Natural Learning

In this series, I’m going to share with you some things that I’m learning about right now. I’m trying what some call “unschooling” or “interest-led learning” during our summer break.  I’ve been reading a lot about this method of learning and am very intrigued.

I’d rather call it natural learning. The term unschooling sounds like you aren’t doing anything educational, and we do not plan to be slackers in any way. Also, I have to say up front that there are some things within this philosophy that I do not agree with and, like all methods of education, I will use what I agree with and ditch what I don’t. Right now I am just researching, learning for myself, keeping some notes on our experiences, and doing some experimenting with the kids. My findings so far have been so positive that I wanted to begin sharing with others.

First of all, think back about the kinds of things you remember from your school days. I know that I remember things like: art, some geography, a few literature books, and a report I did on Emily Dickinson in the 5^th grade. I remember these things because they interested me! I don’t know about you, but the things that I memorized for a test have been long gone and were never really retained at all. I’ve always been aware of this and have often thought about it when trying to figure out how to get my children to have that “love of learning” that all of the homeschool how-to books said was so very important.

I’m going to be honest and speak plainly here….My kids have always cringed at the word SCHOOL and have never had a “love of learning” when it came to the work I assigned them. They do not enjoy reading books with what some would call beautiful language (a.k.a. classic literature). They are not interested in making lapbooks or lots of projects and crafts that are time consuming. (True Story: One time we put together a paper model of the Trojan Horse and it was torture for us all! After the hours of cutting, taping, gluing, and stress, which was mostly mine, we finished it and then wondered what on earth we would do with it now that it was put together! LOL!) They do not like the artificial feeling that comes with prepared lessons no matter what the homeschooling flavor I try to disguise it in may be. Even the things that I love do not go over well. Nature study, for instance, (my favorite thing about the Charlotte Mason method) has never worked well for us unless it is based on something THEY discovered and were interested in learning more about.

All these years I’ve been reading in countless books, blogs, and magazines about how important it is for a child to have a love of learning, but my kids resented school time! I felt like such a failure and could not (for the life of me) figure out how to get them to LOVE school! This past year I went to the extreme and tried to make them more independent with their work to see if I was the problem. We moved their desks into their bedrooms, gave them a schedule to follow, and let them try it on their own. That didn’t work AT ALL, and this past school year was our worst ever!

I’m not even sure how I started reading more about unschooling, but the more I’ve discovered about this natural learning idea, the more I can now see why the kids have resented school time.

1. I have not been supporting their interests when they express them.

2. I have even been cutting them off and making them stop doing what they wanted to learn more about so that we could do what I had on my schedule for them to do.

EXAMPLE: As I was recently talking aloud about unschooling, my daughter expressed to me that she remembered at one time both she and her brother were very interested in writing their own fictional novels on their laptop computers. However, when they were in this book writing stage I would make them set a timer for 30 minutes and when the time was up they had to stop and get back to their real “school work”. She said she would HATE it when time was up because she wanted to keep writing. I never even THOUGHT about the fact that I could put down the curriculum and let them use the book writing as part of their school lessons. I was too caught up in the schedule and method and way that I had planned for the year to flow.

I honestly feel that I have been holding them back and causing tension between us all that is completely unnecessary. I have been keeping them from learning about things that were not on my “list” simply because I thought that if we took too much time away from the plan, we would not get finished with what was important to me. I did not realize that going down those rabbit trails could have been much more educational and rewarding for them than what I had planned in my schedule.

However, when I look back over the past years, I can see that my children have been finding ways to unschool themselves when I gave them a break from my assignments. Those times of self-directed education have led to a love of learning in them that I was not even aware of until now! We will discuss that next time.

To be continued…..

Here’s a quote that has been very helpful to me:

“We could do the curriculum – I could put together a few hours per day of “school work,” insisting that my children do it. But I’ve read everything I could get my hands on about learning and I’ve had 30 years of teaching experience. I know, deep down inside, that any coercion in learning creates either open resistance, passivity, or apathy, and I don’t want to create any of those in my children. Learning feels good – it might be challenging, but it is also pleasurable. Coercion feels bad, and trying to learn under coercion is not pleasurable, even when we make the best of it. Children who have experienced the pleasure of unforced learning show the effect in their incredible creativity, confidence, intensity, focus, persistence, self-knowledge, and strong sense of personal responsibility.”  http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/pam_sorooshian.html