What is the difference between homeschooling and unschooling?

Answer

Alan Moses provided this answer on the Home Education Mailing List:

As I understand the way the Growing Without Schooling crowd uses the terms, unschooling refers more to the process of removing your child from school and overcoming the negative effects of the compulsory education process; homeschooling is the more general term referring to home-based learning. I'd love to come up with a better term than homeschooling, due to the implication that the child is spending all their time at home (see my comments on "socialization"); but it's the best I've seen so far.

Heather Millen added:

The process explained [above] could actually be considered "de-schooling" rather than unschooling. Unschooling is child-led learning in a home environment rather than duplicating school and its curriculums at home. Most unschoolers don't follow lesson plans, or even have "school learning" time structured into their day. Subjects are covered when the child's interest dictates not when the "educational experts" say its time for every child to know that subject.

David Mankins added:

Unschooling, for this unschooler, is based in the beliefs that children:

are incredible learning machines, as shown by their ability to learn language and to function in society with little or no explicit instruction

are insatiably curious about the adult world,

and are driven to learn by these features, and sometimes children learn *despite* our attempts to teach them!

Unschoolers also believe, or at least this unschooler believes, that *imposing* an agenda on a child is more counter-productive than helpful, because it doesn't take the child seriously.

I think a lot of this can be justified by reflecting on one's own learning experiences. Nobody makes me learn new things, I just do because learning is fun, or because I want to know about this subject for my own purposes (even if those purposes are as prosaic as justifying my paycheck). The same is true for children.

I think it is also motivated by a certain kind of respect for the rights of children. *I* don't want to be told what or when to study, what right have I to tell another what to do and when?

Unschooling requires a lot of faith in your child, that they will learn the things that are important for them to know despite not being "forced" to, that their seemingly patternless play is experimentation that will pay off in insight, and that they will stick to a subject through the "hard parts". Again, reflecting on one's own experience can help solidify this faith, as can reflecting on the behavior of one's own children.

[The answer above is based on a homeschooling FAQ originally edited in 1994 by Dave Mankins for the Home Education Mailing List.]

Answer

To me, "unschooling" simply means when a parent says they are homeschooling, but does not take the time, nor make the effort to do it correctly, and hinders their child's education.

First answer by Chris. Last edit by Lonestarr. Contributor trust: 313 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 184 [recommend question]

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