Quick Installation for Unschooling:
Just stop. Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly.
Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.
by Sandra Dodd

I had never heard of deschooling until I started home schooling. While we were in South Africa I met many other families who home schooled for real and warned me to allow time for the children to become 'deschooled'.

This, they explained, was letting go of the way school taught things, from both respects, parents view and child's view.
Parents have the assumption that lessons need to be at desks with pens and paper and structure, all performed in a certain way but looking at it, it didn't HAVE to be done this way.

Equally children, very often have learnt that school is 'boring' and 'hard' and 'horrible'. And this is not to mention their view of homework which can be considerably worse.

The very idea, for both children, that we were going to spend five months doing homework gave them the heebies. But children are naturally hungry for knowledge. They soak it up like sponges and actively seek more - as long as they are interested in the subject.
It's is not easy for the parent who is trying to keep up with a curriculum, to teach the children what they need to learn so they are not left floundering when they get back yet strike a balance between allowing them to deschool and learn that learning is actually fun..

So in order to get them to work I needed to let them 'deschool' and this was very tough. Bad habits, bad feelings and associations from school had become entrenched and initially both girls were very resistant to doing a variety of homework.
Once they realised what fun it could be they both learnt without knowing they were learning but as soon as it became 'like school' the barriers went back up.

Eliza was fiercely resistant to doing maths after a couple of years of being behind at school so trying to encourage her to learn the subject was very tough.
Savannah on the other hand was just starting to learn about the subject and because of our relaxed way of learning was hungry to learn more.

One point was that I found it hard to judge whether I was deschooling them or simply letting them be lazy!

Resources:

• Deschooling: The Fallacy of Comparing Children by Valorie Delp
• Deschooling for parents - Sandra Dodd
• Deshooling - Ann Zeise