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 😋 

What if you could spend time with people you love, doing stuff that was meaningful and interesting - all of the time? There is a way - Worldschooling…Read more
Unschooling versus ambition, every parent loves their children deeply and does their best on the grounds of values and beliefs. How do you balance am…Read more
Read about our evening routines, how we succeed in getting everyone to sleep – There is room for everyone in a very large bed when you co-sleep. Read more
To start unschooling was like opening the door to Narnia - a whole wonderland of time, presence, and desire for learning emerged. Read more
The magic of Amsterdam gave us a day to enjoy and remember. We set out originally for Paris, France, but decided to go slowly, living our lives on t…Read more
The Moments, when travelling: Like having a croissant and coffee in the sun. So, this is a short blog post - part of the migration of our traveli…Read more
That's the big problem with the mindset behind consequences-based parenting at all levels. It's not actually about consequences, it's about power. It…Read more
How do you grasp every day? How do you structure your homeschool? I have been asked this question many times. Read more
We get many questions about homeschooling; here, I have collected the 6 most common questions and answered them. Hoping it will help you in your proc…Read more