Self-Ed 101: 5 Reasons Why You Should Unschool

Anna    Basics     101, 5, beginner, five, how to start, reasons, self-ed 101, self-education, should I unschool, starting out, unschooling, why, why unschool

It’s hard to say when exactly I chose unschooling. Looking back, it seems like unschooling always was my choice. I just didn’t know it. Most of my learning happened outside of school. Even when I was in elementary school I understood that. After a few years I started to question why I even needed to be in school at all.

Like a lot of families, I came to choose unschooling through a gradual process. In my first years at school, I enjoyed it. I loved the opportunity to learn. When the system started working against me, I started to question it. Why couldn’t I learn something the higher grades were learning? Why didn’t we read more than one chapter, if everyone was interested and concentrated on it? I didn’t know the world arbitrary then, but that’s what it felt like: a bunch of rules and regulations with no real connection to learning.

Then I discovered homeschooling. That made more sense to me. I already learned more at home than I did at school. A few years after my discovery of homeschooling, I discovered unschooling. That’s when I realized unschooling was what I had wanted all along.

So here I am.

There are a huge number of reasons to unschool. It’s likely there are as many reasons as there are unschoolers. My biggest reasons were not wanting to be stuck with my grade level subject matter. I wanted more.

Among everyone’s reasons to unschool, there are a few things we all agree on: read more

Self-Ed 101: Deschooling

Anna    Basics     Basics, beginner, change, deschooling, new, self-ed 101, start, starting out, unschooling, what it's like

The way you think in school can be applied to many things in life. It’s a kind of thinking people understand. Unschooling involves a different way of thinking. That’s why we have deschooling.

What is Deschooling?
Deschooling is the process of unlearning schooled thinking. It involves letting go of old habits and approaching learning in a new way. It means letting go of the thought that learning only happens in schools.

There are a lot of ideas and concepts to let go of: grades, schedules, curriculum, tests, teaching, diplomas, certifications, school years, and even (especially) the teacher/student relationship. Deschooling means letting go of the idea that learning is separate from life. When you take away school, its structure, its vocabulary and its ideas, you’re left with learning. read more