Am I an Unschooler?

by Beverley Paine

Letting go of the need to be defined by others is where I'm at, working on... one of the reasons I'm taking time away from online communities, especially Facebook. I need to spend more time with myself getting comfortable with me.

Some days it is easy to define myself as a unschooler - heck, I really live the unschooled life, my whole family does and has done for decades. But if I capture a few moments here, or an hour there, or even a whole day, it can look anything but unschooling in nature. Or I can take something I said, either a stand-alone comment or a response and pull it apart and cringe because it sounds completely opposite to my unschooling or permaculture or other much cherished beliefs and values. A bit like when I buy fish and chips... I don't eat fish, totally ethically opposed to it because of the over-fishing situation, and I watch my weight and I prefer to eat organic and so on and so on, but heck, some days I buy fish and chips. I use the excuse I'm human. It's human to err, right? And then I beat myself up mentally, again. But I still buy the fish and chips again. Because learning for me is slow and arduous, frustrating a lot of the time, exciting all of the time.

I am leaving the Facebook unschool support group I founded a few years ago. I know I give a great deal to everyone there and it is truly my community - it nurtures me and helps me grow. But I need space to find and be comfortable with me, who I am, how I define myself. I need to stop being responsive to the needs of others and attend to my needs. The need to have others define me, affirm me and my purpose, my worthiness, is HUGE in me. For almost six decades I've relied and depended on others to supply that. I've looked to others to say it is okay for me to be who I am, whatever that is in this moment, or in the past or future. The deschooling process is endless for me... perhaps not though. I'm making space and time to be okay with what I think about myself, my life, what I'm doing, and what I'm going to do next.

We're all learners. We're all a bit fractured and insecure. I think that people who aren't don't tend to hang out in online support groups. We're there because we need something and we think we can get it from each other. Bottom line: it's nice to be part of a support group but ultimately, the support we each need and crave comes from within. We didn't get the kind of parenting we're offering or attempting to offer our kids. And we're not even sure what we're doing will pay the dividends we're hoping for. Some of us are here to be reassured by people like me who've been there, done that and have the awesome kids to show for it. But we all have awesome kids and they'll be awesome adults soon. And that isn't because of how we educate or parent them, it's because they are already simply awesomely awesome. And trusting that is the bottom line in unschooling.

Do you trust your children to learn what they need to learn when they need to learn - not what or when or how you or anyone else wants them to learn it - but them? Do you trust yourself to learn whatever it is you need to learn right now? On one level I confidently answer YES, on another level, the answer is a definite NO. Does that make me an unschooler? It makes me a learner. It's not easy, there is no right or wrong here, there is just a passion for becoming open and authentic, vulnerable, honest and from that, begin to repair the damage not being trusted as a learner, as a person in my own right, sadly occurred during my early life.

I am different from the woman who lives next door, the shop owner down the street, my dad, most of my friends: very few people I know home educate let alone unschool! I've been incredibly blessed to have talked to thousands of home educating parents over the years and seen what we all have in common: our passion for our children's well-being.