Fri 21 Sep 2007
Colorado: Unschooling method grows in popularity
Posted by admin under Colorado, Local News, The NEWS
KUSA - In a world that revolves around structure, more parents nationwide are letting their kids learn without structure, and they say it is working.
“We found out that it was more helpful for him to learn if he got to pick and choose what he wanted to learn,” said Kawai Brown.
Brown prefers the term child-led learning. She homeschooled her sons in the method, which allows them to decide what to learn and when.
“It’s basically, do whatever you want for school,” said 9-year-old Dustin Brown. “You can do math. You can do science. You can do anything. You can read another book.”
Dustin typically spends most of his morning outside. During the snowstorms, he spent his days building a makeshift hill in his front yard to snowboard and sled on. Then, he would spend time breaking up the ice on his sidewalk before finally deciding to sit down and do some work.
“I don’t really like being told what to do,” Dustin said. “So, it’s a lot easier if I can choose what I can do.”
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One Response to “ Colorado: Unschooling method grows in popularity ”
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September 23rd, 2007 at 9:54
“The kids run the parents and to me that’s just unacceptable,” Terri said. “When the mom says to Johnny, ‘What do you want to learn today?’ and Johnny says, ‘Nothing,’ you know, okay, so what happens today?”
“We don’t let them just take control of everything, because if we did then our lives would be chaos, too.” said Kawai.
She says academics is the only part of the family life in which she lets her kids have a say.
My response:
The longer we unschool (i prefer to call it autonomous education), the more i find that it is only logical that my children have their say in more areas than just academics. It makes perfect sense to me. Children could learn so much if they had more responsibility in other domains as well. Unschooling is about life, isn’t it, so why limit that to academics only? My children have their say about anything that concerns them and my life has become ever so much easier. They learn about decision making, listening to others, finding solutions that pleases everyone. It doesn’t mean that they run riot or turn into ’selfish brats’ or wake up and say: i don’t want to learn anything today. Which healthy child would say such a thing?