Unschooling Misconceptions

There are so many misconceptions about unschooling I thought I would devote an entire article to those pesky notions that plague all unschoolers at some point or another. If another person comes up to me and says that children can't learn without being pushed, I will not only scream, I will run madly into the night, which of course would only give rise to the misconception that unschoolers love to run screaming into the night.

Part of the dilemma, as I see it, is people can judge a group by meeting one person from that group. They might decide, for instance, after meeting a family whose kids are playing Nintendo during "school hours" that video games are all that family does and that video games are all unschoolers do, period. They don't stop to think that possibly the children were taking a break from designing a solar car, creating a replica of the Mona Lisa or building a teepee in the back yard. Maybe Mom is not feeling so hot or maybe the kids like to play video games and the wise mother, feeling that Nintendo will help her son's poor hand eye coordination, lets them play on! Then the person who finds them playing the video games, who probably was against unschooling in the first place, tars all unschoolers with the same brush and makes a blanket statement, "All unschoolers do is allow their children to play video games and watch TV all day. That is, after all what children will do if not pushed."

Other Unschooling Fallacies:

Unschooled children are completely responsible for their own education and parents never help their children learn.

This one not only makes me laugh, but really dishonors all those unschoolers who run their children to classes, find mentors for them, help them when their children ask for it, spend hours at the library, carefully choose books for reading aloud, take countless field trips, and play tons of games with their children. Unschooling parents are very involved with their children's education...... they just don't run it.

Unschooling parents are too lazy to take the time to sit down and teach their children.

See above answer.

Unschooling families have no discipline in their homes.

Some do have discipline in their homes and some don't. Just like any other family. I think this misconception stems from the fact that many people think if a child has choices in their education that they get to do whatever they want whenever they want to and they will always make bad choices. Child rearing techniques are as varied in unschoolers as they are in any other group of people.

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