While holidaying with my family we have been getting a lot of concerned questions about our homeschooling choices. Some of the most interesting questions coming from our daughters’ cousins who are 11 & 14 yrs respectively but others too. Too summarise the arguments/ concerns:

- can she still get into uni (particularly things like medicine and law…)
- how can we impose our views on school and (anti) discipline on her without giving her an insight and experience into the alternatives
- if she does not “have to” do thing, how will she learn persistence, that she can work through hating something and get better at it, having discipline at something etc..
- how will she get a broad knowledge of subjects and “keep up” in a competitive world

Well that was starters anyway! The main argument really is “why dont we try to be more moderate by sending her to school and practicing some of the ideas we have in addition to that, rather than going to the extreme and opting out of it altogether”.

I wont go into responses here which would take way too long… but in conversation and answering these concerns, we have often found ourselves trying to explain the idea of “intrinsic motivation” and “self discipline” quite a lot.

It seems the idea that a child can be motivated to learn for her own curiousity and intrinsic reasons, rather than being taught and learning in a more formal school structure is quite a big leap of faith for many.

It is difficult because when you give a schooled child some of the freedoms we are doing with our unschooling i think there would be mixed reactions because they are being compulsed to do things via rewards etc in a (big) part of their life. Which is why the whole “why dont you unschool when they are not in school” does not really work. That said we kept explaining that if she does want to go to school in the future we would support her decision… frankly we would question it but support it.

I find it essential to remember that the questions from my family come from a real place of compassion and concern. Its understandable from their perspective as some of them think we are undermining our children’s future prospects because of what they perceive as a well meaning but naive ideology.

I would love to give them a reading list but there is not that level of interest or motivation to research what we are doing. At a certain point beyond understanding the basis for their concern, acknowledging them and where appropriate patiently and politely explaining there is nothing we can do to allay their fears.

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