Many parents with families and people
planning their families have realized
that there are many alternatives to the
mainstream schooling system.
Whether it be homeschooling, unschooling,
Waldorf or Montessori, just to name a few
options, there are so many out there.
Today I am going to introduce you to my
friend, Lucy, at Life Without School
and she is going to share 6 reasons why
she chooses to unschool her children.
Here she is...
Lucy: Hi everybody! I'm Lucy.
I live in New Zealand in a yurt with my
2 children, Ramona who is 9 and Gina who is 7.
And my partner, Tim.
One of the more radical parts of our life
is that we live a life totally without school.
In fact, we live a life totally without
any curriculum whatsoever.
Some people call this unschooling, some
people call it whole life learning, but
it's really just living as humans have
lived for millennia. Which is learning by
doing and learning within your community.
Learning from those around you. Simply
experiencing rather than sitting behind a
desk being taught stuff that you're not
really that interested in.
It's really a paradigm that exists totally
outside of mainstream education.
And today I wanted to share with you
6 of the main reasons that we do it.
There's actually loads and loads, but
I've tried to distill them into 6.
When we became parents, one of the main
things we wanted to do is to provide an
environment for our children where they
could just blossom into who they were
inside without any of our molding or
shaping of them. I don't really think
that that is the the job of the parents.
I think the parents main role is to make
space for this unique human that has been
brought into their life. For us,
unschooling is really an extension of that philosophy.
We just want to support our children and
the way they want to learn and what they
want to learn. Without them feeling any
need to conform to what we expect or what
we think, arbitrarily, they should be learning.
So, the number 1 reason is that we want
our children to be able to learn in a way
that is free from shame. So, you know,
85% of adults have had an experience of
shaming in their school years that so
effected them that it impacts their adult life.
That's 85%. That's a huge majority of people.
And that's because mainstream education
uses shame and punishment as a way to get
such a massive group of kids learning what
teachers think is important. Shame can
have a pretty catastrophic impact on your
ability to really be yourself. So we
wanted to provide an environment where
our kids didn't experience that.
Even when they were learning in a way that
seemed pretty random or messy (laughs),
we could just make space for that
learning and how they wanted to do it.
I think because of the mainstream
education system we've made shame and
punishment quite an everyday part of the
human experience. We've kind of
normalized it and that has been done to
the detriment of our ability to create a
fair, just, and beautiful world.
Okay, number 2. Unschooling is curiosity
based learning. And we embrace that
because all of the studies show that
learning that is done where there is self
motivation, or a kind of seed of curiosity
is one, much more effective for learning
the actual thing that you are trying to
pick up, but also activates parts of your
brain that makes it easier for you to
learn anything that is coming up while
you are in that state. Also, thirdly,
studies show that curiosity allows
learning to be stored in your memory.
So, the learning when you are curious is
like a long term thing.
I can imagine that quite a lot of you
watching understand that on some level,
because how much of your schooling do you
actually remember?
For me, it is very little. I am a writer
and I have to google the difference
between noun and adjective (laughs)
on quite a regular basis.
The 3rd reason that we are unschoolers
is because we want to create a learning
environment that's totally stress free.
Just like learning without curiosity,
learning in a stressful environment is
such a waste of time. Stress has a huge
impact on your amygdala, which essentially
ends up sending information to the wrong
part of your brain, not to your higher
brain where you can rationally look at the
information and create a learning journey.
But it sends it down to the fight or
flight zone when you are in stress, so
your brain actually doesn't know what to
do with information when you are in a stressful state.
There are some statistics about this,
saying that 65% of 12 year old school
children are stressed because of their
school environment. Obviously, that has
a massive impact on what they are actually
taking in, what information they are
actually taking in while they are in the classroom.
But also, huge impacts on their mental
health and their physical health.
I just think that trying to raise
children in a constantly stressful
environment, because of testing and
competition, because of shame and
punishment, is just a super unhealthy thing.
So, a typical day of unschooling might
involve us hanging around here. It often
involves us meeting up with friends and
doing different unschooling groups and
exploring the wild. It's always fun.
There might be conflict, but there is
space to figure out the conflicts so it
doesn't become a genuinely toxic or
stressful scenario. We're joy seekers
rather than stressed out learners.
4, we are unschooling because we believe
that you are learning all of the time.
Learning doesn't begin at 5 and ends
at 18 when you leave formal education
But most parents get this, right?
You don't try to teach your child to walk
or talk, you just know that they're going to
pick those things up by being in a walky, talky
kind of environment. And we just believe
that that continues on. Nothing needs to
change when they turn a certain age.
Our kids are 7 and 9 now, and they are
reading, writing, doing art, creating,
making things, doing heaps of math,
like genuine love of math. And they are
just doing it by living. There has never
been a sit down, formal class for my children.
They always just learn through their
experience of being human. And, actually,
as adults we do this all the time. If we
want to learn something new as an adult
we will just find a way to access it.
In the last few years I have taught myself
how to play the ukulele, I've taught
myself how to make electronic digital
music (laughs). I've built a business.
I've done absolutely loads of things like
moving almost into mastery of some of those things
simply by accessing the resources that
will help me. Even doctors do this when
they get presented with a case that they
don't really know what's going on.
They might ring some colleagues, they
might look up online, or delve into their
books in order to get to the bottom this
new illness or this new case.
That is really essentially unschooling.
It's learning through doing.
The 5th reason we are unschooling is
because we just trust our children and we
want them to learn that they can trust
themselves. Our children know that their
instincts are good, that their urges are
good, that their needs are valuable.
Whereas I think mainstream education can
really undermine a child's trust in
themselves. They're told to learn this in
this moment, and then a bell rings and
they're told to switch their mind over to
the new thing and learn that thing.
They're told to mistrust their body's
desire to move when it wants to move.
We even ask children, through schooling,
to trespass on their own boundaries, both
mentally and physically, quite a lot
through mainstream education. And through
unschooling we kind of do the opposite
of this. We say, what you are feeling is
good, your needs are good, I trust you and
you can trust yourself.
And that leads me to the 6th reason
that we are unschooling and that's all
about world change. When i first began
this whole unschooling thing I just
thought, ya we're doing this because this
is what works for our family and this is
the path we've been called to. But the
more that I'm immersed in this world,
I've actually come to believe that
unschooling and other forms of alternative
education are really the embodiment of
the just and peaceful, loving world that
I think is possible. I believe that
mainstream education, as it stands, with
it's shame, punishment, testing,
competitive nature...you know, ranking
kids against each other...I believe that
is like the seedbed of some of society's
most problematic issues. We're coming
into this understanding that we are
actually not born competitive.
We're born cooperative, that's our human
nature, I really believe that. I think
through the schooling system we pit kids
against each other and that bleeds into
the rest of society. There's almost like
a collective societal wound from our
school days and it makes itself known in
individuals in a different way. So, some
people are people pleasers, some people
are afraid of authority or afraid to rock
the boat. A lot of people feel that they
are just not intrinsically good enough.
A lot of people struggle to rest and play.
This is all stuff that we learn through
our schooling years, when we are being
shunted from one activity to the other
with our minds placed in somebody elses'
hands. These days I tend to think that
mainstream education is one of the
strongholds of capitalism.
Raising people who are so
unhappy and mistrust themselves so
much with so much mental anguish that we
have to consume and fight in order to
feel okay. Oooh, got a little bit heavy
there (laughs). But for me, that makes
sense, when you place children for 15,
or more, of their formative years into an
institution that's kind of what you get.
Those are 6 of the reasons that we've
chosen unschooling. I'm super happy to
answer any questions that you have and the
unschooling world is very friendly, so if
you want to jump on board this ship we
would welcome you with open arms.
That sounds a bit weird and cult-y, it's
not really like that. There's too much
anarchy for it to be cult-y. (laughs)
Rob: I hope that you got a lot out of that
time with Lucy. If you did, make sure to
subscribe to her channel where she shares
a lot of valuable information on teaching
children in a home setting.
And make sure to subscribe to this
channel, as well, for a lot more great videos to come.
I love you all very much and see you again real soon!