In today's episode, we discuss the concept of "unschooling", a learner-directed educational approach popularized by John Holt, contrasting it with traditional schooling.
Traditional? Actually what we know as "unschooling" was considered pretty normal until the Industrial Revolution introduced the concept of the 8-hour work day, parents working far from home. What to do with the kids?
Voila! The modern school environment was born. And while there are some pretty good public and even private institutions, even the best of intentions can't undo basic humanity and how we're programmed to learn how to live life, learn a trade or a profession, etc.
Our guest, Judy Arnall, is the author of 'Unschooling to University'. Judy shares her journey into unschooling driven by her dissatisfaction with authoritarian school environments and her commitment to non-punitive parenting.
Judy explains the benefits of unschooling, such as fostering a child's innate curiosity and self-directed learning, and addresses common concerns like gaps in knowledge and the role of screens in education. We also touch on the practicalities of unschooling, such as transitioning to formal learning for university preparation and overcoming societal misconceptions about educational authority.
The conversation includes Judy’s insights into brain development, discipline versus punishment, and the advantages of personalized, interest-driven education for children.
Be sure to tune in to my follow-up interview with Judy which focuses exclusively on the concept of non-punitive parenting. If you're exasperated with trying to get your kids to "do the right thing," you might want to give it a listen!
In this interview with Judy, you'll discover:
01:59 Judy's Journey into Unschooling
04:04 The Concept of Discipline vs. Punishment
05:04 Critique of Traditional Schooling Methods
07:21 Impact of Traditional Schooling on Children
08:14 Unschooling and Special Needs
09:28 Common Objections to Unschooling
15:09 The Role of Video Games in Education
18:43 Transitioning to Unschooling
24:44 Challenges and Considerations in Unschooling
26:22 Addressing Concerns About Unschooling
26:37 Teaching Commitment and Grit
27:22 Personal Experiences with Commitment
29:53 Managing Screen Time and Activities
31:30 Transitioning to Formal Education
33:49 The Role of Khan Academy
35:42 Homeschooling vs. Traditional Schooling
43:10 Parental Rights in Education
45:48 Resources for Unschooling
46:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Resources mentioned:
Unschooling to University
Judy Arnall's website
About the guest:
Judy Arnall, BA, CCFE (Certified Canadian Family Life Educator), DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster) is an international award winning professional keynote speaker and a well-known Canadian parenting expert, having given advice for television interviews on CBC, CTV, and Global as well as publications such as Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Canadian Living, Parents magazine, and newspapers including The Globe and Mail, Sun Media and Postmedia News.
Judy is certified in the Brain Story and many training programs such as The Growing Brain: 0-5, by ZeroToThree.org, Terrific Toddlers by AHS-Alberta Health Services, P.E.T. Parent Effectiveness Training, Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (Durrant), and Attached At The Heart by API-Attachment Parenting International.
The devil doesn't want you to listen to this!
Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil is now available in audiobook format, narrated by Yours Truly.
Visit my website, jamesdnewcomb.com to get instant access to the audios!
(upbeat music) - Conscious living in a zonked out world. You're listening to "Barvosh Done" with James D. Newcomb. Brought to you by Grandma Petruo. (upbeat music) - Today we are talking about unschooling. And those of you who are my age and a little bit older may recall, in the 1970s and 1980s, the seven up soda called themselves the uncola. And from what I understand, the person, the father of the unschooling movement, the man by the name of John Holt. Our guest probably can expound on this a little bit better than I can, but he called it unschooling. He had this weird idea that shipping kids who are six and seven years old off to a separate building completely foreign from their houses, separated from their parents, their loved ones, and then sending them back, just basically treating them like buckets to fill with knowledge and then face the world. He thought, maybe there's a better way to do this and go back to the way that children used to learn how to be human beings, not just people who know how to recite facts and figures. So the unschooling movement was born and it's doing really well. And we have on the line with us, a lady by the name of Judy Arnall, who is the author of a book called Unschooling to University. She speaks with a lot of authority, a lot of wisdom and a lot of grace when it comes to how to raise our children, not just to be knowledgeable, but how to be well-rounded individuals. Judy, it's great to have you. - Thanks for having me, James. I'm happy to be here. - Can you just give us a little bit of background about yourself, how you got involved in the unschooling movement and then we can just take it from there? - I started, when I had three children, little kids under five, I changed my career to educate parents and house authorities on child development. I studied brain and child development at university and kept up with it and that was my career. When I started raising all five of my children, I swore to myself I would never punish them. I would raise them without punishment. And that's pretty mainstream right now in Canada is that mode of raising children without punishment, but it hasn't really gotten into the schools yet. So my kids started school, the two oldest ones, and I didn't like what I was seeing. I'm raising my kids in a democracy and yet they are being educated in a very authoritarian, top-down hierarchy that does use punishments and bribes to get kids to learn. And I know from brain research is that every child learns if they breathe, they learn it's not something they have to be bribed or punished into. So that's nowhere. So it took me about two years of sending my kids to school before I actually pulled them out and started like everyone else, homeschooling. But that didn't work well 'cause homeschooling is taking the school model and bringing it home, which doesn't work very well because your parents, your safe, kids aren't gonna listen to you unless you're very authoritarian. So after a while, we just slid into just playing and living our lives and being curious. And that's the word called unschooling. It's not like school at all. So that's where we went. - Now, how would you describe the difference between punishment and discipline? - Okay, that's a good one. Discipline means to teach. And actually, we discipline ever since babies are born because we're teaching them constantly as parents and caregivers. Punishment is teaching, but it's teaching by method of hurting. So it's, it uses hurt or an unpleasant thing to teach something where discipline. Yes, yeah, can be consequences. - And how do, and you just opened a couple of questions before we really dive into this, but how do schools bribe children to learn? - Oh, in various ways. Usually giving them pizza coupons when they read books, bribe them with grades, special privileges, like if they finish early and do well, they get to clean the chalkboard, those kinds of things. - Okay, all right. Now, you alluded to how bringing your children home and doing the homeschooling is basically bringing the school model to your home. And I'd like to begin our interview by asking, what is the school model? And my understanding of it is, and you can fill in whatever blanks I leave, is that up until about maybe 1,800, 1,850 timeframe, it was the way that children learned was very similar to what we call today unschooling. But then the industrial revolution occurred, and there's this need for warm bodies in these factories to create widgets and whatnot. And so the public schools are the, what we now call traditional schools, were born out of necessity to meet that need. I was wondering if you could just expound on that just a bit. - That's right. That's a really good timeline of what happened. And yes, the most people home educated their children for thousands of years, or kids' apprentice in the villages, and then the industrial revolution hit. And of course, parents had a very big need then, and that was called childcare. So they hired the most educated person in the village to take care of the kids while the parents went off to work. And that has been our system for probably about the last 170 years. Only now things have changed so much. Most parents are well educated to teach their own up to about grade eight, even without teacher's manuals. But so there is one thing we've discovered during COVID that we still need, and that's called childcare. We do need childcare for children under age 12, and school still fulfills that function. But, and we're seeing that now with a lot of parents teenagers wanting to pull their kids out of school, because they no longer need that childcare function, but they do need an alternative way for their children to get educated. The system's not working. - And how is it not working? - When you get 30 same age kids, all in the thrills of hormones are just mean kids. There's a lot of bullying. When you think there are only three institutions in society where people have to be, it's jail, mental hospitals, and schools, and all three of them are rampant with bullying. But it's not just the bullying. It's the standardization that leaves little room for personalization. It's the non-consensual part of learning. Children do not have a say in what they learn. They're told what to learn. Whereas we know kids are curious. They're gonna learn everything they need to learn when they need it, if you just leave them to their own devices. - What about children who are so-called diagnosed with things like ADD, ADHD? Do you think that the traditional model of schooling has anything to do with such diagnoses and that some of the attention or children who have a tendency to show a lack of focus? Is that because, how much blame can we assign to this model of teaching children? - I think there's a lot of that. I actually did have a child with ADHD and video games, no problem with focus right there. But reading Shakespeare, that's a problem. And schools can accommodate children with special needs to a certain extent, but they still have to teach a government curriculum 'cause they're funded to do. Whereas a parent at home can certainly modify anything that their child wants to learn if they wanna learn it. And that's the beauty of unschooling is if kids don't wanna learn it, they're not forced to learn it. They can spend that time learning something that is much more enjoyable and interesting to them. - What are some of the common objections that you hear from parents? Because it seems to me like people would hear what you have to say and it's so different from what we're taught is the right way so-called to teach children. What you say is very radical and on the one hand it makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, we have this fear of departing from conventional wisdom or being brandished by the tribe as outsiders. I'm just wondering what are the common objections that you hear when people are entertaining what you have to say about education? - Hey, there's quite a, there's a few common ones. One of them isn't that giving too much power to the child to empower them to decide what to learn. And my stance is that children already have the power. We're just handing it over to them a lot earlier than they would get in after high school. And kids, if they don't wanna learn, they act out in class, they tune out when they're teenagers and when they're old enough, they drop out. They're wasting everybody's time. Why not empower them to learn what they wanna learn and be excited about learning and curious and fun? The other thing question we get is, will there be gaps? And we say, yeah, there will be gaps in knowledge, but any child who goes to public school will have gaps too. You know, there's 195 countries in the world. Not every school can help a child study all 195 countries. They have to pick and choose. And why not the learner pick and choose based on their interests? And then the other one is, how will kids learn things they should know? But you don't teach them things like history, world history. And in my experience of observing the 30 kids I write about in the book, is that they're very keen. Any child is very keen to act grown up, to know what grownups know, to learn about their world, their community. And even now with the internet, I started this one, we didn't have an internet. And with the internet, they have everything at their fingertips. Every piece of knowledge they have, they can look it up. So it's even better than ever to make it more personal to them. - Yeah, I was at my son's school. It's a public school yesterday for my wife and I have lunch with him whenever possible. And I was in that, the cafeteria just looking around and I thought, 'cause I'm thinking about this interview that's coming up in less than a day. And I'm thinking, man, even if the school wanted to change something that would be to the benefit of a child, to update it to the modern times which are changing at an exponential rate, just the nature of the public school system with its bureaucracies would just make it almost impossible to keep up with the way the technology is changing and the way that the world is changing right in front of us. - I totally agree, our social studies textbook that is still being used in classrooms now is from 2007. That was before we had smartphones. - Right. - But it takes 15 years usually to upgrade curriculum in government schools just because there's so much bureaucracy to it where we still don't know what we're educating kids for. Five years ago, we had no clue about chat GPT. We had no, or some people had a clue but the general public didn't. - And yet I know in our jurisdiction, we teach kids one hour of coding a year and that is not enough. And that's the nature of bureaucracy. - You mean the public schools teach one hour of coding per year? - Yes. - At what age? - It starts about grade three. - Okay. And what do you mean by coding? - Coding programming. - Like web design or? - Web design or they started with HTML and they're doing Python now but those are all things my kids learned on their own and they had the time to learn it on their own 'cause they had days and days to fill. - I think about my child who's nine years old and he's going to this public school and he has his own interests and he does struggle a little bit with school and staying focused and staying on task sometimes and we've had all kinds of meetings with his teachers and with his mother and nobody seems to want to even suggest that maybe there's an alternate way of doing things other than sending him to this public school. In all these meetings that we've had nobody has ever said maybe his dad would like to teach him. They don't ever suggest that because it seems to me like it would be, it would not be in their interests to promote something other than what is at their sustenance and their means of putting food on the table. - Yes, that sounds pretty much where we live too and you can't blame it. School is a billion dollar industry. It supports a lot of jobs from bus drivers to teachers to curriculum developers to government officials and we just can't have the public knowing that their kids can learn pretty well everything they need to learn by surfing the internet and playing video games. But don't want to get that out there. - Okay, 'cause this is an issue for me too because my son loves to play roblox and Minecraft. So I want to get it from your perspective how valuable are video games for education? - Fantastic, obviously we're a gamer family. I have five kids and they're all gamers from a young age. They played a lot of video games. They learned a lot of critical thinking, problem solving, team player, cooperation under time pressures. They learned a lot of subject matter and now I have my engineer actually works for a video game maker. - What kind of video games? 'Cause some of those video games you can just get lost and you just rot your brain away. But others, I love to play Angry Birds when I'm just taking a break from my work. It's wonderful, it makes you focus, it teaches you engineering, like you got to hit that bird at just the right spot to make that thing topple over. It's wonderful, I love the game. And I like that my son is, he loves video games and like you said, there's no attention deficit when he's playing roblox. My concern is that if that's all he does, then it opens him up to potential addiction, to video games, like when he's nine years old, he doesn't have the wherewithal to say, okay, this is enough. So as a parent, how can I just guide him in the right way and what point is like setting boundaries or time limits on video games, things like that? - That's such a common question. I get all the time, even in parenting. First of all, video games are not gonna rot brains. They have a lot of really good educational merits, even the non-educational video games. My kids used to think the educational ones were so lame that they would, they'd be playing World of Warcraft and roblox and Minecraft and all those ones too, in addition to Call of Duty and every game teaches something. But yes, you're right. Kids don't have that executive function part of their brain mature enough yet to put the brakes on themselves until I've seen that kick in about 16, 17, where my kids would delay buying a game because it was exam season. Or even in university, they would wait and wait. That does kick in eventually that self-control, but you have to be the parent and watch to see how much is too much for your individual child. Some kids get very antsy. Other kids can play 16 hours a day, right? It was no problem. The other thing I wanted to address too is that the research out there shows that most kids in healthy nurturing families will not develop an addiction, no matter how much screen time they have, because addiction is a brain impairment, it's not a matter of willpower. It's a broken brain. And kids don't get that when they're raised in a nurturing environment. - Okay, this is really helpful. And I'm getting off topic a little bit from unschooling, but these are pressing for me personally, and maybe someone listening in, they have the same issues with their child. So there's a little bonus content for all of you. Bonus for a little reward for sticking it through. Let's go back to unschooling. Now that we've talked about the difference between unschooling and traditional schooling, and let's say that a family is ready to make the leap, and they decide, come June, whatever is the last day of my child's public school, we're gonna send the notice in, we're taking them out, and we're gonna give this unschooling thing a shot. What would a family that makes this decision expect in the first 90 days, the first year, what's that experience gonna be like for them? - I think it's like summer holidays all year round. It's going to be very relaxing, it's gonna be fun, it's going to be, you start getting to know each other again, the siblings start de-schooling. - De-schooling. - De-schooling is when September comes around, and they have to get used to not being forced to study a certain number of hours, or the school model. We tell parents, actually a lot of parents don't jump right into unschooling. They tend to go into homeschooling first, and then they realize how much kids learn on their own that they're not teaching them, and then they slide into unschooling. But there are still times where parents get worried, I know I was one of them, I had times where I didn't see anything that looked like formal learning going on, and that's a time that you really need to mark down those times that your kids are learning things, or have an a-ha moment. - A lot of parents start worrying, 'cause their kids do get on screens, and they sit on YouTube all the time and watch videos, and it doesn't look like anything they know to be school. And we tell parents, it's not gonna last forever. Everything has a stage. Your kids are gonna get sick of that, according to their own schedule, and move on to some other interests, it will happen. But parents like to nudge it along a bit, so. - Yeah, we just tell them to relax, just do what you do all summer, but do it September to June. - Plus June through September, God. - Right. - I was thinking about it, 'cause I was planning on asking this question, and I thought, I wonder if it's like the person who retires, and they just veg out for about three months, but after a really short time, they just get the itch to wanna be busy, and they just go out and find something to do. Is that similar to the de-schooling process? - That is such a good analogy, because people worry that they're gonna have these empty days to fill when they retire, and they won't have any interests or affiliations, and yet, the first week, they're busy. You can hardly get a lunch in, and it's like that with unschooling. You're educating out in the community. You have, you get into a rhythm, like we had every Monday night was our library night, and every Friday afternoon was part day with the other homeschoolers. You get into a rhythm in a week, and it's just that kids find learning in so many things, the grocery store, the doctor's office, in the community, in the parks, in wetlands, you name it, they find the learning. - I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate a little bit on this concept, 'cause I've read about education, and listened to podcasts, I think a couple with yourself, so that I could prepare for this interview, and a common theme that I hear among people who are in favor of unschooling and homeschooling, is that the traditional model of schooling just essentially sucks the joy out of children. Like, learning things should be a state of, you should be in a state of wonder when you're learning things, but then by the time you get to 16, 17 years old, and this is my own experience, thinking back to my days in a public school, I was 16 and 17, I didn't want to learn anything. I was just tired of it. What is your take on that? - I agree, a lot of kids are burning out by about grade eight, so age 13, 14. When I looked at my kids, we're gearing up for more formal learning. I said to them, do you want to do some high school credits, but do it your way? Because they had so much free time and so much time to explore their interests, they pretty well knew what they wanted to do after high school. And I said, okay, if you want to be an engineer, you're going to need math, you're going to need science. If you want to, and actually four of my kids went into STEM careers, so we had to about grade eight, we had to say, okay, maybe it's time to start doing some formal math, but they're not burning out. They were excited to do more formal high school courses, you know, some they were slogging it out 'cause they didn't really like it, but I said to them, hey, kids go to school six hours a day and do this, you're only doing this for an hour a day. And they're like, oh, thank goodness. So yeah, and those are the years that count. The high school years are the ones that count for post-secondary, so you want kids excited about learning then, not burned out. And what does burn out look like when you're eighth grade and you're burned out, what does that look like? - You don't turn in the assignments, you start hearing more about the opposite gender or same gender love interest or you just want to party, you want to try marijuana. I'm looking at what we did in grade eight. - Yes. - And grade eight, grade nine was such a write off year 'cause we were done with school and learning. We just wanted to have fun. - Yeah. Have you ever known a family that has gone the unschooling route and then just found for whatever reason it didn't work and they sent their kids back to a public school? - Yes, yes, there are families that maybe one partner is not on board and that can create a lot of problems. Sometimes, now with unschooling, it needs a facilitator, it needs a parent or it needs a caregiver, it needs somebody actively willing to get kids things that they can't get, they can't pay for our welding class or they can't get there. And sometimes when there's families with mental health issues, sometimes out of 10 of caregiver isn't present. So maybe that's not a good fit either. And sometimes parents just need childcare for the earlier grades. So there are times when it's not a good fit for the family. - Okay. I'm playing devil's advocate here. And I like what you're saying. So don't interpret this as I'm turning on you all of a sudden. Like I've been your friend for 30 minutes, now I'm turning on you and that's not the case at all. - Yeah, that's fine, you go ahead. - What do you say to a parent who says, "Yeah, I know that my child, my eighth grader is burned out, but I have to teach my child the virtue of sticking through it and working through that burnout and having that goal of graduating high school, I want to teach my children that virtue of just sticking with something until you're done." What would you say to that person who's like adamantly opposed to unschooling and is sold on public school or bust and they say, "This is just part of the process." - Yes, we get those questions all the time, we really do. And I say to them, there are many other venues or things you sign your child up for that they can practice stick to it, I call it grit. So when they, for example, say they start a lawn mowing business and D2, they hate it, they want to quit. That's an example where you can say, you know what, why don't you give it another week and see how it goes. - There are, or signing up for Girl Guides, committing to a soccer team, even committing to a guild when you're playing World of Warcraft or League of Legends, you can't quit right in the middle or people will get mad at you. And they learn that quite a lot, they really do. - Okay, and the reason I ask is because my own child, when I'm bringing in into this conversation again, he was like fired up about Jiu-Jitsu, about five, six months ago, we got him into the lessons. And now he's, I don't want to do it. I don't want, I don't want to go. And as a parent, I'm thinking, I know that you don't want to do it in this moment, but at the same time, I have to teach him the value of, you made a commitment. You said that you're going to do this and you can't, I feel it's incumbent on me to teach him, you just have to slug through these negative emotions. And you can't just quit something just because you don't want to do it. If you made a commitment, you make a commitment. And if you have a valid reason, like if he has a good reason as to why he shouldn't do Jiu-Jitsu, then I'll accept it. But I'm not going to accept, I don't want to do it just because I don't want to do it. - I would, I know, I've really struggled with this myself. And I would ask the kids to stick it out for a certain number of times, like one or two or three times. And if they don't want to do it, drop it. There's, it serves nobody any purpose. It wastes your time and money, it wastes their energy and good feelings to force them to do it. I had a six-year-old who signed up for soccer and would not play all season. And I made him sit on the sidelines with his shirt on and brought him to each game, even though he refused to play. And finally, about a month later at Don Demi, this is serving nobody any purpose. But the other way to teach kids that is not to force them to do it, but it is to model it yourself. When you sign up that you're going to a postmaster meeting and you don't feel like going a half an hour before and you say to the kids, but I committed myself so I am going, I'm going to drag myself to that meeting, you are showing them what adults do. - Yeah, and my son, just the other day, he had this episode, he did not want to go to Jiu Jitsu. And I'm thinking, yeah, I know that you're saying this, but every time he shows any resistance, he'll get into that, he'll get into his uniform and he gets into the activities and he loves it. By the end of the hour, he's on cloud nine. So I just, my wife has joined us on the call. - I'm going to tell him something, 'cause my stepson is addicted to game. And after one week, he stayed with us, his father finally disclosed where he hit the iPad where he plays. And that was the day he was going to Jiu Jitsu and Gabriel has tendency when he have the iPad, he would just not listen, he would hate everything. He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't drink water the whole day when he is on the iPad. And that day, it was very clear. 10 minutes before you go to Jiu Jitsu, you give him the iPad and what you expect him to say. That I'm going to go for Jiu Jitsu. - Yeah, I don't remember that exact scenario. - Yeah, so that was the scenario. - Okay. - Yeah, that can be a problem. I, and I had the same problem with my kids too, 'cause they're involved in something that's so engaging. I would not bring something out right before we, even half an hour before we have to get out the door. But I would also, I find you have the most power to negotiate screen time before the device goes on. So I mean, if you say we have a dental appointment in an hour, you only get 15 minutes of screen time. Are you okay with that? Then it sometimes is easier to pull them off, but he's nine. - No, he's gonna, he's gonna cry and tantrum. It's okay, he's not gonna do it when he's 16. - Okay. - All right. - You're indeed. - All right, now you've already mentioned this very briefly, but you were talking about when children are getting to be a little bit older, high school age, they're thinking about where they're gonna go to college, what they're gonna study, what they wanna be, when they quote, grow up. And you said something along the lines of, that might be the time where it's appropriate for them to enter more formalized education, such as math or science. And what is your take on, and you wrote the book, unschooling to university? So what is the process of parents and children working in tandem to make that plan, to go from that not as structured learning environment to prepare for a more structured learning environment such as a university? - So when I asked my kids, I said, what do you think you might wanna do for a life's work? And they said engineering, biochemistry, English, teaching, I said, okay, this is what you're gonna need. You're gonna need a little, you're gonna need credits at high school level in grade 12. So none of my kids did any formal education until grade 10 in science, history, geography, English. They did a grade eight math course. That was their first introduction to math on paper. Now, they could get through eight grades of math in one year, not because they started at grade one and went to grade eight. They did it because they learned math through their play, through the video games, through their activities in the community, but they never really sat down and did paper math, working out how to add fractions or multiply or divide. So in grade eight, they learned it. They learned how to do all the calculations on paper and they were ready 'cause they had their abstract thinking skills then. So then they skipped grade nine and then they did grade 10, 11 and 12. Sometimes it was very hard for them, but they soldered on 'cause they knew they needed math to go into STEM careers. And it was them being motivated to ask me to hire a tutor or to get on Khan Academy and learn through there. And that's another resource teachers will recommend is Khan Academy. That got my kids through a lot of math and science. - I'm sorry, what is the name of this Academy? - Khan is K-H-A-N Academy. And Bill Gates has, through a lot of funding at them, their goal is to teach the world math for free. It's wonderful. - Are you familiar with CUMON, K-U-M-O-N? - Yes, I am. - What do you think of that? - They're not free. - I know that. - I think the beauty of Khan Academy is kids can self-teach through the videos. So if they're stuck on a concept, they can play it over and over again. And it was really helpful. They do everything from kindergarten to even university level math and science. Yeah. And because, and again, public schools or teachers will not recommend that to their parents because they're funded through governments to teach. Even though it might help a child with homework, they often don't recommend it. - Yeah, you're not gonna refer a client to a competitor. - No, you're not. No. So yeah, so that's how my kids did high school. And, and then university was, they loved university. - Okay. - It was, yeah, it took a bit of an adjustment, but it takes kids in public school adjustments to a way where nobody's gonna nag you to turn anything in. You show up if you want to show up. If you don't, nobody really cares. It was much more of a self-directed learning experience for them. - You know what college experience was? - Yeah. - Okay. - Well, they had plenty of experience with it. - Yes, yes, they did. - What's that? - So, I have taught a lot of students from different background races and countries. And in fact, in British University, University of London, one of the degrees we were teaching, they've done our research on different students in the classroom, their learning curve and what type of education background they had in their countries. We noticed a lot of American students couldn't cope because of the education system failed. - Like the public school system in America? - I think both, because I think private ones are very much commercialized and public school. Like you said, maybe people on, you have to, I'm very new to America so I cannot judge it, but based on what the students used to tell us that even public schools, you have to be skeptical which one you choose, which is normal. I think all around the world is the same. We have good teachers and bad teachers. If you don't read a good bad book, you will not know the value of a good book. So, I think that's one of the learning curve students have to go through to prepare for University and College. And of course, those who've been to school, they have better understanding of, they might not have, they might have four good teachers in university and another four they don't like. But there are many students that love me, maybe another half of the class major in lecture in the conference hall and inside 800 students. I can't expect all 800 to love my university. - Yeah, at the university level in Asia is very different from America. 'Cause I don't know this, but I know that it's very intense over there. - Well, the curriculum is the same. The University of London will not come change the whole curriculum for Asian market. As much as the tuition they pay in London, they have to pay it over there as well. - Whatever care come to students studying London, they have to study in Asia as well. - And did you ever have students that came from like a homeschooling or an unschooling background, like Judy's talking about? - Oh, yes, they do. - Not that they do. - That's very strange 'cause American students went to school. A lot of Asian rich family who send their students and their kids to America and Europe, they didn't send them to study in school. They send them to study to do homeschooling in America with American teachers. - Yeah. - Interesting. - When they came back, of course, they were much more smarter because they were away from their family. They have to live with what you call them, a family here, host them in. - Like a host family, just a host family. - A host family, but there's a name for it. Basically, 15, 16 years old, three years in America, along with the host family, have to learn how to survive without love, mom and dad. And at the same time, go through intense study, homeschooling, and come back, and study in British University in Vietnam, for example. Yeah, there are so many-- - Interesting. - So many of them in my class like that. - So Vietnamese kids would go from Vietnam to America, do in a homeschool environment, or like a public school. - Public school, homeschool, also college, and come back and go to university because their culture, they have to come back to their parents, take care of them and be there. - Yeah, what are you talking about, we went to that. - Hockey. - No, I'm just kidding. - That's interesting. - Yes. - But, oh, the study, the research wrote that a lot of, and among the staff, I have worked 20 years, and all the time I had American colleagues. Most of the companies that I work at industry level was multicultural, multinational. Always, American had, after six months for one year, issues with the system. We had European, Asian, Middle Eastern, African working, and corporate offices, I work. And all the time, the big fights between the bosses and the Americans, they are more vulnerable. And we immediately, the rest of us were part of other side of the work, say, because of education in their country. Maybe both education, home education, and the schooling both doesn't work, because the things they used to fight, it doesn't really match to the market and the standardization of the labor for that position. - The Americans tended to be more confrontational than others. - But in the wrong way, it doesn't make sense many of their fights. 20 years of my experience in poor five companies before joining academic life. - Right, that would fight just to fight. - Home schooling is absolutely brilliant. A lot of our own family friends, their kids, homeschool. But that's in the case that you have a proper person at home who is, the parents are highly educated and can reach to that level to homeschool, or was suggested to have a care, take somebody who care for that child and be really dedicated to put that person on the seat and say, this is the hour scheduled day, and we have to study this and that. Fun is good, learning can be done through fun as well with a strict schedule. But to make our child prepared for future and be marketable in the industry, not only in America but worldwide and gain their respect. Unfortunately, even though I'm against the degrees and whatever schooling is that, but we have to prepare them for that because we want them to earn more money, we want them to reach to a level of ranking in organization wherever they work, that they make them full field and satisfied. - What Judy is talking about is the ultimate aim is for the child to get to where they want to go. So if they want to go to university, the unschooling is gonna provide a roadmap to that. And in many ways is better for the child than going to a public school where they're more or less forced to learn stuff that they don't necessarily want to learn. - That's true as well. But if I have a child, even though I hate public schools in America, the whole American culture, I would still put my child there, but I will supplement alongside my child to control the mental, emotional, spiritual, whatever that's gonna get negative effect of public school, I will supplement that, I will take it away and work together with the school to prepare her for future. I remember I was 10 years old when internet and computer came into the world. My mom put me in technical university among all the 20 years old engineers to study computer. It was a big box yellow color with blue writing or blue color yellow writing. I got psychological issue. I hated my parents, I cursed them. But when I went to university and I sat in a classroom 70 student international university with 50 maybe different students from different country, I was the only person who knew where is the on and off button on the computer. I went back and I kissed my mom and that's hand literally. I kissed them and I said, thank you. That time you founded and you let me go to that university and learn about that new device that actually revolutionized the whole industry in the world. - Right. Sana's comments, Judy are making me ask this question. And do you ever encounter like in kind of a power struggle between families that want to more or less take ownership of the education of their children versus the government schools who say, thanks for bringing them into the world but we'll take it from here. Do you ever sense anything like that as far as just any tension between these unschooling families and the government schools? - Yes, there definitely is a lot of misinformation going around schools on parental rights. Every parent who has a child has the authority to direct their education. And what they do when they sign a child up for school is they hand over that authority. And the schools talk, oh, they're letting the parents homeschool and yet no, we're saying, no, that is our right. We're retraining taking back our authority to educate our child. And it's interesting because during COVID there was quite a revolution because at least in Canada, a parent doesn't have to teach when they homeschool. They can farm it out. We say there's a general contractor and then they can hire out to childcare professionals, to tutors, to pods, to co-ops, to, or just empower the kids to self-teach. So the parent isn't the expert. They are the procurement of their child's education. - They're the ones ultimately responsible. - They are responsible. And then, yeah, so when they sign their kids up for school, then they're handing over the responsibility to the schools and get very little say. I think it's great that I think you're a lovely wife. You wanna, you wanna do what we call after schooling when we perceive their shortfalls in the public system, we want to supplement after school. And I did that for a while too. And I just felt that the school gets the best part of my child's day when they're alert, they're happy in the mornings, and I get the drugs at the end of the day. And that's what I thought, no, we're, I'm gonna get them a little sooner. So yeah, it's good that you wanna try everything. And believe me, there are kids who love school. There are, mostly girls, they love school. And I wouldn't wanna take those kids out. If they love school, it works for everyone, they're happy. - Yeah. Now, let's say that people are listening to this and they're like, they wanna investigate further. How can they know more about you? And then let's say that they wanna maybe check out the local laws and they're wherever they happen to live and say how feasible is this? Where would you direct such a person? - Okay, most unschooling, all of it is undertaken under home education regulations in state provinces, countries, wherever. You have to follow the home education regulations 'cause you just can't do this in schools because of the funding from the government. And if you wanna know more, I do have a book out called "Unschooling to University." It's available and you can order it from any bookstore you want. I have a blog by the same name, so it's unschoolingtouniversity.com. It's got a really good frequently asked question section 'cause you name it, we get it. And also, if you want more parenting advice, I also have a parenting blog, which is judyarnow.com. I have lots of resources on there for non-punitive relationship-focused parenting. This has been wonderful and we're just about up to our allotted time limit, but I will have everything that we've mentioned in this interview and probably a few things more at the show notes, which you can find at jamesdenucum.com/judy. Jamesdenucum.com/judy. Judy, this has been wonderful. I'm so glad that we are able to connect. We met through our mutual friend Ben Greenfield and you were contributed to his parenting book and I really liked what you had to say and I also listened to your podcast with him a few years ago. And I'm just really glad that this worked out. This was really beneficial for me personally. I got a lot of questions answered, just a lot of really helpful information. And also thank you to my beautiful wife for adding her insights, it's very much appreciated. But hopefully we can do this again sometime, but until then, thank you so much for being on the show. - Thank you so much for having me and it was lovely meeting you both. - Grammar Petrelow is your go-to full service publishing and marketing firm, specializing in podcasts, copywriting, email marketing, website design, course creation and much more. If it involves clicking a button that says publish, we're here to help. Let us handle the technical side of things while you focus on creating and delivering value for your audience. With Grammar Petrelow, your vision becomes reality shared with grace, mercy and peace in truth and love. Discover the Grammar Petrelow difference today. Visit GMPTL.org and receive a free gift just for checking us out. That's GM as in Mary, PTL.org.
