quote of the day and more on unschooling

What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out. ~ John Holt

I was reading this great unschooling blog tonight called Life Without School and came across a post called What is Unschooling. Here are a couple of paragraphs that I really liked...

"People who unschool tend to question just about everything, and that includes experts, authorities, and the status quo. They live and learn outside the box of convention and to the beat of their own individual drums. Individuals may use the services of mentors, teachers, guides, facilitators, but are not bound to any of these. Parents play the roles of guides, facilitators, learning companions,  and care-givers who offer advice, support, and encouragement. Learning relationships can be reciprocal in nature: parents can be teachers as well as learners, and children can be teachers as well as learners. Unschoolers live and learn together. Real world experience is valued, and curriculum may be viewed as a tool, if used at all. Unschoolers learn by doing, experimenting, exploring, experiencing, and even by playing. They may also choose to take classes. Unschoolers value self-awareness, self-empowerment, and choice."

"Most all who are influenced by unschooling philosophy tend to be non-authoritative in parenting style. Respect for children is often at the heart of unschooling perspective because empowerment is the goal. Arbitrary structure and rules are antithetical to the nature of unschooling philosophy. Unschoolers generally seek to create cooperative, collaborative, individualized environments for all family members. As always, interpretation is in the eye of the beholder: each child, parent, and family system presents with different needs and circumstances and therefore different expressions of unschooling."