Homeschool Fever

Unschooling was made popular by John Holt’s theories on learning developed during 1950s-70s. 

This method of teaching a child at home revolves around child-directed learning, meaning that parents are more of a “coach” and not a traditional teacher.  The parents ensure that the child is exposed to a wide variety of experiences and books, but no formal plan, tests, or schedules are imposed on the child.  As a student of unschooling, the child is free to decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn it, and how they want to learn it.  For instance, if a trip to the museum sparks a desire in dinosaurs the child might spend a month studying nothing but dinosaurs.

Unschoolers, considered to be a more radical form of homeschooling, run the gammut from those who plant materials in their child’s path in some subjects while using textbooks in others, to families who completely obscue traditional teaching methods and believe that to force any knowledge (including math and reading) upon a child is detrimental to their ability to learn and self-educate. 

The typical belief in unschooling families is that when a child is ready to learn, he will, and will do so in a much shorter time period than if it would have been forced on him when he wasn’t interested.