Super Excelling Unschool Grads Anyone?

by Beverley Paine

The other day, on the support group, Lisa said, "The stories you hear of super-excelling home-ed students seem to come from curriculum-based parents...who agrees?"

Stories are just that, stories. When we first began homeschooling I would get Growing Without Schooling and it would inspire and discourage me. Back then the only homeschooling stories you read were the success ones, the musical or mathematical protégé who benefitted from an unschooled environment, or the unschooler that read nothing but maths books, or the literary genius that had published by the age of 15.

My children were ordinary, average. They still are. Plus, they aren't ambitious! No super-excelling unschooled grads here!

Does this make them failures? Yes, if you judge them by the same criteria by which schooled graduates are judged. My children aren't moulded to the myths permeated by stories for the last 200 years.

Think about all the stories - fiction - you read as a child as well as all the
TV shows and movies that depict children and young people. Nearly all of them parade the extroverted, talented child as the ideal. Anyone watch Spy Kids last night? See what I mean? Kids are not allowed to be normal or average. If they are they are declared not to be reaching their 'potential', whatever that
means!

Why do we only hear stories about super-excelling home-ed students from
curriculum based homeschooling programs? Because it is reassuring. Yes, if you teach your children at home and use curriculum (which is how children learn in school) your children will do just as well, if not better, or MUCH better, than schooled students. Families new to homeschooling, and those along the path, want and need that reassurance.

Who wants average, normal children? Not many people... Most people can't wait to ask a child, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It's painful and endless for teens. They are expected to pursue whatever interests they have and make an art form out of it, end up earning buckets of money (which is how our society measures success), or 'knuckle under and get a real job' and start putting away money into superannuation!

Replies from four years olds "I'm going to be a truck driver" are tolerated,
but if a fourteen year old says it, woe!

Most super-excelling unschool grads are getting on with doing what they love, quietly and confidently. Their parents have long realised that it's no big deal. They don't have the same investment in their children's education that someone who has spent thousands of dollars on curriculum and books over almost 12 years may have.

When I would worry about my children playing LEGO forever it would help to remember that people used to look at my four year old breast feeding and ask me if I was worried that he would breast feed forever! As if!

However, and because I'm me, I always add a 'however', it really does help to ask 'why'. Why is my child at home? What is it we're trying to achieve here? Why do schools teach in the way that they do? When I start asking lots of questions it doesn't take long before the answer I need to soothe my worries appears.

Your child might not be the person you pictured her or him to be when he or she turns 18. He might not head down the paths you would have wanted him too. As a parent you tend to follow, offering support and guidance, rather than dictating what should and shouldn't be. Some things you don't budge on - family, religious and lifestyle values, perhaps, but with other things you're more pliable as you help your child grow into herself, not some image of who she 'should' be.

This is natural learning.

I always asked myself 'why' - why am insisting that my son learn this now, or at all? If I couldn't come up with a logical answer that made sense for both of us right now I couldn't insist on the 'lesson' at all.

How do kids brought up this way 'turn out'? One word: impressive. But don't expect them to 'fit' into ordinary society because it just doesn't measure up to their expectations - these youngsters tend to be quiet achievers or leaders, making life fit them, not the other way around.