Roxanne identifies their schooling as extreme unschooling.
Yeah, what else can I tell ya? We unschool - extremely…I don’t plan things for them to do or try to push them too hard in any direction.
Unschooling, by most definitions, would not include a structured curriculum, or even an unstructured one. Roxanne’s strategy of not planning things for her boys or even pushing them towards something she thinks is important reflects an unschooling philosophy. She’s not building a curriculum of things that are important to her and adjusting it for her children’s interests like many other homeschoolers.
Roxanne has both shared her distrust of the educational authorities in Harrisburg and she has explained why she and her boys believe that most textbooks are outdated before they are even published. Roxanne reports Luke saying,
People who are often writing textbooks don’t know the subject they are writing about. They are basically anybody with a college degree, gets hired on a temporary basis to put this stuff together, they may or may not have any clue about the subject, and that’s how textbooks get so stupid. The thing too though, is he also knows that anything that has been printed out is already old news…If you’ve had time to make a textbook on it, it’s too late man, unless it’s on Ancient Rome.
Such beliefs could fuel an approach to learning that discards both textbooks and learning strategies such as Common Core. Therefore, the carefully arranged and balanced curricula used by schools would find no place in an unschooling home. Roxanne’s home is like that. Below she describes different ways that her boys learn.
First of all, when John comes home for dinner the question “What did you learn at school today?” is never asked. Instead Roxanne reports far-ranging conversations that astonish her. She is usually surprised at the things her sons are interested in and have learned.
There’s constant conversation instigated by the kids about everything from world politics, the history of Rome, and the Mormon faith. I mean they stun me with the vast amounts of things that interest them and how they pick it up and remember huge amounts of information and can verbally dance circles around anybody.
She explains how their learning is like following threads of information. She tells a story about how Luke learns about foxes,
They’ll read a story about foxes. Luke will start looking into more about foxes, more about domesticating foxes, how they domesticate foxes, why they domesticate foxes, what are the problems with it, what could be the benefits. Then that might make him look up another animal that was bred to become different than it was... So, it’s like this “following threads” that take them all over the place.
Another way their threads work is Everett wanted to read Dracula because he could tell that a lot of things he had seen were spoofs of Dracula, so he felt that everything would be better if he understood Dracula. So, he read Dracula. And then he read Frankenstein, because he’s like, well, obviously you gotta read Frankenstein or you’re not gonna get it. So, the things that motivate them take them to places that I wouldn’t expect.
One of their computers broke and when it was taken to be repaired Everett paid close attention.
Our computer broke. We went to the computer store…Everything the guy did to try and retrieve the data, Everett was watching and saying, what does that keystroke do? What does that key stroke do? What are you doing now? Do you mind if I ask you everything you’re doing...and the next morning Everett said, Well I stayed up till about four or five and I really looked, and I found about 10 ways we might have been able to retrieve the data, but I don’t think any of them are going to work in this situation?
Roxanne believes when you don’t have to get up and go to school every morning and you’re not bogged down with learning things, like a language that you will never use, that you can specialize and become good at things you are interested in.
Video games are also important vehicles for learning.
I would say as far as what we actually use, video games are one or our most important ways of learning, and ways of expressing what they learn. An example being the game Civilization.
Adopting an unschooling approach to learning fosters different attitudes and behaviors. Many homeschoolers set up their learning experiences in ways similar to school. They begin school at a certain time, walk through lessons prescribed by bought curriculums or home built ones, and end school at a certain time. The closer one adheres to an unschooling approach the difference seen between schooling and life diminishes; the accepted philosophy becomes that children learn all the time. Roxanne explains how she reports the ‘’days her kids have gone to school.”
Once a year, I have to turn in a portfolio, that has a calendar that shows they went to school a hundred and eighty days…which is malarkey. So, I look at the school calendar and x off all the days they would have gone to school. There is no on or off for us. They are always learning.
I find myself very drawn to the philosophy Roxanne advocates. Children start off so curious and are such good learners when following their nose. I love the idea of life-long learners, and that we can learn about all kinds of things all the time. These ideas came to me as an adult and fed not only my thoughts and ideas about my children’s learning, but my own behaviors as an adult and my attitudes towards learning.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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