Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Unschooling / EU173: Unschooling in Context with Anna Brown

EU173: Unschooling in Context with Anna Brown

April 25, 2019 By Anna Brown 4 Comments

Anna Brown joins me this week for a conversation with a twist: we’re not talking about the ins and outs of unschooling itself but about how it fits in the bigger picture. Hence the title of the episode, Unschooling in Context.

It’s a topic I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I really needed to let a bunch of things percolate, like: the kinds of questions I get from people, how they relate to each other, the missing bits of information or connections behind the questions, the conversations I come across online about what unschooling is and how it fits in with other alternative education options etc. I needed time to for all that to bounce around in the back of my mind, making interesting connections, and eventually starting to come together into my version of the puzzle of defining unschooling.

Granted, after percolating for a few months, I needed to remind myself not to wait for “perfect!” My puzzle isn’t done. In fact, I’m sure I will continue to add to it for many years, as my understanding continues to grow. But, I think I got far enough along to participate in the conversation.

Discussion Points

1. One of the most fundamental and helpful shift for all parents to make is the realization that our children’s education is our CHOICE. Whether we make that paradigm shift before we have our own children or after they’ve started public school, when we understand that it’s our choice, our whole outlook changes, doesn’t it?

2. Let’s dive into some terminology, because often it’s helpful to choose different words to describe what we do depending on whether we’re inside or outside alternative education circles. For example, in social conversations with say, a neighbour or at the grocery store, when the school question came up, I very rarely used the word, “unschooling.” Did you?

3. Lately, the term “self-directed education” has been growing in use, as part of The Alliance for Self-Directed Education’s work. I’ve had some questions around this recently, and I put together a little Venn diagram visual, which I used on the episode image. One circle represents homeschooling and the other circle represents self-directed education. Where they overlap is unschooling. Unschooling is a style of homeschooling, in that it is home or family-based, rather than school-based. And it’s also a style of self-directed education, in that the child is free to choose what they want to do and learn, rather than having to follow a curriculum. Does that make sense?

4. In the last few years, the term “radical unschooling” has become more prevalent in conversations. What’s the difference between unschooling and radical unschooling?

5. “Child-led learning” is another term that sometimes gets used interchangeably with unschooling, but that can also lead to misunderstandings about how unschooling works, can’t it?

6. Over the years, I’ve often heard democratic schools, like those based on the Sudbury model, referred to as “unschooling schools.” There is commonality in that they both fit in the self-directed education circle, but they aren’t synonymous. They are two distinct learning environments and I think it’s helpful to understand the differences. What differences do you see?

Links to things mentioned in the show:

You can find The Alliance for Self-Directed Education here

Episode Transcript

Read the episode transcript

Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: context, learning

Comments

  1. Ashley Gieschen says

    April 29, 2019 at 11:41 am

    Thank you so much for this discussion. It really helped encourage me to think more deeply about my priorities and how to articulate it better. The “language” is important. So, thank you!

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      April 30, 2019 at 9:01 am

      You’re welcome, Ashley! I love knowing it got you thinking more deeply. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Aleta says

    June 12, 2019 at 10:50 am

    This had some great distinctions between Sudbury Valley Model and unschooling. We were an in school I go family in Venezuela and returned to the USA when our youngest was a teenager. The Venezuelan system is different in that school is 4 hours per day and then their children go to social clubs during the other hours. This gave our children a great deal of choice in their social learning environments.

    So when we returned to the USA, our daughter looked at Sudbury Valley Model (homeschooling was still very restricted in our state at that time). We thought that we could be part of the community (I was even voted in as a staff member by the School Meeting). My role on staff was to serve as a liaison to the community for mentorships and internships. I found a therapeutic riding center for my daughter to challenge herself with service to the community. I would drive her to the riding center and then we would drive to the school. She put in a hundred hours. At the end of the year, she was told that she was “absent” from school for those hours. There was a subtle pressure to be on the school grounds rather than exploring the community.

    And I agree that exploring a relationship with peers doesn’t end after the school day ends. Most of the really significant stuff was happening after school hours. A male student was brought up before the school meeting for using a slur with a female student. I knew what was happening outside of the school and knew what questions to ask him in the school meeting which completely changed the final decision regarding expelling him from the school.

    My daughter was empowered by her right to choose and went to a boarding school the next year. She chose the extended hours for peer relationships over the self-directed learning piece. And that was the real learning…that she had the power to choose.

    Great discussion!

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      June 13, 2019 at 1:14 pm

      I’m glad the distinctions made sense, Aleta! And thanks for taking the time to share your family’s experience. Choice is the key, isn’t it?

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT