Be unschooler

UNSCHOOLING - Most of us found school boring and sometimes useless. A real waste of time. Why then should we spend all our childhood there?

Adilla, 7-year-old, lives an uncommon special life. Unlike the children of her same age, she has never been to school. She is an unschooler.

Unschooling is a non-coercive, cooperative educational method, born in the 1970s, that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. According to this philosophy, education is a matter of curiosity and desire rather than academic achievement. A fundamental premise of unschooling is that curiosity is innate and that children want to learn. From this point of view the standard school, which apply the so-called “factory model: one size fits all”, is an inefficient use of the children's time, because it requires each child to learn specific subject matter in a particular manner, at a particular pace, and at a specific time regardless of that individual's present or future needs.

Unschoolers learn simply through their natural life experiences, with no formal classes taken, while their parents act as “facilitators”, helping them to make sense of the world.

While it once was considered a hippie, countercultural practice, experts say that unschooling now taps into changing mainstream values surrounding children and parenting, institutions and individuality. The recent blossoming of unschooling reflects, then, an intolerance towards a life that seems no longer meet the real needs of the human being.