Unschooling To University: Relationships matter most in a world crammed with content

By Judy L Arnall

School is one option for education; homeschooling is the second, and unschooling is the third.

 

Many parents are frustrated by the school system, perhaps because of bullying, crowded classrooms, and outdated, dull, online courses. Disengaged learners that have no say in their coerced curriculum tend to act out, tune out, or dro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judy Arnall
• Release date: Sep 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781775178606

Judy L Arnall

Judy Arnall, BA, DTM, is a Certified Family Life Educator, Distinguished Toastmaster interactive keynote speaker, and mother of 5 children. She specializes in child development and non-punitive parenting/education practices. She also founded Attachment Parenting Canada Association and trains in Attached At The Heart Parenting program by Attachment Parenting and The Growing Brain, by ZeroToThree organization.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Arnall, Judy, 1960-, author

Unschooling to university / Judy Arnall. -- First edition.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-9780509-9-3 (Soft cover).--ISBN 978-1-77517-860-6 (PDF)

1. Home schooling--Canada. 2. Alternative education--Canada.

3. Education--Parent participation--Canada. 4. Universities and

colleges--Canada--Admission. I. Title.

LC40.A66 2018 371.04’20971 C2018-904386-5

C2018-904387-3

Copyright 2018 owned by Professional Parenting. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage, and retrieval systems, in accordance with the Universal Copyright convention and the Berne Convention, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by Professional Parenting, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

www.professionalparenting.ca

www.unschoolingtouniversity.com

First edition 2018

Although the author and publisher have researched all sources to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any other inconsistency herein. Any slights against people or organizations are unintentional. Readers are encouraged to use their own judgment and consult their local laws and regulations concerning their education decisions.

Edited by Beverley Kroeker, www.betterword.ca

Printed and bound in Canada

To Elizabeth Grace,

for believing in the power of children’s curiosity, for trusting parent’s knowledge of their children, for facilitating families learning together, thank you.

We could not have been what we are today without you.

To the Team of Thirty,

thank you for your stories, inspiration, and friendship.

To my loving family,

thank you for your love, support and encouragement for this project.

I’m so proud of the wonderful people you have become.

Advance Praise for Unschooling To University

Concise parenting advice that presents alternative ways to help children grow, learn, and get into college or work. Arnall’s stage-by-stage descriptions, supporting documentation, and personal stories create a useful handbook for families interested in self-directed education.

— Patrick Farenga, John Holt / Growing Without Schooling

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Team of Thirty study

PART 1:

WHAT IS UNSCHOOLING/SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION?

Chapter 1 - The Problem: You Can Lead a Child to School but You Can’t Make Him Think

Adults can choose, but children cannot

A high dropout rate indicates a need for real change in education

Students are borderless in a digital world

What is Unschooling?

Chapter 2 - The Solution: Self-Directed Education and Adult Facilitation

We are natural learning organisms from birth to death

Adults provide 7 Critical Cs of education

Curiosity is the central driver of learning

Unschooling is pure free-learning

Self-directed education takes many forms

Unschooling research: does it work?

Chapter 3 - What Unschooling is and What It is Not

Unschooling is a buffet

Radical or whole life unschooling versus educational unschooling

Unschooling is...

Unschooling is not...

How to unschool

Many parents already afterschool, flexschool, worldschool, and homeschool while in the system

Philosophies of education

Homeschooling is different from schooling

Government-controlled distance education is not homeschooling

Unschooling is different from homeschooling

The impact of government funding on self-directed education

What can schools learn from unschoolers?

What can homeschoolers learn from unschoolers?

Deschooling

Our story

And the children played...

Chapter 4 - Play is the Primary Learning Vehicle of Children

Play is learning

Play must be freely chosen by the child, undirected by adults, and should emphasize enjoyment of process

Learning and play are intrinsically one concept

Develop a play ethic

Barriers to free play

The social, emotional and academic cost of not playing

Benefits of free play

Types of play

What kinds of toys?

Unstructured toys

Structured toys

Creativity

Nurturing creativity in young children ages 0-5

Nurturing creativity in older children ages 6-12

Nurturing creativity in teens

Can play always replace curriculum?

Play-based learning is already in the classroom

Chapter 5 - Unschooling at School

Andragogy versus Pedagogy: facilitation versus teaching

Adult Learning Theory: does it apply to children?

Myths of childhood education

Mainstream schools are already moving toward unschooling

The Finland-Alberta Comparison Project

How unschooling would work in the regular school system

PART 2:

WHY UNSCHOOLING? THE DIGITAL GENERATION NEEDS ADULTS AND SELF-DIRECTION MORE THAN PEERS AND CURRICULUM

Chapter 6 - A Brief History of Education

Homeschooling was the norm until the 19th century

Public mass schooling for 100 years

Home education catches on again in the 1970s

Unschooling is legal

Chapter 7 - Academic Benefits of Unschooling

Unschooling is one-on-one learning with an adult

Children’s vocabulary expands with time around adults

Unschooling prepares children for the future, not the past

Unschooling is a personalized education

Learning is intrinsic

Unschooling accommodates all learning styles

Unschooling learning sticks, whereas forced learning fades

No summer-slide learning loss, because education is year round

Unschooling integrates learning with context

Children learn from curiosity, not standardized testing

Unschooling invites intense concentration

Critical thinking is encouraged

Problem solving is encouraged

Initiative and grit is encouraged

Unschooling is multi-aged and interest-sorted

No streaming or tracking

Unschoolers can delve deep into a topic

Unschoolers learn entrepreneurial skills

Unschooling grows creativity

Unschooling eliminates cheating

Parents, teachers, and caregivers learn too

Children have more time to read

Sleep grows children’s brains

Chapter 8 - Social Benefits of Unschooling

Bullying is minimized

Parents have less administration and more interaction time with children

Unschooling provides much more time for family and interests

Peer culture is minimized

Children are encouraged to stand out rather than fit in

Unschooling provides optimal diversity in socialization

Socialization is better learned in a home and community, rather than in an institution

Unschooling promotes close friendships

Respectful questioning is encouraged

Unschooling is collaborative, not hierarchical

Unschooling promotes self-improvement over competition

Unschooling promotes leadership over obedience

Unschooling grows a healthy work ethic

Unschooling discourages consumerism

Learning is valued over status-seeking

Siblings grow up close and remain close through adulthood

Chapter 9 - Emotional Benefits of Unschooling

Children need an emotional sanctuary

Children don’t burn out by high school age

Unschooling is uncrowded and serene

Unschooling is unstressful

Unschooling doesn’t require punishment or bribes

Unschooling celebrates failure

Children develop excellent communication skills

Children crave human touch

More time for family dinners

Emotional intelligence is enhanced

Self-esteem and self-confidence is protected

Chapter 10 - Physical Benefits of Unschooling

Home is a healthier learning environment

Meals are homemade and healthier

Children get more sleep

Children get more physical activity

Unschooling is safe

Freedom from the school schedule reduces stress

Chapter 11 - Benefits to Society

The best interests of the child are always the first consideration

Unschoolers are educationally accountable only to themselves

Unschooling saves public money

True choice in education is a funded choice

Unschooling benefits all stakeholders in education

PART 3:

HOW TO UNSCHOOL - 3 CRITICAL COMPONENTS OF A PERSONALIZED EDUCATION

Chapter 12 - Adult/Facilitator

The 3-legged stool

Is the adult supervised?

Sample unschooling education or learning plan

Adults facilitate rather than teach

The system of school is imposed on teachers, too

Learners need teachers to guide their questions-or do they?

What does the adult actually do?

Adults are not perfect

Strewing

Can the unschooling parent work outside the home?

At what age should parents cease to be facilitators?

Why children don’t always listen to homeschooling parents

Teaching styles and parenting styles

Unschooling is not unparenting

The Parenting Style Axis

Performance pressure

8 parenting and education myths that are not evidence-based

Tips from veteran unschoolers

Chapter 13 - Resources

Experiential learning is better than book learning

Minimum resources for unschooling families

Resources that are nice but not critical

Chapter 14 - Unstructured Time

How does an unschooler change a light bulb?

School children get one hour of individual attention each week

6 things most useful for children to do throughout childhood

Is learning from unschooling really that much different from traditional school?

10 most common concerns of new unschoolers

Restoring relaxed and connected family time

Boredom is the key to fostering creativity

What will kids do all day if not directed by adults?

Chapter 15 - Assessment

Learning objectives and assessment

Who is testing really for?

Unschooling planning and assessment is the reverse of school planning and assessment

15 problems with testing unschoolers

Do we test for social, emotional and physical health?

Trust parents

No marks until high school or beyond

3 forms of unschooling assessment

Falling behind

Outcomes versus curriculum

Recordkeeping

Translating life into educationalese

Join a home education support group and protect your rights

Government regulation violates boundaries

PART 4:

UNSCHOOLING AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT STAGES

Chapter 16 - Brain Basics

Child development research is based on institutionalized children

Education begins with the brain

Human beings need experiences that engage all five senses

Brain anatomy by age

Memory

Creativity

Stress

Technology and gaming addictions and the brain

Gender differences in the brain

Building healthy brain architecture

Chapter 17 - Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers Ages 0-5: Explore and Build the Bond

Flashcards or cardboard boxes?

What we did

What you can do

Cognitive development during this stage

Educational needs for this age

Technology for toddlers and preschoolers

How to build executive function in your child’s brain without electronics

Conversation promotes social and emotional development

Play builds literacy in the silent generation

Building numeracy

Preschool - is it necessary?

Playgroups instead of preschool

Kindergarten

Chapter 18 - Elementary Ages 6-11: Play, Read, and Learn Together

Soccer practice or family dinners?

What we did

What you can do

Cognitive development during this stage

Educational needs for this age

Learning without bribery and punishment

Motivation comes from belonging, choice, and autonomy

Non-coercive parenting and education produce cooperative kids

Attachment to parents is still important

Homework eats into quality family time

What if they play video games all day?

Research on screen time for older children

The effect of screen time depends on 3 factors

Set limits or not?

Addressing concerns about screen time

How to get your screen zombie moving

Games are just another food on the buffet of learning

Educational benefits of video and computer games

Lessons, sports and activities: enrichment or overload?

Elementary learning happens in waves

How do kids learn math?

How do kids learn to read?

Facilitating literacy

How do kids learn to write?

Speaking and listening

Social Studies and Science

Unschooling STEM education

Art, Health, Physical Education, Music, and languages

Will there be gaps?

Chapter 19 - Junior High Ages 12-14: Create, Experiment, and Travel

Parties or projects?

What we did

What you can do

Cognitive development during this stage

Educational needs for this age

Travel

Volunteering

Clubs and groups

Virtual schools

Disadvantages of online learning

Advantages of online learning

Children with special needs and learning disabilities

Tutoring

Leaving junior high

Chapter 20 - High School Ages 15-18: Investigate, Problem Solve, and Explore Careers

Textbooks or travel?

What we did

What you can do

Cognitive development during this stage

Educational needs for this age

Is a diploma required?

Happy teens

Close siblings and parents

Can teens be too good?

Personalized learning

Attending regular high school as an unschooler

What do they do all day?

14 pathways into postsecondary institutions

Other less conventional ways to get into postsecondary institutions

Scholarships

Motivation for high school work

Don’t universities love homeschoolers?

High school graduation

From unschooling to university

Chapter 21 - Postsecondary School Ages 18-25: Follow Passions

Gap year or first day of school?

What we did

What you can do

Cognitive development during this stage

Essential college skills

Which postsecondary school is right for you?

Tips for applying to postsecondary schools for students and parents

The 5 critical rules for students

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

Credentials

If kids get lost at university

Letting go: trusting your child’s work ethic and your own parenting

Biggest unschooling regrets from the Team of Thirty

Biggest unschooling bonuses from the Team of Thirty

Lifelong learning

Good citizens

Lifelong family bonds

References

About the Author

Also by Judy Arnall

Introduction

"People own their education from the first day of life. We are never not learning. If one breathes, one learns."

In developed countries, children do not suffer from lack of schools, teacher expertise or resources. The 30 percent dropout rate in high schools indicates a problem that no amount of funding can solve: disengagement. Clearly, for a significant proportion of today’s children, school does not work. Many withdraw from school as soon as they are legally able to. Traditionally, stay-in-school initiatives have been aimed at fixing children rather than at fixing the system. School staff often contact teens who have left to invite them back. But in the root cause of disengagement—relevancy to children’s lives—little has changed. Children don’t see relevance in memorizing the facts and theories that can be attained in seconds simply by consulting their phones.

What children need in their education is passion—the kind of motivation they bring to their play. Passion cannot be taught, nor coaxed. It must be intrinsically motivated. Today’s children can learn most preschool, elementary, junior high, and even some high school content by following their interests. They don’t need the mandated government curriculum. All children are born self-directed learners. They just need adults, free time, and access to resources.

We must consider education outside of the monopoly of government; children are no longer limited to a physical school that serves a specific community. Education today is globalized and borderless. Learners can take courses from anywhere in the world. They can sidestep the entire government education system and write the SATs (Scholastic Aptitude Tests), ACTs (American College Tests) or Grade 12 equivalent exams to qualify for postsecondary entrance.

Education encompasses all the learning in a person’s life. Parenting is a major factor in education, guiding the whole child in all four developmental domains: social, physical, cognitive, and emotional. Teaching a child to become a productive and caring member of society is the goal of parenting. We want our children to be engaged citizens, hold down jobs, and sustain caring relationships. That is the goal of education as well. Thus, teaching is inherent in parenting. Teaching does not have to be coercive—in fact, coercion breaks relationships. Parenting and teaching are about building relationships because relationships are the foundation of our society. Parenting and teaching begin the day your child is born, and do not end on September 1 of your child’s sixth year. Parents do not suddenly become incompetent at teaching and kids do not suddenly stop learning when there are six candles on the cake. Your child can continue to learn in the same way, and you can continue to build your bonds. Children can learn math any old time, but they have only a few short years to cement relationships with those who will accompany them on their journey through life—siblings and family.

I am not anti-school. I recognize that parents will always require schools, especially if they wish to work full-time and need childcare. I do believe, however, that school is not the only place to get an education.

School should be voluntary, not mandatory. Children should spend their time being inventors, designers, researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists, in areas that interest and challenge them. If their school provides that, great. If not, children can pursue those topics and interests outside of a school framework. Children should read, write, play, volunteer, work, build projects, travel; see new places and do new things. In exploring their interests, children develop the contextual language arts of reading, writing, speaking, and representing, as well as numeracy skills. They experience social studies, history, geography and sciences, instead of reading about them and memorizing facts and figures.

If children then choose a more formal high school experience when they reach the age of 15, they will approach it with creativity, motivation, and a well-rounded educational base. In contrast, children educated in a government-mandated curriculum endure 16 years of rote learning, and stress caused by their lack of control in the content and delivery of their education. Children who enter preschool at age two and finish high school after Grade 12 have attended an institution for 16 of their 18 years. Is it any wonder many kids do not want to spend four to seven years in postsecondary education? They want control and relevancy, and often quit school to get it. (Gavel, 2017)

Today, age 13, or Grade 8, marks the average burnout point for most children, a result of too much formal school and too early a start. Research from the Alberta Education Survey, Tell Them From Me, shows that the percentage of students classified as engaged drops dramatically between Grades 7 and 12, or age 12 – 18 years. (Gavel, 2014) In contrast, children who have never been to a bricks-and-mortar school or completed a formal homeschool program are gearing up to enter high school eagerly and with passion. Research shows that the longer children avoid formal schooling and instead determine their own education, the more likely they are to attend postsecondary education and love it. (Gray, 2014)

Children need to be out in the world, not sitting inside of four walls. We are so used to being raised in boxes called classrooms that we no longer question their effectiveness. Instead of asking how to make the boxes more relevant for today’s lifestyles, why don’t we ask why children even need the boxes, or whether the boxes make for their best learning environment? Parents and employers need schools. Do children?

Children need relationships, and especially, adult relationships. Contrary to common assumptions, scientific evidence shows that the influence of relationships on development continues throughout the lifespan. These relationships are not more important at a particular stage of a child’s life compared to another, but the nature of those impacts does vary by age and developmental status. (Palix, 2017)

Through curiosity and creative exploration of the world around them, with adults at their side who mentor instead of teaching, children acquire passion and motivation and absorb knowledge in the areas they want to study and that could become their life’s work. This new breed of creative problem solvers, those who have grown up outside of the box, will find the answers to society’s problems of unemployment, pollution, global warming, political unrest, economic crisis, social problems, and global conflict.

This book is for parents

Are you the worried parent of an unmotivated, scared, unhappy, or disengaged learner? Relax! Your child will learn. Don’t worry about the need for or the quality of preschool, homework, educational daycare, enrichment activities, get-ahead tutoring, or public or private schooling. You can’t make your children learn—and you can’t stop them from learning!

Yes, we live in a competitive world. Like all parents, you want your child to do well academically. But formal school may not be the right educational path for your child. Your child doesn’t have to go to school in order to attend university or postsecondary institutions. All your child needs to do is demonstrate competency; skills and content can be learned, and learned well, outside of government-provided education systems. Content is everywhere. Children find the motivation to seek out their passions when they are ready, and when it really counts—as teenagers or as emerging adults.

This book is for kids

Play. Explore. Read. Experience. Discover your passions and interests. Find what you love to do. Do not fear boredom: it is a gift that will spur you to learn more. Be creative. Get messy. Find out. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Always ask Why? How? When? Be respectful but challenge conventional thinking; be sure to question everything you don’t understand. Listen. Work hard. Play hard at your passions. Help others. Leave your mark in the world to make it a better place. Explore your interests—then get the best possible education for pursuing your passions: either self-taught or through the many resources available. Go as far as you can go.

This book is for teachers and homeschooling parents

You are saints! You juggle kids, parents, curriculum, testing, outcomes, principals, school boards, and administrations as well as community stakeholders. You deserve children who want to explore and learn. You deserve to interact with children who are as passionate about learning as you are. Relax! Children need you more than they need content. Human contact can’t be replaced by technology. They don’t need you as a lecturer, but rather as a facilitator who helps them find what they need and discover the answers to the questions they ask. Their questions—not yours. Help them discover what they want to know, not what the system thinks they need to know.

I realize that in government schooling, both teachers and students have little input. But we need to push for a better educational experience for everyone—teachers and students. If you are not confident in your ability to homeschool or are already a homeschooling parent whose children don’t listen to you or take direction, don’t worry! You don’t have to teach your children like a school does. Trust in their passions. They will capture what they need along the way, when they need it. Join their journey on their chosen path of learning.

This book is for principals, administrators, and government

There are alternative methods of education; for the sake of our future, we need to acknowledge and support them rather than compete with them. Not everyone will be comfortable with this new model or agree with it, but everyone should be informed that it exists, and that it produces amazing results. If it needs further research, so be it. We cannot deny that children can learn and succeed without school as we know it.

This book is for members of society

The unrelenting, stress-inducing competition of institutional academic supremacy requires a backlash, and that is self-directed education. We need to step back from coerced learning, and bring joy back into the learning process. I’ve attended many education- and government-sponsored symposiums on what education and school should be, in light of today’s huge advancements in technology. Most stakeholders still think inside the box—the traditional model of children starting school at age five and stepping off the educational assembly line at 18, with certain anticipated outcomes. Textbooks, classrooms, curriculum, and control of scope and sequence are not even questioned. Question it! We need to nurture our children’s passions and creativity. Our society desperately needs future problem solvers. We can’t let them drop out!

This book is for all countries

Although many of the examples in this book reference Canada and the province of Alberta, they are useful for other countries and governments in developing policy around self-directed education and balancing the needs of families’ autonomy and public interest in education.

The Team of Thirty study

I do not have a stake in the school industry. I only have a small research project with my Team of Thirty and the anecdotal experiences of 1500 unschooling families across Canada, but I believe we must commit ourselves to exploring and researching the outcomes of alternative education. If we all truly and honestly want the best education for each child, it follows that corporate profits and government jobs in the school industry will be impacted. And that is a small price to pay in order to grow global problem solvers.

The stories in this book are drawn from thirty unique unschooled individuals from my personal circle of family and friends. The children are either my kids’ friends or my friends’ kids. The parents and I laughed together, commiserated together; we got together for coffee or visits online. The kids played together, supervised each other, and had sleepovers (sometimes double-headers!). They all unschooled as children, following their own passions for at least three and up to all 12 years of the time they would otherwise have spent in school.

While most children spent those years within school walls, the Team of Thirty played, explored, and learned—without imposed structure, intentional targets or predetermined outcomes. By simply living life, they developed creativity and innovation, critical thinking, and problem-solving and decision-making skills. They acquired literacy and numeracy skills. They developed general and interpersonal communication skills, collaboration and leadership skills, digital and technological fluency, and a love of lifelong learning.

They were all accepted at various universities, colleges and postsecondary schools and most have graduated with degrees, certificates, or diplomas. The rest are still working on them, demonstrating grit, perseverance, and a healthy work ethic.

The team members followed various pathways to acceptance from postsecondary institutions. They adjusted to deadlines, requirements, and exams. Some received scholarships.

They take personal management and well-being, and social, cultural, global and environmental responsibility seriously.

They are engaged thinkers and ethical citizens; they have enterprising spirits. They are equipped to lead productive and satisfying lives. Their names have been changed to protect their identities as they make their way in the world, getting jobs—or making jobs! —and solving the world’s problems.

You don’t have to send your children to school or homeschool for them to get an education and attend university, college or technical schools. Children can acquire an education by living life.

Welcome to unschooling!

Author’s notes:

Many commercial products are mentioned in this book. To eliminate text distraction, the symbols ™ and ® are not used.

The terms he and she, him and her are used interchangeably and are not mean to exclude non-binary genders.

All names have been changed to protect the privacy of the Team of Thirty.

PART 1:

WHAT IS UNSCHOOLING/

SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION?

1

The Problem — You Can Lead a Child to School But You Can’t Make Him Think

Google is our curriculum and the world is our classroom.

Adults can choose, but children cannot

Imagine that you are at a conference. You have spent the last three days listening to a lecturer and looking at 600 PowerPoint slides. You are tired, bored, and lectured out. It’s not a topic you would have chosen, but your employer required you to go. The last presenter is putting you to sleep. You decide to either tune out and check your social media feeds or walk out and go to your hotel room to answer emails. As an adult, you have that choice.

The day after the conference, you are getting your son ready for school. It’s his first day of Kindergarten. He gets up and eagerly packs his huge backpack with his snack, a notebook, and a pencil. He dresses in his new clothes and heads out the door with you. You drive him to the big school building a few blocks away. He sees a few hundred other children looking as scared as he is, and he hesitantly opens the door. He walks into the building. Two hours later, you drive back to the school to pick him up. As he comes running to the car, you excitedly ask him, How was your day at school? He proudly announces that he had a really great day and that it is now done. He finished school. He wants to go back to spending his days playing. What do you say? As a child, he has no choice.

Every day in Canada, seven million children (Hildebrandt, 2014) get up earlier than they probably want to; they eat breakfast, get dressed, and board a bus to go to a building where they spend the next six hours, most of their day, in a room with one adult and 30 peers. Going to school is their single most common activity for most of their childhood. Throw in an hour of bussing and kids spend 18,720 hours of childhood not feeding their curiosity, but following a rigid, often outdated, government-mandated agenda.

When adults do not choose their education, they have the ability to leave. Unfortunately, children do not. In North America, 20 to 50 percent of children drop out of school before graduating from high school. Many more who can’t leave because of truancy laws simply tune out instead. Wouldn’t it be great if kids could choose what they would like to learn, and be excited about their education?

Parents and children have been doing school for the past 150 years and although society and technology has changed most other aspects of our lives and cultures, not many people question whether this model of education still serves our children best, especially in the light of the borderless education delivery made possible by the internet.

A high dropout rate indicates a need for real change in education

Alberta has one of the highest dropout rates in Canada. Only 74 percent of Alberta’s high school-age children finish and graduate from high school within three years. Of those who do not, some make it back, and another six percent graduate within five years. (Harvaardsrud, 2013) That means that 20 percent of children don’t make it back at all while they are still young and unencumbered by mortgages, jobs, and children. It means that one out of every five brains is not reaching its full potential, yet society accepts this. I cannot imagine a brain surgeon saying, Well, we lose about one out of every five patients on the operating table, but that is an acceptable loss. Our society would be outraged. Yet we don’t question the efficiency of a system that loses one-fifth of its clients annually? There are points of progress, but as pointed out in my Introduction, most stay-in-school programs focus on fixing students rather than on fixing the school system. (Gavel, 2014)

We may think that if a child quits school, he is the only one who suffers the consequences. Not true. In addition to the financial repercussions that high school dropouts face personally, they place a financial burden on society. In Alberta, 9000 high school students drop out every year. This drains our economy—every year—of $142 million in unemployment, healthcare, social assistance, and judicial costs, as well as lost tax revenue. The Canadian Council on Learning 2008 cites a cost to society of $15,850 per dropout, per year, for the rest of their lives. (Hankivsky, 2008) Multiply that by 3000 students and the cost to society in the city of Calgary alone is $48 million per year. (Miller, 2013)

Schools were first established around 1850 to keep children busy while their parents went off to work in factories during the upswing of the second industrial revolution, which demanded ever greater numbers of obedient, non-thinking workers. Schools were structured, inflexible, and routine; coerced curriculum rewarded conformity and reinforced the mindset required by industry, and later, by the military. There was no questioning the status quo. Schools are institutions.

Undoubtedly schools improved since industrialization, allowing more interesting curriculum content, but rigidity and the demand for obedience remained with bells to signal the start and end of classes; enforced subject and topic divisions; grading systems; and punishments and bribery.

Many critics have spoken about the hidden curriculum of schooling; most notably, John Taylor Gatto, a New York Teacher of the Year whose distaste for the schooling industry led him to write the bestselling book titled Dumbing Us Down. Teaching children values, attitudes, and beliefs has always been the hidden curriculum of schooling. The problem is: Whose values? Whose attitudes? Whose beliefs? Who determines what is taught? Companies? Parents? Teachers? Universities? Governments? Politicians? The church? Community? And then—which companies? Whose parents? And so on.

In the 1850s, school was an extension of parenting. Nowadays, schools have taken the place of parenting. They are tasked with teaching values—possibly contradictory or contrary to those held by their students’ parents. Many schools have tried to become value neutral. But institutions must run efficiently and to do so, certain values are embedded and promoted: obedience, conformity, unquestioning acceptance of ideas. Some parents who have disagreed with this hidden curriculum have started charter schools or placed their children in private schools whose values and beliefs are more in line with their own; or they have homeschooled. But not all parents can opt out of the public system, as there may be financial, geographical, or admission barriers.

Students are borderless in a digital world

Other sectors of our society have changed along with the digital revolution. Mostly, school has not. The digital revolution of the past twenty years has disrupted so many industries: music, movies, television, conferences, books, hotels, taxis, travel, dating, shopping—even dying. The internet has allowed us to birth at home, educate at home, work at home, shop at home, retire at home, and die at home. Services and products to help us do all that are available even on our mobile devices!

With a whole library at our fingertips on our mobile phones, we no longer even have to purchase books, music, movies, or classes. All are available free or for a nominal cost and are accessible instantly. We can subscribe to services that supply us with more content than we could ever absorb. Google promotes learning anytime, anywhere. Kids do not need to take local government or school board courses online just because they are government-approved, or local, or free. Countries across the world offer amazing courses! Parents do not have to be the teachers. They can direct their children’s education with resources from around the world.

Even universities now have open courses, accessible anytime. Research studies on every conceivable topic are available to everyone. Resources and knowledge are everywhere.

So. With information available twenty-four hours a day, every day, why do children still go to school at fixed times, on fixed days, and attend fixed classes and subjects? Why is the school format so unchanged? Even homeschooling departments of major school boards are still run on the traditional September-to-June school model, a remnant from the time when children had to be free in the summer to work the farms. Learning now takes place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The answer is that traditional schooling maintains the traditions that sustain it as an industry, rather than changing to grow along with the clients it serves.

The single major change generated by the digital age is the visual and aural forms in which courses are taught: much educational content is now being read from a screen instead of being read in a textbook or heard in a lecture. But although the delivery method may have changed greatly, course content has changed very little. Overhauls of government-mandated curriculum are far too infrequent, occurring approximately every 15 years—and far too inadequate in today’s fast-paced world. My kids have been studying Social Studies from a ten-year-old textbook, written before smartphones literally changed our way of living, communicating, and educating. I remember reading the book Animal Farm by George Orwell when I was in high school 35 years ago, and now my children have to study it. The words, storylines, and concepts in the book are so far removed from our children’s reality that it is difficult for them to relate to life in the 1940s when people lived on farms and didn’t have TV, let alone mobile phones. Have no great books been written since then that would have more relevance?

Information is available all day, every day, and everywhere; why not let children loose to choose their own program of study based on their interests? Why do we keep slotting them into the government agendas, rather than letting them create their own? Do we think they will stop learning? Not a chance! Kids are very good at learning—we just need to get out of the way. Why don’t we trust that our learners will self-acquire knowledge, outside of the government-controlled education system?

There is one big reason: Education is an industry and it is driven by economics. The school industry both costs and generates billions of dollars. It’s big business. Directly and indirectly, it employs millions of people, all of whom have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Which sectors would be affected if children were allowed to study whatever they wish? What kinds of jobs would change drastically, or be sacrificed?

Teachers—we will always need teachers but teaching methods and delivery would change. To name just one, an exciting new online industry is emerging, in which teachers develop and sell learning modules over the Internet.

Textbook and curriculum producers would lose lucrative contracts for print and online material. Today, textbooks are sold and distributed as government curricula mandates—whether they are actually used or not. How many textbooks would they sell if we allowed our children to explore subjects based on their interests? And to take this one step further, what if parents knew that their kids could learn just as much from video games as they do from textbooks?!

Bussing and transportation—bus manufacturers, drivers, mechanics, gasoline suppliers and maintenance workers, administration. Even within the school system, many kids are online on a parent-supplied laptop, in a school building—how is it we do not question why they even have to physically move from home to a school building? Bussing companies would suffer. But in addition to benefitting our children, imagine the benefits to our environment if millions of children did not spend an average of one and a half hours commuting to and from school every day—only to do their work on the same laptop screen they could use at home!

Buildings—architects, contractors, tradespeople, building maintenance employees—all who design, plan, build, maintain, clean, and in general, keep schools in shape.

Materials providers such as printers, paper products, book manufacturers, designers, editors, distributors, libraries, computer and internet suppliers, cafeteria provisioners, manipulative suppliers, art, music and theater suppliers, and many more. Even toilet paper needs to be supplied by someone!

Professionals and support staff—psychologists, police officers, nurses, guidance counselors, secretaries, janitors and social workers working in schools. Museum docents, artists- and writers-in-residence, speakers, musicians, and actors that visit classrooms.

School board administrators, superintendents, curriculum developers and testers, assessment and exam departments, directors, managers, and clerical staff in education departments.

If personalized learning is truly in the best interests of every child, why is society not prioritizing that? Why are we still institutionalizing children? By definition, public schooling cannot be personalized for each child. The system must be consistent in its policies, rules, and treatment. And the status quo remains. The schooling industry needs a disruptor to its gatekeepers of knowledge. Think UBER, which provides rides but no cars; Amazon, which sells everything but carries no stock; and Airbnb, which sells accommodation but doesn’t own hotels.

So, do we need a school with no buildings and books? Yes! Think Google! Think Life!

There will always be a need for schools because of society’s need for child supervision. But what we don’t need is today’s formula with its universally prescribed programs. People must know that attending a school is but one out of many options.

Clark Aldrich, author of Unschooling Rules, stated in a conference session that change in a monopoly never happens from within. Reforms occur when outside forces change. The homeschooling and unschooling movement is one huge external pressure on today’s school system (Aldrich, 2015), growing exponentially every year. When homeschooling reaches 30 percent of the education demographics, it will be considered mainstream.

For many years, our local public school board had a small home-education department. Its employees’ mandate, it seemed, was to dissuade callers from even considering homeschooling. I know—I was one of those callers. The response to callers seeking information was patronizing, condescending, and offensive. We would hear comments such as You must know you can’t do as good a job as the school, or Aren’t you worried about socialization? or the biggest heart-stabber of all, You could wreck your child for life! It’s better to just enroll them in school.

But the hostile attitude had the opposite effect. The Alberta government mandates supervision of homeschooling families; smaller private schools and non-local school boards began offering this supervision by long distance—an option that allowed families to circumvent their local public school boards. Homeschooling and unschooling families increased and flourished.

Clearly, this led to the public system losing many students and the corresponding government funding. Realizing its loss to homeschooling, unschooling, charter, and private schools, the public system hired a new department head for its homeschooling department in 2004 to update and grow the department and make it more supportive and welcoming.

School is not best for every child. Just as some people like to work in a big company, other people prefer to work in a small company or run their own business. In education, not every child wants to attend a big school. Some would prefer a private school or self-study. Children must have choices. Unschooling is one.

What is Unschooling?

First, let’s define schooling: The process by which a predetermined, arbitrary set of outcomes is reached using predetermined, standardized curriculum administered by an authority figure to target groups of students sorted by chronological age. (Sandy K, 2002)

Parents’ options to traditional schooling are homeschooling or unschooling. Most people understand homeschooling but not unschooling.

Unschooling is the philosophy of self-directed free-learning. Children decide what they want to learn, when they learn it, how they learn it, and how much they want to learn about a topic.

For example, a child has just heard about the Roman Empire because she was playing a computer game called Age of Empires. She wants to know more about the Romans, so her parent might check books out of the library, scour Netflix for movies about Rome, and suggest they build a model of the Coliseum. The child may choose to do some or all of those things—and the parent is okay with her choices. She may wish to explore the Roman empire in depth—or not. Perhaps the family goes so far as to plan a trip to Rome in a few months. Or, the child may be happy simply looking at picture books! Whatever the case, the child directs how deeply she wants to study about Rome. The learner takes total responsibility for her learning. Practiced around the world, unschooling is one of the fastest-growing trends in education today. Unschooling produces children who love learning. Unschooling capitalizes on children’s curiosity and their drive to find out the answers to their questions—their motivation to learn.

If children could do this in school, would they drop out? Research shows they wouldn’t. Summerhill School in the U.K. has been allowing children to choose their own learning path and curriculum for the past 97 years, with tremendous success.

As in the example above, curriculum is determined by the learner. Traditional curriculum is often defined as packaged programs a school purchases for its teachers to use in their classes and most people indeed think of curriculum as a canned package. In the broader sense, curriculum can be defined as what schools, parents, and individual teachers do in their encounters with the child. (SAPTA, 2013) In this context, curriculum is present from the time the newborn emerges from the birth canal until the child walks in the front door of the Kindergarten—and far beyond. Curriculum is all around us in every conceivable form. Curriculum encompasses interactive and experiential learning, something all unschoolers do. But instead of learning from texts and workbooks, they might use a park, a video game, or a discussion. In whatever form, the learning is always self-directed.

If adults were to trust that a child knows what he needs to learn, they would be surprised to see that most of the child’s choices coincide with established curriculum! In their play, children naturally gravitate to experimenting with water, sand, magnets, blocks, boats, worms, planes, rocks, motors—an infinity of objects and subjects. Children are natural scientists; they want to know about everything they encounter in their world!

In a way, children choose their curriculum even in traditional schools. When they deem the subject boring or irrelevant, they tune out; when the subject is of interest, they listen! Long periods of studying uninteresting or irrelevant subject matter can lead to children eventually dropping out of school. Meanwhile, since they are not engaged, they act up and waste everyone’s time and effort: parents, bus drivers, teachers, principals, and fellow classmates.

A positive result of traditional schools is the development of additional adult-child relationships outside of the family. The central relationship is the teacher-child bond. Without a doubt, teachers are the best part of traditional schooling. Children always need adults, and even more so with the inherent isolation that is a product of the digital revolution. With so much information at children’s fingertips, they need a caring adult—whether teacher or parent—to help them make sense of the information and interpret its significance; to connect the dots between random bits of information.

In traditional schooling, the biggest challenge is reaching children that don’t want to learn. Thousands of books are written on how to engage unmotivated students. Yet motivation is ultimately up to the learner and no measure of tips and tricks are going to turn an uninterested student into an engaged one, if he or she doesn’t want to learn what the teacher is required by the system to teach.

Parents want choices. At the same time, they can be overwhelmed by them. We have so many more choices in education now: charter schools, language schools, rote learning schools, online schools, homeschooling, and unschooling. With choice comes worry: what is the right choice? Will your choitce mess up your child for the rest of his life? I can assure you, parents, that you can’t mess up a child’s education! Because they, as learners, are ultimately in charge of it. They own it. They will decide what and how much they learn, where they learn, and in which way they will learn. True learning is always self-directed.

Do children need 12 years of prescribed, government-controlled curriculum in the digital age?

No. As evidenced by the Team of Thirty, they probably only need about three years of intense study in Math and Science, and perhaps a year or two in English, History, and Writing to prepare them for university or other postsecondary choices. As the brain’s pre-frontal cortex matures, it develops the abstract and critical thinking skills that promote accelerated learning of basic, intermediate, and advanced concepts. Children do not miss out if they don’t have 12 years of traditional schooling; rather, they learn in a different way—through interests instead of school.

Writing an essay is a critical skill. Children learn how to write a five-paragraph essay in almost every year of Grade 1 to 12 schooling; then they go to university and are taught it again in first-year English courses. Repetitive and boring for those that catch on the first time. Those who want to know how to write an essay or need a refresher can look it up online and practice on their own or with an adult’s help. Mathew was about to be tested on Grade 10 level cell components. He was to study a website, memorize the cell parts, and learn them for an exam. He told me, If I ever need to know about cell parts, I can just find it on the internet. Why do I have to memorize this? Good point!

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The Solution — Self-Directed Education and Adult Facilitation

Unschooling is self-directed, adult-facilitated, interest-based free-learning in response to intense, compelling curiosity.

We are natural learning organisms from birth to death

My children and I are shopping in a grocery store. It is eleven o’clock Monday morning, a time that most kids their age are in a school. As we approach the cashier to pay for our week’s worth of food, we brace for the inevitable question: No school today? We are practiced with a variety of answers, such as We homeschool, No school today, or just plain No. The questions keep coming until we admit that Yes, we homeschool. Then the comments come, Oh, I could never do that. You must be a saint to want to be around your kids all day. My kids are standing right here. They can hear you! Or, You must miss being with your friends.—as if school is the only place to make friends. Or my favorite, Is that legal? No, I’m modeling criminal behavior as a form of good parenting!

More recently, such comments are fewer, as more people are homeschooling and children are becoming more visible in the real world during business hours. Still, the clerk might ask, When are you taking a break from homeschool? Which is like asking, When are you taking a break from breathing? It’s only recently that I have come out of the closet and admit that we unschool, not homeschool. Then they ask, with extreme skepticism, But how do your children learn? The fact that people learn from many sources is far removed from most people’s thinking. The idea that school is the only place to learn is entrenched in their brains. It is reinforced by the media, books, internet, adults, kids, and life in general. It’s a huge assumption. When most adults meet a