It’s no lie that most children don‘t like being at school for several different reasons, but parents as of late have taken a step in a different direction of handling this problem… removing them from the public schooling system entirely. Also known as “Unschooling.”, So, why is this happening specifically and why now? Well the answer of when this all started may be a shocker to most.
The idea of unschooling comes from the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believed in the idea of children being able to be free and explore their own personal interests, without a school curriculum interfering with their activities. Another word for this style of “education“ is called “Free-schooling. “In unschooling, there are no school hours, no homework, no nothing relating to simple education that most all public schooling systems have.
The unschooling movement was originally brought up in the 1970‘s, which is also around the time that the idea of homeschooling students emerged, but once again unlike homeschooling, there is no curriculum. While it was brought up several decades ago, it‘s only picked up traction more recently, mainly due to the invention of social media platforms like Tik-Tok have become a place for parents who have unschooled their children to tell people why they would do such a thing.
Other individuals have also made statements about the trend, including psychologist Peter Gray, who wrote Free to Learn, which is a book about the topic. One of the reasons for this trend is that some parents don’t like the fact that most school districts base students’ academics purely on standards, test scores and conformity of character, rather than personal growth. There have also been advocates, such as John Holt, (a promoter of homeschooling) that have worked in the public schooling system and have had the same ideas as Rousseau.
But even though they’ve been removed from the school system, and aren’t exactly being homeschooled, they still need to learn somehow. The way that these children learn is simple. The child finds something they are interested in, they ask questions about it, and just kind of figure it out for themselves with some basic outside information. Sometimes the parents of these children have a basic understanding of school subjects, and they do their best to answer any questions the child may have.
The whole system (or lack of a system) of unschooling relies on the child to be inquisitive, which is the entire goal of the trend. The trend is also incredibly controversial due to the fact that not all parents have the ability to properly answer or “educate“ the children in question, leaving everything completely up to information primarily found on the internet, which isn’t always very accurate. While the trend has made its rounds on the internet, it seems to slowly be dying off, as it loses its five minutes of fame.
