The Worry That Your Unschooler Isn’t Learning What He Should Be Learning
Editor’s Pick. Written by Leo Babauta.
It seems that many parents here in the U.S. (and very possibly in other countries) are worried about how much their child is learning by a certain age. Does my kid know everything that a 2nd grader should know? Is my kid learning as fast as other 3-year-olds? Does my sister’s kid know more than my kid does?
I think the traditional school system encourages this (there are non-traditional schools that break away from it). Schools have decided that all kids need to know X, Y, and Z by age 6, and then U, V, and W by age 7, and so on. How does this get determined? Who are these oracles of education who know exactly what our kids need to know by age 18, and can predict what the future will be like at that time? It’s impossible. None of us could have predicted what 2013 was like in 1999, and we certainly don’t know what the world will be like in another 10-15 years.