Interest-driven education?

Even after having this blog for over a year and a half, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing with it. Is it a parenting blog? A homeschooling blog? A nature blog? A family diary for future generations of Stankovitses? It seems to be not a very good blog of any particular sort and I’ve often thought about doing away with it altogether. But it isn’t hurting me or bugging me so it has abided.

I have enjoyed getting my thoughts on homeschooling out here periodically so this next piece of writing is me trying to formulate my current views/plans for the next school year.

I have always been drawn to the idea of unschooling, that the parent/child learning team forego conventional ideas of “school” and even “education” altogether in favor of life learning, or maybe just life living! In my mind there’s a tree with the interests and passions as the trunk, which lead into the conventional reading, writing, arithmetic lessons in the branches and leaves, off-shoots of the good stuff, becoming super important as they (gather sunlight) facilitate and nourish the learning of the trunk subjects. But I always thought that holding to an educational philosophy such as unschooling meant that you must abandon structure, discipline and organization. I’ve looked for information to disprove my objections, since the learning tree lures me so. John Holt’s and David Albert’s writings have now carried me to a place where my objections are no longer of concern. It seems that structure and discipline, in the form of the parents’ continued attention to the child and diligence in seeking out more and more materials, resources and information, and definitely organization to boot, are the roots of the tree. I believe that the child will establish discipline on their own, too, though I’m not prepared to write about that.

Here is a quote from John Holt, taken from his book Learning All the Time.
“We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions – if they have any – and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.” I have come to agree with that, by watching Jonny’s experience with school. He absorbs math fast, but hates the amount of busy work the curriculum requests. Even after I tailor it down significantly, it exasperates any interest he came to the concept with. How awful is that? Here’s a kid that can barely sit still for any amount of time, he’s good at math, interested in numbers and time, but the work I give him involving these very subjects, repels him from them! That is the opposite of what I hope education is and will be in this house.

So, my way of getting started on unschooling is to observe Jonny and decipher what it is that he is passionate about. The kid loves and I mean LOVES the video game Call of Duty. I should mention that I was so very opposed, at first, but couldn’t take it away because Jonny and Sid had such great times together, bonding over it. Jonny is really, really good at it too. When he plays live with other players, his team mates and opponents think he must be Sid because he’s so good! He loves the guns, loves the fighting and is 100% aware that it is just a game. In fact, when I get bothered by the violence, he reminds me, “Mom, it’s just a game.” He knows he doesn’t want to be in a real war. So, what can I extract and elaborate on so that Call of Duty can serve as a gateway to knowledge for Jonny? Well, on our Netflix xBox instant queue we got a show from the Military Channel called Future Weapons, hosted by an ex-Navy Seal. Sid and I love that show! So we watch it together with Jonny. During last night’s viewing, Jonny was suddenly overcome by the best idea ever! A Nerf tank!! And a Nerf missile launcher! Then I followed with adding a Nerf Cornershot to the idea list after the weapon and it’s Israeli creator were featured on the show. So Sid is going to draw up the ideas, at Jonny’s direction, and we’ll send them to Nerf. We’ve also checked out various books about military weapons from the library. Super cool. I love that I get to learn about this stuff too!

Thus begins our journey into the gloriously colorful, sparkling and unpredictable, yet satisfying, world of unschooling, for lack of a better term, or maybe my title here is a better term, interest-driven education? (I bet if I google it, it already exists and has an excessively detailed description which I am not prepared to advocate!) We will not abandon math lessons, next year we’ll try out the Math on the Level curriculum. Also, we’ll continue to be loosely guided by curriculum for the other core subjects, but with flexibility. And that’s where we’re at with that.