An Inteview with an Interest-Led Learning Dad

I knew before my kids were born that I didn’t want them to attend school. While I was pregnant I worked in a public school, and I had been reading books by John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. I could see with the 12 and 13 year-olds I worked with that when their interest was high, they were very engaged and happy with what we were doing (which rarely happened!).

 But most of the time they weren’t. I wanted my kids to love learning, get out into the community and wider world, and learn those things that interested them without being interrupted every 45 minutes.

But my husband wasn’t happy with the idea of homeschooling. He was even less happy with the idea of unschooling. But as they kids grew older and he saw the incredible amounts of learning they were doing through play and following their interests and how close we were as a family, he’s become as passionate about our decision as I was.

So, I decided to interview him this weekend and post excerpts from it here on the blog.

 

What were your thoughts when I first mentioned the idea of homeschooling?

I was worried about how homeschooling might affect the kids because the only homeschoolers I had known were a little awkward and didn’t seem as well adjusted socially. So I was a little concerned. But then after a while when you showed me more information about homeschooling and unschooling I felt good about it, and now I’m glad we’re doing it.  It’s nice that they can play and still be kids, and yet they’re learning a lot at home.

How did you become comfortable with the idea of interest-led learning – not having lesson plans and having a “school” schedule?

I liked that we were still going to introduce things to our kids. Some of the first examples I read of unschooling families – some of those families said they’d never teach their kids things at all, which seems absurd to me. We should want to pass down to our kids the knowledge we have.

We introduce things to our kids, answer any questions they have, and take what they show an interest in and expand upon that.

Do you have any concerns at all about our kids’ futures?

Maybe when they’re teenagers with some of the subjects where you need to have more than just a working knowledge to teach it, like physics. If that ever happened, where they’d want to know more about a subject in depth, they could probably take a class at a high school or a community college for something like that.

 [I’ll add that we live in Illinois and homeschooled teens are allowed to take as many or as little classes that they want to at the local high school. I knew of a girl who went took theater and choir at her local high school and learned everything else she wanted to at home. It’s a great system that I wish more states used.]

What do you see as your role as an interest-led learning dad?

With me only being home at night and on the weekends, I’m not going to have as big of a role as you will have. But I’ll be there to help them with anything they have questions about when I’m at home. Of course, I’ll also be there on weekends and at night when things just come up.

What are the three top reasons you’re glad you’re kids won’t be going to school?

They’ll be able to learn at a faster pace because it will be more efficient- there won’t be all this time doing administrative stuff like there is in a classroom or trying to keep control. So they’ll have a better quality education – they’ll just be the two kids and you.

I’m glad that if they need to run around, they can do that when they need to, or if they want to sit and concentrate for three hours, they can do that, too.

I just see that there’s a lot of indoctrination that they try to push through at public schools that has nothing to do with education, but it’s some politician or some group’s idea that they want placed in the curriculum, and they somehow call that education. Our kids won’t have to worry about any of that. They’ll just be focus on what education should be and that’s learning.

What are the main benefits you’ve seen to have an interest-led learning philosophy verses a more traditional school approach?

In the traditional approach, you just study a subject when it’s planned whether anyone is interested in it or not. But with interest-led learning, if someone’s interested in the topic or subject, you can study it for as long as you want without having to switch subjects after 45 minutes.  And then you can also branch off into other connected areas and then follow ideas wherever they take you. But at the same time you’re also introducing other things, so they’re learning a variety of topics and not just studying one area.