of unschooling allows flexible schedules and the maximum adaptability to each child’s skills and interests.
Because they are actively involved in determining how they learn, unschooled kids tend to become quite self-reliant and self-confident.
Even more than most homeschoolers, unschoolers have the time and energy to explore topics in depth, to think and ponder and dream, and even just to be bored for a while.
Watching your kids so eagerly learning can move you to dig into a few topics to explore for yourself; learning for its own sake can be hard to resist.
Drawbacks
Unschooling can make parents and other relatives very nervous. Having faith that your child will learn to read is an entirely different matter from sitting back and letting her do it at her own pace.
Self-directed learning does not lend itself to traditional assessment methods or grade levels. Demonstrating and documenting learning can be tricky and takes planning if the child will eventually enter school or attend college.
Unschooling can be sneakily expensive: You don’t purchase formal curriculum packages, but you buy interesting books and tapes, and “stuff” for hobbies and projects, and perhaps pay for specialized lessons. If you’re not careful, the costs can add up all too quickly.
A Note on School Calendars
You may start out homeschooling assuming that you’ll stick to the traditional September-to-June school year. Most homeschooling regulations assume your school year starts in the fall; notices of intent, private school affidavits, and other such forms are usually due for submission sometime during the period from mid-August through early October. Homeschool suppliers hit the conference circuit and advertise their wares heavily in the homeschooling periodicals during the summer on the assumption that most homeschoolers are then reviewing and choosing their materials for the coming new school year. Sticking with the conventional school calendar is convenient, if nothing else.
Most often, more structured homeschool families are the ones who conform to the traditional academic year. After nine or ten months of tightly scheduled work assignments, the entire family is often more than ready for a break. Some families won’t do any teaching or learning over the summer, whereas others may opt for something like an unschooling style for the warmer months.
But many homeschoolers find that they prefer to develop their own academic calendars. Some structured homeschoolers like to continue homeschooling continuously throughout the year because they feel their children learn better and retain more knowledge