We Unschool. Here’s Why.

My sons are eight, ten, and twelve years old. They have never been to school. Instead, we homeschool. But we’re a little (a lot) more radical than most homeschoolers.

We unschool. For the most part, my kids pick their own educational content. They learn at their own pace, and they learn what they choose to learn. We follow no curriculum. We do not adhere to common core standards.

Here’s why.

I was lucky enough to crash land in a graduate program that pushed not only research, but teaching skills. For six years, I studied pedagogy. I taught: English 101, English 102, and creative writing. After one semester, I knew I would never dump my kids into public school.

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish convinced me. Freire describes our schools’ methods as a “banking model” of education: kids are stuffed full of information by an authority figure (the teacher) and regurgitate it for a test. Afterward, the information no longer matters and can be forgotten. The teacher holds themself above their students, creating an unequal power dynamic. They do not admit their own ignorance.

In this kind of education, children become the colonized. They’re forced to adopt a strange culture. Their obedience is maintained through threats and force. They endure systemic powerlessness.

Freire proposes, instead, a system called “problem-posing education.” In this model, knowledge and the ability to create it becomes decentralized, with a teacher serving a guide rather than an authority. Students pursue their own knowledge and ask critical questions, ideally as a community. Both teacher and student learn from each other. Power is decentralized, destroying the colonial aspect of modern schooling.

I agreed with Freire’s methods.

But Foucault’s theories scare me.

In Discipline and Punishment, Foucault says, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” He uses a central metaphor of the panopticon, a kind of prison in which prisoners may possibly suffer constant surveillance, and so behave as if they are. This ensures their compliance.

Schools are designed not for education, but to condition children’s adherence to societal norms. Threat of constant surveillance provides control. Children are churned out, factory-style, to enter a workforce which also perpetuates an illusion of constant surveillance. Because they may be watched at any moment, they always behave as if they are under surveillance.

They are cogs in a machine, valued not for their personhood, but their utility.

This is conditioned powerlessness.

Big fat no.

I refused to throw my kids to the wolves. And I refused to duplicate a banking model at home. Our option? Unschooling. My kids discover the world on their own.

And it works.

Stay tuned for how.