Editor’s Pick. Written by Hilinda.
All curriculum still has two things in common. One is that life is separated into subjects at all, and the other is that there is an order in which things are taught that is decided on by someone other than the person doing the learning. So how does the person creating the curriculum decide what should be taught when, in what order, at what age? And how do they account for all the tiny bits of knowledge that may or may not be known by the student?
Unschooling depends on having all the time in the world, really, to learn. It isn’t about “introducing” a “subject” at the most appropriate time, it’s about building a foundation of learning that extends into anything and everything. It’s about literally millions of little moments, all adding up to better understanding.
It becomes almost impossible to identify when anything was “introduced” because everything is so interconnected, that you can’t see where one thing changed to become another, or where someone stopped learning one thing, and began learning another, because there are no such moments. There is a LOT of overlap.
Things come up in conversation, or in passing. Maybe in a book, or a game, or a movie, or an unfamiliar word on a sign. In thinking about one thing, as someone starts to understand it, they start considering all sorts of related things.
