RE: Top 3 Reasons To Unschool (Home Education, Self-directed learning)
We always homeschooled except a brief stint when our oldest attended a Charter School in 1st grade. But with a homeschool curriculum the same hierarchical pressure developed. Moving into unschooling was the best decision I ever made besides my accepting my hubby's proposal and actually having the kids lol.
It's been six years since I gave the kids a "summer vacation" then simply never went back to a teaching model. Six years since I said "study this" or "learn that" and in that time the number and range of learning opportunities they have voluntarily embraced has astonished me. Things I'd never have thought to include in a curriculum and had I, they likely would have balked at.
At 17 my oldest has learned to speak, read, and write Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, German, and French; as well as sketching, playing guitar and piano, and cooking dishes from all over the world.
At 15 my middle codes and gets paid for it and has had a successful balloon animal venture since he was 10 doing parties for kids.
My youngest is 10 and she's got a notebook full of drawings and notes on the horror/mystery/puzzle game she wants to design.
I freely admit none of these pursuits would have been encouraged under my previous belief that a curriculum needed to be taught to them.
WOW! I'm blown away! I'm so happy to hear that. Your children sound amazing! At the same time, I can't help but feel sad for all of the lost potential for billions of others on this planet due to public schooling.
Yeah, I so vividly remember being 23 and reading this legal thriller - just brain candy really, no great literature or anything of substance - and part of the plot line was that a student was murdered after discovering a formula for predicting prime numbers. The exposition went into how the inability to predict primes underlaid a lot of online security systems and some of the history of prime-prediction attempts, etc. I was fascinated by the math and realized for the first time that I didn't hate math, I just had the same horrible bitch of a math "teacher" for every grade from 7th through 12th and she made math miserable. I started buying books on math and physics for dummies and then I got on the internet and it was so incredible to remember that 5-year-old me had loved to learn! It was "teaching" and the bullies who made my childhood miserable that killed that joy. I'm so happy that my kids were able to retain it and I honestly don't care if they clean houses or become doctors. I want them to be happy.