The term “Unschooling” was coined by educator John Holt in the 1970s. It is an informal style of learning wherein children learn through natural life experiences and daily activities. Unschooling is considered a curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling — this method of learning advocates learner-chosen activities as the primary means of gaining knowledge and developing skills. In Unschooling, children learn through various daily activities and experiences, like play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction.
Proponents of Unschooling question the usefulness of traditional schools and curriculum-based approaches to learning. They believe that traditional school structure and its beliefs that learning should take place at fixed times doesn’t really help students. The grading methods in standardised tests, forced contact and interaction among children in their age group, the compulsion to do homework regardless of whether it helps the learner in their situation, enforcing learners to listen to and obey the instructions of one authority figure, and various other features of traditional schooling does not help develop the children. Every child is unique, and Unschooling, they believe, can cater to their individual needs.
Parents, in Unschooling, must:
- Respect the interests of all children equally.
- Include the child in their own daily life – live a more “open-book” life than the norm.
- Follow up on things the child is interested in and do this in a wide variety of ways.
- Live a family life rich with experiences of various kinds both at home and outside the home.
- Provide the possible sources around the house which are thrilling and stimulating.
- Must involve the child in discussions – spend time in conversation; this is probably the most important parental “action” involved in Unschooling.
- Must be involved in playing activities, have fun, and appreciate the amazing world around them.
- Try to be self-aware of their thinking and behaviour.
- Purposely stretch their imagination, try to create, question their assumptions, examine their automatic impulses.
- Be very observant of what their child is doing.
- Recognise a reason for a child’s actions, that a child is “born to learn” and is always learning.
- Get to know their child’s special favoured ways of learning.
- Support a child’s passions.
The principles of Unschooling are:
- Learning happens all the time. The brain never stops working and it is impossible to divide time into ‘learning period’ and ‘non-learning period’. Everything that happens around a person, what they hear, see, touch, smell, and taste, leads to learning.
- There is no need to force learning. Learning can’t go against someone’s wishes. Coercion makes people feel bad and produces resistance.
- It feels good to learn. It is satisfying and beneficial. Extrinsic rewards may have undesirable side-effects that do not support learning.
- When a person feels confused, learning stops. All learning must be based on general knowledge.
- When a person is convinced that learning is difficult, learning becomes difficult. Unfortunately, most teaching methods assume that learning is difficult and this lesson is actually “taught” to students.
- Learning must be meaningful. When a person does not see the main point, when they do not know how information is related or how it is useful in the ‘real world’, then learning is superficial and temporary, rather than ‘real’.
- Learning is often incidental. It means that we learn when we participate in activities that we enjoy and learning is a kind of ‘side benefit’.
- Learning is usually a social activity, not something that happens in isolation from others. We learn from other people who have the skills and knowledge that interest us. We learn from them in various ways.
- All learning involves emotion and intelligence.
Embibe Product/Features: Multiple Content Types
Learning is no longer just about marks! It is fun to learn beyond the syllabus. Embibe intends to make students gain holistic knowledge about the concepts. Embibe’s ‘Explainer’ videos as well as curated videos from the web help students understand more on any topic. The ‘Learn’ module, powered by our own ‘Search’, contains one or more videos of the following types:
- DIY (Do It Yourself) Videos,
- Coobo Videos,
- Virtual Lab Videos,
- Real-life Examples Videos,
- Spoofs or Fun-Type Videos,
- Experiments,
- Solved Examples
The interactive, engaging 2D and 3D world of Embibe generates curiosity in students and makes them fall in love with their studies. Our narrators capture the imagination of students and weave the story in such a manner to make it fun.
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