Unschooling
No curriculum at all. Learning follows what they are actually doing.
Home education without a curriculum. There is no sequence and no subjects; a child learns what they are pursuing, when they pursue it, with an adult whose job is to make resources and people available. Holt's argument is that children learn constantly and that schooling mostly interrupts it. It asks the most trust of any position in this instrument and offers the fewest reassurances along the way.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Sustained nerve with no milestones to check yourself against
- Constant availability — it is less structured than home education and not less work
- Meeting the legal requirement wherever you are, which varies enormously
- An honest distinction between this and neglect, which only shows up in what the adult is doing
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
Source: Teach Your Own
What to read
Teach Your Own — John Holt
The founding text, and clear about the distinction between this and school-at-home.
Free to Learn — Peter Gray
The research case, from the closest thing this position has to an academic advocate.
Compared with
Sources for this row
Teach Your Own
John Holt, Delacorte, 1981. The founding text of unschooling, and the clearest statement of the distinction between home education and school-at-home.