Unschooling Advice::Get Off The Highway!

Posted by Tiff in Funschooling, Travel in the U.S. | 8 comments

When the kids and I planned our trip up to the Pacific Northwest, we had some choices to make. The most important was who would have the food and snacks by their seat. The second most important was what route we’d take. We could go right up the 5, and get to Seattle in 16 hours. Or, we could get off the highway and take the back roads…this would add another 10 hours onto our trip. 10 hours in a small minivan and stinky kids who don’t have a huge love of long road trips (so ironic, since we go on them so often!). So, we went back and forth discussing the pros and cons of taking the highway vs. side roads.

The highway was appealing in a lot of ways. It would be quicker, for one thing. We’d get to our destination faster. It would be easier to keep track of things like time, speed, distance, and ETA, since we’d be on one highway going one speed most of the time. It would also be convenient…we’d have food, gas, and lodging the whole way up. What town doesn’t have a McDonalds, Chevron, and Holiday Inn?! In fact, that’s about all there is on the side of a highway. Same restaurants, same places to stay, same strip malls, same everything. It would be safe. Reliable. It would be….totally boring. Uninspiring. Monotonous. Routine. Impersonal. Soulless!

So we took the road less travelled. We got off the highway…we even got off the side road…and blazed our own trail!

It took us a lot longer, yes. We gave up the idea of knowing how long we’d be in any one place or when we’d actually get in to Seattle. We didn’t see a McDonalds for 3 days! We lingered when we found something beautiful and inspiring, and drove quicker in places we didn’t care to be. Anytime anyone yelled out “Oh! I want to see THAT!” we stopped on the side of the road.

We ate pancakes as big as our heads and met pastry baking pirates!

We saw big giant rocks floating up from the ocean and sunsets melting into the sea.

We saw groves of trees give way to building sized sand dunes. We marveled at every new turn. It was exciting. Inspiring! Full of personal connection and meaning!

It was a trip that is unique to us, at that time. We could go back and try to recreate it, retrace our steps, and we still wouldn’t be able to. We sacrificed time, efficiency, and traveling down a highway that everyone else was on. We traded in sameness and routine for other things like experience and individualization.

The parallels between these two different traveling modes and unschooling are uncanny. Whoever said that there is no more new frontier has never met an unschooler. We see new frontier all the time. It’s in the world around us, reflected in ourselves, and we see it with our own eyes. The current method of overstandardization and curriculum frenzy forgets this important part of the learning cycle. Exploration! Passion! Time! Interest! Excitement! An unblazed trail! The current system values efficiency at the expense of these things. Sure, it may get kids from point A to point B in a speedy, planned out manner, but they end up at point B sometimes wondering how they got there at all. Wondering if maybe point C wouldn’t have been better. Wishing they could have traded in some of the boredom for some of the fun.

This is where my patience comes from when people ask me things like if I’m worried that my daughter isn’t reading even though everyone else in 1st grade is. Or if I panic when my kids spend their days drawing or playing instead of working on worksheets or sitting in class. I’m not worried or panicked. I know that our journey is taking us places and down roads that are curvy and windy. I know that we’re not on a highway with only one destination. I know that we will eventually get there, but we’re having a lot of fun and seeing a lot of other things along the way!

Learning and standardization should never go hand in hand. Learning is, in fact, one of the most exciting journeys we go on in life. So why spend it on a highway, eating at McDonalds and seeing the same strip malls out the window when there’s so much more out there?

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this is part 4 in a series I like to call “Advice for a wannabe unschooler”. Parts 1 through 3 can be found here!

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