My First Foray into the “UnSchooling” Side of the Blogosphere

Not an auspicious beginning.

When my friend Sonita started her series on Christian unschooling, I was interested in hearing what she had to say. I’ve never really researched unschooling, and don’t have time to look into it, so her view of education is probably going to be my whole experience of the unschooling mindset. Please bear in mind that, when I speak of unschooling, I am speaking of the impression that I get from one or two unschoolers on a single blog. I have no idea what the rest of them are doing.

After reading a post at Cows Don’t Moo, by guest blogger Jessica Bowman, I have a somewhat better idea of what it is these unschoolers are getting at. It looks an awful lot like moms teaching stuff to their kids in a child-led way, with lots of books and love. So far, so good. If that’s the way you want to roll, then I’m thrilled to look the other way while you do so.

But in explaining her own reasons for doing things the way she is doing them, Jessica says some things about classical (or perhaps just traditional) Christian education that I just can’t let slide. You see, Jessica thinks that, while Christians who use structured teaching are almost certainly not malicious in their intentions, they are really doing a grave disservice to their children.

They want to help their children succeed, be successful and respected, and use all that talent and energy one day to do good and work for the Lord.  But they’re doing that with Latin curricula, and daily math lessons, and lots of memorization.And I can’t help but wonder, deep down – what does that have to do with anything?  I mean, really.

What good does minute amounts of rote math do for anybody?  And latin?  Can you say “dead language”?  And don’t even get me started on memorization.

[Cue horror movie sound effects] Oh, my goodness! Not that!

Yes, ma’am. Math lessons. Rote. Dry. Daily. That’s the way we cook it up and serve it around here. It works. I will admit that I don’t quite understand the use of the word “minute” here, as we’re actually doing copious amounts of rote math–albeit in minute detail.

I have no doubt that unschooling is an effective way to raise a child (for some). I think the children of unschoolers are unlikely to be illiterate, ill-mannered, or unable to cope as adults just because their parents didn’t make them learn dates and and sentence diagramming. Innumeracy seems to be a risk, since math is hard (or so I’m told), and not many kids are eager to do drills when they could be finger-painting. There are worse things than failing at Algebra, I guess.

If the parents are emphasizing love for Christ in bringing up their children, the unschooled student will come out light-years ahead of a secularly-schooled one in the most important life lessons. After all, Christ is our purpose. Everything else really is tangential. Because I believe this, I can say with a perfectly clear conscience:

You guys go right ahead and do that. More power to you.

When my friend (I have lots of lovely invisible friends on the internet) Mary Jo posted her opinion of unschooling, she gently expressed the same misgivings I have about it. Namely, that unschooling seems to be an extreme reaction to institutionalized schooling. In their haste to disassociate themselves from the stultifying environment of the assembly-line schools we’ve grown accustomed to, unschoolers throw the baby out with the bath water.

This knee-jerk rejection of formal study comes dangerously close to beatifying mental laziness.

Perhaps Jessica can’t see the point of math drills or Latin, but they do have one. When my kids are taking higher math (which is important, even for dumb hillbillies like me), they won’t have to interrupt their thought processes with trying to remember “useless” facts like 9*8=72. If the drills aren’t done in early childhood, the more difficult concepts can be lost because the student is focusing on simple calculations that should be second nature by high school.

The blogger also misunderstands the meaning of “dead” language. Latin is dead in the sense that no one speaks it as his native language anymore. It is most certainly not purposeless! Latin is useful in understanding the Romance languages. It’s the language of science and medicine. Latin is instructive in understanding English, which was shaped by Latin (due to historical influences which unschoolers will no doubt view as esoteric knowledge not relevant to modern living).

Unschoolers speak as though forcing (and forcing is precisely what I do, some days) my child to learn things he doesn’t “care” about will make him hate all learning. I haven’t witnessed that at all! What I’ve seen is that making my child do things that are contrary to the bent of his young mind is giving him the intellectual discipline to think hard thoughts, and his life is better for it. Growth hurts! This is true in every area of life, including education. Even if my children never use their knowledge of Latin or higher math in their “real” lives, the life of the mind will be richer for having to stretch to accommodate these disciplines.

Classical education is hard. It doesn’t take the path of least resistance. Sometimes it can be very frustrating for both the student and teacher. It is for this very reason that I continue to press my child even when he doesn’t want to learn. He needs to learn to push through the frustration. He is learning more than math when we do drills; he is learning to discipline his mind.

There is nothing particularly Christian about math drills, but there is something distinctly pagan in the notion that children–fallen human beings–have within them already the means to guide their own growth.

Can you raise a child without timelines, multiplication tables, and dead languages? Yes. He’ll probably be fine. Personally, I don’t think that’s good enough.  And wouldn’t it be awful to find out when it’s too late that you’ve hobbled your child by refusing to give him the tools that he didn’t even know he needed, just because his immature will didn’t want to?