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Hello, I am 17 and I haven't been officially unschooled (I've been enrolled in public school my entire life) but I've grown up in an environment very similar to unschooling in that I've always had a passion for learning and regularly persue my own areas of interest and research regardless of its relation to school. My parents have encouraged this and always allowed for my branching out into other areas not related to my school work so I greatly identify with many of the methods being discussed and as a result of being so encouraged to follow what interested me instead of being boxed into a public schools cirriculum I feel like it has greatly increased my academic ability and has been a major compliment to my public education. I am convinced that more of this kind of learning whether it be actual unschooling or even simple encouragement to branch out in your "play time" to follow what you enjoy would be invaluable to both the students and the educators involved.

I have a few questions that I'd just like to hear some people's thoughts on.
What do you think unschooling or alternative methods of schooling would have on an autistic child or a child with ADD/ADHD? I heard earlier in the program that one mother had a daughter with dyslexia and was doing very well in learning to read, do you think that this would be the case in children with other disorders?
And if you are a New Age weirdo like me, do you think that unschooling would have any relation to or affects on an Indigo child?

I think that unschooling would absolutely have an effect on these kinds of children and (coming from someone currently in public school and one who sees far too many kids with these disorders or "attributes") I think that methods like homeschooling or unschooling that are based on putting many of the choices regarding education in the hands of the students are an extremely important piece in learning to interact and better educate children as we move forward. More in the "now" of things, it is very obviously not the same world in which the traditional methods of schooling are the best. And by this I don't mean that traditional methods don't work at all, I greatly acknowledge the fact that there are many students who prefer traditional methods and flourish in those environments but I think that as we see an increase in the various disorder epidemics being observed in children alternative means of obtaining education will become more and more widespread. I feel that the traditional methods will slowly but surely fade away as we restructure our system even further. I'm not one to believe that the economic situation is the only thing we will re-structure (or is even a bad thing!).

-Braeden

posted 4 years, 5 months ago
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