A Definition-in-Progress ...

At it's most basic, unschooling is not following a academic curriculum or school schedule. But in practice unschooling is much more of a lifestyle than a homeschooling method. Unschoolers believe that the best learning - learning that is understood and remembered - happens when kids (or adults) are engaged and excited and interested. They believe that all learning is valuable as we make connections to construct our own personal view of the world. To encourage this unschoolers help their kids follow their interests, to whatever depth they desire, and wherever they may lead. In other words, just live an interesting, inquisitive life together! This is why unschooling can look so different in different families: because no two people (let alone two families) have the same set of interests, to the same depth, and these interests change over time - and sometimes very quickly! No wonder a concise definition is so difficult!

Oh! Oh! Learning works much better when you can connect to something you already know so maybe it will help those new to unschooling to think of it this way. At school teachers spend a lot of time trying to show students how what they are teaching is applicable in the "real" world. They will use plastic food, plastic money, or just try to relate how a person would use this knowledge in the real world so the students can make a connection to it. As unschoolers we live in the real world every day - the kids encounter and learn these same things in real life so there's no need to resort to imitation.

In other words, school gives the student all sorts of little bits of information for 12 years (give or take), hopes the student puts it all together into the big picture and then graduates/certifies them ready to start living "real" life. Unschoolers live a real life from the get-go and spend those 12 years finding and connecting many of the interesting bits that make up the world. And as a by-product they see learning as fun and natural, not boring and disconnected from life, and they don't stop learning because they reach a magical "graduation age". They continue to connect together their personal view of the world and learn anything interesting to them for the rest of their lives.

Other Attempts to Define Unschooling

There are some other interesting attempts to define unschooling found around the web. Follow these links if you're interested and I'll continue to add ones that I like as I find them.

What Is Unschooling? is a great collection of tidbits from various contributors at the unschooling.com site.

Unschooling Undefined by Eric Anderson takes an interesting tack and lists many things that unschooling isn't.

How Unschooling Works by Joyce Fetteroll speaks of skills (reading, writing, math, history etc) as tools, and explains how, with unschooling, kids learn how to use the tools as a side effect of doing something they want to do.

Unschooling or Homeschooling? by Billy Greer takes a look the difference between homeschooling and unschooling and in the process does a good job bringing out the concepts of unschooling.

On Unschooling by Mary Griffith in search of a short, workable definition of unschooling this essay takes a look at the three factors that appear consistently in families for whom unschooling works.

More To Consider

Learn vs. Teach When learning about unschooling one of the first things I find it useful to question is the difference between teaching and learning. It may seem like semantics, but it really helps to change the focus from "parent as teacher" to "child as learner".

Our Philosophy of Learning This is something I came up with when we first started out and surprisingly, it hasn't changed much!