Homeschooling, Road Schooling and Unschooling

The idea of homeschooling was rapidly growing in India even before the impact of the pandemic. Living in a pandemic where our children can’t go to school has piqued curiosity about alternate forms of learning. Homeschooling has become an increasingly popular and relevant choice for our children today with a fast-changing and expanding approach to education in a globally networked world. Homeschooling is a lifestyle, where learning isn’t restricted to specific hours on a timetable. It is an ongoing constant that occurs throughout the day. Although it requires plenty of parental involvement, it also harnesses the educative power of play. Biologically, education has always been something children do for themselves; they come into this world and learn what they need to in order to survive. So homeschooling is the perfect way to make use of this biological ambition. Now, what is the difference between homeschooling, road schooling, and unschooling? Homeschooled children are taught at home. They still follow a curriculum and are assessed through standardized exams. Road schooling Is homeschooling on the road, followed by families who live their life constantly traveling. They still follow a curriculum and take standardized assessments. Parents integrate what they are seeing and experiencing the child’s homeschool curriculum. Travel is an enormously educational experience in itself, a hands-on, experiential way of learning that appeals to many families. Children learn a tremendous amount from the cultures and places they visit.

Imagine learning about the pyramids while actually visiting Egypt, or visiting bat caves while learning about bats. Unschooling is the philosophy that children are in charge of their own learning. Unlike homeschooling and road schooling, the children don’t follow a structured curriculum or are assessed in any way. It is still an active learning process based on choices made by the individual child. They are free to uniquely explore at their own pace. To the amateur, unschooling can be misunderstood as unused free time. To an unschooling family, however, a simple household chore can be an opportunity for learning. When children help wash clothes, for example, they learn practical math skills (by using fractions to measure detergent), with cooking they learn chemistry (understanding what changes happen to the food when the heat is applied, etc.).

Unschooled adults tend to be highly motivated, assertive, and focused. For them, careers are direct extensions of the passion they developed in play. They don’t distinguish between learning and doing, which can be said of anyone who’s involved in a passionate, interesting work – play and learning are all one and the same thing. It should come as no surprise then that homeschooled children tend to score better on exams than those children going to conventional schools. There are plenty of unschoolers that have gone on to succeed in college, securing admissions to the likes of M.I.T and Stanford. Multinational Companies such as Google and IBM also headhunt those with hands-on experience in skills such as coding, proving that there is huge potential for homeschoolers that extends beyond degrees and certificates. In fact, homeschoolers tend to have a slight edge over the others because of the hands-on approach and practical knowledge they bring to the table. Homeschooling parents choose this path to eliminate the unnecessary pressures of a school environment or simply to provide an education that aligns with the parents’ philosophies and goals for their children, which tends to include plenty of time for play. Regardless of the reason, it is an undisputed fact that children and families thrive when they’re able to spend more time together — reading, eating meals, or even just playing outside. This is one of the primary reasons why homeschooling has such high success rates. In a fast-changing world, isn’t it important we adapt our approach to how we raise the future of tomorrow? Procuring high grades by regurgitating memorized facts may be of more value in our schools than acquiring a new skill useful for practical life or even the workplace. Are they really prepared for the real world? Or do schools train them so obsessed with numbers and the perception of success that they are unable to deal with the mental, emotional, and social pressures of adulthood? A simple look at the statistics of the mental wellbeing of our youth today might answer this question. Perhaps homeschooling, road schooling, and unschooling really is a better way of raising our children today.

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