Unschooling Evolution

The following question has been asked quite a few times in various places, so it might be worth addressing more fully. The question is:

Should unschooling theory be a fixed entity, or should it allow for changes?

In the UK Unschooling Network, we have a set of core principles which describe how we currently define unschooling. (See this post for these). We take these seriously and ask that people strive to understand them. We adopted these principles because had they survived various critiques, and because they seemed to carry the strongest explanatory force and fit.

Whilst these principles bear a considerable resemblance to unschooling as it was originally conceived, it is arguable that they may not be exactly the same, and they may actually diverge more from other variations of unschooling that have arisen since the early days. Is it right that this sort of mutation should happen?

There are arguments to be made for keeping unschooling just the same as it ever was. Firstly, a fixed identity is safe, consoling, stable and comfortable. You know where you’re at with it and you know what you’re doing. A fixed public identity for unschooling was also pretty necessary in the early days. Unschooling was such a revolutionary idea in the 70s, 80s and even the 90s, that it could have been so easily just snuffed out. It had to defend itself against all-comers all the time, and it needed, at least in public, an immutable identity in order to be able to preserve itself at all.

However, there have been some perhaps less honorable reasons why unschooling theory got stuck. A few unschooling activists and theorists started defending their own territory, drawing lines of battle, insisting that their theory was the best and they often did this without giving due thought to the actual value of other ideas. This probably happened because they had skin the game, groups to admin, books to sell, etc. They found it profitable to be the big “I am” about how to unschool a child and they didn’t want their books to end up in a remaindered pile. So new ideas were often not permitted except those that were generated by the so called these “experts” and members were thrown off groups if they dared suggest a tweak to a theory that had been generated by the Big Cheese.

Others wanted to keep the least efficacious version of unschooling theory in place so that they could attack it more easily. It would be easier to denigrate if it hadn’t adapted.

Less venally, there is another seemingly better argument for why unschooling should remain the same. This could be summarised as the precautionary principle. Given that you have a good thing, why mess with it? Let’s all do no harm. However, there are problems with the precautionary principle.

Firstly, pre-existing ideas may not offer the very best solutions to pre-existing problems. Worse, they might not be able to cope when new and different, more challenging problems arise. This may be because with the rapid pace of change in the modern world, new problems will be thrown up all the time: we didn’t have the internet and AI around when unschooling was born, for example, but also new problems may arise because even good solutions like unschooling, even when practiced perfectly will produce a new order of problems. So if you get stuck in the precautionary principle, you won’t find good solutions to these old and new problems.

What’s more, theory that becomes ossified will probably die a death because others will develop better solutions that do work, that spread and thrive. That’s how the market in ideas works. Less good solutions die a death. Better solutions thrive.

To overcome the precautionary principle, you need to weigh the harm you are currently causing by having a less good theory to the harm you might cause if you cock up with experimenting with new ideas. If you can experiment with new ideas so that failures only have trivial effects then the precautionary principle is almost certainly a bad one, since the on-going harm will never be solved if you continue to abide by it.

What with the pace of change, and the issue of potentially not having the best solutions, there are a lot of reasons to think that if unschooling is to thrive, it is essential that it remain capable of adaptation, and indeed a lot of current evolutionary theory would support this hypothesis. Tim Harford in his book “Adapt” is excellent on all of this.

To summarise his argument: the problems we (including unschoolers) face are complex. In fact they are WAY too complex to be solved by so-called experts. Indeed, according to Harford, experts are actually only very marginally better at solving problems than anyone else. Harford then provides loads of examples about what happens to things that can’t adapt, (ie: they die out). eg: Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012 because it missed the digital revolution. Blockbuster managed the DVD to CD revolution but failed to take the hand of Netflix when it was offered, and that eventually killed it. There are loads of similar examples and this because the world is a complex, constantly changing place and we can’t necessarily predict what the next problem will be or be certain that our previous solutions will solve a new problem.

Harford then goes on to explain that the only way to get to good solutions is to try stuff out, see if it works and if it does, to incorporate these effective solutions into the way problems are solved and to keep doing this.

So should evolutionary theory apply to unschooling?

It’s worth recalling that unschooling never started out as an immutable body of knowledge. The term “Unschooling” was adopted in the 70s but it didn’t come out as a fully formed package of fixed ideas, but rather was a hodge-podge of tentative suggestions as to how to solve problems that were mostly about authoritarian schooling and rote learning pedagogy. Sometimes these solutions worked, sometimes they didn’t. The good ones that mostly worked formed the basis of unschooling. So the fact is that evolution is actually already built into the construction of unschooling theory.

Related to this point, in the early days, it was often hard to tell unschooling theory apart from a lot of other practices that were called something else, like autonomy respecting education or child-led education, etc. Writers, theoreticians and activists took good ideas from one another quite happily and often improved their practice in the process.

It’s also worth considering the fact that evolutionary theory is integral to this group’s version of unschooling theory and practice itself. In the principles, we urge unschoolers to “remain open minded and to constantly test the validity of our ideas against reality, as far as we can know it” and also that “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 forward.”

The next question might be:

At what point does unschooling become something other than itself?

One response could be: Unschooling started out as an evolving, improving set of theories and this is how it came to be a thing at all. There is merit in returning to this notion. By being open to challenge and evolution, a body of wisdom such as unschooling can refine itself, keep on improving and therefore remain resilient or “antifragile”.

This question is also like asking “how long is a piece of string?” or perhaps “when does a wolf become a dog?” I’ve just read one of those heartwarming stories about the rescue and rehoming of an animal, genetically 75% wolf, 35% cent dog. It behaved like a dog, but looked mostly wolfish. I would have called it a wolf myself but it isn’t a terribly interesting question really. What really mattered was the actual character and nature of the animal. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Those who say “But that is not unschooling” might try to argue that they are worried about preserving the name of unschooling so that things can be properly identified. Honestly this makes little sense. Paypal was originally a cryptography company, for example. Apple, at one point, was making portable CD players. However, the public didn’t become impossibly confused when these companies started doing slightly different things. Their world didn’t fall apart. Rather the public loved the fact that changes these Apple, Paypal etc made unlocked new dimensions of success - heights that would never have been reached if these companies had stayed on the original course. Change didn’t mean that these companies had to change identities. Change was part of their identity.
So what does lie behind the criticism that unschooling cannot evolve in the search for better solutions? It is highly likely that rather than concerning themselves with preserving the identity of unschooling, many of these sorts of critics are either trying to keep their books and groups relevant or else are trying to trap unschooling in its most unfavorable version so that they can criticise it more easily.

When unschooling shouldn't change: 
Of course there will be theories that are so ridiculously contradictory that they really would not be unschooling! Any idea that is less good and does not withstand criticism can be just ignored. But new ideas that carry explanatory force and fit with other good unschooling theories should surely be adopted, as they will solve problems more effectively.

So, in the Network there is the benchmark: we have principles which we ask members to respect. They have been thought and argued about and have stood the test of time. They carry explanatory force and fit and they have worked for many families. We won’t change them for ideas that are less good. Indeed many of these less good ideas will have already been discussed at length, been found wanting and have not been adopted. It is not worth, for example, rehashing the argument about unschooling v. radical unschooling. We have been there, done that, and the response is in the files in the Network under the title "Is this group about unschooling or radical unschooling.

However, we are not immune to thinking that if other good theory comes along that has better explanatory force and fit than a competing theory we currently use, we will adapt! Unschooling theory has and would evolve for the better argument and this because we want the very best version of unschooling that there can possibly be so that we can offer the very best education to young people.