Cappy

Today I heard about something called “Unschooling,” a method of learning based around the child rather than a prepackaged curriculum. I’m going to research it much further, but on the surface it reads like an expansion of the Montessori method, but taken beyond the classroom and made to suit a particular child.

The personalities of individual children become quickly evident even as infants. One might climb trees while another inspects the sap. One might dabble in paints while another orders blocks. Preferences, interests and even the suggestion of goals rise to the surface before long. Why, then, should we all the learn the same thing in our schools? I have long thought that a well-rounded education was completely nonsensical. Children’s minds are not given the respect they deserve, and I’m sure that with a methodology that promoted their own natural curiosity and interests they will quickly reveal the areas that best suit their particular minds. That is why I like the Montessori method, and further why the Unschooling articles I read interest me as well.

An “unschooled” child, as I understand it thus far, would be free to pursue their own interests indoors and out, with parents or another teacher acting as a sort of guide that would provide context and relevant knowledge about any particular activity or subject. Here’s a quick example.

Johnny likes dinosaurs. Therefore, see if he would be interested in:

• Books on the lives of prehistoric animals
• Trips to dinosaur museums or an actual archeological dig
• Other rare and wild animals, past and present
• Descendants of dinosaurs, and the theory of evolution

Or a real-life example, from an article I read today, tells us about Jacky who played on a swingset, a tree swing and a tire swing for a while, and then walked back inside to declare to her mother:

• It is impossible to swing in a square or a triangle.
• When you go real high you hang in the air for a second until you start down.
• Legs outstretched make you go slow (when spinning on a tire swing)- bent goes faster. She thinks this may be due to the fact that with legs bent, your middle [center] is closer to your body and you are smaller so you can go around more times in one “twist”.
• When you spin in the tire swing it must be like how it feels to the earth spinning. It’s hard to stretch out your arms but easy to hold them to your side. This must be why we don’t fly off the world.
• Poodles do not like to swing.

Jacky I think is a really good example, as it shows the intuitive inverse of the “unschooling” method. In the first example, a guide provides a context for Johnny’s interest in dinosaurs. Jacky, on the other hand, already familiar with the concept of garnering knowledge from her interests, is eager and capable of doing so herself.

I need to do more research, and once I do I’ll share more. But I think the point is this: if the free market is the best way to acheive wealth, wouldn’t it make sense to apply the same principles to education? I certainly think so.

Education