Unschooling

Sometimes, when I'm between inspirations, I wonder what will be the next concept to captivate me and drive me, to keep me up at night, researching, interviewing friends for any last bit of information. Well, I'm onto the new thing now: unschooling. I've always felt suspicious about homeschooling, having met many a homeschooled child in my education career. Their social skills, emotional maturity, and sometimes academic abilities were...odd, like they just couldn't cope with the whole school entity and how to enter it. Now I'm thinking, why should they?

And so I'm researching unschooling, at least as a philosophy if not as an actuality, not yet. The organized curriculum-free, child-led education. Imagine! Imagine if the things that interest Max most--filming short monster movies, writing magazines about toys, drawing treasure maps, building a Tiki fort on our roof, riding his bike for hours, hiking, reading art books at the Graphic Arts library--what if that was his education, maybe supplemented by art class, day trips to archaeological ruins, gallery visits, organic gardening. It's very appealing. It's all about flow, in my mind, how his motivation pushes him deeper into concepts. Of course, then I think it's also all about "flojo"--Max's lazy approach to life, how he loves to sleep in, wake up and read books in bed. But, maybe that's not a terrible thing. Maybe it's what he needs. Or maybe it's the kind of activities children do because they need to decompress from the pressures and boredom of school.

I'm wondering where this will take me.