notes from “the unschooling handbook”

the unschooling handbook
by mary griffith

unschooling is:
- child-centered, child-motiviated learning
- three essential things: (1) the parent acts a facilitator (2) providing “an environment conducive to learning and experimentation” and (3) “trusts that the child will learn with joy” and and thus keep the knowledge with them.
- children concentrating for as long as they want on what they want to learn when they are ready
- “mindful living”
- giving children choice and respect, trust and responsibility with the belief that they have an innate desire to learn for their own benefit
“…learning is invisible growth from within with less focus on creating products…” [p. 3]

“…learning is a natural, enjoyable, impossible to avoid drive that we are all born with.” [p. 4]

our purpose as parents is to “find, nourish and protect a child’s desire to learn.” [p. 9]

as support for homeschooling, the auther cited a psycholigist’s theory of multiple intelligences, similar to IAHP theories. psychologist howard gardner in his book “frames of mind” suggest that there are least seven types of intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. “According to gardner, each of us possesses a combination of these intelligences, and the relative strength of each determines what we are good at and enjoy. Traditionally, schools have emphasized the logical-mathematical and linguistic intelligences to the near exclusion of the rest…By allowing individuals to follow their interests and learn in the ways they learn best, unschoolers tend to work from their strengths instead of focusing on their weaknessess.” [p. 17-18]

intrinsic motiviation & autonomy: “people who are allowed to make their own decisions about how they behave perform more competently and more effectivly than those whose behavior is strictly controlled and judged by others.” [p. 20]

unschooling resources: anything and anyone including books, catalogs, hands-on activities, magazines, video, tv, internet, volunteering, trips, nature, gardening, farming, games, people (…who willing to work with a child’s learnng style and listen to her ideas), et al.

the acquisition of knowlege becomes an active habit of searching and sifting, and children learn to think and read critically; the child should be involved in choosing all type of resources.

learning dryspells often happen after intense learning “sessions” where children need to absorb or process what they learned; keeping general records, journals or portfolios allows parents to recognize these patterns. [p. 70]

“Most unschoolers, in science as in any other field, simply believe that a child’s passion for a particular field will become apparent in the course of achieving that basic literacy — and that once ignited, it will lead that child far more effectively than the most rigorously taught laboratory science course.” [p. 109]

“History — along with the rest of the social sciences — is all about people: about how they lived, what and why they behaved as they did, how they made our world what it is…history is not so much about memorizing hard facts as it is about realizing that there are scores of different — often contradictory — ways to interpret those facts.” [p. 126-7]

making sense of a non-chronological approach to learning history:
as opposed to the chronological approach used in text books use a combination of regular books, movies, geneology, living history (e.g. reenactments, environmental living programs (ELPs)) and travel. timelines — a published volume or family-made one on “a long piece of butcher paper hung in a hallway, with centuries and perhaps decades marked; family members add information — people events, both historical and fictional characters, inventions, ancestors, whatever catches their attention — as they come across it.” [p. 128]

not in this book, but definitely related: the goal of homeschooling my children is to help our children restore their fitra, meaning the original state in which humans are created by Allah.