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 😋 

Arriving in Tijuana. The most overwhelming thing was the wall. Oh, my good. I have to say it. It is crazy. Cra. Zy. Double metal fence construction o…Read more
We canceled the plan to go out on the ocean to swim with the big fish because we are exhausted from being "the tourists with the dollars," paying and…Read more
We needed to buy gasoline halfway through our trip and arrived at a gas station that was out of electricity. Therefore, they could not pump the gasol…Read more
It is very hard to take good pictures of dolphins, especially if you are at the same time trying just to enjoy the moment and save some hours in the …Read more
The Julømpiade is on! For those who do not speak Danish, this word is a mix of Christmas and The Olympics. A tradition we started last year to do som…Read more
Isla Magdalena was our Christmas walk. We like to go for a walk at a beautiful place on the 24th of December. We walked over the dunes to the pacific…Read more
I have been asked if I am looking forward to completing my 365 challenge so I am off the hook of writing a story every day. It is a good question, an…Read more
“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a great novel; I greatly enjoyed it. Here, in Puerto Aldolfo Lopez Mateo, the landscape takes me right there, to the mar…Read more
A long, dusty road. We literally saw a Roadrunner. Like in the cartoons! It must be one of the highlights of the day. Such a great comment on the des…Read more