Unschooling – paving the way to self motivated seeking of knowledge

Image by Muhittin KARABULUT from Pixabay

“ Whoever travels a path in search of knowledge, Allah will make easy for him a path to Paradise.”

Unschooling is becoming a very popular trend among homeschooling parents and here we want to discuss this trend: 

So what is unschooling? 

 ‘Rather than following a set curriculum, unschooling is unrestricted learning following a child’s stage of development and personal curiosity, in their own time.’

This is one of the descriptions for unschooling, but in reality there isn’t an exact definition or manual for unschooling. 

Unschooling is a path taken by parents who realise that the curriculum dished out by the Department of education is not the only way to acquiring the knowledge they need to be successful individuals in life. In many cases unschooling parents actually believe that school and the various set curriculums are a hindrance to children achieving their true potential academically and otherwise. Think back to what you learnt in school, how much of it has actually been useful, how much of it was forced, and how much of it was a tick box exercise? 

The views of unschooling parents really strikes a chord for muslim parents. Muslim parents might want to avoid schools because they might see it as a hindrance to good akhlaq and adab on one hand  but on the other hand there is so much with regards to the deen, spirituality, creativity and life lessons that a muslim parent might want to incorporate into their child’s curriculum which often cant be harmoniously achieved with a schooled child.  

Unschooling differs from homeschooling in many ways but a fundamental difference is not abiding by a traditional curriculum set by governments but parents setting their own informal curriculum or learning based on the interests of the child and the parents (because let’s be honest what the child is going to be interested is very likely to be influenced by the learning environment created by the caregivers and the subjects that he is exposed to). 

Here we would like to challenge parents to consider that the standard school curriculum may not be the only curriculum that can get your child into university or get them a good job. There may be other more creative ways of getting there, if we would only dare to take the different path. Interestingly more and more parents have in fact done just that and taken the unschooling path and research shows just how well they are doing. 

Unschooling is not for every family, admittedly some families do need structure and are not equipped with the luxury of providing their children with an adequate learning environment (although this does not necessarily take much to do)- and it does need the right family environment that is conducive to learning. We do not deny that some children are much better off in school. “Not one size fits all” certainly applies for the unschooling, homeschooling, schooling decision. 

Later academic success is very much linked to children developing excellent reading skills, excellent writing skills and excellent communication/speaking skills. If they are able to develop these skills using topics/subjects that they want to or love to learn about then they can excel in any academic area they put their mind to. If you are able to develop good reading, writing and speaking skills in the unschooled way i.e. pursuing the child’s interests, the unschooling argument is that you end up with children who display much more self motivation and acquire these skills to a much higher standard than children who are “forced” to do school work. Once they have acquired a high standard of reading, writing, speaking and a love of “seeking” (knowledge) then what remains is for them to work out what they want to do in life and pursue that goal with the unique self determination that unschooled children appear to acquire. 

“Unschooling does not mean that parents can never teach anything to their child­ren, or that children should learn about life entirely on their own without the help and guidance of their parents. Unschool­ing does not mean that parents give up active participation in the education and development of their children and simply hope that something good will happen. Finally, since many unschooling families have definite plans for college, unschool­ing does not even mean that children will never take a course in any kind of school.” – Earl Stevens

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