On Un-Schooling

"I have nearly broken myself of the habit of the terms "school day" and "school work." "School" is about compartments, subjects, boxes. It implies a certain location and specific actions. But we are learners. The world is ours to grasp and know and marvel." -Study In Brown

I had someone inquire as to the differences, in my opinion, between "home-schooling" and "un-schooling."

I thought, "Interesting post idea!"

As usual (particularly in the nit picky world of the internet, particularly in blogs, particularly in blogs of conservative Christian women, see: courtship vs. dating,) the two terms often overlap. Therefore, this post will be one of my self-centered ones where I only tell you what I think (moo ha ha ha!)

In our generation, the term "home-schooling" is rather well-known. Perhaps not totally accepted yet, but still considered fairly normal in comparison to this radical new idea of (drumroll please!) "un-schooling."

As a matter of fact, to be quite honest, it has taken me some time to become comfortable with writing (here) about my education. To be totally open about the way we do (not do) school is an invitation for criticism, i.e. not my favorite thing. But nonetheless, the years have turned me into a die-hard un-school advocate who can't quite keep her tongue still about how much she loves to not do school. Ever.

Ahem, which brings me to the point: I don't do school.

(There! I said it!)

The first time I ever heard of an un-schooler was when my older sister had a pen-pal from Kansas as a child. They met in a chat room back when chat rooms were for chatting children and not preying perverts and began emailing and then snail-mailing. This girl was "home-schooled," but was a certain species. She was not the type with the bun and ankle-length skirt, no make-up and a True Love Waits ring. She was the type with the black hair with blue highlights, pierced nose and affectionate boyfriend (at least if I remember the pictures that came in her emails correctly.) Eventually, I remember her telling my sister that she was in fact "un-schooled." We raised our eyebrows to this. Apparently it meant that she had dropped out of home-schooling. Tsk, tsk.

My two older siblings and I all went to public school through '98, and in '99 my parents took us out (to the shock of our entire little town) and began to educate us at home. We were the only home-schoolers in our town (did I mention it was little?) and knew very few home-schoolers elsewhere. But my parents weren't about to base our happiness and education and futures on the opinions of the rest of the world, so home-school we did. This started me in first grade and I've never been to school since.

The reasons my parents took us out of school and the reasons my parents kept us out of school are somewhat different stories which I hope I can write about another time, but from the beginning, my parents were quite unique and personal in their approach to our educations. At first though, the logical thing seemed to be to bring school home, for isn't that what "home school" meant? Then again, there were the reasons that we didn't go to school to consider, so our curriculum was then limited to "school" without the parts we didn't want. And then we added the parts that we did, which "school" didn't provide. And then we altered it yet again.

And to tell you the truth, we went from relaxed, to more relaxed to even more relaxed. The more my parents taught, the more we taught ourselves, and the more we taught ourselves, the less work any of us did. For my parents didn't have to strap us to chairs and cram Abeka down our throats, and we didn't see anything we were doing as "work."

Eventually we moved and met more and more home-schoolers, but over the years, we became less and less like them. We were already strange to the majority, and now we were becoming strange to the minority. We were developing our own, even smaller minority, which turns out the be the philosophy behind un-schooling.

Our home-school friends still ask us the same questions:

"Did you do school today?"

"Are you finished with your school for the semester?"

"Do you like doing school?" and

"Who teaches you your school?"

These are all good questions for them to ask among themselves, but to us we always see one little glitch: the word "school."

So to tell you the truth, I don't do school. I never do. I don't sit down with a stack of books or DVDs or URLs or papers. I don't have a school schedule, I don't have school breaks. I do, however, "teach lessons." This means that on weekdays, I sit down with Willin and make sure that he practices a little reading, a little writing and a little arithmetic every day. Then I read aloud to him and sometimes we play games. Sabrina does this with Sam and Birdie does this with Jubilee. It is very relaxed, quite short (in comparison to school days!) and flexible. If we decide to go on vacation, we go and leave the lesson books behind (unless they beg to bring them along and peck through them on the road,) and if we decide to all go shopping together, we all go shopping. Or if our cousins come over to play or we are celebrating someone's birthday, lessons are put to the side. Because even though we try to do it every weekday, they are not our top priority.

So the difference, in my mind, is that home-schoolers do school at home and un-schoolers just live life and learn along the way.

But as far as me, I have decided to improve my math. I don't like math, haven't "done math" since eighth grade and still have no desire to do math, but I do have a desire to be an educated, competent adult and therefore, I decided on my own to work towards improvement. My mother bought me a book on the subject and I am slowly working through it. When I reach the back cover, I'm going to throw a party. And then everyone can ask me about college. :)