What is the difference between homeschooling and unschooling?

Answer 1

Alan Moses provided this answer on the Home Education Mailing List:

As I understand the way the Growing Without Schooling crowd uses the terms, unschooling refers more to the process of removing your child from school and overcoming the negative effects of the compulsory education process; homeschooling is the more general term referring to home-based learning. I'd love to come up with a better term than homeschooling, due to the implication that the child is spending all their time at home (see my comments on "socialization"); but it's the best I've seen so far.

Heather Millen added:

The process explained [above] could actually be considered "de-schooling" rather than unschooling. Unschooling is child-led learning in a home environment rather than duplicating school and its curriculums at home. Most unschoolers don't follow lesson plans, or even have "school learning" time structured into their day. Subjects are covered when the child's interest dictates not when the "educational experts" say its time for every child to know that subject.

David Mankins added:

Unschooling, for this unschooler, is based in the beliefs that children:

are incredible learning machines, as shown by their ability to learn language and to function in society with little or no explicit instruction

are insatiably curious about the adult world,

and are driven to learn by these features, and sometimes children learn *despite* our attempts to teach them!

Unschoolers also believe, or at least this unschooler believes, that *imposing* an agenda on a child is more counter-productive than helpful, because it doesn't take the child seriously.

I think a lot of this can be justified by reflecting on one's own learning experiences. Nobody makes me learn new things, I just do because learning is fun, or because I want to know about this subject for my own purposes (even if those purposes are as prosaic as justifying my paycheck). The same is true for children.

I think it is also motivated by a certain kind of respect for the rights of children. *I* don't want to be told what or when to study, what right have I to tell another what to do and when?

Unschooling requires a lot of faith in your child, that they will learn the things that are important for them to know despite not being "forced" to, that their seemingly patternless play is experimentation that will pay off in insight, and that they will stick to a subject through the "hard parts". Again, reflecting on one's own experience can help solidify this faith, as can reflecting on the behavior of one's own children.

[The answer above is based on a homeschooling FAQ originally edited in 1994 by Dave Mankins for the Home Education Mailing List.]

To me, "unschooling" simply means when a parent says they are homeschooling, but does not take the time, nor make the effort to do it correctly, and hinders their child's education.

That is not true!

I was homeschooled my whole life, and never fell behind. Infact, I knew alot more then all the kids in public school. I was unschooled, which doesn't mean I never did a work sheet, it just means that I didn't just do work sheets. Unschooling is alot more hands-on, instead of learning how yeast raises in a book, you would do an experement with yeast, and watch it raise. People always act like homeschooled kids are these weird animals that know one knows anything about, but their just like everyone else. People like you think that a child belongs in school, where they are all tought to be perfect at every subject. Which is why almost every child hates school. People are forcing them to be like everybody else. Every child learns differently, one kid may be great at math but horrible at history, another kid may be perfect at spelling, but hate science. It just depends on the kid. All the kids in school are all in a class with a bunch of other kids their age, with all different questions and all different problems, and only one teacher to answer them all. The child then doesn't get enough one on one time with the teacher, then making the subject harder to learn. I remember when I was little having total conversations with adults, who were about three times as old as me. I liked talking to adults more the I liked talking to kids, and I was one. The adults had more interesting things to talk about then the kids did, plus the kids never understood what I was talking about anyway.

Lots of times when a parent unschools their child it is for a reason, not because they don't feel like doing anything. If they wanted to do that, they would just put them in school. Where the teacher raises your child for you.

Answer 2

Homeschooling is where your child (or you) is schooled in your home, I, being 12 years old, am homeschooled by a homeschooling company called ECOT it stands for Electronic Classroom Of Tomorrow and it is an Ohio only homeschool for grade K-12. And school education is just regular school. And, umm, if you are thinking about homeschooling your child[ren], kiss that whole "kids go bye-bye for most of day and parent[s] get[s] to house to themselves[self]" goodbye!! ECOT, by the way, is a computer homeschool where your child has teachers that they can communitcate with and they can also communicate with other students of their grade level and share contact information (of course a Student Contact Release Form has to be signed by the parent and scanned in for contact information to be able to be shared) with friends!

Answer 3

Home schooling clearly caters more to an individual's learning pace, style and level. It eliminates the problem of bullying, and allows a child to express himself without fear of ridicule or failure. However, evidence suggests that the lack of interaction with peers, and lack of opportunities to learn problem-solving and conflict resolution skills can greatly hamper a child's social development. Adults who have been home-schooled are more innocent and naive, and emerging as an adult into a ruthless society can see them taken advantage of, if proper guidance is not undertaken.

Answer 4

There are quite a few significant differences between public/private education and homeschooling. Both public and private education typically require students to progress at the pace of their peers or the classroom, while a homeschool student can move as quickly or slowly as they need to in every area of study. In the same way, homeschool students have the advantage of being able to tailor their curriculum to their learning style; they don't get stuck with a program that doesn't fit who they are and how they learn.

Unlike a public or private school student, the typical homeschool student does not take 6 hours each day to complete their required studies (plus homework!), and therefore has much more time to pursue other activities and studies they are interested in. This becomes particularly important when it comes to college applications, since colleges like to see students who have demonstrated some particular passion or sustained interest throughout their high school years.