Why Not Unschooling?

Lately I've been wondering if I may not be heading in the direction of unschooling as our approach to home educating our kids.  The short answer is no.

Two reasons.  One, I keep hearing how unschoolers "trust" their children.  I don't think trust is a relevant term.  How can you trust someone to do something if they've never been exposed to it?  How can you trust someone to do the right thing if they've never been taught right from wrong?  How can you trust someone to know what to do without being explicitly directed?  This last one is particularly pertinent to me as an autistic woman who flew under the radar for over four decades.  There are many "common sense" things I only learned when they were explicitly explained to me, usually by my husband!  So I know first hand that not everything that comes naturally to one person will be natural to another.  I trust my children with the things they have already shown themselves to be trustworthy in.  That's the other thing.  I don't automatically trust people until they have shown me they are trustworthy.  Trust is earned.  I expect to have had my children "earn" my trust in their self-directed education by the time they are somewhere in their teens, but not before.  How do they know what they don't know?  How do they know what there is to know?  Of course, I can't teach them everything, nor do I want to.  But having more life experience than them, I at least know what sort of things have come in handy for me and why, and therefore which things I want to equip them with for the future.  

The second reason I won't be unschooling is because this is a join venture.  We are learning together.  Some things, they bring to the table and we all learn together.  Other things I bring to the table, and again, we all learn together.  I do not fill our days with busy work.  I do not insist on things because that's what the public schools are doing.  In the words of Charlotte Mason, I try to create a certain atmosphere where certain subject matter is a daily topic of conversation, and I try to instill a certain discipline in doing things because they have been set before us as being important by someone we love.  I think it is not the right attitude to raise a child to believe that they never have to bow to authority, that they are the master/mistress of their own life, because this is not always possible nor even healthy.  Of course, I want my kids to shoot for the stars, but not without proper safety equipment in place first!  Certain knowledge and skill sets are simply universally foundational in our society.  There is no question, for instance, that to be successful (productive/content/healthy) adults, they will need to not only have basic English literacy and numeracy down, but also cultural literacy (history, geography, social sciences, foreign languages, the arts), basic understanding of the physical world around them (sciences), and critical thinking skills to offset the incessant gaslighting present in mass media that passes as "news".  

The exact content for any of these may be up for debate, but the importance of some level of all of these "subjects" is beyond contestation for me.  And the idea that my kids should have to wait until the situation arises in order to be intrinsically motivated to then finally learn the pertinent information or skills seems like a major waste of time and procrastination of the inevitable.  Instead, when faced with the situation at hand, they ought to be able to hit the ground running, already knowing what to do for the best outcome.

I don't think higher level math or science is necessary unless one is going into a field that requires it.  But arithmetic and basic algebra is something we use as part of our financial literacy such as budgeting, and in meal-planning and cooking - at the very least.  

I don't think an in-depth understanding of the intricacies of chemistry or physics is necessary for everyone, but understanding the basics of weather patterns, seasons, how these affect the availability of food, what happens to waste, the environmental impact of our consumer choices - these are all things that matter.

I don't think everyone needs to be a lyricist or public speaker or poet, but let's be honest.  People judge us based on how we express ourselves both orally and in writing.  Misspellings and bad grammar may not necessarily translate to lack of know-how on a given subject, but they will look bad and cost us our credibility.

I could go on but I won't.  The bottom line is, taking the relaxed, eclectic Charlotte Mason-inspired approach to our home education, my children spend 2-3 hours a day on content prepared by me, and the rest of their waking hours (so about 11 hours!) pursuing their passions, getting lost in their own pursuits, following rabbit trails, perfecting the skills they find most interesting, inquiring about information they find most appealing, doing whatever their hearts desire.  Letting go of those 2-3 daily hours of prepared content will not help my children suddenly have the amount of time they need to self-educate... they already do that!  They do that on the weekends, during breaks, in the evenings, and they don't realize they are still learning even though we don't officially call it "homeschooling".  

In a word, we won't be unschooling because we don't have to.  We already have the perfect set up with the right balance of prepared content and freedom to cover all of our bases.