When, for the first time, I heard of unschooling, I was just a college student, uncertainly lingering between idealism and cynicism!
I had zero experience taking care of small humans or even a remote thought of having my own child someday.
But the faith that a human being would want to learn for nothing except an innate desire to learn?! These people must be beyond my imagination of crazy! How can a “student” learn if nobody teaches them or gives them homework? Is that not impossible? Or ok, maybe not impossible, but at least mortifying… scary?!
It was a fortunate accident that in every step of my way, I -very clumsily – stumbled across many people who were self-taught masters of their crafts. Watching their graceful, happy, and grounded lives made me look at my stressed, anxiety ridden, and highly self-doubting academic experience with a fresh, critical perspective. I had to honestly look at what I really learned and retained… what turned out to be useful…and what all I must learn on my own anyway, because the academics didn’t cover so many life skills essential for living an adult life.
Although I may not have known it, I was “deschooling” myself gradually.
Looking back, I can see the steps I took to shake off the superficial conformity and slowly build self-discipline from within… slowly found my own structure and ethics of life and work, however flawed and ever evolving.
Slowly, the anger towards the system that until then seemed to hold me back, faded away…( well, mostly!)because I grew my own tools to learn… I can smell freedom here!
There is still so much fire in me, and, believe me, it burns! But motherhood gave me a new reason to learn and grow deeper. It feeds the fire even more…
And then, as I watch this miraculously ordinary (!) child “show me”, how a raw mind is hungry to learn, it all makes sense! Her idea of studying is very, very different from what most of us grew up with…
She has the patience and focus to sit and do her own “work” for a long time.
She has a good grip and wrist control because of the many unstructured home, kitchen, and garden activities that she herself comes up with. She gets plenty of sensory play with water, mud, and any inexpensive, safe stuff at hand…
Nobody expects her to draw, doodle, or write… but she doodles for her own needs. Most importantly, nobody “teaches” her….
She probably sits and studies simply because Aai, Achcha, and other people of Maateemol team look very happy to study and work!
She is my living proof that a child studies because they want to.. and definitely not because someone is teaching them.
And no, she is not “ahead” or “behind” her peers! There is no race… no competition in her world. The only aim is to learn by experience… which, in a child’s mind, is “play.”
I remember, at one point, being worried about accidentally “teaching” her! And a very kind, experienced unschooler told me to just relax… and observe!
Yes, that was the advice!
“Just observe her… let her take the lead… you follow it. Trust her because she knows her path. Your job as a parent is to facilitate her journey, not to drag her along the others. Just watch her, and she will tell you what she needs from you.”
And how true those words are! Because she does ask very clearly what she needs. She has no shame or pride about being herself… no concept of comparing herself with the others… competing with or racing against them!
If the grown-ups do not introduce it, she may not find winning by beating others of any interest…. simply because it is not natural.
I had to deschool myself, and I have to keep doing it, to shake off the unnecessary layers of superficiality we keep acquiring for no apparent reason… but my daughter?! She is born free… and I must guard her freedom to learn and live above everything else…
Anujna Writes 