Summary: This week we are talking with Peggy Webb of West River Academy. We are talking about unschooling and eclectic homeschooling and what it all means for your family. You can listen to the audio below or read on for the transcript of our conversation. Carrie: You’re back with Carrie at Natural Moms Talk Radio. My guest this week is Peggy Webb, Director of the West River Academy. Hi, Peggy. Peggy: Hi, Carrie. How are you? Thanks for having me today. Carrie: Oh, I’m glad to talk with you. I was browsing your web site, and you have the most interesting thing going on. I’m not even sure how to describe it, but I’ll let you do that. We’re going to talk today about your philosophies and thoughts about unschooling, and how it fits into the over all homeschooling picture. Peggy: Okay. I can start maybe by mapping out a homeschooling philosophy continuum, so that the listeners know where we are here. Generally, when someone wants to homeschool, they think they’re going to do what schools did, except that they are going to do it at home. I’m going to by a curriculum, I’m going to sit my kids down at the table or the front desk, and we’re going to go through the various subject areas. I’m going to be the teacher and they’re going to be the students, and they’re going to do what I asked them to do. I’m going to grade them, and do the homework and so forth. When people find out that there’s another way of doing it, it’s really very refreshing and liberating to a lot of people that are open to the idea. It’s not for everybody, because people come to this idea of allowing your children to have the freedom to participate in the decision about how they are going to be educated. They find it rather different, because most people have gone through a school system, and they’ve been told what to do. This whole idea of being given a choice is a little bit scary for them. A lot of questions come up about are they going to succeed in life if they’re given so much freedom? I’m an adult, and I’ve got to make sure they learn this, that and the other thing so that they can be successful. It’s a whole different mind set, it’s a different paradigm. But what you find on this spectrum is what we call school at home on one end, which is what I just described, and then on the other end is the opposite. It’s more of a bottom up rather than a top down. It’s actually engaging your children in a discussion, where you want to check to see what is their learning style? Do they learn better when they’re jumping on the trampoline reciting the multiplication facts, or when they’re sitting with a workbook and memorizing flash cards and that sort of thing? What is the learning style? What are your children’s goals? What do they want to accomplish with their life? Some kids, at a very young age, know very clearly what they want to be when they grow up, and they never change that. You want to give them the honour and recognition that it is important that they are part of this decision. Then, you sit down and work together with a child to decide what’s going to be studied, what the materials are, if it’s going to be hands on, if it’s going to be through travel and field trips, or a combination of book study possibly with apprenticeships or mentorships, group activities, co-op learning with other families, … There’s just so many things out there to explore. Your child is one of how many billion on the earth, and they are each different. What happens with the school system is that there’s a mass educational technique, because when you have 30 kids and one teacher, you can only make them all do the same thing at the same time. So that model has been followed even right into the home. It’s something that at least needs to be looked at and questi[...]
