Unschoolers Are Uniquely Positioned to Follow the Science of Learning (& Human Development)
Will the Unschooling Philosophy Become the Gold Standard?
“Children are born with an innate curiosity and an evolutionary toolkit for learning. The more their environment mirrors the conditions under which this toolkit evolved—through exploration, play, and meaningful social interaction—the better they thrive.”
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century
First, a word about unschooling.
Like society at large, the people within one defined group are not exactly the same in every way. Unschoolers vary in what they believe politically, spiritually, and socially. They also encompass a wide range economically. However, in this context, I’ll focus on the underlying philosophy about learning that, I believe, ties all unschoolers together which is based on the ideas proposed by John Holt, “the father of unschooling”.
They are:
A child’s interests guides learning rather than a predetermined, canned curriculum.
Education happens continuously, not just during designated school hours or lessons led by a teacher.
Every child has unique talents, interests, and learning preferences.
Daily life provides endless opportunities for education, from cooking and gardening to travel and community involvement.
Formal assessments aren’t heavily focused on. Growth is measured through observation, conversations, and the child’s achievements. However, unschoolers test themselves, too, and appreciate a good challenge. The biggest difference is choice.
Parents play a supportive role by providing resources, exposing children to new ideas, and nurturing their innate curiosity.
Unschooling is adaptable, allowing children to explore a wide variety of interests at their own pace without pressure. The clock doesn’t dictate when learning should start or stop.
Children learn through meaningful engagement with their families, peers, and communities rather than being isolated in classrooms or school buildings.
Anyone can be a mentor to—from a sibling to a specialist on YouTube to a local artisan. Learning comes from all types of people and places, not just the classroom setting with a trained teacher.
Holt’s philosophy reflects a deep trust in a child’s capacity to learn when they are free to explore their world in their own way and time. It also aligns beautifully with what we know scientifically about learning and human development. (More on that below).
Pat Farenga, a student of Holt’s who has brought Holt’s message and foundational magazine, Growing Without Schooling, to a larger audience has provided this additional piece to the definition of unschooling:
unschooling is allowing children as much freedom to explore the world around them in their own ways as a parent can comfortably bear.
I find this addition important to highlight because it intentionally includes the parents in the unschooling equation. Unschooling is a partnership not an inflexible ideology that demands strict adherence to a set of beliefs that is so child-centered that other members of the family are overlooked or ignored. It is symbiotic and unifying instead of controlling in one direction or another.
As Pat says:
I see unschooling in the light of partnership, not in the light of the dominance of a child’s wishes over a parents’ or vice versa.
Now that unschooling is defined, let’s define learning.
Learning Defined
We’ll start with this definition of learning from Britannica:
“learning, the alteration of behaviour as a result of individual experience. When an organism can perceive and change its behaviour, it is said to learn.”
Learning is also a dynamic, personalized, and neurobiological process that involves acquiring, building, understanding, and applying information, knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors.
I argue that is also a full-body experience that requires exploration, instruction, reflection, and, ideally, conscious participation. (This last part is especially important to me because while it is true that kids can and do learn even if forced, coerced, or punished, it’s not ideal nor does it compliment what we know about healthy human development and relationships.)
Learning is also lifelong. It is a continual process that influences how one perceives, interacts with, and adapts to the world around them.
With this said, do I believe children learn while in conventional school? Of course they do because you truly can’t stop learning… it’s what our brains are built to do! What I argue is that education is not only about a child’s cognitive growth within a predetermined and inflexible scope and sequence, but about their physical, emotional, and spiritual growth, as well.
And when we compare the conditions of the standard schooling model with the conditions provided by loving, involved, attentive, and attuned parents and caregivers, schooling doesn’t hold a candle to unschooling.
Best Conditions for Learning and Human Development
When we consider the trajectory of the human story, schooling is the experiment, not homeschooling. And when we consider the impact of family on a child’s development, we discover that a healthy family is not simply an option, but optimal.
With the growth of modern research in neuroscience, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and education we have gathered a comprehensive understanding of how children learn effectively, retain knowledge, apply skills, and develop best.
For instance:
Developmentally speaking, we know that children tend to fair better when they are surrounded by people who have a vested interest in their long-term happiness and who help to regulate their immature nervous system. (Attachment Theory and Polyvagal Theory)
Biologically speaking, we know that children learn by doing, being physical, and interacting with others in environments that support such activity. (Evolutionary Biology)
We know that learning is not a passive activity, but a very active process. We know that our brain requires time to absorb new material and information, space to explore, challenge oneself, and try different things in order to grow. (Neuroplasticity)
We also know that the amount of time each child requires to fully grasp concepts and master skills varies because we know brains are different and don’t all learn the exact same way. (Neurodiversity)
Basically, the opposite of how conventional schools are set up.
Let’s go deeper.
Children need particular conditions to thrive and those conditions change as they mature. What tends to stay consistent is their need for foundational security and safety that fills their emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual cups. Here’s what science has revealed about what children need (and why unschooling has the potential to do this well!)
1. Basic Needs (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)
Children learn best when they feel safe, loved, and secure. If their physical needs (food, sleep, safety) and emotional needs (a sense of belonging and connection) are unmet, learning is significantly hindered. I believe most families, regardless of their opinions about education and academics, aim to meet their children’s basic needs. What’s different here is that by stepping away from the conventional model, unschoolers are not only saying yes to academic freedom, but personal freedom, too. In the unschooling equation, children and families don’t waste time following someone else’s imposed plan for their life. There isn’t a “standard curriculum” that must be followed because life is customized to the child versus molding the child to fit a set curriculum. Unschoolers can spend time on their own goals and aspirations which positions them to reach the highest tier in Maslow’s Hierarchy sooner rather than later.
2. Active Engagement and Curiosity
Learning is most effective when children are actively engaged and intrinsically motivated. When they are connected to their interests, real-life experiences, or personal goals their natural curiosity drives the process. And, they learn. Period.
3. Repetition and Spaced Practice
Memory consolidation requires repeated exposure to material over time (spaced repetition) rather than cramming. And in unschooling, children tend to go “all in” on a topic they love or are fascinated about. It’s amazing to listen to a child share their acquired knowledge about a topic they have chosen to study. Furthermore, I find it presumptious and unfair to ask a child to wait to learn something so that we can create a lesson plan that controls what and when they learn. I have watched my kids surpass my knowledge on various topics quickly when they take the lead and learn what they love and practice skills that are important to them.
As mentioned previously, kids naturally test themselves. Think about how a child tries something again and again to get it right. They are participating in active recall which moves information from short-term memory to long-term memory. Unschooling allows for regular attempts at a skill or idea because learning isn’t divided into time blocks or subjects and started and stopped according to someone else’s schedule or to keep up with the class.
For more insight on children’s memory and what you can do to support their memory making, I interviewed one of my favorite college professors, a Developmental Psychologist, for my podcast. You can listen to the episode here:
4. Meaningful Contexts
Children retain information when it’s tied to meaningful, real-world contexts. Abstract facts, when isolated, are easily forgotten, but when connected to stories, applications, or emotional experiences, they stick. And what better way to do this than to live a life of meaning and purpose day in and day out?!
This also makes me think of something Alfie Kohn shared about content delivered in school:
Students will soon forget much of the information they’ve been taught. The truth of that statement will be conceded, either willingly or reluctantly, by just about anyone who has spent time in school. We commit a list of facts, dates, or definitions to memory, but before long we couldn’t recall most of them if our lives depended on it. Thus, one teacher quips, “Covering content is like being the guy on the corner handing out cheap, mass advertisements. We are basically saying to our kids, ‘Here, throw this away for me.’”
Isn’t this a shame and a waste of everyone’s time? “Here, throw this away for me?” Not exactly the best scenario for supporting children’s natural curiosity.
5. Multisensory and Hands-On Experiences
Incorporating visual, auditory, and kinesthetic elements engages multiple brain regions, making learning richer and deeper. Hands-on activities, experiments, and projects enhance understanding and retention, not to mention is usually a more enjoyable activity that includes the learner versus telling the learner what to study, learn, or think.
As Julie Bogart shares in her book, “Raising Critical Thinkers” and on the podcast, there are “essential methods for gaining more access to a subject of study” in order to grow the mind. This involves a “trifecta of promoting quality thinking” which includes:
reading,
experiencing, and
encountering
Each provides value, but the deeper you go, the more you will grow in understanding the subject, person, or place. For instance, it’s one thing to read about Spain, another to go there and visit for a week (experience), but an entirely different level to live there for a semester (encounter).
We can apply this same process for the study of bugs, gardening, baking, or building. Schooling tends to stay at level one, reading. There are opportunities to venture into experiencing, especially in science, art, or music classes, but true encounter? That can only happen over time and with dedicated attention. Unschooling is much better positioned to honor “encountering” and therefore, more access to a subject of study, people, or places.
6. Play and Exploration
Unstructured play is a critical learning tool. It fosters creativity, problem-solving, perseverance, and social-emotional skills. I say that “play is a child’s love language” and if there’s one thing unschoolers have time for it is play and exploration.
(In case you’re in need of a book that backs up play so that your spouse or grandma doesn’t worry, Stuart Brown’s book, Play, is a quick read about why play is necessary and how it impacts all humans, not just children.)
And of course, there is Peter Gray’s Substack, Play Makes Us Human, where he shares all kinds of research and information about play.
The Big Question
Unschoolers are a varied group and unschooling, itself, is not a magic bullet. One doesn’t just refrain from sending their children to a conventional school setting, call themselves “unschoolers” and have everything fall perfectly into place.
Like learning, unschooling is an active, engaged process, too. It requires close observation of children by their parents. It is intentional and self-reflective, with parents and caregivers recognizing that their role is to be both the backbone of their family and a soft place for their children to land. Unschooling parents respect their children as unique individuals within a family system who require good faith guidance coupled with space to make their own decisions. And, maybe most importantly, they see life and learning as an inseparable experience so they don’t fall over themselves trying to separate learning into buckets or time blocks or checklists.
Instead, everything counts, everything matters.
As I see it, unschoolers challenge the status quo of schooling and, in a sense, force the educational complex to look itself in the mirror and wrestle with a very big and important question:
“Why aren’t we giving our kids the best possible environments knowing what we know about the science of learning and human development?”
Maybe, just maybe, as more people experience and encounter unschooling, society will circle the wagons around a new gold standard that has the potential to support children’s learning and development through the years in the best possible way. Maybe instead of corraling kids for efficiency and “saving money”, we’ll reflect and reinvest in what we know to be optimal for children instead of what’s easiest for the bureaucracy.
I’ll raise a glass to that!
~Missy
If you are new to homeschooling/unschooling, are unschooling curious, or are looking for a way to explain unschooling and self-directed education to a family member, spouse, or friend, I have co-written the e-book, Life Unschooled: A Guide to Living and Learning Without School with my friend and fellow unschooling parent, Ann Hansen. This lovingly written 43-page downloadable e-book provides insights and assurances that children can and do learn without going to school. Grab a copy here or share with a friend!
