Schooling is all about control.  The hardest task for parents of unschooled children is letting go of our ideas about control when it comes to education and what children should learn and when they should learn it.

Loss of control scares people.

But answer me this:  Can you look me in the eye and tell me what, exactly, a person will need to know 10 years from now in order to function and succeed in the world?   Which facts, which technology, which skills will be in demand?

You can’t do it, because no one knows.  Technology changes so quickly and new ideas spring up every day.  The world will be an entirely different place ten years from now.    If you are still hesitating, think about all the things you use today that didn’t exist 10 years ago.   Facebook springs to mind first and foremost, but I’ll bet if you sat down and spent 10 or 15 minutes, you could come up with at least 10 or 15 things that are now part of your daily life that did not exist 10 years ago.

So why, with that in mind, do we try to dictate and control what our children learn?  As though we know what they will need, 10 years down the road?  Why do we pretend that certain facts are imperative to success when many of the things children will need to succeed once they are adults have not yet been invented?

We should step away from the idea of controlling our child’s learning and support their natural curiosity and ability to learn.  Leave the content up to them.

The best skill any child can have in today’s world is the ability to know where to access the information they need.  To learn how to learn, in effect.   Happily, this is something children do on their own from the day they are born.  It comes naturally and only years spent in forced schooling will kill it.

Don’t worry about “losing control” of your child’s learning.  It’ll be the best thing that can happen.  Let go and simply be there as the support team.   Once you do away with the need for control, you’ll be amazed at how much learning takes place, and how quickly.

The future is just around the corner.  Let your child be ready.