Unschooling's depths and comparisons

In July 2005, I re-ignited a older discussion about the boundaries and definitions of different kinds of unschooling. I'll link that old discussion below. It's on the wayback machine, and there's a lot of it there.

Sandra Dodd
Jul 02 2005

So I was watering my yard with my thumb over the end of the hose, playing with the water, and seeing the sun reflect off various drops, where it came through the trees, and this topic (old as much of it is) flooded in. I had a new idea.

Some people define unschooling as a relationship (or lack of one) with school. Others define it as a relationship (or potential damage to a relationship) with their children.

It seems our detractors say "If my kids aren't in school and I'm not using a curriculum, I'm unschooling."

It seems to me that stopping there will lead to frustration and failure and the continuous little additions of rules and lessons and requirements.

It's enough if one is looking toward school and wants to declare the kids are out AND they're not going to use a curriculum. So at that point in the sort (if we were writing a computer program, they've passed through
School? if no, then homeschooling
Curriculum? if no, then unschooling)

But will that last years? It's the label of a moment. "Now what?"

It's not a computer program. For me it's about natural human learning, not about not-school and not-curriculum.

For a short while I had a column in a homeschooling newsletter/magazine in California. I was dumped for writing the "unschooling choice" article http://sandradodd.com/schoolchoice because it didn't match the organization's strong anti-school stance.

So maybe the regular radicals are more often answering the deeper questions. Not "what is unschooling?" but "how can it work best and how can it be maintained for years and lead to these transformations of which people write?"

My husband is out making a cinderblock wall. Maybe I should be out helping. But knowing the definition of masonry won't get that wall built nor help it be solid. The more he knows, the more he can draw on his experience, stories of others' successes and failures, ideas from books, and the more choices he considers and makes as he proceeds, the better that wall will be, and the longer it will last.

Buying blocks and a sack of cement isn't building a wall.

We're helping people with unschooling that will last and be strong

The original: Definition of unschooling? (page 6)

By changing the page number at the bottom left there, you can read all the rest of it, if you want. On that same page six, Lyle Perry posted (three times, mistakenly) something very good, too.


This index page for SandraDodd.com/unschool was created November 27, 2025. Other pages already in the folder will be listed and linked below. This URL used to open a list of files. Now it opens all this. 🙂