How Learning Happens in Unschooling
My daughters watched the video of Korryn Gaines and read some articles that offered speculation on what happened.
I knew they watched and read because I heard Kris (their dad) and Marley (age 12) loudly engaged in spirited discussion. I walked in to see Sage (age 10) reading an article and mumbling about the site’s mobile app deficiencies. We asked the girls what they thought happened, and how they felt about it.
We had just finished practicing our handstands and round-offs in the backyard. As usual, and our conversation go from light chatter about fun things (like handstands) to spirited debates about life’s more weighty bits (like racism and police brutality).
Our daughters peeled back layers and asked several questions. That evening, we ended up in a series of deep-dive conversations about
denotation and connotation…
context and statutes…
bench warrants…
Sam Sharpe…
white supremacy…
…and what it means to own ourselves.
We explained in detail how car insurance is calculated, and how much Korryn’s knowledge of her rights didn’t matter to her murderer. Our girls had a lot of questions. So did we.
We held a 4-person panel, ignited by yet another public execution of a black person by way of police brutality. And how important it is to not have to rely on a part of the system to sustain you. We revisited conversations about the economic value in being a producer and not just a consumer. Our daughters updated us on their entrepreneurial interests. We listened and offered the resources we had.
After that, we signed up for a project management site (Teamwork.com) because Kris has a deal with Marley to fund her trip to Anime Weekend Atlanta in exchange for some help with a WordPress project. I offered Sage a similar deal to help me organize a system for managing my new podcast; she accepted.
Our projects won’t be very difficult for the girls, as they regularly practice database building and digital asset management through their own personal projects. With one ongoing project, for example, they create detailed Wikis for original characters they develop as part of fan fiction groups, short stories, or scripts for voice actors they hire online.
The projects they help Kris and me with, will expose them to copywriting, theme customization, and time management. They’re willing participants, which is a primary tenet of self-directed education.
And that’s how learning happens among us. Except that Kris and I, as the adults learn in small dots of information. Our daughters have a different relationship with information gathering and processing. They swim through massive data and pull out the bits they need, and quickly discard the bits that don’t feel like a good fit.
We learn how to learn faster by watching our daughters. They get to see examples of focus and idea-to-completion from Kris and me. We are unschooling, the four of us, and we are now learning how real learning happens.
Curious about Self-directed Education? Check out my podcast and preorder my book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work.
