by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: November 07, 2009   Last Updated: November 21, 2009

School is a construct in the minds of the masses. It's hard to see around it. That's where deschooling comes in.

Since most of us were conventionally schooled and did not choose our own learning experiences, we sometimes have difficulty letting go of the pattern of control and expectations to which we are accustomed. Before coming to a place of trust, we might go through a process called deschooling during which we overwrite cultural programming with our own insights and experiences.

Deschooling is a process of deprogramming which occurs readily in unschooling families. It happens to the parents if they were conventionally schooled, as well as to the children if they have come out of the school system. The noncoercive nature of an unschooling lifestyle might cause parents to feel some transient feelings of insecurity and loss of control, especially when faced with concern or criticism from friends and relatives.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of unschooling is giving up the illusion of control and instead trusting and allowing our children to learn what they personally need to learn. Even as parents settle more naturally into the world of unschooling, they might still worry about how their children's self-motivated, growing body of knowledge and experience compares to that of average conventionally schooled children. Without grades or test scores, they do not have a measurement to easily satisfy fearful friends and relatives.

For many parents, seeing is believing, and their unschooled children typically do not disappoint in this. Unschooling parents might not measure their children's learning by units, but they see that the children are learning. Nonetheless, some parents fear that their unschooled children will not learn all the subject areas mandated by standard school curricula, and therefore will not be prepared for college or work life.

Years of institutional programming causes many parents to automatically, habitually view learning according to officially established subject categories, such as social studies, science, language arts, health, and mathematics. Conventional schooling provides a standardized education in the form of a curriculum divided by age and further by subject categories. Conventionally schooled children digest topics according to the same schedule. Unschoolers, conversely, each have their own individual learning schedules that might vary widely from those used in schools. Subject divisions that apply in the school setting do not necessarily apply in life. However, unschoolers do demonstrate that they learn traditional academic subjects through the pursuit of personally-motivated activities.

Over the course of eighteen years, I not only trust, but confidently expect that my children will have acquired at least the same basic body of knowledge as any other person in our culture. According to my local government's official learning goals, an educated child should be able to

Read, write, and communicate effectively;
Think creatively and logically to solve problems; and
Set and work toward goals.

From this broader perspective, I see without a doubt that my children are progressing beautifully. My deschooling is coming along.

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