You must have heard of homeschooling before, but do you know about worldschooling and unschooling. Do you know the difference between the 3 different types? They are all similar but have very different aspects.
Homeschooling is the broad idea of when you do school at home or in places other than a typical school. When you worldschool you are learning through travel, culture and experiences. And unschooling is when students have no structure on what they learn, they just learn at home through play, experiences, and curiosity.
That is just the basic explanation, but there is a lot more to be said. Keep reading to understand the differences and similarities of homeschooling, worldschooling and unschooling.
Homeschooling
First off I will explain what Homeschooling is in more detail. As I already said, homeschooling is when you do school at home or places other than a school. When students homeschool their parents are normally their teachers, and in some areas, they have teachers who check in on them to make sure they are learning well. Homeschoolers are also commonly taught by tutors or through online courses.
Homeschoolers get lots of opportunities that conventional schoolers don’t get. Their education is specialized based on their interests. If they enjoy a certain subject that they are learning they can go more in depth about it, which is not something you usually get to do in public school. Students have a lot more options by being homeschooled. If they find a subject hard they can spend a bit more time trying to understand it, plus having one teacher
A common way of learning when students are homeschooled ranges depending on their age. At a younger age homeschoolers don’t have to do as much structured learning. They almost do a bit of unschooling and learn through play and experiences. As students get older, they can start doing project based learning which is a big perk of homeschooling. They can choose their own projects based on their interests.
When they are in the high school aged years, if students have an interest in going to college after homeschooling, they either do online courses or begin to structure their learning and base it off of what their conventional school peers are learning. Usually when you homeschool, students somewhat follow the curriculum. In some countries it is mandatory to follow the curriculum or it is entirely illegal to homeschool. Some countries you need a permit to homeschool, and others require you to check in with a teacher a few times a year.
Back in the 16th century homeschooling was the most common type of education, as public school were not around. Then when classrooms and schools were invented, laws began making it illegal to homeschool. They made every child go to school and if their parents homeschooled them they could lose their parental rights. Then homeschooling began to gain popularity again by christian parents who wanted to teach their kids based on their religion. Since then there have been many studies and it has gained popularity by more people.
Parents now homeschool for many different reasons, not just because of their religion. Some common reasons include concern about the school environments, dissatisfaction in the school academics, general interest in a different approach of education or their child has special needs and needs specialized education.
Unschooling
Unschooling is technically a type of homeschooling. It is when kids get to learn through experience, play, household responsibility, personal interests, curiosity and work experience. They have no structure whatsoever their education is all based on what the student does during the day. Unschooling encourages kids to learn on their own through experiences. Unschoolers also don’t have grading methods, and of course no curriculum. Sometimes unschoolers will do a few online classes here and there though.
The term unschooling was created by educator John Holt in the 1970s. He brought it up in his newsletter “Growing Without Schooling” and he believes that learning should be a natural process. While there are many arguments and concerns to unschooling, but unschoolers believe that children were not born to sit in a classroom to learn things, instead they think that a natural self directed learning will teach kids to be more prepared for the real world.
Some examples of how unschoolers learn include, being curious, so they might explore different ideas or concepts through experience. They might learn math by buying things at the grocery store or by cooking. If parents are ever worried about their kids’ math skills they will get them to do some online math classes.
One of the main motivations for parents to choose unschooling is because they question the schools for lessening parent/child bond and they question the schools for creating an atmosphere of fear in which students have to compete and try to get 100% on every subject. Another thing unschoolers don’t like about conventional schools is that students are put in classes where everyone is the same age, so they never interact or become friends with people older or younger. Being unschooled, students get the chance to make friends of all ages.
Socialization is a big factor when parents are choosing whether to unschool or not. There are not as many unschoolers around the world, and maybe the children’s friends will decide to go to conventional school. But in the past few years unschooling along with homeschooling and worldschooling has become more popular, which allows families to have a bigger chance of meeting other unschooling families.
Worldschooling
Worldschooling is kind of another type of homeschooling, but in a way it is homeschooling and unschooling. Worldschooling is when you learn through travel, which is why it is called worldschooling. It is a recent educational mouvement that has just started becoming popular. Though worldschooling has many different approaches, the most common is full time adventurers where families don’t have a home base, and just travel and live in places all around the world.
According to Ashley Dymock there are four main approaches to worldschooling. There is the settled globetrotters where families have a home base but go on trips occasionally. Then there is the Unconventional Traditionalists where families travel full time but enrol their kids in schools around the world for months at a time. The third approach is the Structured Adventurers where families are always traveling living a nomadic lifestyle. And finally the last one is the World Unschoolers where families travel full time and live as if school doesn’t exist and learn the unschooling way. When you are worldchooled you might be unschooled, homeschooled and enrol in schools around the world. The variety ranges on all the different types of learning!
There is a lot of educational value in worldschooling. Worldschool families have the chance to learn through culture and experience. One month kids might find themselves in Beijing learning and exploring the Great Wall of China. One month they might be hiking Mount Kilimanjaro or hiking to Mount Everest base camp. Many worldschoolers have blogs so you can follow their adventures. (Read my post about Amazing Worldschool Families you Must Follow.) Throughout the journey the kids will have to learn how to figure out the time changes and currency, and budgeting. They can also study new languages, or learn a language as a family.
It is also common for worldschoolers to learn online. If there is something they want to learn or their parents want them to learn, they have the internet for that. Especially if it is math or science because there are hundreds of websites with online courses (like Khan Academy). Another great thing about worldschooling is that families can go to places that interest their kids, and pick locations based on learning.
A common misconception to worldschooling is that it is way too expensive, which isn’t always the case. Depending on where you live worldschooling can be cheaper overall, especially if you live in a big city. Worldschoolers can normally afford it because they end up selling all their belongings and even house to afford the experience of a lifetime. Plus parents a lot of are still able to work from abroad.
The Dennings, a worldschool family of 9 that has been traveling for over 12 years traveled on $5000 a month! They are living proof that you don’t need to be rich to worldschool. But to have a budget like that you have to make sacrifices and it will not be luxury travel. Budget travel is becoming more popular and in cheaper locations you can get accommodation, food and pretty much anything for super cheap.
Worldschoolers meet people of all ages and ethnicities which is another thing that makes it so unique. They get to have friends from all over the world and with today’s technology it is easy to stay in touch with all their friends.
The Similarities
Worldschooling, Homeschooling and Unschooling are all very similar yet different. They are all considered different forms and types of education as opposed to the usual conventional school. They all have many misconceptions and are questioned by lots of people. The most common questions people ask are, “How do you socialize?” “How do you afford it?” and “How do you learn things?” These families usually all respond the same way.
Worldschooling is normally a form of homeschooling and unschooling. And unschooling is a form of homeschooling. So homeschooling is just the general way of educating from home or places other places that are not a school environment. So that means worldschoolers who travel like the Unconventional Traditionalists are not necessarily considered homeschooled because they are enrolling in schools around the world. In none of these types of alternative schools (except for maybe worldschooling) do any of the students attend a conventional school.
Other Types of Alternative Schooling
Roadschooling
Roadschooling is very similair to worldschooling. It is when families pack up and sell everything they own, including their house and live on the road. Normally they will live in a campervan or RV or even tents and drive to destinations! So instead of traveling by plane, they travel by road hence the name. I do consider roadschooling to be a type of worldschooling though but it is its own thing. Roadschooling is becoming a growing trend across the U.S. with families who want to explore their country.
Normally roadschoolers will drive across their own country or explore what is nearby. Roadschool kids learn the same way worldschoolers do, through experiencing and seeing different places and cultures on the road. They use sights and attractions as educational lessons. A lot of families will try roadschooling even just for a year, by taking their kids out of school and driving across the country. It is a pretty incredible way to learn.
Wildschooling
Wildschooling is a modern educational mouvement where kids learn through nature and self exploration and curiosity. It is kind of like unschooling but more outdoors and nature based. Wildschooling parents want their kids to support and honour the human’s bond with nature. In a way it is a spiritual nature based education. Wildschooling was inspired by a few different types of alternative education sources like Forest School, Earth Schooling, Unschooling and Permaculture. Wildschoolers believe that nature and humans need each other.
There are 10 main pillars to wildschooling, so I will name a few. Parents teach their children to recognize the nature connection as a fundemental human need, it is a relationship lead type of education and a favors place-bonded, contextual learning and wildschooling encourages village building and respects and honours ancestral knowledge.
Online schooling
Online schooling can mean a few different things. You could be a full time online schooled students where the only classes you take are online, or you could be partially homeschooled while taking a few online courses here and there. Either way online schooling is the most popular source of education for everyone! In this world of internet everyone is researching things and learning new things all the time. But the online schooling I am going to talk about it when you do it as an alternative to conventional school.
There are a lot of online schooling programs around the world. Normally you will have an online education source for your state or province. Depending on the state/province you live in you might be able to do all your classes online. In a lot of places across the world students can get high school diplomas by doing online classes too! Where I live this is an option, and if you get enough credits through online school (or DL is what they call it where I live) you can get a diploma. So it is quite common for homeschool students when they are in high school, to take all their classes through the districts online schooling system.
Photo credit: Photo by Gyorgy Bakos on Unsplash