Unschoolers “Playing School”

I have already shown that our family's homeschool didn't try to replicate what happens at school. I didn't set out to have a curriculum with learning divided into discrete steps—lesson-sized chunks that would be introduced, practiced, tested, and periodically reviewed. I didn't intend to carve up the world into separate subjects like Science and History and Art, and I didn't want to spend much time on evaluating (testing) or labeling (grading) my kids.

Instead, I hoped to concentrate on true learning.

I hoped to promote education by listening to my kids' expressed interests, helping them learn about those things, and exposing them to other cool stuff.

So it was pretty funny to have the kids ask for formal lessons—exactly what I didn't  want to institute.

However, there is a very, very different feel in playing at school, on the one hand, and really “doing” school (whether at public or private school or in a school-like homeschool), on the other hand. Playing at school when the kids want to do that is child-led learning, is tapping into their interests, and (by the way) is lots of fun. If I would have chosen a Letter of the Day, myself, and if I were serious about introducing and practicing and testing for mastery of that letter...it would soon have become drudgery for them and for me.

Fun for all—and all for fun?

Naturally, not all learning has to emphasize fun. My kids often chose to do things that involved a lot of work and even drudgery. Learning gymnastics and ice skating and dance, for example, involves sit-ups and sprints as well as glittery costumes and performances. But self-imposed drudgery to reach a goal that the child has freely chosen is, again, very different from days and weeks and months and years of slogging through boring or mystifyingly irrelevant lessons “just cuz.”

Typically, adults say that knowing all that school stuff will be important someday. But that is not a very convincing reason to study hard—because no matter how smart or not-so-smart kids seem to be in school, they're all smart enough to realize that parents and other non-teacher adults, by and large, don't remember all that supposedly crucial stuff. All the kids have to do to find this out is to ask for help with their homework!

What every fourth grader should know...

I know that we can have a panicked response when our children or, say, people on the street don't know something that we consider absolutely minimal for being considered “educated.” But we probably all have different lists of what that baseline-supposedly-necessary knowledge is. I would say that everyone should know the planets of the solar system and the definitions of the words proton, neutron, and electron. Someone else might say that it's crucial for an educated person to be familiar with the names of Shakespeare's major works and to have read at least one. Most of us would agree that familiarity with the structures of the government and the particulars of our nation's written constitution are important for being good citizens, but some people would stress learning about past presidents, and some would stress learning about Congressional and lobbying procedures.

However, maybe the concept of having a list of facts that EVERYONE needs to know is, at heart, erroneous. As education scientist Sugata Mitra says, when you can look stuff up on the internet in just a few seconds, why should you try to stuff that stuff into your head?

Proof positive that it's not THAT important that your kid know what every fourth grader should know:

Before I had kids, I was managing editor in a company that, among other things, produced textbooks. I headed up the project of writing the fourth grade state history book, and for a while, I not only knew tons and tons of California history, I even knew exactly what page and paragraph particular facts of that history could be found in our textbook. The book was adopted by the state of California, and for a number of years I often saw fourth graders with my book under their arms!

(If you know anything about textbook writing, you know it's a huge committee effort, but as MANAGING editor, all changes and additions and deletions—and all photos, diagrams, illustrations, and charts—went through me. So it really seemed like my baby...until I had a real baby, at least.)

One task that fell to me as managing editor was choosing the VERY MOST IMPORTANT stuff that we really wanted kids to remember, and writing review and test items about those particular concepts, terms, and facts. I thought I chose really well. I stayed away from dates, because few of us remember them. Instead, I went for the really meaty concepts and facts that I thought every Californian really ought to know.

Flash forward four years. I was over at Camille's house, and her cousin, who went to school, was trying to rush through his homework so he could join us in celebrating Las Posadas. He had history homework that involved my book, and he was having problems with one of the review questions I myself had written.

Camille's mom grinned and said, “You have the book editor right here—go ask Auntie Cathy for help!”

As I confidently reached for the book, I asked which question he was stuck on.

“Number 3.”

I read the question...and realized that I had NO IDEA of what the answer was. Of course, it didn't take me all that long to scan through the chapter and find the answer—and then to help the student find it as well—but I was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! If that test question really dealt with something that EVERY Californian should know, right off the top of their heads, as I had been confident when I wrote the question, then how could I—the book's editor—have no idea what the answer was a mere four years later?

The actual crucial thing in education isn't knowing the right answers. It is the confidence that we can find the answers.