Unschooling

Is free schooling better than unschooling?  Unschooling is the most extreme in its lack of structure.  I believe there are times when unschooling is the only thing that will really work to activate someone's natural learning ability.  It all comes down to the degree of damage that has been done through the oppressive classroom experience.  Unschooling is about recovering from the punitive coersion of classrooms that often shame non-traditional learners.  As I shared in my other post, most of the kids I worked with who wound up in the alternative schools, considered themselves bad and dumb.  They had heard it enough times, and so it wasn't surprising that they started to adopt that identity.  

As educators, we have to recognize the damage may takes time to be undone.  

The undoing cannot come in the form of schooling at all.  School now feels like the source of emotional humiliation.  School means domination and oppression.  This can be so overwhelming, that any activity, no matter how innocuous and even joyful, will be resisted by the student who has been so damaged by school.

If your non-traditional learner has become defiant, this is not a bad sign.  It means they are standing against the definition that has been placed upon them, that they can't learn, they are lazy and dumb.  They are resisting, and this has much more energy than apathy.

When someone has been wrongly defined by the system, the individual can actually feel something is off.  There is a sense that those around me, do not understand me.  They do not see me for who I am and what I can do.  Even if at one level, the student recognizes their limitations, they also know at a deeper level they have something to offer.  ADHD students expecially, have a strong will and desire to create.  When given the chance, they can do, learn more, and create outside their experience level.  This is the talent of the non-traditional learner.  This is what a freeschool model will ignite.  But first to get through some of the wounding.  First to help them take off the armor.

There are countless examples of people with dyslexia and ADHD being brutalized in school.  ADHD students are often forced to take dangerous medications, while traditional dyslexics are often just overlooked completely.  These are just two of the many forms of learning differences that are not supported in conventional schools.  There are many others, and when such a student, brilliant and sensitive, goes through the traditional school system, they often end up with mental health issues, and a core lack of self-esteem and self-awareness.  They don't know who they truly are and have adopted the identity placed on them by unknowing teachers.

This is when unschooling is appropriate.  For me, my healing came through an outward bound experience.  It helped me organize my external activity and connect with my true nature.  It helped build my will forces, and gave be silence and peace being in nature.

Unschooling is not academic, it is not graded, it is not teaching.  It is time to connect to the self.  Learning happens everywhere and when that natural curiosity is allowed to come through, when the sense of self starts to become one of the awareness of greatness, then the person will seek out their own path of schooling, and you can be there to support them.

I am attaching my favorite dyslexia video here because I often look for it on youtube, and can never find the link.  So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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