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Deschooling, the process of breaking away from traditional schooling and its associated beliefs, practices, and structures, helps us live a purposeful life.
While the concept was initially introduced by the unschooling movement, it has since become increasingly popular among homeschool families so that all homeschool families can find ways to help their kids learn more effectively and live more purposefully.
In my homeschool years, I’ve learned there’s a connection between deschooling and living our lives more purposefully.
Say whaaaa? Deschool to live life purposefully? Yes!
I’ve seen it in my own life, the lives of my kids, and other homeschool families who have deschooled too: we become more intentional with our time and goals.
Here are seven ways I see that deschooling helps us homeschool families live a more purposeful life…
1. Deschooling encourages self-directed, lifelong learning.
Traditional schooling often focuses on meeting standardized learning objectives, reviewing and reciting knowledge bits, and achieving grades.
Though this is a sequential, predictable learning approach, the traditional approach leads students to feel disconnected from their learning and disengaged from the material they’re engaging.
When we ask ourselves what we want for our kids, almost always you’ll answer…(wait, before you answer, will you write it down or say it out loud?) …well, I often hear that homeschool families want to build a love of lifelong learning. You’ll hear homeschool families say they want to customize a unique education for the kids in front of them.
If we strip away the conventional approaches to engaging in an education, we are left with a child in front of us, that still enjoys learning.
That child enjoys learning: it’s what we humans do.
But that child enjoys learning on his/her terms for his/her reasons and learns in ways that may or may not reflect a conventional approach.
When a homeschool family deschools, they take notice of the child in front of them and gradually shift toward a more self-directed, child-centric education.
A self-directed educational infusion allows kids to be connected to their learning journey: so that they care about what they’re learning.
Deschooling encourages self-directed learning, where the student has more agency over his or her learning journey.
Kids are free to explore topics that interest them and learn in a way that makes sense to them.
This approach can help students develop a love for learning, as they can pursue their interests and passions.
So parents discover that their child really will have a lifelong love of learning, and it’ll naturally be an individualized education too.
2. Deschooling also promotes flexibility.
Homeschool families have the opportunity to be flexible in learning, routines, extracurricular, and curriculum choices, but we don’t always take it.
If a child is interested in science, they can focus on that subject for a period, and if they want to take a break, they can do so without falling behind.
If you want to sleep in every morning, you can do that.
And if you want to homeschool year-round, you can do that.
If you don’t want to join the local hockey team, even though everyone else is doing it, you don’t have to.
Perhaps you discover that neither you nor your child likes the writing program, you don’t have to continue it.
If you want to do violin lessons before school gets out, you’ve got that freedom.
Not only did our family discover that learning also happened after dinner, on the weekends, and whenever the school hours weren’t happening, we learned that where we learned could be anywhere too.
- We were in the family room often, because I still occasionally find a nest of erasers under cushions, growing like a nest of mice, but we find pencils and markers under car seats too.
- Also, we learned about ratios in the grocery store when we were trying to figure out the “best” price for toilet paper.
- We learned when having an engaging chat with a neighbor about local history.
- We learned about weights and scales when we found ourselves gathered around the airport scale hoping, wishing, and praying that the last five overage weight in the suitcase would disappear so we weren’t spending an extra fifty bucks on plane transport.
Learning happens everywhere.
And learning can happen through any subject of interest.
If a kiddo is interested in Minecraft, he can print a few writing prompts from Pinterest (cause there is surely a free workbook for that), he can learn spelling words from that writing activity, he can do geometry to learn how to create different shapes, he’ll learn how to manage his Minecraft resources, he’ll learn how to be part of a team too, and he’ll even learn that he can’t download a Minecraft server on his mom’s computer, because she won’t be able to record the podcast interviews she just recorded.
We need to think outside the educational box to understand that learning can happen through our kids’ interests too.
3. Deschooling supports social and emotional development.
Traditional schooling focuses on academic achievement at the expense of social and emotional development.
(Why we’re questioned about homeschool socialization when kids are told to be quiet, sit quietly and attentively, without being distracted, is a marvel to me. I’ll take a deep breath and not digress into all the reasons I don’t think there’s a magical school socialization ball found in the four walls of an institution, because I’ve written so much about it before.)
Deschooling, on the other hand, promotes a holistic approach to learning that includes social and emotional development.
It allows students to learn from their experiences, and to develop critical life skills such as communication, problem-solving, and collaboration.
In my family, I’ve seen with my own eyes that kids learn to negotiate, be respectful, be heard and understood, express their feelings and thoughts, be kind and considerate, learn to share, and all the important socialization things are addressed.
Socialization happens within families (in beneficial and not-so-beneficial ways); because we parents are intentional about wholeheartedly engaging our kids, connecting to our kids, and listening to our kids.
“In sum, a deschooled society would be a society in which everyone shall have the widest and freest possible choice to learn whatever he wants to learn, whether in school or in some altogether different way. This is very far from being a society in which poor kids would have no chance to learn things. On the contrary, poor kids, like poor people, and indeed all people, would have many more chances to learn things and many more ways of learning them than they have today. It would be a society in which there were many paths to learning and advancement, instead of one school path as we have now . . . a path far too narrow for everyone, and one too easily and too often blocked off from the poor.”
John Holt
4. It encourages creativity and innovation.
Deschooling promotes creativity and innovation by allowing kids (& their parents) to pursue their interests and passions. It encourages them to think outside the box and explore new ideas and perspectives.
For a very long time, I heard many assumptions voiced about homeschool kids (but we know assumptions are never 100% accurate).
The assumption I heard was that homeschool kids are geniuses. Sure, some of them might be. However, some school kids might be too.
No question though, that a deschooled kiddo gets many hours to follow whatever rabbit trails that child wants to pursue.
You spend enough time tinkering on the piano, whittling wood, or writing poems, you’re bound to see an engaged, curious kid become a concert pianist, a skilled carpenter, or a published poet sooner than you might see with some of his/her schooled counterparts.
(They’re getting to those 10,000 hours of expertise a whole lot faster).
Not that all homeschool kids become geniuses, of course.
When our homeschool kids get more unprescribed time, they do more stuff.
And don’t assume that homeschool parents aren’t touched by these value shifts too. They’re equipping their kids to do creative, amazing things. And they have always wondered if they could draw, they could develop a new app, or run for a federal election as a political candidate too (my husband is doing the political representative thing).
We all catch the creativity bug in our homeschool homes, eventually.
Creativity is encouraged in our children’s lives as much as the homeschool parents’ lives.
5. Deschooling encourages kids to be curious and to seek out new knowledge and experiences.
Quickly into my homeschool years, I realized that when a child asked a question, it was me who was going to address that question. They might not have a chance to ask a teacher in a classroom unless I answered (or found the answer).
So I had to stop and look it up, find it in a storybook that my child might find interesting to read, or ask someone who might know.
When you do that often enough, you practice following your curiosities too.
And when you do that often enough, you recognize that your child is ever-curious, always thinking about something.
Also, if you’d just get out of their way, and stop prescribing meaningless activities that don’t have inherent meaning to them, they might go to their bedroom and write stories that have meaning and relevance to their lives.
This deschool approach helps students become self-directed learners who are capable of learning independently throughout their lives.
ps I am learning how to use Descript, a tool I use for transcription, that can condense some of those words using AI. That wasn’t something you COULD learn in school. So guess when I’ve been learning it? When I’m 50. What have you been learning recently that wasn’t in school? I want to hear.
6. It also helps clarify our life intentions and values.
Deschooling provides us (and our kids) space, solitude, and time to reflect on what is truly important, what matters to you.
Do you want to know why I include heavy books like Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal on my Homeschool Mama Reading List? Because I think it serves you to think about this one thing: your life isn’t more than 130 years.
Purportedly, in recent recorded history, Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122 years and 164 days (in 1997), setting a record as the world’s most long-lived person that is still unsurpassed. (By the way, I didn’t know that: I googled that).
But my point? You’ve got an end date: how do you want to live life until then?
By stepping off the conventional path, families can create a lifestyle that aligns with their values and priorities. Deschooling can help you live more intentionally and purposefully, as we can focus on what matters most to us.
- So what are your family values?
- What are your values?
- And are those values aligning with your daily activities?
- What matters to you?
You can connect with me in a coaching conversation to learn more about how you can deschool your homeschool & your life.
7. Deschooling can provide families with more time.
And time allows for exploring new interests, spending quality time together, building memories, and pursuing meaningful life experiences.
More time leads to a sense of expansiveness and freedom because we are not tied down to a rigid schedule, calendar, or curriculum.
We are free to create our path and follow our passions, not think we have to do things the way others do them, which is truly liberating.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”
Henry David Thoreau
Overall, deschooling helps families live more purposefully: so homeschool mama, deschool your homeschool & your life!
Deschool your Homeschool Journaling Workbook
Deschool your homeschool journaling workbook that aids in your self-exploration, to get clear on how you can bring freedom & individualization into your homeschool.
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Teresa Wiedrick
I help homeschool mamas shed what’s not working in their homeschool & life, so they can show up authentically, purposefully, and confidently in their homeschool & life.
