Back

What is that unschooling thing? | Day 169 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Jun 19, 2023· 2 minutes

🇩🇰 Also available in Danish 🇩🇰

On some days of my travel- and reflection journal, there is not much to talk about.

I can not keep sharing how green the Swedish forest is in the summertime or how I, yet another day, failed to see a moose.

We are enjoying the peace and don’t even want to go on day trips or hikes.

Still reading books, cooking meals, having conversations, and swimming in the lake.

It is still precious.

But of course, there is thinking.

There is always thinking.

I heard a podcast with a statement that got me thinking:

“At that point, we were completely unschooling. She wakes up, and she decides what she wants to learn today.”

You see, this sounds, to me, not like unschooling at all by no means.

It sounds like a maybe very freestyle form of homeschooling, but still, a life where the children are supervised by the adults who ensure they learn.

True unschooling is a lifestyle where the whole idea of school has been removed from the equation, the idea of “you have to learn” and the idea of the curriculum. Both. Both need to go in order for it to be unschooling.

You see, learning is a byproduct of living.

Anything we do voluntarily has a challenge, and therefore we grow.

We learn.

If there were no challenges, it would not be fun.

There is no way a meaningful life will not leave us smarter every day.

The difference for the unschooled child is that the child is not expected to learn anything in particular, not even DO anything in particular. In our family, we all pursue our hobbies, do what we LIKE to do, and find meaningful.

This can be hard to see on the surface. On the surface, it all looks just like a weekend. But it is not. We don’t do weekends. We just live — every day.

Love and light

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

🇩🇰 Also available in Danish 🇩🇰

 

Thank you for reading
I would love to hear from you. Listen to your thoughts and reflections - or praise :) It is often emotional to share our life like this, and we get very happy when we get feedback from you. So feel free to share a comment below 😋 

My family and I dared to say 'Yes' to an extraordinary adventure—moving in with a family we'd never met in Gran Canaria. From overcoming fears to spi…Read more
How did we make it happen? This is the all times most asked question, we get. Read on to get insight into our experiences around the money question. …Read more
Dec 21, 2018
Trusting the path
Walking with faith, listening to the ways of God, the ways of the Universe, believing the miracles, and embracing even the complications. We learn ev…Read more
Dive into our week of nomadic exploration, filled with unexpected detours, artistic inspirations, and heartwarming encounters. From the scenic Pyrene…Read more
From fixing bike racks to witnessing flamingos in the wild, we navigate the intricacies of bus life while embracing the serenity and surprises of our…Read more
This gallery is about the week when we started driving in the bus, going south, and learning to live in the bus as we moved around. Read more
When we drove the bus the 100 km North to visit our unschooling friends in Gilleleje, the bus broke down a bit again and we became organic farmers fo…Read more
We have been full-time travelers for almost three months, seven weeks of which were preparation: Clearing out our home in Copenhagen, converting the …Read more
A sunshine gallery about the first ten days of bus conversion, sharing visually how we began rebuilding a 43-year-old big red bus to a tiny house. Read more