Unschooling

It’s an interesting name for something so simple – letting a young person’s interests drive their learning. But that’s what the movement is being called. Unschooling, to some degree, is simply an extension of homeschooling. The difference is that the young person is ‘driving’ the learning by what they find interesting or want to know more about.

The name, first used in 1970 by someone called John Holt, but in a recent article in Teacher Magazine it says the movement is growing. There are no hard numbers on how many young people are being unschooled but there are an estimated 1.1million young people being home schooled.

The worry expressed by educators is that young people will lose their way. I wonder. It’s probably true that some people using this approach may lack some content knowledge but isn’t curiosity and a desire to learn (and the ability to learn) more important?

Here’s a link to Unschooling – a web site with resources for and about unschooling.

Here’s Google’s results when searching for unschooling.

Schooling vs Education