UK Unschooling Network Guidelines

Below is the welcome post from the Facebook group which we ask all new members to read and to agree to by clicking "like" at the bottom of the post in FB.

WELCOME TO THE UK UNSCHOOLING NETWORK

We ask all new members to read this pinned post.

The purpose of the group is to provide a comfortable place where unschooling parents can experience solidarity and support for their unschooling practices.

Given that conversations often touch upon personal issues, strong emotions may be triggered. Therefore, in order for everyone to feel safe and supported, we ask that people respect our:

POSTING GUIDELINES:

1. You will be muted for the first 24 hours as a new member. This is to provide an opportunity to read and to get to grips with the ethos of the group.

2. Aim to create light rather than heat. Check you've really understood the issue before you post.

3. If you are still unclear, remain open to finding new solutions. Phrase questions so that it is clear that you are receptive to new ideas, eg: I'm struggling to agree with point x in unschooling theory, because ABC, but I would like to see why it might be a good idea?

4. Remember your ideas may be challenged as a way of helping you and other readers to understand and enact the principles of unschooling. Criticism is a gift.

5. Assume that members want to read replies that fit with the unschooling principles outlined below, especially, that anything that you say does not involve coercion or imposing an unwanted limit.

6. Please stick to the subject of unschooling. Do not post meta discussion, eg: inflammatory remarks about people or discussion about the rules of the group. If posts veer too far off-topic, admins might close the thread and delete irrelevant posts.

7. Please respect your family’s privacy. Ask their permission to post personal information. If you do not have their permission, post anonymously by contacting one of the admin team who will post for you, or you could frame the question hypothetically.

8. Please respect the privacy of the group. Do not copy or repeat personal information from the group elsewhere and do not take screen shots. Members who do this may be removed from the group.

9. Do not delete threads: the discussion is likely to be of interest to others and people will have spent time providing answers. Contact an admin if you are unhappy about anything posted.

10. Please don’t post links to personal blogs, websites, businesses, projects etc unless they are directly relevant to a discussion. Personal promotion will be deleted and persistent posters of personal information will be removed. Please post local events in local groups only. If you find it hard to connect with unschooling families in your local area, feel free to add a post to the thread on ‘Connecting with Other Unschoolers,’ which is in the files section.

11. If you find information in other places that you feel is interesting or inspiring, do post links with an explanation about how it is relevant.

12. In order to make the moderation of the group possible, you need to ensure the group admins can always see your posts, or you will be removed from the group. Please respond to PMs from admin.

13. Moderators reserve the right to use their judgement if they feel that a member or a thread is causing problems, even if there is not a particular guideline in place. The moderators of this group aim to be fair, so members are always given plenty of opportunity to resolve issues.

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WHO THE GROUP IS FOR:

This group is for parents who are home educating or thinking of becoming home educators. Sometimes previous unschooling parents may remain members when their children have left home.

Parents with children of any age are welcome since unschooling is relevant from birth.

Please also note this is a UK based page, and information will be from a UK perspective.

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WHAT IS UNSCHOOLING?

Over the years, unschooling has been defined in a variety of ways. Other terms such as "autonomous education" and "consensual living" have been used. We seek to constantly improve the theories and so welcome critique. But for now, for the purposes of the conversation in this group, our understanding of unschooling is as follows:

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UK Unschooling Network's PRINCIPLES OF UNSCHOOLING:
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1. RESPECT:
We focus on understanding and connection: a child’s viewpoint, however it is expressed, is to be valued and considered important.

2. FREELY CHOSEN, SUPPORTED LEARNING:
We strive to create a safe, nourishing and supportive environment where the child's freely chosen learning can flourish. We are our children’s partners in learning and supporters of their interests and passions. We seek to offer choices that will meet the needs and desires of our children but we understand if a child does not want to take up these opportunities. We recognise that children learn best when they can learn at the pace that suits them.

3. LEARNING and UNSCHOOLING:
Individuals learn using a wide range of methods, implicit and explicit, intuitive and rational. Learning happens in many ways: through everyday living, through a created, rich learning environment, by demonstration, or by the offer of new information. The key features of learning in unschooling are that the learner is self-motivated and the information relevant to the learner.

4. A VARIETY OF LEARNING SETTINGS and TYPES OF INFORMATION:
 We recognise that should the learner be interested, learning can be found anywhere, from a trip to the shops, to a video game, to a text book. We also recognise that people learn best when in company they enjoy, irrespective of age, and in locations they have freely chosen. Learning can be either co-operative or competitive. As long as learning is freely chosen by the learner, it is unschooling, whether it be informal, incidental, inferred from inexplicit example, social, private, conversational or responsively structured.

5. COERCION LIMITS LEARNING:
We understand that learning does not happen effectively when one person attempts to impose it upon another person against their will. All learning is initiated by the learner since any growth of knowledge will first require activity in the mind of the learner. Information cannot simply be forced into the mind of the other. We define coercion as "being forced to enact a theory that is not active in the mind, thereby limiting the capacity for rationality and creativity". Coercion inhibits learning, so we strive to avoid it. Unschooling parents also seek to help their children to resolve any internal conflicts (self coercion) that may arise in the child by seeking creative solutions that will reduce such conflicts.

6. PARTNERSHIPS:
We seek solutions to problems so that family members do not have an outcome imposed upon them against their wishes. In other words, we strive to find solutions that suit everyone.

7. THE BALANCE OF SUPPORT and FREEDOM:
Respecting the desires and rights of a child involves being attentive to the child’s needs and desires and prepared to answer questions and offer information. Unschooling is not laissez-faire parenting, a lack of involvement or neglect. It also does not mean that the adult should sacrifice their freedom and happiness to support the child’s, but rather should be about seeking to maximise freedom and happiness for all. We are also aware that partnering a child in a sensitive and responsive way does not mean being intrusive or overly involved.

8. HUMILITY ABOUT OUR IDEAS:
We realise we need to be alert for mistakes in our thinking and in particular to be aware of the possibility of false assumptions that we may have acquired from our own childhoods, the prevailing culture or simply as a result of human nature. We seek to remain open minded and to constantly test the validity of our ideas against reality, as far as we can know it.

9. LOVE, TRUST, HONESTY, OPTIMISM AND CHALLENGE:
We seek to build honest, trusting, loving relationships in the family through all of the above. Families should be places where ideas can be challenged, mistakes easily admitted and where errors are seen as a natural part of learning and a useful way forwards.

10. ADVOCACY ON BEHALF OF CHILDREN:
We acknowledge that many of the societies that we live in have a very different view of parent-child relationships from the principles expressed above. We seek to promote and normalize within our societies, the idea that children are full, complete and equal human beings, deserving of the same level of respect and as many as possible of the same freedoms that are afforded to adults. We see the concept of Adultism as being as important as Feminism.

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This group doesn't adhere to the writing of any particular 'expert’. Writers who inspire members here include: Pam Larrichia, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison, Jan Fortune-Wood, and blogs: Racheous and Happiness is Here.

And in case you are in need of a little confidence inspiring note, please see here for what unschoolers do as adults: https://tinyurl.com/ybbfej9x

Privacy and Posting about our Families in Public Places

This can, and indeed should, be a problem for parents - not just unschoolers.  Most parents who use social media, will, at one time or another, feel the urge to post about their children for any number of reasons: from connecting with others, to sharing news, to seeking solutions to problems. In the UK Unschooling Network, unschooling parents will often need to ask questions which are unique to the child and it often seems almost impossible to do this without revealing a lot of detail about the child.

However this means parents are publishing often very intimate details about their children to a large audience.  Even if people post privately, the FB policy makes it clear that information may become public. And information, even when deleted, never goes away.  Memories abide, there are almost always other backup copies, screen shots may have been taken, and depending on how a system is run, there may be archives or other types of copies. This information is highly likely to be there forever.

And it isn't just a problem of permanence.  It is also a problem of respecting the privacy of others. This is where unschooling parents may be well placed to be thinking about and dealing the issue, and this because in every other part of life, unschooling parents strive to take heed of their children's opinions and to enable their children to live in a way that makes everyone in the family happy.  If an unschooled child says that they don't feel like going to the climbing wall, an unschooling parent won't force them to do it. And yet, it may be that the parent has just posted something about their child that the child would proscribe if only they knew about it.

Parents (unschooling or otherwise) should therefore seek the consent of the child when they want to post about the child.   This is the respectful thing to do and a reliable way to maintain a trusting relationship.  

And it must be informed consent too.  The parent must help the child understand the pros and cons of the information being out there.  For example, the parent should help the child consider how the child as an adult could one day feel about the information being shared now, how this may impact on their future selves, job applications, (employers nowadays do FB searches on potential employees), future relationships, etc.

And in the likely situation that the child does not want the parent to post about them, what then?  Well, there are solutions:

Either the parent could one of the admin team or another member who is known to them to put up an anonymous post. This is probably the easiest solution.

Or the parent could try to frame the question hypothetically, since the principle behind solving one problem may well solve another.  However, this may be difficult when there is a very particular problem that requires a unique solution. 

It may also be possible to try to post the question directly, but in a way that means that the child is happy to consent to it.   The parent must try to find a way to post as respectfully as possible, treating the child as a worthy human being and not referring to or about them as if they are one of their needs or characteristics, but instead using these concepts and labels only if relevant to the conversation and on the presumption that any labels are simply descriptors of the child's challenges and characteristics.

Whatever way you and your children choose, please do think about it.  Your children will thank you for it!