Defining Unschooling
Helen Hegener
At 7:05 AM +0000 3/13/2002, Tia Leschke <leschke@...> wrote:
and thinking to myself, but Tia's question made me click on reply, as
I thought this would be of interest at this point in the discussion:
It's an editorial from Home Education Magazine, I forget the date,
and I couldn't find it anywhere online, so I'll just post the entire
article and hope the formatting stays readable and the length doesn't
cause problems for anyone.
Defining Unschooling
by Helen Hegener
Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussion
in homeschooling circles about unschooling, what it is, what it
isn't, and how one does it - or doesn't. Workshops on unschooling
have become standard fare at homeschool conferences and conventions,
and several homeschooling publications have tried to define the word.
There are even derivatives now, like Christian unschooling and
structured unschooling and radical unschooling.
Unschooling is an interesting word, or at least I think it's
a word. How many people need to use a word, and more or less
understand and agree on what it means, before it officially joins our
language - as in it gets added to our dictionaries? I don't think the
word homeschooling was around for more than six or seven years before
it showed up in a major dictionary. Maybe with a few more years of
useage unschooling will join the ranks of publicly recognized and
respectable words.
But to be included in a dictionary, a word needs a
definition, and unschooling is a particularly difficult word to
define. Just last month there was a long and involved discussion
about what it means - and doesn't mean - on one of America Online's
homeschooling forums. There were those who felt unschooling totally
precludes the use of school-type materials, and those who said the
materials don't matter, it's your attitude that counts. From the
online discussions, one could gather that unschooling generally seems
to refer to the act of not learning in the same ways we were expected
to learn in school, i.e. with textbooks, workbooks, lesson plans,
drills and all the rest. But many avowed unschoolers said they do use
these handy educational tools, just not always in the ways they were
originally designed for.
Most unschoolers agree that it goes a little further than
that, tho, and can mean the entire process of shaking off schoolish
habits, patterns, and expectations. Of course others will say that
it's not a process at all, but just what they do with their kids
every day. It's their interactions, their interconnectedness, their
very lives.
In the Dec/Jan 1995 issue of Growing Without Schooling,
editor Susannah Sheffer had some interesting comments on the history
of the word 'homeschooling,' and I was surprised to learn that
unschooling was actually the predecessor of that word. For a long
time now I've thought it was the other way around!
Susannah noted that John Holt had used the word 'unschooling'
in GWS #2, noting "at the beginning Holt simply used it as a synonym
for what we now call homeschooling." She adds "By issue #12, which
I'd date at June 1979, you can see that the magazine was using
'unschooling' and 'homeschooling' pretty much interchangeably, and
gradually the term 'homeschooling' became the more common one."
Grace Llewellyn gives our term an interesting spin in The
Teenage Liberation Handbook. Throughout the book she prefers the term
unschooling, explaining early on that it has fewer negative
connotations than homeschooling. But in Chapter 11, on Legal Issues,
she writes: "I am shifting my terminology a little. In this chapter,
I will mostly use the euphemism 'homeschooling' rather than
'unschooling.' 'Unschooling' is not a legally recognized term, and
probably never will be. Don't use it when you talk to schools,
courts, or legislators; it will confuse them."
Well, maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up about getting it
into the dictionaries.
For that matter, do we even want official dictionary-style
recognition of the word's meaning? Unschooling means many things to
many people... that became quite obvious in the America Online
discussions. And that's part of its appeal. Each family, each
individual, can decide what they want it to mean for themselves
within a loosely-accepted larger context.
There's an odd dynamic at work in that once a word is
defined, it begins to lose its meaning through overuse,
overpopularity. The word homeschooling, officially recognized for
some time now, has been showing up in some strange places, most
notably as what parents do with their children after school and on
weekends. Because the term is widely recognized and accepted, it's
being used to stretch the meaning of other activities, with the very
real danger that the word's own original meaning will be completely
lost.
This has already happened with the term 'alternative
schools.' Where that once meant schools which functioned outside the
educational bureaucracy, it now also means special public schools for
kids who don't fit well into the usual regimen. If one uses the term
alternative schools but means free schools, or student-participatory
schools, or any of the other originally accepted definitions, the
distinction needs to be made clear.
Unschooling is still a wonderfully nebulous term, subject to
individual interpretation. Homeschoolers can argue themselves in
circles about what it means, and that's as it should be. We need
words that are vague yet descriptive, changeable while unchanging. In
much the same way that homeschoolers have taken leave of the
educational bureaucracy, we've taken leave of the English language
bureaucracy and are exploring new options in communication. We're
unschooling in the best sense of the word.
>So how *do* the rest of you define unschooling?I've been catching up with lists this evening, mostly just reading
and thinking to myself, but Tia's question made me click on reply, as
I thought this would be of interest at this point in the discussion:
It's an editorial from Home Education Magazine, I forget the date,
and I couldn't find it anywhere online, so I'll just post the entire
article and hope the formatting stays readable and the length doesn't
cause problems for anyone.
Defining Unschooling
by Helen Hegener
Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussion
in homeschooling circles about unschooling, what it is, what it
isn't, and how one does it - or doesn't. Workshops on unschooling
have become standard fare at homeschool conferences and conventions,
and several homeschooling publications have tried to define the word.
There are even derivatives now, like Christian unschooling and
structured unschooling and radical unschooling.
Unschooling is an interesting word, or at least I think it's
a word. How many people need to use a word, and more or less
understand and agree on what it means, before it officially joins our
language - as in it gets added to our dictionaries? I don't think the
word homeschooling was around for more than six or seven years before
it showed up in a major dictionary. Maybe with a few more years of
useage unschooling will join the ranks of publicly recognized and
respectable words.
But to be included in a dictionary, a word needs a
definition, and unschooling is a particularly difficult word to
define. Just last month there was a long and involved discussion
about what it means - and doesn't mean - on one of America Online's
homeschooling forums. There were those who felt unschooling totally
precludes the use of school-type materials, and those who said the
materials don't matter, it's your attitude that counts. From the
online discussions, one could gather that unschooling generally seems
to refer to the act of not learning in the same ways we were expected
to learn in school, i.e. with textbooks, workbooks, lesson plans,
drills and all the rest. But many avowed unschoolers said they do use
these handy educational tools, just not always in the ways they were
originally designed for.
Most unschoolers agree that it goes a little further than
that, tho, and can mean the entire process of shaking off schoolish
habits, patterns, and expectations. Of course others will say that
it's not a process at all, but just what they do with their kids
every day. It's their interactions, their interconnectedness, their
very lives.
In the Dec/Jan 1995 issue of Growing Without Schooling,
editor Susannah Sheffer had some interesting comments on the history
of the word 'homeschooling,' and I was surprised to learn that
unschooling was actually the predecessor of that word. For a long
time now I've thought it was the other way around!
Susannah noted that John Holt had used the word 'unschooling'
in GWS #2, noting "at the beginning Holt simply used it as a synonym
for what we now call homeschooling." She adds "By issue #12, which
I'd date at June 1979, you can see that the magazine was using
'unschooling' and 'homeschooling' pretty much interchangeably, and
gradually the term 'homeschooling' became the more common one."
Grace Llewellyn gives our term an interesting spin in The
Teenage Liberation Handbook. Throughout the book she prefers the term
unschooling, explaining early on that it has fewer negative
connotations than homeschooling. But in Chapter 11, on Legal Issues,
she writes: "I am shifting my terminology a little. In this chapter,
I will mostly use the euphemism 'homeschooling' rather than
'unschooling.' 'Unschooling' is not a legally recognized term, and
probably never will be. Don't use it when you talk to schools,
courts, or legislators; it will confuse them."
Well, maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up about getting it
into the dictionaries.
For that matter, do we even want official dictionary-style
recognition of the word's meaning? Unschooling means many things to
many people... that became quite obvious in the America Online
discussions. And that's part of its appeal. Each family, each
individual, can decide what they want it to mean for themselves
within a loosely-accepted larger context.
There's an odd dynamic at work in that once a word is
defined, it begins to lose its meaning through overuse,
overpopularity. The word homeschooling, officially recognized for
some time now, has been showing up in some strange places, most
notably as what parents do with their children after school and on
weekends. Because the term is widely recognized and accepted, it's
being used to stretch the meaning of other activities, with the very
real danger that the word's own original meaning will be completely
lost.
This has already happened with the term 'alternative
schools.' Where that once meant schools which functioned outside the
educational bureaucracy, it now also means special public schools for
kids who don't fit well into the usual regimen. If one uses the term
alternative schools but means free schools, or student-participatory
schools, or any of the other originally accepted definitions, the
distinction needs to be made clear.
Unschooling is still a wonderfully nebulous term, subject to
individual interpretation. Homeschoolers can argue themselves in
circles about what it means, and that's as it should be. We need
words that are vague yet descriptive, changeable while unchanging. In
much the same way that homeschoolers have taken leave of the
educational bureaucracy, we've taken leave of the English language
bureaucracy and are exploring new options in communication. We're
unschooling in the best sense of the word.