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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges

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Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast

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Speaker 1: is recorded on.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Claire Murphy. This is the summer series of Mumma

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Speaker 1: MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie. I know we've

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Speaker 1: only just gotten over the Christmas Newys break and we

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Speaker 1: really don't want to have to deal with the fact

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Speaker 1: that the responsibilities of twenty twenty five are already calling

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Speaker 1: our names. But the reality is the schooling year is

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Speaker 1: just under a month away, and ready or not, here

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Speaker 1: it comes. So while we complete stationary list and get

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Speaker 1: out last year's uniform and shoes to see if they

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Speaker 1: still fit today, we're looking at a new trend known

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Speaker 1: as unschooling, where parents are hoping to undo the rigidity

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Speaker 1: of the curriculum and give kids a better understanding of

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Speaker 1: the world around them from a practical experience. Could unschooling

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Speaker 1: be right for you? According to the Unschooling Mom to

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Speaker 1: Mom website, unschooling is the opportunity for you and your

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Speaker 1: child to engage in learning together, trusting your experience and

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Speaker 1: your child's natural desire to learn. By being present with

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Speaker 1: your child's curiosity and creativity. Together, you discover knowledge in

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Speaker 1: ways not limited by school curriculums. It's a version of

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Speaker 1: homeschooling where children learn through self directed exploration and play

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Speaker 1: rather than the structure involved in traditional schooling. It takes

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Speaker 1: a lot of time and resources from parents to facilitate

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Speaker 1: this style of learning, and as there always is with

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Speaker 1: those who are also homeschooled, there are concerns about children's

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Speaker 1: social skills with a lack of interaction with other children,

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Speaker 1: not their siblings, and their academic preparedness for tertiary education

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Speaker 1: or a chosen career path. The extreme version of unschooling

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Speaker 1: is free schooling, where parents only teach in response to

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Speaker 1: their children's needs.

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Speaker 3: And so for y'all to come up with my comments

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Speaker 3: thinking I have like a teenager, that's like needing to

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Speaker 3: learn calculus, it's crazy to me, bro.

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Speaker 2: That's what society does is they make you think that

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Speaker 2: you are on the time frame your child needs to

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Speaker 2: learn it right now.

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Speaker 3: But there are.

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Speaker 2: Studies done that when a child is ready to learn something,

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Speaker 2: they will learn it very quickly and willingly.

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Speaker 1: It's not gonna be forced, it's not gonna be traumatic,

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Speaker 1: it's not gonna be.

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Speaker 2: Like, I don't know this math problem.

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Speaker 1: Okay, we'll figure it.

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Speaker 3: We'll try again tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: That's Mami on Nami, a self proclaimed spiritual guru and

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Speaker 1: mum of three. But they are also grown up children

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Speaker 1: on TikTok who say they were un schooled and that

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Speaker 1: it was beneficial for them.

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Speaker 4: And yeah, there's probably a lot I don't know about

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Speaker 4: math or history or science, but there is a lot

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Speaker 4: more that I know about myself, about the world, about traveling,

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Speaker 4: about people, about respecting people, and about my own individual

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Speaker 4: talents and gifts that I was able to nurture with

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Speaker 4: the time that I would have spent on the school.

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Speaker 1: But the comments about these stories swing between those who

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Speaker 1: support the movement.

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Speaker 2: I'm currently homeschool slash unschooling my son. We do curriculum

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Speaker 2: with a huge focus on self discovery and mental and

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Speaker 2: emotional health.

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Speaker 5: Excited to unschool my kids. I'm a Harvard and MIT

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Speaker 5: right and education doesn't mean you know, I want my

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Speaker 5: kid to know life and themselves.

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Speaker 1: And those who are concerned about what this may do

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Speaker 1: to the kids once they get out into the real world.

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Speaker 2: The thing I find fault in with unschooling is, yeah,

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Speaker 2: those real life things are important self discovery and to

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Speaker 2: be a good human and yes, there is a serious

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Speaker 2: lack of that in the world. But learning those things

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Speaker 2: and learning important subjects like maths, science, and history are

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Speaker 2: not mutually exclusive.

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Speaker 1: But Mamoami's response to those who don't feel unschool and

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Speaker 1: gives those who are taught in this manner a bright

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Speaker 1: future is that she's not trying to raise more of

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Speaker 1: the same as those who come through the traditional school system.

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Speaker 3: They're not going to be civic minded numbers of a

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Speaker 3: functioning democracy. First of all, it's dysfunctional, but.

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Speaker 2: Second of all, that's the whole point.

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Speaker 1: But what is it actually like to unschool? And what's

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Speaker 1: the big difference between homeschooling and unschooling? Hillary? You is

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Speaker 1: a parent who's unschooling had children, Hillary, what made you

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Speaker 1: decide that traditional schooling wasn't the best option for your children.

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Speaker 5: I definitely didn't intend to be a homeschooling parent, and

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Speaker 5: the reason we ended up homeschooling was absolutely just because

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Speaker 5: of our own child's needs. He had a really bad

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Speaker 5: time at Kindy, no fault of the KINDI it was

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Speaker 5: a great place and great people, but it just wasn't

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Speaker 5: the right place for him. He had a number of

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Speaker 5: health issues going on, and he was just a very

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Speaker 5: distressed little boy. So we ended up pursuing various medical

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Speaker 5: professionals to help him, and he does now have a

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Speaker 5: number of diagnoses and we just had to spend a

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Speaker 5: couple of years really helping him recover his health mentally

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Speaker 5: and physically. So it was a case of he actually

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Speaker 5: couldn't attend somewhere and through that we went, well, we'll

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Speaker 5: just have to meet his needs at home to start with.

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Speaker 5: And as he came out of his period of really

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Speaker 5: poor health, his energy started to come back and his

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Speaker 5: natural interests started to come through, and we started seeing

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Speaker 5: this natural first for learning, and we just went with that.

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Speaker 5: And it was quite a natural progression to follow what

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Speaker 5: he was interested in and find ways to work in

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Speaker 5: the sorts of things that we thought he might be learning.

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Speaker 5: And we connected with other people who were in a

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Speaker 5: similar situation with their kids, and it sort of evolved

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Speaker 5: from there. It actually turns out that homeschooling suits him

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Speaker 5: really well, and that's how we got here.

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Speaker 1: I guess he really touched on what the foundation of

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Speaker 1: unschooling is in that it is led by the child

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Speaker 1: themselves and their interests and what they would like to

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Speaker 1: learn about, and we'll get into that in a little

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Speaker 1: bit detail in a moment. But choosing to stay at

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Speaker 1: home and homeschool or unschool or free school, whichever you

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Speaker 1: choose to do with your children, that's a really big decision.

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Speaker 1: That's a financial decision, that's your time decision, and that's

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Speaker 1: your career decision too, because I understand you're a lawyer

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Speaker 1: before this, and so how do you make those decisions.

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Speaker 1: That's a really difficult choice to make.

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Speaker 5: It was a really difficult choice, and at the same time,

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Speaker 5: it was the easiest choice in the world, because my

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Speaker 5: dear little boy was so unwell that I honestly would

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Speaker 5: have done anything to help him, and the best thing

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Speaker 5: I could do for him at the time was just

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Speaker 5: giving him the safest, most nurturing place at home, with

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Speaker 5: no expectations of having to go and be or cope

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Speaker 5: anywhere else. I hope that for most people they don't

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Speaker 5: have to go through something like we did. But our

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Speaker 5: family had this period of crisis where things were just

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Speaker 5: felt so dark and we just wanted our child to

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Speaker 5: be okay. And so when I had that in one

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Speaker 5: hand and working in the other, there was no competition really.

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Speaker 5: Of course I do miss the things that come with working.

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Speaker 5: I miss that actual kind of work. We've given up

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Speaker 5: an income, but for me personally, because of what we

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Speaker 5: went through, it's a sacrifice that I'll never regret. It

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Speaker 5: doesn't mean that it's easy, though it does come at

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Speaker 5: a cost.

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Speaker 1: Well, can you take us through what unschooling looks like

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Speaker 1: for you? Because I loved this note that you wrote

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Speaker 1: when you're explaining to us how you and your family

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Speaker 1: work in that it's not a case of trying to

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Speaker 1: encourage your son or make him learn, it's that you

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Speaker 1: actually can't stop him from wanting to learn. Can you

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Speaker 1: talk me through how that works and how it kind

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Speaker 1: of works here in Australia, because I presume that you

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Speaker 1: would have to check in with some kind of authority

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Speaker 1: to prove that you are following some kind of curriculum.

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Speaker 1: How does unschooling work for you?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so there as many different ways to unschool as

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Speaker 5: there are families doing it, and in each state in

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Speaker 5: Australia there are different rules around how you register for

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Speaker 5: home education. I'm in Queensland and we're registered and we

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Speaker 5: provide a report on what the kids are doing each year,

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Speaker 5: and as long as I can show that I am

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Speaker 5: planning for it and providing a high quality education, than

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Speaker 5: the way in which we have to do it is

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Speaker 5: flexible at this point in time. So for us, I

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Speaker 5: know that there's probably a lot of ideas around that

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Speaker 5: unschooling might mean unparenting. That's certainly not the case in

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Speaker 5: our family. We have a really involved and engaged in

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Speaker 5: network of relationships, both within our immediate family and around us.

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Speaker 5: To come back to the question you asked about the

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Speaker 5: part you referred to about not being able to stop

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Speaker 5: my son learning, this is it that until he was

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Speaker 5: at a position where his mind and his body were

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Speaker 5: able to learn, whether that was going to be at

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Speaker 5: home or in any other organization, I couldn't make him.

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Speaker 5: No one could have made him. And when a child

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Speaker 5: feels safe and nurtured and their interests are respected, they're

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Speaker 5: more likely, this is at least my experience, to engage

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Speaker 5: in things. So once he had that sort of sense

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Speaker 5: of health and happiness at home, his natural curiosity came out.

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Speaker 5: So he just thinks of something, He asks me these

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Speaker 5: really hard questions, and also wants to investigate things, whether

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Speaker 5: it's how something works, or the way different words came

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Speaker 5: to be, and we just find ways to work with that.

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Speaker 5: We end up talking about the history of something at

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Speaker 5: the same time as spelling it or reading about it,

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Speaker 5: finding that there's something to do with maths or science

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Speaker 5: related to it, and in the space of one half

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Speaker 5: hour on a topic, we've worked in all these other things.

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Speaker 5: What I don't do is say, okay, well, now it's

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Speaker 5: learning time or school time or whatever. We don't sit

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Speaker 5: down and do lessons like that, because in fact, our

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Speaker 5: entire day is full of that.

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Speaker 1: What would you say the major benefit of unschooling has

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Speaker 1: been for you?

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Speaker 5: It's the strength of the relationshi between the kids and

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Speaker 5: me and my husband, and the freedom to really love learning.

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Speaker 5: The kids really love learning because they get to satisfy

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Speaker 5: their own curiosity and desires, and they don't have to

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Speaker 5: then wait until after school to look something up, or

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Speaker 5: they don't have to push through things that they're uncomfortable with,

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Speaker 5: where it is actually something that is appropriate to accommodate.

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Speaker 5: For example, if we've had a big day doing something

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Speaker 5: and they're tired the next day, that's okay, we can

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Speaker 5: work with that. So I feel like it teaches them

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Speaker 5: a lot more understanding of themselves and each other and

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Speaker 5: relationships with others. They don't just have to go through

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Speaker 5: the motions of things.

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Speaker 1: What would you say the biggest barriers have been for you?

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Speaker 5: The hardest parts are probably the lack of a break.

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Speaker 5: It's twenty four to seven parenting and learning, so that

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Speaker 5: is exhausting. But again it's a balancing act of how

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Speaker 5: the whole family works. I guess it can feel wearing

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Speaker 5: when people express concern that they think that homeschooling kids

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Speaker 5: mightn't really be learning. But I think if you spend

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Speaker 5: five minutes with my kids, you'll see that they're learning

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Speaker 5: all sorts of things.

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Speaker 1: The unschooling movement seems to be more of a focus

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Speaker 1: for American parents, and the influence here in Australia has

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Speaker 1: come from there too. Back in the nineties, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: Mameo Ami on TikTok influencing parents. It was John Holt,

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Speaker 1: an unschooling guru from the US, who discovered that children

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Speaker 1: could learn as they followed their interests, saying children who

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Speaker 1: were provided with a rich and stimulating learning environment would

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Speaker 1: learn that they are ready to learn when they're ready

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Speaker 1: to learn.

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Speaker 2: It.

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Speaker 1: It was his friend Raymond Moore who began sharing his

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Speaker 1: research on education away from the school structure, and the

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Speaker 1: phrase homeschooling was born back in the seventies. Unschooling and

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Speaker 1: homeschooling meant the same thing, kids learning away from school environments.

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Speaker 1: So what do the education experts think, Rebecca, English teachers

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Speaker 1: in the School of Teacher Education and leadership in the

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Speaker 1: Faculty of Education at QT Rebecca, are we seeing a

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Speaker 1: rising parents choosing to unschool in Australia And if so,

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Speaker 1: why do you think that is?

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Speaker 3: That's a beautiful question, this idea that they would be

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Speaker 3: research around what's the best option for your child? Unfortunately,

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Speaker 3: every child is as unique as they are, so there

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Speaker 3: is no one answer to that question of what's the

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Speaker 3: best education for my child?

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Speaker 1: So if we were to consider that, would you then

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Speaker 1: say that free schooling, round schooling or homeschooling is a

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Speaker 1: better option because of the fact that parents essentially know

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Speaker 1: their own children better than anyone.

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Speaker 3: When you look at the research around why people choose

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Speaker 3: to homeschool and in particular unschool, which is a branch

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Speaker 3: of homeschooling or a type of homeschooling. When we find

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Speaker 3: that research, what we tend to read is that parents

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Speaker 3: of children with specific needs, parents of young people who

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Speaker 3: have experienced negative things happening to them in school, those

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Speaker 3: kinds of people tend to find that unschooling for a

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Speaker 3: period of time or for the entirety of that child's

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Speaker 3: schooling journey is actually really healing and really helpful for

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Speaker 3: that young person.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of concerns obviously around traditional school in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. We have teacher shortages, we have teachers

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Speaker 1: being treated very differently than what they would have been

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Speaker 1: many decades ago when they were very respected. There's bullying

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Speaker 1: in schools. Are you surprised that there is this increase

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Speaker 1: in a moving away from that traditional system.

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Speaker 3: I am not surprised that people are moving increasingly toward homeschooling.

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Speaker 3: Latest Queensland data suggests that there's more than eleven thousand,

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Speaker 3: two hundred young people homeschooling just in Queensland, and that's

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Speaker 3: up on ten thousand and forty eight from last year,

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Speaker 3: which is up on about eight thousand from the year before.

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Speaker 3: So we're seeing a really constant move toward homeschooling and

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Speaker 3: unschooling as a type of homeschooling. I'm not surprised I

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Speaker 3: think we're living in a community where we've been told

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Speaker 3: for a really long time that schools are failing. We

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Speaker 3: have a terrible public discourse around teachers. We make teachers

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Speaker 3: sit a literacy or numeracy test while they're studying to

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Speaker 3: be a teacher, because we just don't trust them. We

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Speaker 3: don't make My brother in law is an ophthalmic surgeon.

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Speaker 3: He never sat a literacy and numeracy test. He never

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Speaker 3: sat any of that kind of thing. We had this

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Speaker 3: real lack of faith I think in teachers and in schools.

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Speaker 3: So really it doesn't surprise me at all. The people think, well,

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Speaker 3: I've got a degree in accountancy, or I have a

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Speaker 3: PhD in chemistry. I could do just as good or

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Speaker 3: better job. And you know, I do know my child

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Speaker 3: really well. I've worked with that child since say we're

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Speaker 3: an infant. I know them intimately. I can provide the

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Speaker 3: best education for them.

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Speaker 1: What though, if you went from say your own schooling

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Speaker 1: years to becoming a young parent and then maybe not

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Speaker 1: getting a tertiary education or not even really having any

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Speaker 1: time in say a career, What if the parent is

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Speaker 1: not qualified to teach in any way, shape or form

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Speaker 1: other than the fact that they are that child's parent.

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Speaker 3: That's a really interesting question, this idea that parents need

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Speaker 3: to be qualified in order to be a home educator.

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Speaker 3: I think when I look at the research around that,

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Speaker 3: what I read parents saying is firstly, they don't need

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Speaker 3: a qualification to become a parent, and that some really

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Speaker 3: highly qualified people actually make terrible parents. I think the

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Speaker 3: second thing, too, is this assumption that's somehow having been

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Speaker 3: to school and having experienced teaching or I often see

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Speaker 3: this from government legislation having a teaching qualification makes you

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Speaker 3: a better home educator. There is no evidence that the

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Speaker 3: parents educational background positively correlates with success in home education,

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Speaker 3: and that advocates in New South Wales, for example, tell

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Speaker 3: stories of families who work together to improve everybody's educational

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Speaker 3: level and a kind of rising tide lifts all the boats,

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Speaker 3: and that through that experience everybody is benefited. So I

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Speaker 3: don't know that there is evidence that suggests that parents

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Speaker 3: necessarily need to be tertiary qualified to home educate.

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Speaker 1: Do also, parents have access to a hell of a

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Speaker 1: lot more resources now for homeschooling than they did, say, ten, fifteen,

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Speaker 1: twenty years ago. Is it a lot easier to homeschool.

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Speaker 1: I mean, obviously taking into account homeschooling obviously takes up

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Speaker 1: a lot of your time, effort, and resources. But is

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Speaker 1: homeschooling essentially easier now with the access to resources that

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Speaker 1: parents have now?

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Speaker 3: I'm writing a book about teachers who choose to homeschool,

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Speaker 3: and one of the mums yesterday, her kid is seventeen,

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Speaker 3: so almost at the end. She has four children, so

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Speaker 3: she's gone through all four of them. This is the

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Speaker 3: last one. And she talked to me about the difference

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Speaker 3: from when she started in the late nineties to now.

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Speaker 3: You know, the capacity to find information, to engage with people,

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Speaker 3: to even get curriculum resources, if that's your jam, is

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Speaker 3: so different than what it was in the noughts. Even so,

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Speaker 3: I think that access to resources through the internet, those

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Speaker 3: connections that you can make with other parents are massively

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Speaker 3: improved now due to social media and more online spaces.

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Speaker 1: How do you feel about this unschooling movement now? Do

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Speaker 1: you think a lot of the pushback comes from the

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Speaker 1: fact that we are so programmed to think that school

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Speaker 1: is a be all and end all to kick off

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Speaker 1: a child's education, Because what we want to come out

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Speaker 1: the other side of that is someone who will be

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Speaker 1: a productive member of society and who will contribute to

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Speaker 1: our economy. Do you think that's where the backlash comes.

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Speaker 1: We're programmed to think that way.

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Speaker 3: I think we're definitely a programmed to think that school

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Speaker 3: is the be all and end all, because we assess

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Speaker 3: everything that child has done through this one number of

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Speaker 3: this ATA that everybody gets now, and that number is

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Speaker 3: then converted into what's called a ranking and that ranking

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Speaker 3: score determines which university course as you get into. But

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Speaker 3: key to all of that is university. Not everybody will

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Speaker 3: go to university. Not everybody wants to go to university.

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Speaker 3: So this idea that everything should come down to that

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Speaker 3: one number is really problematic. We see increasing rates of

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Speaker 3: anxiety among you young people, particularly in the senior secondary

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Speaker 3: phase of learning, because they think, Oh, my entire worth

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Speaker 3: as a human is in this ATAR score that I

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Speaker 3: get and this degree that I get into. And I

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Speaker 3: think that's really dangerous. There's some research out of India

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Speaker 3: which shows that with the way that their school system

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Speaker 3: is organized, there's lots of tests and lots of points

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Speaker 3: which block off major pathways to young people. If you

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Speaker 3: don't do very well unschooling was actually found to be

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Speaker 3: deeply corrective for the high rates of anxiety that these

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Speaker 3: young people had, and that when they were unschooled and

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Speaker 3: they realized that there were alternative pathways that they could take,

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Speaker 3: it really changed their relationship to learning and education. And

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Speaker 3: I think what's really interesting, Claire, is this idea of

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Speaker 3: what are we educating young people for. Are we educating

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Speaker 3: them so that they can become an accountant and X

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Speaker 3: number of them can become a lawyer, and X number

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Speaker 3: of them can become like my brother in law, an

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Speaker 3: opthalmic surgeon, Or are we educating young people so that

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Speaker 3: they can think and contribute and be productive members of society.

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Speaker 3: And when you talk to families, particularly those that are

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Speaker 3: in school, they're really interested in the latter, not the former.

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Speaker 3: The former will come this idea of having a career

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Speaker 3: of going to UNI, becoming a builder, whatever it is

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Speaker 3: you decide to do. But for them being a human

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Speaker 3: being who knows themselves and lives comfortably in the world

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Speaker 3: and is able to learn what they need to learn,

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Speaker 3: or is able to engage productively with other people. That's

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Speaker 3: the core of education.

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Speaker 1: We've spoken a lot about unschooling and homeschooling today, but

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Speaker 1: while it is becoming more prevalent and better quality for

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Speaker 1: Aussie kids, it doesn't suit every student or every family,

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Speaker 1: and for some kids, the traditional school environment can actually

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Speaker 1: be where they thrive. As Sydney Sciences and Humanities Advanced

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Speaker 1: Research Center paper shows that early childhood education in particular

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Speaker 1: enhances children's developmental capacities and provides invaluable childhood experiences like play, in, friendship,

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Speaker 1: and exploration. Parents don't need to feel guilty about sending

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Speaker 1: their kids it's to mainstream schooling. It can be the

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Speaker 1: place that their child finds who they are and how

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Speaker 1: they relate to others while they learn all the basics.

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Speaker 1: Teachers are also educated and caring and work hard to

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Speaker 1: provide the learning tools your children need. For some children, too,

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Speaker 1: school is a place they can retreat from issues they

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Speaker 1: may be experiencing at home, a refuge, especially if they're

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Speaker 1: experiencing a domestic violent situation. So chuck the parental guilt

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Speaker 1: in the bin. You know what's right for your child,

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Speaker 1: and that might be home or unschooling, or it might

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Speaker 1: be sending them to school, whatever works for you. If

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Speaker 1: you are a school parent and you want to know

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Speaker 1: what type you are? Our friends over at This Glorious

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Speaker 1: Mess podcast have an episode about the seven types of

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Speaker 1: school parents, and as even a quiz you can take

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Speaker 1: to work out which one you are. You can find

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Speaker 1: the links to those in our show notes. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: tuning in today, friends. The Couikie is produced by me

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Speaker 1: Claire Murphy and our executive producer Tailorestrano, with audio production

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Speaker 1: by Tom Lyon.