What the heck is an unschooler?
Well, I can say for certain it isn't my child, but oh, how I have wished for one over the years. If my child were an unschooler he'd be up every morning roaring to learn. He'd gladly run out to the barn to check on the animals, he'd take that dang Lego Robot I got him for Christmas 3 years ago and build every design he could think of. Yes, if my child were an unschooler I'd have robots running my household, he'd have a Jimmy Neutron lab in the barn, and high hopes for high office.
You see, an unschooler is a natural learner, a kid who's curiosity gets the better of him on regular occasions. They build things, they question things, they create things. If my kid were an unschooler he'd have my retirement plan figured out, he'd paint murals in the living room, and he's devise a way to have robots run my household.
Unschoolers have been raising eyebrows for decades with their lax attitudes and child-centered learning. They've been the butt of homeschool jokes the world over - by homeschoolers! Yes, it is pretty bad when you're the oddball out in an oddball world to begin with. Being an unschooled child is a dream-come-true that few kids could even comprehend. "Why, what do you MEAN you don't' have to get up at 6AM?" those non-unschoolers would ask. "If you don't do school then you won't be smart," they'd chide.
But the unschooler knows different. They already know that they don't need someone to tell them what to do, how to do it, and why it needs to be done.
Because they are natural learners and they have built their mothers a whole army of robot maids to run her household, and she is... happy.
Ahhh...to have an unschooler. A kid who begs for Japanese foreign language courses and then comes back to say Russian sounds good too. Who teaches himself how to draw by finding "Learn to Draw" videos on the Internet and submits his projects to the county fair, who not-so-secretly wishes that his barn REALLY was a Jimmy Neutron laboratory, and who laments over the injustices of foreign governments when watching Fox News when he should be doing math.
Hmmm...maybe every kid has a little bit of an unschooler in him? Now if he'd only build me that dang robot army to do my chores.
J. Anne Huss is the editor over at http://www.the-simple-homeschool.com/ and author of Simple Schooling homeschool science and history curriculum. She started single-mom homeschooling-it over seven years ago and has never looked back.
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