Experiences Aren't Universal: Why Personalized Education is Important

People seem to have a lot of ideas about what types of experiences other people--especially children, teens and young adults-- should be having.

Thus we get a whole bunch of faux-concerned (or, hey, maybe some actually concerned) individuals saying “But what about prom? That was such a great night for me.”

“How are children supposed to learn about adversity? I grew stronger through dealing with bullies.”

“It’s about the whole college experience, though! That’s where I learned to live independently.”

Some things, like the bullying, I believe are wrong no matter what. But for other things, they can definitely be important milestones in many peoples' lives.

They don't have to be, though. What some experience as a milestone, others won't feel to be a big deal, and still others will never have that experience and not miss it at all.

This isn't just the case in events and milestones related to schooling, either. For example people who espouse travel as a form of self-discovery frequently seem rather dismissive of people who don’t like to travel, and dismissive even of those who do like traveling but are merely “tourists,” and are not properly pursuing self discovery through life on the road, and backpacking, and couchsurfing. Or how some people believe that all young adults should experience living entirely on their own, without even roommates, as some attempt to learn how to be a "real" adult.

People seem to frequently make the mistake of thinking that because something is meaningful and helpful in their own lives, then it must be meaningful and helpful in everyone’s lives. Which means everyone should do X, Y, or Z important thing as a Right of Passage or a Way to Find Yourself.

Sharing what’s worked in your own life can be really helpful and inspiring to others. But don’t make the assumption that just because it worked for you, it’s going to work for most (or even many) other people. We’re all individuals with different paths to pursue.

This is one of the reasons I love unschooling so much. As I've said numerous times, when asked what my favourite thing about unschooling is or why I think unschooling is important, one of the best things about unschooling, in my mind,  is the personalization of our education,  as we pursue what we truly want and need to learn. This holds true for learning without college, as well, and attempting to build a life as an adult that feels in line with our desires, our values, and our strengths.

It’s wonderful knowing that people have gained joy and personal growth in their life thanks to an experience they had in school, or an epic backpacking trip they went on, or painting every day, or living entirely alone in a cabin in the woods, or adopting a religion. It’s great reading about the myriad of ways people are living meaningful lives and doing important work. But of all those paths, we’ll each find different ones inspiring, different ones that make us go “wow, I want to do that!”

There’s much good to be had in embracing a variety of ways of living, as long as they do no harm to others. Realizing that what’s right for us may not be right for our sibling, or our friend, or a stranger on the internet, is important as we share what's worked in our own lives.

In embracing life learning, a philosophy all about finding the most meaningful and personally relevant path in each individual's life, it seems to me we're making an important step in creating a world where we all have a lot more personal power in the shape our education, and our life, takes.

Review of Better Than College: How to Build a Successful Life Without a Four-Year Degree.

I haven't written a book review on this blog for ages. Probably because I've read very few non-fiction books in the last couple of years! But sparked by some newly discovered energy and motivation, I decided to change that, which is why I put aside some time over a couple of days to read Blake Boles' Better Than College: How to Build a Successful Life Without a Four-Year Degree.

The first thing I liked about it was that I could easily read it over a couple of evenings, with plenty of time left over. I'm a fast reader, but even so, this book isn't long. It's concise and straight-forward, which is really nice, as longer, more verbose books on education often just aren't that easy to get through. If you want to appeal to a larger audience, make it something that isn't intimidating to pick up. On a similar note, get rid of any ideas you have about self-published books being sloppy or unprofessional. Thanks, I'm sure, to a lot of work by multiple people, this book looks really appealing. You want to pick it up.

But all that isn't nearly as important as the contents. So, on to that!

There are some things I really liked about this book. I like that it starts with some "propositions" on which the rest of the book is based on, outlining the reasons college might not be as great as it's cracked up to be, and why skipping college might be a good idea. I was happy to see that the idea of it being a "gamble" skipping college was addressed, with Blake pointing out that going to college is just as much of a gamble. Also, of course, some criticism of the cost of college. As Blake writes

This is the real culture of fear that should surround college: not that purposefully skipping college will ruin your life, but that mindlessly attending college (or graduate school) may lock you into a huge pile of debt from which you can never escape.

As I've struggled with figuring out what I'm doing and how to go about doing it, one of the things that never ceases to make me feel better is just going well, at least I'm not in debt.

I also appreciated the big focus in this book on the importance of self-knowledge. To me that's always been an important aspect of unschooling. Knowing yourself, and working to understand more about the way you best function, what's important to you, your strengths and weaknesses, is invaluable. I agree with Blake that that's an important thing to be striving for, whether you're in college or not.

The other main thing I appreciated about Better Than College was that Blake does a very good job of taking the concept and giving you concrete ideas on how to actually implement the whole living-without-college-and-learning-lots-of-stuff-and-becoming-financially-more-secure thing in your own life. Parts were inspiring to me, as Blake makes it seem, if not easy, than at least very doable.

The parts that weren't as strong to me were those talking more about famous successful college drop-outs, quoting The Education of Millionaires frequently, and Blake's list of inspiring people. Made up in large part of financiers, venture capitalists, business writers, and CEO's, they're not exactly the type of people I'd personally look up to. Steve Jobs and Penelope Trunk (author of this charming piece on why women should just put up with sexual harrassment) are not my idea of good role models. With a quote from each "inspiring" person included, one especially stood out to me. William Deresiewicz has this to say:

You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist--that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhatten or or a mansion in L.A.... [B]ut what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you're suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

My first thought was just really? You can live comfortably as a community organizer or artist? I must just know the wrong organizers and artists... I agree that these are deeply worthwhile vocations, and that you should be able to live comfortably doing such a job. But currently, it can be pretty darn hard to.

This is a good example to me of the obliviousness that seems to run through this book. It seems to have been written mostly for a very privileged audience, and it would have been nice if it was acknowledged that all the suggestions on networking and marketing yourself and similarly hacking your education are likely to work best if you're white, male, affluent (or at the very least middle class), straight, and are generally the stereotype of the entrepreneurial, tech heavy, young professional crowd.

There's a great exercise nearer the beginning of the book, designed to get you to look critically at what's most important to you, and how you can use your skills to help others. I loved it, and the sentiments behind it! But then for much of the rest of the book, everything is couched as a way to gain value or "get" something: get a job, get money, get skills, get ahead. Everything was about networking and badgering people to hire you (and I'm sitting there thinking what about sufferers from anxiety, especially social anxiety?), and seeming to encourage you to look at every single interaction as a networking opportunity. What about simple kindness? Friendships where you're not trying to get anything from the other person other than reciprocal caring?

I ended up liking the first half of this book, with more of a focus on self-knowledge and concrete ways to learn outside of college, better than the second half.

So, I would recommend Better Than College, but with some caveats. I think it addresses some things very well and provides some good tools and ideas, but falls short in other ways.

I hope to continue reading more non-fiction, and have some more interesting books to share soon!

The Value in Writing for an Audience, Not a Grade

After not reading any non-fiction books in quite a while, I picked up Better Than College by Blake Boles this afternoon and started reading. Instantly, something sparked a blog post idea. Blake writes:

Instead of working on homework, papers, and presentations destined to be seen once and tossed into a trashcan, self-directed learners turn much of their hard work into useful products for other people.

I don't know about "products," per se, but definitely something useful and appreciated.

Reading that, I had a thought that somehow had never occurred to me before. Most young people view non-fiction writing as something primarily done to get good grades, something that is only useful insofar as it pleases a teacher or professor and thus leads to good marks.

I've never written a five paragraph essay. Count paragraphs, you say? Construct an essay based on a rigid outline? Why would I do that? I've worked within word or space or time constraints numerous times, writing articles for magazines or talks for conferences. But I've never written an essay expected to adhere so closely to a specific outline, nor have I ever written something designed to please just one specific person.

I learned to write for an audience. I started writing before I even started reading, dictating silly stories for my mother to write down. Creating with words is something I've been doing since I was a small child. But when I really started writing in my teens, I first started writing book reviews for a homeschooling magazine, and then I started blogging. And it was through blogging that I became good at writing.

An Idzie writing.

I think blogging has been helpful for me in developing good writing skills for several reasons, and I think it's helpful for other people for the same reasons.

1. Your content is personally meaningful. You're writing about things that are actually important to you, things you're interested in, things that are relevant to your life. This isn't something boring you're forced to do, it's something you actually want to be doing, so you're going to care more about it and invest a lot more effort.
2. You get feedback. That's supposed to be the point of teachers grading papers, but blogging does that much more effectively, both because the audience is wider, and because feedback isn't the main point. The point is whatever you're writing about: politics or stories of daily life or unschooling philosophy. Getting feedback on your writing, directly through comments and emails and indirectly through which posts are more and less popular, allows you to improve your writing in a much more organic and meaningful way.
3. You learn to write accessibly. I'm generally considered a decent writer, with a good vocabulary. Yet when I read an academic paper written at a university level, or listen to a couple of academics discuss something suitably academic, often as not I'm left understanding only half of what's being said, and encountering a whole bunch of unfamiliar vocabulary--and I don't mean vocabulary related to a specific field, just academic jargon. It's a form of gate-keeping, separating people into those who have had access to ivory towers and those who have not. Blogging breaks that down. No matter your subject, you're likely writing for a wider audience, and so you want a large number of people to be able to understand what you're saying.
4. You get better at communicating. I can't count the number of times someone has misinterpreted something I've written. That has happened less though as I've been pushed to be ever clearer in my writing. Expressing yourself clearly and concisely is a good skill, and blogging is a platform very conducive to improving that skill.
5. You focus on the content, not the mechanics of writing.  Schools often emphasize writing first as a technical process, teaching proper grammar and structure, with content coming second. In reality, it works so much better if you instead focus on things that feel like they have more meaning, on the actual content, and let skills be built naturally through the practice of creating meaningful content.
6. You have something exciting to strive for. Having people interact with your writing, commenting on it and sharing it and sending you emails about it, is super rewarding. Knowing people value your voice, value what you have to share, feels wonderful. A blog is also something that feels like it can grow, not only as more and more people discover it, but also in content and style, as your perspective and experiences change. It can also lead to a lot of other cool things: having your work published in magazines and books; getting your own books published; making money or getting a job. All of that is likely to be a lot more exciting than just writing to get a good grade!

Writing can certainly be meaningful in both high school and university settings. If you like the topic you're studying, you might be quite happy to be writing about it. I just think blogging can provide an excellent self-directed way to grow as a writer.

Through blogging I've created a bunch of content I'm really proud of; I've had my work published in magazines and books; I've gone to conferences I never would have gotten to go to otherwise; I've made many friends; received many free books; and discovered a bunch of great content created by other people.

Through it all, even when it's been difficult, writing has felt like something good. Important. Something that has meaning.

I may have never written a five paragraph essay, but I have learned to write, and write well, for an audience of people who really care about what I have to say. 

And that seems like a much better way to learn.

Unschooling Isn't New. Really, It Isn't.

"Have you heard of this 'unschooling' thing? Just wait until those kids grow up, they'll never make it in the real world!"

I can't count the number of times I've said, with as much patience as I can muster, that unschooling isn't new. That quite a few of "those kids" have already grown up.

John Holt is famously known as the creator of the term unschooling, about which Pat Farenga has this to say:

Unschooling is actually defined by Holt in GWS #2: "GWS will say 'unschooling' when we mean taking children out of school, and 'deschooling' when we mean changing the laws to make schools non-compulsory and to take away from them their power to grade , rank , and label people, i.e., to make lasting , official, public judgments about them."

I've been asked to define unschooling since 1981. The simple answer I learned from John is unschooling is NOT school. John Holt was tuned into popular culture and during the 1970s there was a popular television commercial for a soft drink called 7-Up. The marketing hook for 7-Up was that it was "The Uncola"—clear to look at, refreshing to the palate—it was NOT a syrupy cola. When John was casting around for words to describe learning without going to school the Uncola campaign was in full swing and it could have influenced him.

It's not a new term, and it's not a new movement.

Its also not a new concept. The idea of learning through living without compulsory institutions, learning through play and community involvement and following passions, is not new. In fact, it's really, really old. Peter Gray has written extensively both about the importance of play in learning, and how indigenous children traditionally learn.

Unschooling isn't new.

The "results" have already been seen.

Unschooled children have grown to adulthood.

Countless life learners have gone on to lead fulfilling lives.

It's not some weird untested theory being practiced by a bunch of people who just don't know any better. Instead, it's a way of living based on observations and experiences of how people actually learn best. It's an attempt to embrace what comes naturally to humans, which is a drive to learn and explore and become active members of our communities.

Children want to be part of everything. In this case, making bread!
An Idzie circa 1993.

It may have been getting increasingly popular, and receiving more media attention in the past handful of years. But that simply means that more and more people--educators, parents, students, and community members--are feeling there's something deeply wrong with the institution of schooling as it currently exists. While there are lots of new projects and new initiatives, new books and new blogs about unschooling and complimentary ideas, the ideas themselves aren't new.

Which means that we're lucky enough to have people to look to for inspiration, no matter how near or far in the past we're looking. It can be scary no matter what, to choose something as unconventional as unschooling, but we're not making our way through entirely uncharted territory. There are people who've gone before me, and now I'm honoured to have people who look to the experiences of my family for inspiration.

Before you react with a knee-jerk "that will never turn out well!", know that unschooling has been around for a very long time. It has worked, it does work, and it will continue to work.

Embracing unschooling may be becoming more trendy, but the practice itself is just plain old natural learning. And that? That's been around for a very long time.

A Short Interview With An Idzie: Making the Choice and What Separates Unschooling

I recently did an email interview for the Romanian website Think Outside The Box, which you can read in that language here. I'm happy to also be sharing that interview here, in it's original form! 

Why unschooling and not homeschooling? Why was that the choice versus homeschooling and, of course, versus public schooling?

Why not public schooling was, well, a mix of things. My mother never wanted to send me to school, but because my father wanted to, I went to kindergarten. However, there were quickly problems (weird/obscene prank calls from a kid a couple grades ahead of me, as in, grade 2) which convinced my father that maybe homeschooling was a better option.

As for the why unschooling question, unschooling is something we just organically moved into. The home education in my family was relaxed from the start: I didn't have to do a set amount of things each day, and though my mother started out with some curriculum, when it came to everything but math I was free to stop using anything I wanted to. Over the years, our house just filled with interesting books and games, we went to a couple of different homeschool coops and classes, and participated in a range of different activities, from nature clubes to French classes. Me and my sister, who's two years my junior, learned about whatever excited or interested us, always with an enthusiastic parent ready to bring us to the library, search for relevant local events, and otherwise assist us in our pursuits.

After finally saying no more math textbooks, I hate this to much at around 10 or so, I'd say we truly became unschoolers, though we didn't start using that term until a couple of years after that.

Our learning experience though, no matter what term we were using at any given time, was always something very flexible and driven largely by passion. My mother has always been and continues to be truly passionate about learning things, all kinds of things, and that really influenced her approach to parenting and home learning right from the start.

What do you consider to be your most important accomplishments due to unschooling (what's the best things you think you came to experience because you were unschooled instead of being in a system)?

One of the best things is definitely the writing and advocacy stuff I've done! I have a successful blog, I've done public speaking as far away as Texas and as close as my home city of Montreal, my writing has appeared in multiple magazines and a book, and I've gotten messages from people all over the world telling me how much they appreciate my writing. That means a lot to me, and I'd say all that is an accomplishment (or series of accomplishments) I'm really proud of. Essentially I've built a name for myself as a writer and speaker!

Check out the T-shirt! Pretty cool, huh?

Will unschooling be the choice for your children, in the future or will you let them choose for themselves if they want to be in school or not?

I definitely plan to unschool my kids, though when they're older, they'd be free to make their own choices about whether they go to school or not. When they're younger? I don't know, and I don't think that's a question I'll be able to answer until I do have kids. I think it would depend on my child and the general situation, as well as the school options available.

What did your parents, family and friends think about you being unschooled, in the beginning and what do they think now?

Honestly? For the most part I don't know. Perhaps surprisingly, unschooling isn't something I discuss regularly with people who aren't interested specifically in homeschooling or alternative education. One close friend whom I've known for years still likes to mention that my sister and I are unschoolers when introducing us to new people, since he seems to find the fact either an interesting anomally or an important part of our identity. I'm not really sure which. My mother was the most enthusiastic advocate for home education and later unschooling, and that hasn't changed to this day. My father's feelings have gone up and down over the years, I believe, sometimes worrying, other times feeling better about things. All in all, I'd say it's a pretty mixed bag.

Which are, in your opinion, the most important features of unschooling, the ones that make a real difference for life, for unschooled children, compared to the public schooled kids?

Firstly the flexibility and personalization of unschooling. The fact that each and every unschooler is learning about different things in a different way, guided by their interests, their needs, their family, and their communities. To me that's something truly special, the ability to have so much choice and options in what and how you learn from a young age. I also believe that this can contribute to a healthy community, with a variety of individuals who have different skills and strengths, who are confident in what they know and are good at.

And secondly, being able to learn in an environment that feels safe with support that feels nurturing. Without the competition, stress, and shame often induced by trying (and sometimes failing) to learn things in a school setting, there's just so much less pressure and so much more joy that can come from learning. If you don't have that terror of failing in front of a whole bunch of others, if you don't have a teacher watching you with eagle eyes and standardized tests measuring whether you're doing good enough, it can be a lot easier to to take risks, try new things, and explore new skills without fear. I believe getting to choose which environments (classes, coops, groups, home, libraries, community centers) feel good to be in is a really powerful thing when it comes to emotional health and growth. It's important for kids to branch out, and take on new situations as they feel ready and able to, instead of being thrown into an environment that might be causing a whole lot of stress and anxiety with no option to leave it.

To sum it up, I think the biggest difference with unschooling, as opposed to schooling, is that each unschooling journey is entirely unique and built around the needs and desires of the learner, and that children are allowed to grow and learn in a respectful and caring way that promotes well-being.

Youth Rights, Community, and Why Everyone Should Care About Children

This past weekend while sitting anxiously behind a table at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, watching people walk by, and only very occasionally stop by, I pulled out my new flower-patterned notebook to scribble some budding thoughts.

Sitting at the table, I keep watching people's eyes catch and then skim over the offerings laid out before me. Some of it could definitely be to do with how our table looks. Compared to the DVDs on one side and the rows of books on the other, all new and colourful and shiny, the slightly messy stacks of zines (and a single stack of a free issue of a three-year-old-journal), it might not seem so exciting.

But I can't help but wonder if some of the reason is that our stuff is all about educating children. Our culture doesn't value children very much [or values them only in certain very narrow ways], and I haven't seen much proof that the radical community [or various radical communities I've had any experience with] values them any more so.

Perhaps this observation was born more out of insecurity at all the disinterest being shown in my zines than as a reflection on people's actual feelings on or interest in children and education. Looking around, there was certainly much eye-skimming to be seen, as I think there kind of has to be at any large event with such a wide variety of tables to peruse. What you find personally most interesting is the only thing likely to catch your eye and make you pause for more than a moment when you're faced with such an overwhelming array of things to see.

However, if there's that little interest, not even enough for a brief flip through a book or zine, it seems to show that the majority of people there don't find the educating of children of particular interest. Or, maybe even more than a lack of interest, perhaps many people simply don't believe it to be of particular relevance. One young person said they didn't have kids, so didn't know if there was any point in signing up for more information.

People love to talk about children, child-raising, and education. Everyone's an armchair critic expert on those subjects when it comes to talk of kids-these-days-and-their-disrespect, or how badly parents are at parenting, or the failure of teachers to teach properly. But there seems to be a profound disconnect when it comes to talk of the actual nuts and bolts of parenting or education. Once it moves beyond vague criticism, there seems to be the idea that the only ones who have any interest or stake in the matter is parents. If you're not a parent, why should you care?

This type of attitude seems to me to be all part and parcel with the general disregard for children in this culture. Everyone can agree that children are important ("they're our future!"), yet somehow no one wants to see them in public (unless they're perfectly behaved, never crying or fussing or yelling or inconveniencing anyone in the slightest), or see them on Facebook ("why do parents post so many annoying photos of their snotty kids?"), or have to interact with them in any way ("I just don't like kids!"). And people certainly don't seem to want children to be treated with respect and kindness, or as autonomous young people deserving of more agency than they're currently being given ("More freedom? More pampering?? They already get too much of that!").

I needed a picture of children, so I figured why not use one of me and
my sister? This is us being cute, circa '96 or '97.

To change the way children are treated, it seems to me that people should come to a few realizations.

1. Children are people. Obvious, I know, but it seems like it still needs to be said. All people deserve to be treated with a basic level of dignity, kindness, and respect for their personal autonomy and well-being. Children are a group with different needs than adults, for sure, but that doesn't change their worth, or their right to be treated well. All it means is that more environments should make an effort to be accommodating to the needs of children, not just the needs (or perceived needs) of adults.
2. If you claim to be against any oppression, and then say how much you hate children, then you're not really against that form of oppression. Why? Because children also suffer from all other different forms of oppression. Anti-racism, you say? A feminist? A queer ally? Against ableism? There are children of colour; children who are girls; disabled children; queer children; trans children... Childhood is intimately affected by the identities a child holds (and the identities and experiences of their families), and a child marginalized by some other aspect of their identity is doubly marginalized.
3. The well-being of children is in all of our hands. Whether you have children or want children or want never to have children, whether you're young or old, whether you spend much of your time in the company of children or almost none, it's up to all of us to look critically at the way children are treated and viewed in our culture (and the way we personally treat and look at children), and to work in whatever ways are open to us to make our environments safer and more hospitable to children. 
4. This means caring about children, caring about parents and care-givers, and caring about education. This might mean more intimate personal involvement, it might mean educating yourself about the state of schooling and educational alternatives, or it might mean simply being nicer to hassled parents out in public with unhappy kids.

I don't think everyone should have the same interests as I do (unschooling and radical education), or that a childless person should care as deeply as a parent does about the harm standardized testing is causing (they're just not going to), but I do think that we should all be concerned with how other people are treated. We should all desire and strive for a world that treats everyone with dignity and respect, and where the important needs of everyone are met.

I just think that, when we talk about revolution at the anarchist bookfair, or ways to improve local services at the community center, or about our ideal world with our friends, we should always remember to make children both a subject of and a part of those important conversations.

Unschooling Doesn't Mean There's No Hard Work

One of the biggest criticisms of unschooling rests on a fundamental belief about children (and teenagers) and their ability to stay motivated and do difficult things.

People say that, if not forced to, children will never do hard things. Never apply themselves, practice skills intensively, or push through challenging material.

I suppose if you believe so strongly that children and teens aren't capable of doing anything difficult, then that would naturally make you rather unimpressed with the idea of unschooling. Because the truth is, a lot of things are hard. Often even things we find fun are also difficult!

Take writing, for instance. No matter how much you love the written word, love reading, love finding the perfect turn of phrase to convey exactly the mood you're looking for, or to explain a difficult concept in a way people can relate to, it's also work. Every writer, whether they're a novelist or blogger, is going to be familiar with the dread of an entirely blank page that needs to be filled; the difficulty of finding a word you know you know, but you just can't think of; pushing through when it feels like you have to fight for every single sentence.

No matter how you cut it, writing is hard.

So is cooking, my other main passion. Only with cooking, the "hard" comes with a big physical component: mixing batter, kneading dough, hoisting around heavy pots and pans, chopping huge bowls of vegetables... Though working in a commercial kitchen is the hardest, I'm regularly drained by home cooking and baking, as well. When I finish a big project--an oven full of entirely from-scratch hand-pies, for instance--I drop down, extremely tired, on the nearest cushy sitting surface, my back aching and sore from hunching over food stuffs for long periods of time, and mentally tired from focusing for hours on getting everything just right with whatever I'm creating.

Cooking, too, is hard work.

Butternut squash and caramelized onion galette with cheddar cheese.
Daunting to begin with, and satisfyingly delicious once it was done!

Now, I suppose some could say I'm an adult, and that's why I manage such things now. But my writing started before I hit my teens, and my ability to write as well as I do now comes from years of facing that daunting blank page.

My sister as a child and a teenager wrote (and writes) voraciously; she started playing marching snare drum when she was 12, started taking lessons in highland snare drum when she was 14 or 15, and now plays professionally, for pay; she's been practicing Ninjutsu since she was 16, and has progressed through several belts; she's completed NaNoWriMo on multiple occasions.

All of those things, too, were not easy to do, not things that came without much work and dedication.

Unschoolers, too, can be prone to procrastination, to avoiding doing hard things that need to be done and dropping hobbies they like when they get too difficult. I wouldn't say unschoolers are necessarily more likely to be motivated and work hard at things than people in school (they might be! I'm just not confident enough of that to attempt to make that claim). But what unschoolers do have is the time to really pursue things, to dig in deep and build skills they care about.

There are important elements that need to be in place to provide the best possible environment for managing hard things. One of those elements is having people (often parents, or mentors or teachers or friends or other family members) who are dedicated to helping you learn, who will cheer you on and encourage you when the going gets tough. Who will help you come up with goals, find the resources you need, and get important projects finished. Who will remind you that you said you wanted to practice violin every single day, and that you swore you'd get that chapter you've been working on finished by the end of the week.

It's hard to stay motivated if you've got no one in your corner who's invested in what you're doing and wants you to succeed at whatever you're trying to succeed at. But we do children and teens a huge disservice when we think, with the needed support, that they're incapable of dealing with difficulty.

A whole lot of what feels exciting and interesting is going to come along with a certain amount of difficulty and hard work. That holds true no matter your age. Beyond that all-important support, I think several other things contribute to people working hard:

• Doing things you're genuinely excited about, things that feel joyful and fascinating. I feel this when I'm enthusiastically telling someone about the process behind a fermentation technique I've been reading about, or when I embark with determination and a deep breath on an intimidating yet exciting new baking project.
• Finding meaning in your projects. When you choose what you do, instead of having someone else choose what they think you should be learning or doing, you're doing it because it has meaning to you. It's something you care about, something that actually seems important and relevant to you. You're going to put a lot more effort into something if it has importance in your life than if it's something someone else says you have to do.
• The time to devote to learning and skill building. While deadlines, either self-imposed or imposed by a relevant external force (the print deadline of a magazine, the entry deadline for a contest, or the date for a performance), can certainly prove helpful, if you're tired out and mentally drained from too many things then you're not going to have the energy to truly apply yourself to something. I feel like this is something that gets in the way of school students focusing on what's really important to them. All the hours spent in school, going to and from school, doing homework, and often plenty of extra-curricular activities besides, suck up time and leave little left over for other pursuits. Hopefully some of those extra-curriculars are things the student really cares about, but with too much time taken up by school, it can be difficult or near impossible to focus on what the individual truly wants to be focusing on.

None of this is a guarantee: sometimes unschoolers don't feel challenged enough, are frequently bored, or have great difficulty sticking with things they care about when they get difficult. Sometimes maybe something in the environment or parental approach or personal attitude needs to change for things to improve, and sometimes, because we're human, no matter how good the surrounding circumstances are, hard things are hard.

We can do them, though. Unschoolers are proving every day that you don't need schools, don't need teachers or parents, to force young people to do hard things. Young people are more than capable of working, and working hard, because they care, and want to improve, and enjoy the warm glow you get upon accomplishing something difficult. All that's needed is for the individual to have access to the tools and support to help them in achieving all the things that children and teens are excited and motivated to do.

Learning is exciting, and learning is also hard. Let's start realizing that kids are naturally great at learning, no matter how hard it can sometimes be.

In Praise of The Unexceptional: Because Unschooling Doesn't Have to Be Impressive

In some ways, this feels like an redux of a post of a couple months ago, Uncollege, Hackschooling, and When Success and Profit Hijack the Message. I'm starting with inspiration from two of the same posts that launched the earlier piece, but I'm shifting focus here, and concentrating more directly on ideas of what, exactly, constitutes success for unschoolers, and the pressure we feel to be extraordinary.

There’s an attitude that seems to have been quietly sneaking into unschooling discourse and advocacy. Never outright stated, yet there nonetheless: that unschoolers doing Big Impressive Things is the way to prove that unschooling works. Which seems to imply that it’s only working if it’s, well, impressive.

I suppose it’s not all that surprising this attitude is being found even in unschooling circles, as the idea of there being winners and losers--the winners distinguishing themselves with grand accomplishments, prestigious jobs, and lots of money--is a pervasive and widely held view in our culture at large. Though he's talking about the anger many adults feel at children receiving what they see as undeserved praise, or having it "too easy" in life, I think this recent op-ed in the New York Times by Alfie Kohn still serves as a really good point to illustrate some commonly held attitudes about what success is and how it works. He notes one of three underlying values in how people often view children and success is that “children ought never to receive something desirable — a sum of money, a trophy, a commendation — unless they’ve done enough to merit it. They shouldn’t even be allowed to feel good about themselves without being able to point to tangible accomplishments. In this view, we have a moral obligation to reward the deserving and, equally important, make sure the undeserving go conspicuously unrewarded. Hence the anger over participation trophies. The losers mustn’t receive something that even looks like a reward.”

While no one in unschooling circles is advocating for punishing or putting down those who aren’t obviously “succeeding” in impressive ways, the idea that the proof is in the accomplishments, and that’s what we should be aiming for, definitely seems to be there. Gillian Goddard noted the same thing, saying:

Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, [is] jumping on the 'self-directed learning' bandwagon these days. And they are bringing to it all the same old bullshit - children who are 'more'. More curious, more motivated, more more more. These children are not circus performers. So stop showcasing who did what at the youngest age, who gives the best TED teen presentations and not think that to me it will look no different except now the child is at home.

This is also something that can be felt very keenly by those of us who grew up unschooling, or who have chosen to forego college in favour of “uncolleging” or otherwise learning into adulthood without institutionalized education. Jessica Barker recently wrote a post on her blog College Rebellion that really hit me hard, where one of the things she said about her own journey was that:

I’ve been really upset for quite a while because try as I might, I can’t live up to all the "aim for your dreams!" mantra I preach on this website, because I feel like I have to as part of the Uncollege Movement. I say "those of us" because the person I’ve been trying to fit into the Epic Box the most is myself – I haven’t allowed myself to accept the fact that I want to live a normal life, that I feel my success depends neither on going to college nor not going to college, nor even what I do in or out specifically. I have dreams, yes: but I also have finally reached the point where I am confident that following certain Big Dreams is actually not the most important thing to me in life.

Whether it’s deliberate or not (I'd say it's almost never deliberate), the attitude that to be successful we have to dream and do big definitely exists, and it definitely does harm.

----------

I was discussing this article, and some comments people made on Facebook about this post in the works, with my mother today. "I've never said I'm proud of you deliberately, because pleasing me isn't important. I just want you to be happy, and if you're happy with your life, then I'll be happy!" she said. "I hope you haven't wanted me to say I'm proud of you," she continued, looking worried. "No," I assured her, "I'm good."

----------

So often when people find out you're an unschooler they say "well you must be very smart/self-motivated/brave for it to have worked!" I never know how to point out that that's not the case at all. I'm no genius, I procrastinate like all hell, and sometimes just leaving the house feels like it takes more bravery than I posses. Unschooling is for anyone with the time, support, and resources to be able to do it, not just for special people.

----------

Me and my sister, (almost entirely) lifelong school-free learners, aren’t exceptional. Sure, we’ve both done plenty of things we’re proud of: speaking in front of people for me and playing music in front of people for Emilie; she's recieved multiple belts in Ninjitsu and I’ve cooked professionally. Some of the things we've done, like my blog and unschooling advocacy work, are things that have gotten a lot of praise and attention from other people. I suppose my blogging/writing/speaking could be considered “impressive,” though it doesn’t usually feel that way to me. That one thing though is the only thing I can think of that could possibly be considered really impressive. I haven’t traveled beyond North America, have never hitch-hiked or bused across the country. I haven’t started my own business (besides the very half-hearted attempt at selling thrifted clothing, which I *do* plan to put more effort into), and sadly people are not lining up to hire me. There are other things I’m good at, for sure. Cooking and baking come to mind instantly. But that? That’s a quiet skill, hidden away in kitchens. Most of my skills and hobbies and interests are quiet, nothing huge or eye-catching.

I love going on road trips, with both family and friends, but they're usually
within a 6 hour drive from my home. Exploring the New England States, into
Ontario to visit family, or Northeast up into Quebec to visit where some
family comes from. Places chosen for their beauty and abundance of good
people, not for a grand and exciting adventure.

But what’s more important for the moment than whether or not I, or my family, fits the narrative of The Successful Unschooler, is just what that narrative is. Us unschoolers are feeling pressure to do more and be more: to become world travelers or successful entrepreneurs, to win prestigious awards or get head hunted by Google. Somehow, through both the greater culture and through those same messages making their way into our own, smaller, unschooling communities, we’ve gotten the idea that quiet skills aren’t enough. That if we’re not doing big things with obvious rewards, then we’re not enough.

That’s why the quote from Alfie Kohn I shared at the beginning of this article, and the article I pulled it from, really resonated with me when I read it. My whole generation, both schooled and not, has been messed up by those messages.

What complicates it for unschoolers is that, well, we’ve got something to prove. Not only unschoolers feel this added pressure: children coming from any “unusual” family, or any type of family likely to be looked at suspiciously by the dominant culture almost certainly also face a similar type of added pressure. We want to show that this unschooling thing works. Parents of unschoolers want to show that it works! So people turn to tangible, big things they can point at: Look! Look how impressive! And people talk about following your dreams, with the implication that “dreams” must be pretty special looking. I think without consciously realizing it, those forces play off of each other: parents and unschooling advocates talk about all the exciting special things unschoolers get up to and can do; unschoolers themselves want to prove with their lives that the way they’ve lived is successful. It goes in circles of lots of people talking about impressive things, unschoolers starting to feel like impressive is the norm, and thus if they’re not doing Impressive Things, then they must be failing, instead.

Which is rather sad, because the reality for many unschoolers, and many young adults foregoing college, is much more complicated. Life looks so different for different people. For many unschoolers life looks like video games, and Google searches, and craft projects at midnight. Playing with neighbors and homeschooling park days and trips to the library. For adult uncollegers life might look like reading lots of books, both non-fiction and fiction, keeping a blog, marathoning TV shows, having email discussions on history with friends, and volunteering at the local animal shelter. Life might feel exciting to the individual (very hopefully it does!), because it’s your life, your interests, your goals. But from outside? It probably doesn’t look that exciting. It might, with TEDx talks and a series of ebooks about travel adventures. There might be aspects of your life that look impressive, and other parts that don't. The impressive activities are every bit as valid as the quieter ones, for sure. But they're not better.

----------

Laura Parrish had the following to say in a Facebook conversation sparked by my mentioning of this post I was writing.

I've always had a hard time with the language people use about grown children: They "turn out" well. (Or they don't.) We're "so proud" of them. (Or we aren't.) It doesn't jibe with the way we've focused on helping clear the way for our kids to see what's what for themselves and make their own choices. It's not about using a method to produce a superior product. They don't "reflect on me". They're just themselves, and that's enough. It's a lot.

I love that. And I think it points to such an important thing when it comes to unschooling: this isn't a method meant to turn out superior products humans. The point isn't, or certainly shouldn't be, about superiority, about being better, more successful people. It should be about all those far less tangible things: people who are kind, and capable, and enjoy learning. As Stephanie Sims said:

[T]he unschooling path is meant to be a joyful and natural one, not an exemplary one that can be held up as proof as Unquestionable, Absolute Success. At the end of the day, my unschooled children may only look different by their memories and how much they love and expect to love their lives--that's good enough for me.

----------

Just like everyone else, the lives of each unschooler will vary quite a bit. What unschoolers, no matter their age, share is a similar attitude towards learning. How that manifests in the lives of each unschooler is going to be different, and how closely it aligns with the dominant culture’s version of success (or the unschooling community’s prioritization of travel and entrepreneurship as success) is going to depend on the person you're looking at.

I just hope, as unschoolers, we can hold tight to our shared value of appreciating learning for learning’s sake, whether it’s big or small, sung from the stages of a national singing competition, or curled up in a comfy chair in a nondescript house reading about Arthurian legends or the history of comics. As older unschoolers, we’re going to continue getting a lot of pressure from the general population, both the pressure all young adults face to be productive and “useful” members of society, and the added pressure to prove ourselves as successful unschoolers. The unschooling community doesn’t need to fall into that same trap of judging peoples success by their productivity, or large achievements, or traveling lifestyle. Instead, let's just make sure that we convey, in all our words, in our speech and writing and advocacy, that all learning is important. We need to celebrate all those quiet lives, too.