Demystifying Deschooling

Pam Barnhill [00:00:04]:

Deschooling is an often skipped and often misunderstood part of the homeschooling process. And today, we’re gonna demystify it for you. Hi, everyone. I’m Pam Barnhill, and Welcome to episode 79 of the 10 minutes to a better homeschool podcast. I am so happy that you are joining me here today. Before I get started on today’s topic, I just want to invite you to join us over in the Home school better together community. You can find an app in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store just by searching home school better together, and join us in our free community where you can connect with other homeschoolers. And, actually, I kind of got today’s topic from that homeschooling community.

Pam Barnhill [00:00:52]:

What do you do if you’re trying to homeschool a child for the first time? Maybe you’ve just started a new school year. You’ve pulled a child out of school. You’re homeschooling them, and they are so resistant to learning. And the answer to that is the process of deschooling, but I know this is something that maybe new homeschoolers haven’t heard about at all. And it’s also something that can be just a little bit mysterious, and you’re uncertain about what it is. There are a number of different misconceptions that come up with deschooling. So I wanna try to break it down for you today, exactly what it is and why you probably want to do it. So the definition of deschooling is that it is a process of transitioning from from a traditional educational approach, usually public school, but it could sometimes be private school as well.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:48]:

From that mind set into a more relaxed mindset of learning like we have And so what you do when you and beliefs that they have ingrained from all of their formal years of schooling. And the other thing you’re doing during this period of time as well is You’re taking time to discover some of your own natural learning rhythms, exploring some of your own interests, and taking the time to reset your perspectives on what education is. And that is what you are going to do during this period of deschooling. That’s what it is. Now what does it look like in kind of the day to day? It’s going to look a lot like learning to learn all over again, throwing off the things that you’ve been doing. And maybe it’s easiest to explain what it looks like by talking about what it what it really isn’t, some of the misconceptions that people have about it. So when people come to us in the community and they’re like, I have a child and they’re they’re resisting homeschooling. They really don’t want to do any of the work that I’ve put in front of them, and we tell them to deschool.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:08]:

Kind of the first thing that goes through their head is it’s a vacation. Right? It’s like this long break from all academic work because that’s what we’re telling them to do. We’re saying put aside the curriculum, Put aside the worksheets. Put aside the math book. Don’t do any of that stuff. Don’t do any of the things that you were expected to do in public school and instead kind of rediscover what learning can can actually be. And they’re like, oh, we’re supposed to take a vacation. No.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:40]:

That’s really not what we’re telling you to do. I mean, relaxation and downtime can be part of the process, but the primary goal is to shift from a traditional school mindset to one that appreciates more organic and self directed learning. So one of the very first things I would tell you to do if you’re deschooling is spend a lot of time at your library. Go to the library, check out books, look for books, look for fiction and nonfiction books that you’re interested in, and then spend a lot of that time either reading aloud as a family or having the child read a lot of those books to themselves if an established reader. Right? So you’re gonna spend an awful lot of time doing that. You might also spend an awful lot of time watching YouTube videos, like the educational YouTube videos. I’m not talking about, you know, the Stampy cat YouTube videos. Is he even still thing my kids used to watch when they were little.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:38]:

But find the educational YouTube videos and spend a lot of times watching those together. So deschooling is not unstructured laziness. So we’re not just gonna lay around and not do anything and not kind of be serious about our education, but what we’re looking for is helping kids understand what motivates them to learn. What interest do they actually have without somebody telling them what they need to be learning? So that is another part of, deschooling as well. It’s also not the same as unschooling. So Inschooling is a very specific homeschooling method that is based on self directed learning without a set curriculum. And this is a long ongoing thing that you choose to do for your entire homeschool career or a very long period of time. And we could do a whole episode on schooling.

Pam Barnhill [00:05:43]:

And just let me make the point that it is a valid method of education. It’s not simply we don’t do anything. Actually, I have said many times before that I don’t unschool because it’s a lot of work for the parents. And I really love the idea of putting my school in a box every day, doing it, getting it done, and being finished with it, and unschoolers don’t do that. And so deschooling is not the same. Deschooling is a transitionary period where you’re trying to figure out what method of homeschooling you’re gonna use. It’s not unschooling, which is a method in and of itself. And then perhaps one of the biggest things to think about when it comes to deschooling is it is not just for the student.

Pam Barnhill [00:06:27]:

While the student does need that adjustment period to kind of figure out what their interests are, to learn that there are other ways to learn rather than a textbook or a lecture in a classroom to kind of figure out their own motivations. Deschooling is also for the parent as well. And, actually, my children have never been to school. They didn’t need a deschooling period, but I needed one greatly. Not Only had I spent 12, 13 years when you count kindergarten in a public education setting, I had also trained to be teacher and then spent 7 years teaching as well. I needed a lot of deschooling to unlearn all all of the things that I knew or thought I knew about how kids learn. And so the parent is wrestling with and working through some of these educational paradigms for themselves, and they’re learning to think about in a new way. And so this deschooling period could actually be a time of research for the parents as they research alternative methods of schooling, as they look at things like unschooling or project based learning or a Charlotte Mason education or even unit studies or something like that.

Pam Barnhill [00:07:46]:

And they’re observing their child, and they’re learning what things are my child interested in, what things, motivate my child, what, you know, what are kind of the things that they prefer to do and how do they prefer to learn? And so all of that is with the parent as well as the child. And then another misconception that people sometimes have about deschooling is that the longer you deschool, the more kind you get. So what we often tell people in the homeschool community, what the homeschool community often tells people is you need to deschool a month for every year that your child was in school. And so if you’re looking at a 7th grader, you’re deschooling almost an entire school year with that 7th grader. And you’re like, wow. We’re just getting behind. But you’re not. Because the idea is we’re learning from everything around us.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:41]:

We’re learning from everything that we’re doing. Remember back when I said, You know, watch some YouTube videos. I didn’t say park your child in front of the TV and have them watch YouTube videos by themselves. The family is involved. The parent is involved with this, and you’re having all of these great learning conversations together. And so Different kids are gonna need a different length of deschooling. You might get through it a little faster than the 1 month for each year rule of thumb. It might be a little bit slower, but it is worth the time it takes to get to the heart of what education really means and to help reprogram a child away from that public school mindset as opposed to spending that 7 months butting heads with each other, fighting constantly, and really ruining the relationship.

Pam Barnhill [00:09:31]:

The next thing I wanna point out is that not all of the negative emotions or behaviors that you seeing your child. It they can’t necessarily be traced back to the public school, especially if you’re dealing with middle school There’s all kinds of emotions running high. There’s all kinds of hormones running high. There could be some character issues that are more related to your family life. And so deschooling is a great time to work on some of those character issues, to build some really good habits, to find your natural family rhythms, and to let some of those hormones run their course while you are working on building up really good relationships with you and your between you and your children. So finally, if you are constantly fighting with your newly homeschooled child, they they seem to have a lot of resistance to learning. There’s some burn Now maybe some overemphasis on grades or performance or looking for outside motivation because they’ve lost their intrinsic motivation, that could be a pretty good indicator that some deschooling is needed. So I hope this was helpful today.

Pam Barnhill [00:10:46]:

I hope it gave you some really good ideas about what deschooling is, what some of the misconceptions are and why you might want to spend some time doing it. And like I said, if you would like some help with any kind of home problem. You can find that by becoming a member of our free community. And that sign up page, you can find at community dot Pam Barnhill .com, and we do invite you to come over there and get all the help you need from the wonderful homeschooling parents. Next week, we’re going to be talking about a brand new podcast that would actually be perfect for a deschooling family. This is a podcast that I’m doing with my my daughter, Olivia, and we’re going to introduce it to you next week. We’re gonna be talking all about the brand new Wonderworld podcast, and we can’t wait to have join us then. Until then, keep on homeschooling.