What About.....

College? Math? Science? Algebra? their future?

The longer we're at this unschooling life, and the older our boys are, the more I hear these questions. The questions come from extended family, or folks new to unschooling, and sometimes from those who choose to use a curriculum (or several) to homeschool their child because they wanted him or her to get more education, to be better prepared for "the real world"; essentially so their child can be ahead of the game.

Honestly, I've never understood the desire for a child to be 'ahead of the game', or the appeal of a child scoring above grade level in a test, for example, or having the best grades in his class.  Is there some kind of race no one told me about? Is there proof that the faster a person learns something, the better he'll be at it; that somehow knowing everything a year, or two, or several, before his peers will guarantee success in life? 

I've always thought it more likely that information crammed in at a faster rate is more likely to be forgotten at a faster rate.  That's absolutely how my brain works. Well, unless I'm learning something I consider valuable, something I can use today and tomorrow and the next day. When I'm learning something that matters to me and improves the quality of my actual life today -- not just the potential quality of my life in some far-off future day -- I can pick it up like wildfire and remember all I need to know. 

Learning something that might someday help me to be more successful -- to take on more work -- in a topic that really doesn't interest me? I can cram enough info into my head to answer enough questions to pass a test and get the piece of paper showing I learned the material. After all, I did manage to graduate high school, and I can assure you that what I learned in Algebra and Applied Chemistry was learned in just that fashion.  Do I remember enough of those subjects to pass a test today? No way!  I would look like a complete idiot on a high school Chem exam today.  That's because in my day-to-day life, the curriculum of that Chemistry class is useless.

People ask me "how do your children learn math?" (or science, or whatever subject it is they've been told is both essential and hard to learn -- usually something they themselves didn't take to quickly or well. Hence the fear.)  My first instinct is to ask them how much of that subject they use in daily life. If their grasp of that subject is good, then they don't need to worry their child won't learn it.  If their grasp of the subject isn't as good as they've been told it should be, it's likely because they don't need that subject in the depth schools attempt to teach. They've forgotten (or never really learned it) because it has no value in their life today.

Higher math isn't a big deal for many people in their everyday lives. And really, it's not even something we as parents worry about. Our boys can do all the math they need for day to day life. If and when they need to know more math, we're sure they will learn what they need. We will be there to help them find the right classes, the right books, to help with homework if they want our help. Most importantly, we give them our confidence and trust that they can learn whatever it is they need to know.  Our reason for that confidence is that, so far, we've all managed to learn whatever we need to know to have the life we want; so far they've learned all they need to know (and along the way, their learning has taught us a lot, too!)

People spend our whole life learning new things; at least we should expect to learn new things for most of our lives. So why all the rush to have children learn everything they'll ever need in the space of 18 or 24 years? Does a child walk any better because he learned at 9 months instead of 17 months? Does someone read better as an adult if he learned to read at 4 than if he learned to read at 8 or 12?  Does a person become good at math only if he started learning math at all the 'right' points in childhood? Does someone become a good writer of great novels only if he learned to write well in high school, or college?

For me, the real core of unschooling is trusting, coming to know in your bones, that you, your child --- that people everywhere -- don't need to know everything, and we certainly don't need to learn those things on the same schedule.  What we do need is the confidence that we can learn whatever we need, to handle whatever life throws our way.  Our children need the confidence that they can learn anything they need to learn, when that learning will support the life they want.

So often, people have this idea that somehow all these subjects taught in school, often the same subjects we struggled with ourselves, must be *important* and our children must learn them now, or at least on the same schedule as all the other children.  Many people have the idea that homeschooling should make children better educated, that they should be better prepared for college, academically advanced. I think, too, that we risk making our child's educational success very important in validating the choices we make, and whether or not we're good parents.

It's not that it's less important to me that our kids be successful, just that I define success differently. I also have different ideas about what kind of education is important for a person to have. I define success as happy and capable, strong and confident.  I think lifelong learning is more important than completing an education. 

I'm not raising my children to win the race for learning in 25 years so they can spend the next 50 years resting on their laurels. I am instead supporting, enjoying and instilling confidence in them that they can learn whatever, succeed at whatever they love, do whatever makes them happy and whole, no matter what life throws their way.