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Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education

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Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education

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Highlights & Notes

There are three different types of learning: learning to be, learning to do, and learning to know.

There are two reasons to learn something: either because you need it or because you love it.

  • Damn right!

possible. The bloating of most curricula comes from a simple flaw. Each generation believes that what they love the next generation needs.

All people unschool to learn most of their knowledge during most of their lives. The only variables are how well do they do it, and when do they start.

It could be that for 1 “average” hour of stimulation, people need an hour of reflection to create useful memories. On occasion, it might be much more than that; for example, it could easily require 10 or 15 hours or more to process 1 intense hour of unfamiliar activity, especially one that’s well outside of one’s comfort zone.

Math must be part of a critical core curriculum. It is one of the few subjects, along with reading and writing, worth making mandatory. No one should enter the productive world, nor can they make good life decisions, without a deep and comfortable experience with math.

Formally learn only what is reinforced in the productive world in the next 14 days.

The truth here is that for schools, getting out of the way may be the best thing they can do. Students, left alone, will build things. They will create unique, surprising ways to meet specific needs that often only they understand (even if the need is to enable an elaborate prank).

Building can be done with computer code or lumber or ingredients or fabric. And building is the opposite of consuming, which is done with movies, textbooks, restaurant meals, most video games, or lectures.

The next generation of engineers and scientists are not going to be the ones who are the best “students” who memorize a given week’s lists of tables and equations before heading off to history class where they do the same with historical figures and dates. In fact, it will be a failing graduate school that draws from this lot. The next generation of engineers and scientists will be the ones who are skipping the class but painfully and meticulously gathering the building blocks in their secret workshop and putting together something unprecedented.

In fact, ordering people to do something often results in the opposite long-term behavior or belief system.

Children should be exposed to as much richness as possible. This includes different philosophies, different cultures, different art forms, different careers, and different forms of meaningful work.

For example, exposing a child to a great scientist has a low probability of predictably pushing him or her down a science path. But over the years, any child leading a life of rich exposure will predictably find what they love and where they can uniquely contribute.

The education-industrial system is addicted to homework. From a “business” perspective, it meets the needs of a K-12 school perfectly: It reduces the responsibility and accountability of the existing teachers and school processes. It makes parents accountable to the school, instead of the other way around. It keeps the student feeling guilty and unempowered. It maintains the illusion that there is so much to teach and the school mission is so important that they are worth consuming all aspects of a child’s life.

Being a role model has two values, not necessarily in this order. First, children learn by watching adults. Second, adults will be a lot more thoughtful in what they assign children to do if they actually have to do it themselves.

No matter what his or her age, when a child has a serious and productive interest in something, do anything possible to feed it. Be the perfect enabler.

Childhood passion based on curiosity and real interest is one of the most powerful forces. This is what eventually shapes industries and nations.

Nothing more typifies modern parenting than “the drop-off.” Parents are addicted to outsourcing their children to paid (or volunteer) caregivers. They drop off their sons and daughters at birthday parties, little league, and of course, schools.

Life is educational. But only if you let it be.

Microsoft could not have happened if it were a part of IBM. Google and Amazon could not have happened if they were a part of Microsoft.

Children are not raw materials to be made into productive citizens by “the system.” Children are beautiful living souls, as much angel as devil, each deserving of a hero’s journey through life, where they can strive and fail and grow up to change the world.

Also check out some of the newest offerings in game-based software for basic skills, like DreamBox for math (www.dreambox.com) or Rosetta Stone for language (www.rosettastone.com). Take time to investigate project-based and student-centered learning at schools like the Acton Academy (www.actonacademy.org).

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