For us, unschooling was a natural progression from the idea of homeschooling.
Homeschooling is the easier term to talk about.
Whenever I talk about homeschooling, people are familiar with the word.
Choosing to unschool is confronting.
The choice might seem easy – just don’t send your child to school.
From that perspective, yes, not having the morning stress routine of waking a sleepy child, making breakfast, packing lunches, walk to school (or if you’re unlucky, a traffic jammed commute) is a blessing.
But I’ve grown up in a mainstream world where it’s assumed that school is compulsory (it’s not) and that the only way to learn how to read and write and everything in between is at school (again, it’s not).
This past week it (end of January) marked the start of the 2014 school year in Australia.
My Facebook stream was filled with pictures of beautiful children in their new uniforms ready for another year at school.
There were proud Mums sharing pictures of their little ones heading to their very first year of school. They all looked so adorable.
But there were also messages like this:
…so happy for them but feel a little like I left my heart behind,
I wanted to tell them that they don’t need to go this path if they don’t want to.
How incredible is the joyful energy radiating out from the little boy in this photo? This is how all children should feel.
This article from Dayna Martin is incredible and well worth the read. It’s a viewpoint that I believe could have more children feeling more joy, more often.