What is Deschooling?
Deschooling is the process of unlearning schooled thinking. It involves letting go of old habits and approaching learning in a new way. It means letting go of the thought that learning only happens in schools.

There are a lot of ideas and concepts to let go of: grades, schedules, curriculum, tests, teaching, diplomas, certifications, school years, and even (especially) the teacher/student relationship. Deschooling means letting go of the idea that learning is separate from life. When you take away school, its structure, its vocabulary and its ideas, you’re left with learning.

The Role of the Parent
Unschooling is often the choice of the parents. Even then, parents need to deschool, too.

The most important thing to do is encourage learning. Learning can be found everywhere: in books, good conversations, movies, the internet, the outdoors, or even a hands on activity. The idea is to make learning opportunities easier to find.

Leave books out to be found, have movie nights, read aloud to each other, encourage questions, and engage yourself in the activities your children enjoy. There’s an endless list of things you can do to make your environment learning friendly.

Let yourself see your children learning, away from the conventional rules and structure of school. Be open minded.

Sandra Dodd has a great resource for parents in the process of deschooling.

• Have fun. Just go with it! Enjoy the ride.
• Don’t teach. Helping is great, but don’t help when you’re not welcome to. Make it clear that you’re available to help with things. Let them come to you.
• Let learning be natural. School gives the impression that learning happens at an even pace, but it doesn’t. Learning happens when it happens.
• Explore interests as far as they go. If your child expresses interest in chess, buy a chessboard. Get a book on strategies. Go as far as the child wants. Pay attention to what your children want to learn.
• Learn together. Learning something new together can be a great way to support each other and have fun. Having a learning experience without the same expectations as school can be eye opening for everyone.

The Role of the Learner
Many unschooling families unschool from the start, but sometimes families decide to unschool when the kids are older. When this happens, deschooling plays an especially important role. Deschooling eases doubt (“Am I learning?”), clears grudges (“History sucks.”), and encourages healthy self-assessment.

Deschooling as the learner is different from deschooling as a parent. For the learner, deschooling can be a very strong, detoxifying experience. Parents usually experience a gradual change, whereas the learner experiences a more immediate one.

The important part is to let yourself go. School has given you a lot of rules and ideas you were forced to live by, but now you have a choice. You can read what books you want. You can watch what movies you want. You can play games from breakfast to dinner. You are no longer under the rules you were when you were in school. You’re now experiencing the freedom of choice.

What you choose to do now will be much different from the things you’re choosing to do months from now. My year of deschooling involved little more than playing video games and exploring odd sleeping schedules. Now, I’m choosing to learn about a huge variety of things, from business to world history to photography.

My deschooling experience felt a lot like rebelling. Today, I feel comfortable with the freedom to choose. I’m no longer desperate to fill my time with the things that I felt restricted in. That’s what deschooling does.

• Don’t restrict yourself. Remember how school tells you video games rot your brain and television is just as bad? Forget that. Make your own opinions. Let yourself experience things away from school.
• Try new things. Trying something new is especially fun to do when you’re not restricted by school. Having a schedule you can’t control gets in the way of a lot of things, and you’re no longer under that kind of pressure.
• Be gentle. It can be difficult adjusting to an environment without clear expectations. Sometimes you’ll wonder if you’re even learning at all. It’s important to be kind with yourself and realize what you’re going through is a healing process.

Deschooling is an important stage for any homeschooler to go through. That’s especially true for unschoolers. What’s your story?

In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich spoke of a system he felt would help society disconnect from its dependence on schools. He rejected the idea of relying on an elite few allowed to teach and control the people. Instead, Illich proposed ideas for making society a more supportive learning environment. His system focuses on networks (learning webs) that promote learning in ways that make it more relevant and more accessible. Illich spoke of how technology could be put to use in his system:

• “The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.”

In a decade when it was little more than a concept, Ivan Illich had effectively described the internet. The internet might not fit every term of his proposal, but it fits the role all the same. Read Deschooling Society’s chapter on learning webs here.

In the past 20 years, the internet has revolutionized communication, news, and marketing, and affects the everyday lives of people all across the globe. It’s created a world wide peer network that can communicate in seconds. Because of the internet, a wealth of information is now accessible to billions. It’s the perfect tool for self-directed education, and that is exactly the kind of activity the internet promotes.

A recent infographic analyzed the searches and amount of information that went through Google search. The numbers are staggering: 87.8 billion searches go through Google a month. That’s almost 90 billion requests for information. People are learning on the internet every day.

The internet isn’t perfect: anyone can have a website, and say whatever they want. However, the same can be said of publications outside of the internet. There is always a responsibility held by the reader (or viewer, or listener) to process the information they receive, and question it. The lies that cause us not to trust everything we hear should make us more resourceful, not fearful. Instead of being fed information we do not question, we’re able to form our own judgments and are encouraged to find more than one source of information.

Organizations, universities, publications, hobbyists, and entrepreneurs around the world have given us all the information we would ever need, in an accessible way. The internet has a resource out there for anything you would ever need to know, and you can find what you need through a simple search box.

I consider the internet an invaluable resource. It has brought thousands of things to my attention that I would’ve otherwise been unaware of: documentaries, movies, books, people, history, philosophies. Without the internet, I wouldn’t have the self-education community I do.

How has the internet helped you?

“If the networks I have described could emerge, the educational path of each student would be his own to follow, and only in retrospect would it take on the features of a recognizable program. The wise student would periodically seek professional advice: assistance to set a new goal, insight into difficulties encountered, choice between possible methods.” – Ivan Illich