NHEG-Magazine-September-October

www.NewHeightsEducation.org
As I interviewed unschooling families and visited self-directed learning centers and unschooling schools across the country
while writing my forthcoming book about unschooling, a key theme was the deliberate way in which parents and
educators ensure a balance of freedom and responsibility for unschooled children.
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
In some cases, these expectations are drafted by the children themselves, in community with adults, as part of their
school’s philosophy of democratic self-governance. In other cases, they are established by the adults running the space
and agreed to by the young people who attend. Similarly, most unschooling families have explicit or implicit expectations
for freedom balanced by responsibility in their own homes and communities. My children have chores and responsibilities,
just as we adults do, in contributing to the smooth functioning of our shared home. We also all try to live and learn
respectfully with one another and in accordance with our own values.
Responsibility and Freedom Go Hand-in-Hand
The responsibility component of freedom is what enables free people to live peacefully and respectfully within a larger
community. It is what prevents the chaos of the lost boys on the island. With the care of adults, unschooling prepares
young people to live in a free society by allowing them to experience the ongoing, and sometimes challenging, interplay
between freedom and responsibility.
Why Unschoolers
Grow Up to Be
Entrepreneurs
They may have abundant choices and opportunities, but they must also confront the consequences of those choices
and the obligations associated with those opportunities. As the 20th-century Nobel prize-winning economist, Friedrich
Hayek, wrote in The Constitution of Liberty: “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and
the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences…Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
In Lord of the Flies, the fictional troop of boys experiences freedom for the first time, but they haven’t learned about
the responsibility that must accompany that freedom. Instead, they import the artificial hierarchy and social customs of
their school cliques. As pressures mount, bullying shifts into tribalism, boundary-testing into warfare. Lord of the Flies is
the opposite of unschooling. It shows the necessity for genuine freedom balanced by genuine responsibility and the important
role of adults in providing care and calmness for children.
Freedom, as Lord of the Flies so vividly shows, is the easy part. Responsibility is far more difficult to define, demonstrate,
and tend to—for unschoolers and for all of us.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
https://fee.org/
By Annie Holmquist
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Almost by definition, entrepreneurs are creative thinkers and experimental doers. They reject the status quo and devise
new approaches and better inventions. They are risk-takers and dreamers, valuing ingenuity over convention. They get
things done.
It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that many unschoolers become entrepreneurs. Able to grow up free from a coercive
classroom or traditional school-at-home environment, unschoolers nurture interests and passions that may sprout into
full-fledged careers. Their creativity and curiosity remain intact, uncorrupted by a mass education system intent on order
and conformity. Their energy and exuberance, while a liability in school, are supported with unschooling, fostering
the stamina necessary to successfully bring a business idea to market. Like entrepreneurship, unschooling challenges
what is for what could be.
The numbers are startling. In a survey of grown unschoolers, Boston College professor Peter Gray, along with his colleague
Gina Riley, discovered that more than half of the grown unschoolers they interviewed were presently working
as entrepreneurs. Many of the respondents indicated that their careers were directly linked to childhood interests that
they followed into adulthood. Interestingly, the correlation between unschooling and entrepreneurship was the highest
for the always-unschooled group, as compared to intermittent unschoolers.Break out the champagne, and get busy doing
real stuff in the real world. Don’t live your life by averages and aggregate data that reflect little more than the superstitions
of the day.
Unschoolers Make Amazing Entrepreneurs
Anecdotally, the link between unschooling and entrepreneurship is fascinating. Karen Leong is a 19-year-old custom
cake designer with her own flourishing small business. Unschooled throughout her childhood, she learned about cake
design from watching YouTube videos when she was 11. That triggered a sprouting interest, and she pursued additional,
months-long courses in cake design and pastry work. Today, her business is expanding and she credits unschooling for
playing a large role in her current entrepreneurial pursuits. In a recent interview for New Straits Times, she says about
her upbringing: “My parents were very involved in my unschooling. It’s essential that parents are very proactive in their
child’s unschooling journey, maintain open communications and have a strong relationship with their child.”
Another grown unschooled entrepreneur is New Jersey contractor, Zachary Dettmore. In a recent interview with the
Lyndhurst Daily Voice, Dettmore describes how growing up unschooled enabled him to pursue his interests, including his
passion for building and construction that emerged when he was around eight-years-old. According to the article: "I was
always interested in building and how things worked," he said, "so my reading as a child was geared towards non-fiction
topics that interested me. I wasn’t pigeonholed into a one-size-fits-all education methodology." At 13, he took a timber-framing
course and became increasingly committed to a career as a contractor. Now 29, Dettmore runs a successful
custom contracting business with a couple of employees.
Entrepreneurship Is at the Heart of Unschooling
Successful entrepreneurs are self-starters, driven by their own passions and goals to create something new and different
that has value to others. As self-directed learners, unschoolers are given the freedom early on to discover these passions
and commit to these individual goals. They are allowed the time and space to explore, to tinker. Whether with their
family, or while attending a self-directed learning center or unschooling school, unschooled children are surrounded by
supportive adults eager to help connect their budding interests with the larger resources of their community, like classes
and mentors. This process of pursuing individual passions while being supported by caring adults creates the ideal conditions
for aspiring entrepreneurs to imagine new possibilities and leap into unknown enterprises.
As the American entrepreneur and author, Jim Rohn, once said: “Formal education will make you a living; self-education
will make you a fortune.” While all of us can benefit from his advice, unschoolers have a great head start.
90 NHEG Magazine | September - October 2018
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
https://fee.org/
September - October 2018 | NHEG Magazine 91