The Ultimate Guide To Unschooling: Top Tips To Create Free-Thinking, Resilient, Creative Young Humans Who Can Thrive In A Modern World.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, education is being disrupted. Now. It's like the king who nobody acknowledges he's not wearing clothes. I think we underestimate the value of play and the value of downtime in that that is what gives your brain a rest and start thinking about creative ideas. We're trying to fill in all that summertime for kids by keeping them busy in activities. They need to take ownership of their education and learn what they want to.

Lear health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey. So it's not often I get a chance to talk education in school, but this stuff is important and I think it's going to be right up your alley. This is, this is a podcast about the future of education and unschooling. And even if you don't have kids or you're not an educator, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this one. Quick shout out. You can find my podcast not only on Apple, which was formerly itunes, I think Apple podcast, but I mean, hell, Spotify, Google, Podcast one, overcast, anywhere. One of my favorite apps is actually Castbox, which is pretty cool. It's got like an audio search engine that allows you to search the actual audio of the podcast, not the show notes and you know, play it 1, 2, 3, 4 times, speed, download books, etc. So Castbox, check that one out. Hey, so it's no secret if you follow me on Instagram or listen to a few things that I've said on the podcast before that. Recently I gave my twin 11 year old boys, river and Taran, the option to not continue to go to the private school that they were just finishing up fifth grade in and to instead transition into a form of schooling called unschooling. In which in a nutshell, although you'll learn a lot more about it in today's podcast, one learns through experiences, through life, through play, and not through a formal education or in a classroom setting per se. Now, these days there's kind of three different ways to get an education. There's homeschooling, and I was personally homeschooled K through 12. And then there is a public or a private school. It's kind of a more a traditional option, at least since the mid-1800s, a traditional option. And then there is unschooling. And I recently read, to really help me wrap my head around how to piece together a good robust education and life experience for my children, a very excellent, recent and relevant book that really was, was one of the best guides that I ever read when it comes to this whole world of unschooling. It's called Unschooling to University. Unschooling to University. And this book outlines how unschoolers learn through things like play and volunteering and games and sports and mentorship and travel and basically just life. In addition to that, it outlines how a parent's job is to simply provide an environment rich in educational resources for their children. Things like books and videos and computer games and video games and workbooks and projects and museums and field trips and volunteer programs, museums, theaters, mentorship programs, apprenticeships, Internet, the library. You know, the list goes on and on. And it's a very, very well written, written and thorough guide. As a matter of fact, it's so good, I decided I wanted to get the author on today's show. And the author of the book Unschooling to University is Judy Arnall. And Judy is a keynote speaker. She is a distinguished toastmaster. She gives presentations all over the world and she specializes in parenting and education. She's been on all sorts of magazines and TV shows like CBC and CTV and Global, which, as you might know by the names are mostly Canadian networks because she's up in Canada. Magazines like Today's Parents and Canadian Living and Parents Magazine, the Globe and Mail and Metro. She's a certified Canadian family life educator. She's taught for Alberta health services for 13 years and she even founded the nonprofit organization's Attachment Parenting Canada association and Unschooling Canada Association. If you visit her Amazon page, which I will link to in the show notes, you will see that she's not only written Unschooling to Union, but she's also written a ton of different books on parenting, on discipline, on education and beyond. She is, of course, a parent herself of five children, and several of those are university graduates who also self directed their own education. So she knows what she's talking about. People and the show notes for everything that Judy and I discuss, as well as links to her books, her website, any other resources that we mention can all be found at BenGreenfieldFitness.com unschoolingtouniversity that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com UnSchoolingToUniversity so, Judy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Ben. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, I'm very excited to have you on. Education is not something that I visit on the show quite as much as I visit things like, you know, workouts and Supplements and biohacking and detoxification and all sorts of crazy fringe fitness and health and wellness topics. But education is something near and dear to my heart. And I know that many of my listeners have asked me about some of these concepts that you discuss in the book. So I think this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful exploration. And you know, if I could, if I could kind of start off, and I was very intrigued by this concept in your book with the question about why schools exist in the first place. Like, kind of like the history of schools in terms of when schools, at least the modern schools as we know them today, when those were established and why. Can you get into that?

Sure. Schools as we know it today are kind of the new kid on the block. When you think of how long humans have been around, most of young people have been educated into society, becoming contributing members of the group, through the family, through apprenticeships, through working around the home, around home businesses. And that kind of changed in the industrial revolution, around 1850, where the upstart of factories occurred and parents were shipped off to factories to work. But then we all had the problem of what do we do with the children? So the answer was, let's hire the most educated person in the village to gather the children and keep them busy while we go off to the factories to work. And that established the first modern schools. Now there are definitely authors and experts that believe that there was a hidden agenda in that, in that it's a great way to indoctrinate the kids into obedience, into understanding a common philosophy and good sense.

Is that a conspiracy theory? I mean, when we adopted this during the Industrial revolution in the 1800s, wasn't it originally based on like a Prussian education system that was designed to kind of create obedient little factory workers?

Absolutely. And not just factory workers, but for kids to go into the military to be obedient citizens and quash critical thinking. Now it's, I mean, you could call it a conspiracy theory, but when you look at the modern school system, a lot of critical thinking is not encouraged just because it's a huge institutional bureaucracy. So that grew and then curriculum grew. The whole institution grew into a billions dollar industry in 150 years in so much that we don't even know of life without school. It's so embedded into our culture.

Oh yeah. It seems insane to even question the fact that a child might learn through apprenticeships or mentorships or life or play. And you know, as you say in the book, I think the way you phrase it is that children are pretty much now viewed, based on the modern education system as buckets to be filled with knowledge and not necessarily little humans who should be experiencing life in perhaps a little bit more practical, hands on way.

Exactly. And the more we know about the brain and how the brain develops, the brain interacts with its environment. It's not a bucket that you just cram full of facts and figures. It's an interactive organ that interacts with where kids spend most of their day with, you know, whether that's with the family, in the community, or in an institution with peers.

Yeah. And you know, when it comes to this idea of sitting in a classroom in kind of this formal educational scenario that has been the norm since the mid or early 1800s, where in your opinion, has that kind of failed us? And I realize that's kind of a loaded question, but we have plenty of time on the show. You kind of alluded to the fact that children's brains are highly plastic and not necessarily meant to be kind of placed in one classroom and have a bunch of knowledge and facts dumped into their head when it comes to the best way to educate them. But can you get into the failures that you perceive this modern way of educating, where those failures exist?

Okay, sure, I see. Well, actually, if. If you want to tie it into health and fitness, Schools have stress. Right. And we know now that stress impacts the body in different ways and has long term life effects for children. But not just children, not just students. But this whole system is stressful for teachers too. They're the products of the system right now, and they're crammed between parents and administrators and children. And the teaching profession is one stressful profession. And same with kids nowadays. When they go to school, they can experience a lot of toxic stress through the effects of bullying, through an impersonal curriculum, through expectations placed on them that are not appropriate. So where the system has failed us, I think is insisting on a one size fits all system. And we know now about learning styles, not how children learn the same way. We know how bullying affects them and how different ways that kids can learn, and especially if they can choose what they want to learn. So it brings out their creativity, their critical thinking. And the system is set up to not encourage individualism because it can't. It's a bureaucracy.

Well, I think the other kind of elephant in the room here is the entire digital revolution. I mean, you know, it's disrupted. And you talk about this in the book, you know, it's disrupted, you know, taxicabs and transportation, it's disrupted dating it's disrupted shop shopping, you know, it's disrupted the way we view television and movies and the way we digest music and the way that we attend conference. And education doesn't seem to have changed that dramatically in the era of a digital revolution where Google allows you to learn any time, meaning that perhaps the memorization of facts and knowledge that one could simply look up on the Internet, you know, as bad as that might sound, it could be relatively irrelevant compared to gaining more experience in other avenues in life. And you know, information is now available 24 hours a day, and yet kids are still going to school at these fixed times, on fixed days, with fixed classes and fixed subjects that might not even involve something they're even remotely interested in or something, you know, when it comes to the way that they're learning, agrees with their learning style or their personality type. But it's very strange in that so many, so many elements of society seem to have evolved with the digital revolution, yet school seems kind of, I guess, for lack of a better phrase, old school.

Oh yes, school education is, it is being disrupted now. Now it's, it's, it's like the king who nobody acknowledges he's not wearing clothes. It's like it's not.

I think that was an emperor.

Yeah, the emperor with no clothes. Right. It's not publicly out there, but the numbers of homeschooling is growing worldwide, across all the countries. And, and what else is growing is that availability, like you said, to access different courses, not just from the government in your jurisdiction, but from, you can take a course on coding from Germany now. You don't have to take the school approved course. And it's that open doors that is incredible, where kids can learn anytime, any way, anything they want that interests them. But yet still kids are being forced to spend six hours a day in an institution with a prescribed curriculum that they may or not be interested in. But the numbers of parents pulling their kids out are increasing, and especially as kids learning needs are diverse and they're not being met in the system.

Yeah, I mean, that's really where my parents were interested in homeschooling me. For them, it was a little bit more related to some of the things that you alluded to. They both had issues with bullying, with drugs and substance abuse, with peer pressure, with a lot of kind of societal issues which influenced their decisions to homeschool myself and my siblings. But in, in my case, I'm not as concerned about those things like there are, there are good private schools in my area that really don't seem to involve a lot of those issues. Granted, I realize some of those things are only accessible to people who could, you know, afford to pay the higher tuition for a good private school where perhaps there's a a little bit less of the bullying or the peer pressure issues that go on. However, what really drew me to home, or to unschooling rather, was this idea of experiencing an education through life. Meaning, like right now, as we are recording this podcast, my kids are out on the patio at the table on the patio with general contractor and a man who is teaching them math, geometry and woodworking because their entire math project for this summer is building a tree forge. So they're building Fort Chipmunk, they're learning trigonometry, they're learning woodworking skills, they're learning design and architecture, they're. They're learning Google Sketchup. But that is their education. And their test is their pass fail is, you know, whether or not their tree fort actually finishes construction and whether or not it blows over in the wind. So that's the type of life experience that appeals to me when it comes to unschooling. But I do think we need to step back here and define some terms because you were just discussing homeschooling, as was I, and this really isn't homeschooling. This isn't like getting a bunch of books out and gathering around the kitchen table with mom and dad or a tutor. It's something a little bit different. So what exactly is unschooling? How would you define it?

Unschooling is empowering the learner to choose what they learn, when they learn, if they learn, and how they learn on whatever topic we're talking about. So the difference between unschooling, homeschooling and school is a matter of control who owns the education. Right. So in the difference between homeschooling is the parents tend to control the process and the learning and the curriculum. Where unschooling is, the learner controls all those things. And school, well, obviously school controls it. The difference between unschooling and homeschooling and school is that as you describe your kids, they're learning skills and knowledge, but it's not separated from the context they learn it in. So it's embedded. So the learning really sticks. And most learning in unschooling is it's an answer to solve a problem. It's real world problems and kids apply the solutions through their curiosity.

Yeah. So it's basically self directed free learning where, you know, like I mentioned earlier in the Introduction. For example, once we decided to unschool, I sat river and Taran down. I learned some of these concepts from your book and spent two days going through with them every last interest that they had, everything they were passionate about, everything they wanted to explore. And they. They just. I mean, sky's the limit, but they wrote down things like learn to fly drones, learn to program LEGO robots. They wanted to learn a little bit more about not playing video games, but more specifically designing video games. They wanted to learn how to work with wood and build a tree fort. They wanted to learn more about gardening and raising the chickens and the goats, a little bit more about animal husbandry. They were very interested in American history. They wanted to learn how to beat dad at chess, right? So all of these little things. So once I gathered all those different things that they were passionate about or interested in, what I then went and did at a fraction of the cost of what I was paying for tuition. Once I added up all this stuff, I maybe spent. I maybe spent a thousand dollars. That's probably about what I spent. I basically equipped the entire basement, this entire room of our basement with every last item that they would need to pursue those passions and interests. So documentaries and board games on American history, books on architecture, and all of the different LEGO architecture kits for all of the different American history objects, you know, like the White House and the different monuments and museums that they wanted to learn more about. Tons of books, like, tons and tons of books that they weren't required to read, but they were simply there around them for when they wanted to delve into it. A drone and a camera attachment for that drone, the entire Google suite on both of their computers so that they could learn sketchup and books like how to beat your dad at chess and, you know, and the battle chess video game and a nicer chess board. And basically I just got all this stuff. And it's very interesting because every single day now, you know, and we're in the middle of the summer when a lot of kids are, you know, kind of just lazing around and feeling as though they can take time off until August or September rolls around when school begins, they are instead, every single day in that room grabbing books, grabbing games, you know, opening robot kits. And my fear, I'd love to hear you comment on this, was that they would just be sleeping until nine, waking up and maybe fiddling around with the TV or wandering around outside and laying out in the grass, staring up at the sky or just playing with their Star Wars Lego kits or something like that. And instead, it's amazing to watch. They're playing with all this stuff all day long, especially the things that align with their passions and interests, where those passions and interests lie right now. Now, is that kind of the general concept? And if so, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about this idea of kind of like play and unstructured time.

That is the general concept. That's amazing that your kids are doing that and you've got all that stuff for so little cost. That's amazing for parents where cost is a barrier for providing those things. The new school is the library, right? So a lot of libraries have software programs that kids can come and use, and there's no cost for that. But what happens generally is when kids go from school to unschooling, they need a period of time to what we call D school. So they're very used to sitting down in a classroom and having someone spoon feed them information and what to do. So. So the longer they're in school, the more time it takes for them to start owning their own education. Right? So we say it's probably about a month for every year they're in school. But for your kids to jump right in, I think that's amazing. But they're. So it takes a while. You know, kids may wander around all day and say, I don't know what to do. I'm bored. And then gradually they start seeing what's around their environment and their natural curiosity takes over and they. They jump right into things. And I. I have to say, you know, there are times when kids are laying on the grass looking at the sky, and that doesn't mean things aren't percolating in their brain. I think we underestimate the value of play and the value of downtime in that. That is what gives your brain rest and start thinking about creative ideas. So, like, I don't know about you, but I get my best ideas in the shower, right? Because you're not concentrating on anything.

Right. For me, it's when I'm walking. And there's research on this, too. There's even research, research on children. This whole concept of daydreaming, right? Like for our kids, like, we have two hammocks out on the patio, and I. I have found them, like, out there, just like, not even with a book, literally just in the hammock, staring off into the forest. And there's now research that shows that not only giving a child the ability to play and engage in a large amount of unstructured free time is highly beneficial for building creativity and self directed self education. But daydreaming is a sign of a better equipped brain with better like learning consolidation and working memory and empathy. They've even done studies on things like blood pressure and salivary cortisol and show that those decrease when a child is able to just distract their attention from immediate tasks and instead just let ideas kind of flow freely. It's almost similar to some of the benefits we see from meditation. Like allowing a child to just daydream.

Yes, yes. There's so much research and unfortunately a lot of parents and society look at, look at play and think it's just frivolous. It's, it's what kids do to keep themselves out of our hair while you know, they're not actively learning something or going to school or going to activities. And as we know, the over scheduling of our kids nowadays doesn't allow, especially homework, doesn't allow enough time for them to have that downtime that free thinking, daydreaming or time for just unstructured play. And unstructured play is not directed by adults. So a soccer game is not unstructured play. When kids have just free rein to do what they want, manipulate toys, crafts, but not directed, they just get to make all the decisions and play on their own. And kids are not getting enough of that time. There's a lot of statistics out there and like you said, it does benefit the brain. The brain thrives on play. Whether a child is 5 or 15, the play looks different, but it is free play, very necessary.

Right. And I think you actually get into this a little bit in chapter four, four I believe, of your book. All the research behind the educational and life benefits of free and unstructured play. And also, I mean you even delve into the type of things that encourage children to do that, that you can have in your house. Like you know, one example that you have is cardboard boxes, tape, wood, nails and other building materials. Well, we have those type of things just littered around the garage. And my children will spend two hours constructing these elaborate forts that they paint murals on the side of and tunnels that go in and out of and with multiple rooms. And part of me probably two years ago would have actually felt pretty guilty. I would have thought that these kids need to be with a tutor right now. They need to be learning something. This is not benefiting their life in any way. All they're learning how to do is build this stupid little like cardboard fort that's going to be destroyed tomorrow when we need to park the car in the garage. And after reading your book and looking through the research and there's a lot of statistics that you have in your book on this, the benefits to it are just absolutely massive, not only in terms of less stress for the child, but also the ability to be able to build things like resilience and creativity and problem solving and in being able to almost like progress to other things in life that allow them to take those skills that they developed during their free play in their unstructured time and apply creativity to actually solve significant problems.

Oh, yes, there's lots of research and play mimics a lot of what kids would learn in school, but it's on their own initiative. The, the other benefit too is, you know, this time of the year, it's, it's summer. People say, oh, you have to protect your children from summer learning slide. So there's research out there that kids lose, you know, a couple months of reading, your math ability. But the problem with that is that the slide is on what the school thinks the children should know, not actual learning. So a lot of times summer is the best time for kids to. They pick up so many new skills and knowledge when they get to control what they want to learn about. And it's kind of sad because we're trying to fill in all that summertime for kids by keeping them busy in activities where they need to take ownership of their education and learn what they want to learn.

I think you talk about this in the book and this, this was also kind of inspiring to me. It was something I'd read elsewhere prior to giving my kids the decision about whether or not they wanted to enroll in sixth grade. And it was this idea that there, there rises a time. I think you say it's somewhere around like early teenage years or 13 years old or something like that, where the rigorous test taking quizzes, you know, written essays, etc. That a child experiences in increasingly greater volumes at school eventually sucks the joy out of, out of school. Like no matter how much they're seeing friends or getting recess or having access to perhaps, you know, some cool labs or libraries at the school. At some point like this, resentment and lack of joy with the schooling process builds up with all the, specifically the test taking. Am I correct that I. That I read that in your book about just, just the issue with kind of the model of here you're a bucket, we're going to dump a bunch of knowledge in your head and then see if you can pass a quiz or a test on it.

Yeah. And that starts generally around grade six or, you know, age 12. And some people call it high stakes testing. I, I don't think it's very high stakes until in Canada and U.S. until, you know, they get into the, the later teen years. But it, it adds stress and it changes the nature of learning. So even teachers can't meander off. If a child, if a group is more interested in something, they have to stick to the schedule. They, if it's an exam year, they have to teach to the test. And that doesn't allow for expansion or exploration where at home you can do that. You have that whole ability to go where the interest lies. And then kids soak it up and they remember it. The learning actually sticks in their brain because they're interested in it. And the beauty of that too is there's no motivation problems. You know, kids want to learn what they're interested in.

Now, regarding testing though, you do need to establish some kind of a criteria for whether or not education has occurred, don't you? I mean, like I give the example of the tree fort. Did it get built and can it withstand, you know, the wind, the rain, or anything else that they want it to withstand, or do certain functions of it work properly? Like they want to build some kind of a, it's almost like a winch system to be able to get the dog via, like a pulley and a rope up into the top part of the tree fort on this like wood platform, almost like an elevator they create for the dog to get up there. And you know, that that's an example of kind of a, almost like a pass fail type of scenario. But do you have other examples in terms of some of the subjects you lay out in the book or some of the activities you lay out in the book of how you would actually evaluate whether or not learning has actually occurred? If that's important?

Yes, I do believe in standards of expectations, like I want my brain surgeon to have passed a certain measure of abilities or my pilot to be certified. So I see education going that way though, where the emphasis is on accreditation or evaluation. But how you get there, how a child learns is not, is not important. If they acquire skills and knowledge through whatever way possible, but can meet the assessments for accreditation, that's great. I really think that's where we're heading just because, as we've talked about, kids can access learning anywhere, anywhere from around the world. But I think most unschoolers prove their learning through writing final exams, maybe at the end of grade 12 or university entrance exams or the SATs. And I know in Canada we have grade 12 final exams, and in a lot of jurisdictions, kids can just challenge the exams. They don't need to prove they took the course. So that's how we can bypass the whole school system and still prove our. Their learning and through writing final exams or SATs or university entrants.

Yeah. In Washington state, for example, where we live, there is a requirement that the children. Children do take standardized tests each year and that we report their learnings to the state. And we can get into some of the reporting and record keeping mechanisms here in a little bit, because I do think those are important and I can comment on how we're doing that. But they. They do have a couple of months during the year where they will need to be reviewing some of the standardized test materials and with a book in a formal situation, at the kitchen table or elsewhere, ensuring that they are able to pass some of the social studies, the history, the math, the type of subjects that are explored on such a standardized test. But it's not that difficult. For me, it was the same thing when I was homeschooled and I had to take these standardized tests every year. I'm not saying this to brag, I'm saying it to make a point. But I was consistently at the 95th to 99th percentile on those tests with very little preparation for them. And, you know, granted, I was doing a little bit more homeschooling out of books than I was unschooling. And so I really didn't even need to sit down and do a whole lot of preparation for those tests just because I was learning this stuff all year long. But, you know, for us there. There is a time, you know, towards the end of the year that we do plan on. On the kids actually making sure they can pass these standardized tests. Because the last thing I want is for my children to want to go to college, whatever. To want to be, let's say, using your examples, a surgeon or a pilot, and then having some amount of resentment because they can't go to college or university because they have no history of standardized test taking. There's no records, they're not able to pass the SAT or the A. What's the other one? The. There's the SAT and SATs.

Acts.

Yeah, the ACT. Yeah. And. And so I do want to ensure that. That there is some amount of formality in place in terms of them jumping through the proper hoops so that they can go to college if they want to. And that is correct. Right. Unschoolers can go to college. Right?

Of course they can. But one thing I disagree with is year by year testing. I see no benefits of that because what that does is it ties learners and the parents to the school curriculum. Right. It's very hard to meander when you think, oh, they got to know this and this and this this year. Whereas if I believe in testing by the age of 18. So when they get to that point where they want to head into a particular college or a university, then at that age they have, they've most 18 year olds know how to read, they've read lots of books, they know how to write, they know how to do math, maybe they need a bit more brush up on calculus depending on the program they're going into. Right. But 18 years gives kids a lot of chances to play. And we know from experience a lot of unschoolers, for example, when their kids reach the age of 13, they can do eight grades of math in one year on paper that year because their brain is ready to understand abstract concepts.

Right. And I agree with you that completion of things like grade 12 courses or taking the, taking the GED when they get that level is far more important than the standardized yearly tests. But at the same time, I don't want to create situation where my kids are labeled truant or a social worker shows up at the door. And there is a requirement, at least in Washington state that they take these annual tests.

Yeah, I know. And that's where advocacy comes in, in that if you have a strong homeschooling lobby group that can lobby the government and say, you know, testing changes the learning. It absolutely does. There's lots of research out there that does says that. And if we want to learn what we want to learn, we can't be tied to school testing because then you're learning what the school says you're learning. Right. And I understand that there are different rules for different provinces and states, but keep that in mind that you know, with, with advocacy comes change.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, is a good point. Now there are of course, you know, here in Washington Again there's 12 different subjects, you know, math and social studies, physical education, art, etc. That they are required to have demonstrated being engaged in during the course of the year. But you get into your book about how creative you can be when it comes to, to jumping through some of these hoops, so to speak. You know, I gave the example of building the tree for kind of being able to pass as for example, math and art. But do you have Other examples of common unschooling or free and unstructured play type of activities that would cross over into and qualify as passing for some of these more formally defined curriculums.

There is. So if, if you look at the legality, unschooling is just a methodology of education. So many, many schools do unschooling in their school and it's just a methodology of education. So there are many activities that one, when I talk to teachers conferences, what I like to do is give them a worksheet and of skills and knowledge. And I say, okay, this is a Minecraft game, because a lot of teachers are familiar with Minecraft. And what skills and knowledge do children learn from Minecraft? What do they learn from playing Settlers of Catan, the board game? What do they learn from playing let's stretch this a bit Fortnite? And then they see on the paper the skills, the math they learn, the critical thinking, the tech, information technologies skills, those kinds of things, how it interplays, how it comes out from just doing ordinary things kids do through their play. And one of these years I'm going to take every popular video game and slot it in there so that parents can see how educational things are that they don't think are educational.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way that we're doing it is the kids both have journals and they're, they're literally just, they're not fancy at all. They're just blank page journals. And they are expected to journal every single evening about the activities that they've engaged in that day. Whether it be, you know, perhaps river has read a few chapters of a biography of Abraham Lincoln because he's interested in American history. And maybe he also read a few chapters of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Right. So that would be. Then once I look at that diary, I would be able to, when I'm putting together the record, say, okay, so this was the day that he did history. And maybe at the same time he's also working on the tree for it. So that's math and art. And maybe he also worked on the, the Lego kit for the Washington Monument. So that's more American history. And maybe they also decided that that day because they have a food podcast, they're going to go to the local, like the, the Queen of Ethiopia Ethiopian restaurant and record a podcast on Ethiopian food. And then there's chemistry because in many cases they're talking about the way the food was prepared and also some amount of history. If they're talking about Ethiopia and even social studies, because they're in kind of a different environment where they're learning about the culture and cuisine of a different section of the world. And so in one single day, there's like six different subjects that were covered. And if I'm not mistaken, and I believe you talk about this in your book too, there is this concept of block learning where they don't necessarily need to cover every single subject every, every day. Right?

Right. Yeah, they can. If you just look at a typical unschooling day, you could slot everything they do into subjects. Right. Now, in unschooling, we don't like to separate learning into subjects. It's all learning. But you do have to meet school requirements, too, or your authority's requirements. But if you look at a typical day, it sounds like you're doing a lot. But my concern is if a child, some of mine were like, that doesn't want to journal or doesn't want to, you know, build a tree for it, are you going to make them do that? Right. So unschooling is accepting that a child doesn't want to do that. I had four boys that hated writing. Hated it. And yet we had to submit a writing sample every year, which even that was really, really hard for them to do if they were forced to do it. So we didn't do it. But even kids that don't want to do what you think looks educational, you can just follow them through the day and slot in whatever they're doing into subject outcomes. So, for example, let's say they go to the store and they help you figure out the cost of fruits. Right. That's math. And I'm not really good at record keeping. I figure I'm not getting paid to record keep, so I do it on a monthly or a yearly basis. So I would write that down maybe once a month or things like that. But, yeah, it's turning what kids do naturally through their learning into what looks a really schooly subject matter outcome.

Yeah. And, you know, you have all sorts of different examples in your book for math and social studies and history and the different kinds of video games and board games and books and activities that would kind of qualify as those different activities, which is very helpful. And again, you know, your book's pretty thick. We can't cover everything that's in it at this point. But do you have, for example, I guess, an example of what a typical day might look like or what a typical day looked like for you as you were raising your kids and unschooling them?

Sure. And it varies with each family. But there are some commonalities among unscathed unschoolers. In fact, that most unschoolers don't like to do things early in the morning. But yeah, we tend to.

Not us. Our family right now is up, we're going to bed about 9 or 9:30pm and the kids are usually up by about 6am and this is something we kind of transition into. Just this summer we've just been kind of going to bed when it gets dark and getting up soon after it's gotten light. So. So typically by about 9am Our kids are already well into the books and having made some new recipe in the kitchen and all over the place. But yeah, every family is different, I guess.

Yeah. And certainly so when my kids were younger, they were of course up early. So they would get up and they would meander to probably the TV or Lego or, you know, in their pajamas. They would find something to do or play with and I would be on my computer because I was working part time and writing books. So that's what I would do. And then we'd probably have breakfast around 10 o' clock and get dressed and head out the door for some activity that day. Right. It would usually be later, morning lunchtime, then we head back. And because I also had babies and toddlers underfoot, which is why I gave up homeschooling and then they would nap and we'd always have quiet time. Actually, even now after lunch is quiet time. And even though I have young adults and teenagers in our house, we just have a natural quiet time where people just do quiet activity like read or you know, watch a movie or something. And then, and then we would have, we would have a rhythm to the week like Monday night might be, go to the library night as a family. Every night we would have a family dinner. Because the benefits, as you know from homeschooling, is that a lot of activities now are happening during the day, such as Girl Scouts meetings, soccer, there's soccer leagues now happening in the afternoon instead of rushing out the door at dinner time. So a typical day is very relaxed and that is very good for not accumulating toxic stress. Is having a more relaxed lifestyle Right where you do gather as a family every dinner or lunch. Sometimes we had lunch together, which is kind of nice. And having relaxation time built in in the afternoon or the evening.

Yeah, I think that the family dinner thing for us that's a non negotiable. It always has been. And it's not just because of you know, books like, you know, Cherry Turkle's Reclaiming Conversation, in which the importance of family dinners and family time in the evenings is emphasized. But also it's a time for us to gather at the end of the day and go over our gratitude journals and the other, you know, kids journals that I just described. You know, what, what have you done today? What have you accomplished? Almost like a form of self examination that's typically now almost every single night at dinner because we've literally got like 20 different games now, whether it's, it's card games or chess or Battleship or Boggle or Balderdash or any of these other things that actually count as language arts, as math, as social studies, we're playing games almost every single night at dinner. And granted, you know, a big part of the unschooling that we're doing, the kids are also in camps. They're in different clinics. They're out learning in kind of like apprenticeships or mentorship type of scenarios. You know, not only building the tree fort, but they have a Spanish instructor, they're doing cooking classes, they've got jiu jitsu camp and tennis camp. And yeah, by the end of the day, it's typically like 8 or 8:30pm by the time we actually gather for dinner. But we literally spend like an hour around the dinner table and then it's pretty much, you know, dad plays guitar, the kids snuggle up in bed with books and we hit the sack. Right. And I know there's many people in the health and nutrition sector who will say, oh, you should be eating that close to bedtime. But I think the pros of a family dinner outweigh the cons of, of a late dinner. But yeah, I mean, that's a big part for us is the family dinner scenario. And I think another interesting thing in your book is some of the particularly intriguing success stories and even research on the benefits of unschooling. I think it's the team, is it called the team of 30 research that you get into?

Yes, yes, it is. The team of 30 is. Once my kids hit late teens and started going to universities and colleges and their friends did too. Because you, you tend to hang around with unschooling friends because they're in the same lifestyle as you. Right. And I noticed their friends were going and they were going. And I thought, okay, this, this information needs to get out there that, you know, kids can play most of their childhood and still go on to post secondary because that's one of parents biggest worries, right? So I sent them all surveys on. Okay, how many years did you unschool? Did you go to preschool? How did you get into post secondary? Did you, which method did you use? What field did you go into? And I got all the surveys back, and they were either my kids friends or my friends kids. And 30 of them responded and said, yes, this is what we're doing. So when I compiled them, all 30 got accepted to universities, colleges, tech schools, and one third were in arts type of courses, one third were in humanities, and surprisingly, one third were in STEM courses. So we had four engineers in the group. Right. And to this date, about 22 out of the 30 have now graduated their programs. So when people say, well, show me research that says this is successful, that's, that's only one measure of success. I mean, there's a lot of unschoolers who go on to entrepreneurial ship and do a lot of great successful things out there too. But I, I, and those are documented in other people's books. But I wanted to focus mostly on STEM and the fact that kids can go to post secondary if they want to.

Yeah, there's a few other studies that you get to in your book, but one, one particularly helpful resource that I found, it's, it's a little more bent towards homeschooling, but it's got a lot of unschooling tips in there too, and it's chock full of research. Are you familiar with John Holt's website? It is John Holt, GWS.com Yes.

Oh, yes. He's. He's my hero.

Yeah, he was like kind of the, the father of homeschooling, or at least one of the guys, I think it was kind of back in the 70s and 80s who was a real proponent of this homeschooling or unschooling approach. And also just this general idea that children don't get enough unstructured time or free play. And he wrote the book. I think that's what GWS stands for, actually Growing Without Schooling. And I found that website as I pieced together the curriculum for our boys to be just absolutely stellar in terms of a host of resources and books.

Yeah, yeah. See, John Holt was, he was probably the proponent of the modern homeschooling movement in the 1970s. And he was an unschooler in his methodology philosophy, which was amazing. He coined the term unschooling, which the story is that at that time, the 7up commercials came out as an alternative to its main rival, and they called it the Uncola. So he coined the term, the unschooling meaning not school, but it kind of got delved into this self directed learning area of homeschooling. So most people know the term unschooling and it doesn't just mean, you know, free play, like it or no classes, no activities. A lot of kids like your kids and my kids are enrolled in classes and activities and groups and more formal structured things. But the difference is they choose us. Right? The, the control is still with the learner. So, so when my kids decided, no, I don't want to do soccer anymore, that was fine, let it drop. Right? So yeah, it's. He's got amazing resources out there and he is the guru of, of this unschooling movement.

Now what do you think about that term unschooling? I mean, do you think that, that, you know, based on this idea of it originally being like named after uncola or whatever, do you think it's a silly term or do you think the term unschooling will stick around is the way that we define what we're doing?

I think it's so embedded now that people still use it a lot. So when people think of unschooling, they know what it means. I don't like the term because when I'm presenting to teacher conferences and you know, talking about the stress they feel in the system, I think it just sounds too anti school. Like I think their schools will always be around. There are a lot of great schools that really do free learning. There are a lot of schools that say they're self directed, but they're not. They're only self directed in pace. So I don't like the term so much as self directed education, but it is known by unschooling. So I have to use the term now.

Now how would this compare to like a Waldorf or a Montessori type of education? Are they incorporating a lot of these concepts or is that also far different than unschooling?

A lot of schools are incorporating unschooling in their methodology. They just don't call it that. And it is very close in Montessori and Walmart. But I guess the real key to me when I ask is this truly an unschooling school is I asked what, what do you do if the child doesn't want to do that? Right. And so is it coercive or is it not? And most government schools are coercive because they are taxpayer funded, they are accountable to the taxpayers in society and they have to enforce the curriculum. Right. So it's Mostly much easier to unschool outside the school system.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think a big part of this now, I was thinking about this when I was reading recently a great book by Yuval Noah Harari, wonderful author. He wrote a book relatively recently called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. And in that book he argues that schools should switch to teaching what he calls the four Cs, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity, while largely downplaying technical skills and up playing general purpose life skills. Because what he says is in an era of increasingly greater artificial intelligence and automation, that one of the most important things that an education should provide for a young human is the ability to be able to deal with change and to learn new things and to be able to adapt quickly in unfamiliar situations, to be able to almost like reinvent yourself again and again in a row. Rapidly changing world. And, you know, I think one of the better academic benefits of unschooling is this idea that templates, right, A set curriculum that leads children down this path to a preconceived outcome, you know, without necessarily fostering the ability to create original ideas that would come with play or creativity. And when we look at the way the schooling system is set up, as you establish in the beginning of today's show, if we're creating a good little factory worker or someone who can put a square peg into a square hole and a round peg into a round hole and doesn't really know how to do anything otherwise, or perhaps figure out a way to carve the square peg so that it fits into the round hole. For example, you actually create a child who's probably going to be screwed by this increasing reliance on automation, artificial intelligence, and the increasing rapidity at which job descriptions and job requirements seem to change.

Yes, absolutely. That's probably one of the reasons I started unschooling, homeschooling, is that my kids would go to school for six hours a day, learn the control curriculum, and then come home and learn what they really wanted to learn. And I thought, this is wasting my time. Why don't we just do this for instead of school, instead of sending them away six hours a day? And that's why it's a problem. If you have yearly testing, then you are tied to the curriculum. Kids are natural communicators, collaborators, critical thinkers. We don't have to teach them those skills. They, from the time babies are born, they problem solve how to get a shape into a shape sorter. We don't have to teach those skills. We just need to get out of their way and not shut down those skills. So the kids who are viewed as the troublemakers in school, you know, the ones that are critical thinkers that stand up and question things, they're the ones that get shut down.

Yeah.

And that, that's the problem that we, we need to encourage that respectful behavior, that respectful questioning, that respectful thinking out of the box. Because like you said, we are moving into areas. We don't even know what we're educating for yet. We need to work on the skills, communication. But kids are natural critical thinkers and collaborators and we want to encourage that. And that is one of the academic benefits of unschooling.

Yeah. And also this idea that some of the skills taught in school are even though they're time honored traditions and this might offend some people, they're not that relevant. Like you talk about hand handwriting in the book, like handwriting skills, you know, and compared to like mastering HTML or, and I realize this is kind of controversial, but even like getting good at Instagram or designing web pages or formatting a blog or you know, knowing how to use Photoshop on photographs, like there are so many skills these days that trump handwriting in my opinion. Like, I grew up learning how to, you know, handwrite beautifully with a little lined paper, but it's like I don't use that at all anymore. If I would have spent that time learning how to program video games and write HTML, it would have far better served me in today's era. My kids and I were talking the other day about another example, like just memorizing stuff, memorizing facts. And yeah, there's some benefits that have been shown to doing things like playing n back apps on the phone where you're recalling and you know, memorizing different images and sounds and shapes. Or, you know, for example, we also, we memorize a scripture each day because we think it's important for the spiritual disciplines to kind of, you know, sit down with something spiritual and devotional and commit that to memory at the beginning of the day. But this idea of just like, you know, why, why memorize some trigonometry equation, for example, in an era of Google, Right? Like, why memorize the path from point A to point B in an era of Google Maps? Like, there's some things that I think we can bypass that just frees up the brain for more creativity. Like, yeah, maybe there's a bunch of truckers that are going to be put out of a job by say, you know, automated driving or perhaps even some surgeons who are going to be put out of A job by the invention of surgical robots and the increasing reliance on technology for surgery. But maybe those surgeons are going to be freed up to go discover the cure for cancer. Right. Or go creatively tackle Alzheimer's or Lyme disease or something else. That's a big problem once robots have stepped in and are able to do the surgery. So I think we just have to think on our feet a lot more when it comes to education in a far different world than the way the world looked when schools were invented back in the 1800s.

That's exactly right. And that, and that's why education needs to be disrupted. Because as a bureaucracy, it takes 15 years to change the curriculum and to pilot it and test it and roll it out grade by grade. So for example, my 17 year old right now is studying for the social studies exam. His from a textbook that is 13 years old. It was written before. Smartphones have changed our world. And it's such a waste of time for him to, to learn this stuff when he could be, you know, learning how to code or make an app or things like that. Right. That is much more useful. Yeah, but that's the way it is. It is what it is. And, and our world can't wait 15 years to change curriculum. It absolutely can't. And that's probably why a lot of parents are pulling out.

And we discussed college, university, and I don't want to give people the impression that I necessarily think that those either should be placed on the pedestal that I think they're placed on. Like again, if my boys want to be a surgeon or an astronaut or something that I do think requires a formal education and proof that you have mastered certain concepts because you could do a great deal of damage to society if you have not. There are other situations where, you know, like if, if my kids wanted to go to school to learn like art or language or go to college, you know, for an arts or language or social studies degree, I would much rather take that tuition, buy them around the world plane ticket and let them just go explore the world for a whole year. And I guarantee they're going to get a lot more resilience and self education in a broader, more useful education out of a year of traveling the world. And they'll also get all of the social life experiences that they might be missing out on in college from a scenario like that. So I even think with college and university, to a certain extent, you know, apprenticeships, apprenticeships, mentorships, life, travel, etc, can, can replicate a lot of what kids are getting in university as well, you know, when it comes to a broad, well rounded education.

Absolutely. I, and I think yes, definitely post secondaries need to change. They're, you know, they're, they're still quite old school. You go into a university classroom and a lot of it looks similar to us 30, 20 years ago where, you know, the learning style has to change from, you know, stand up at the classroom and lecture. A lot of things have to change there. But right now we're in a flux where we're, we're transitioning from more hands on learning to how do we again credential the learning. And for a lot of subjects like engineering, a degree is the, that's the only way you can really, you know, formal accreditate your learning at this point. Right. It doesn't mean that you can't get a job and do wonderful things in the tech industry without a degree. I mean, look at, look at Bill Gates and many others. It just means that right now that is still a sorting hat for, you know, especially all, all the talent that's coming from Asian countries that we're competing with. We still need certain credentials to go forward and I, I want to assure people that you can unschool and through unschooling, through self directed learning, you can still get what knowledge and skills you need to pass those exams to get those credentials.

Yeah, even the most valuable parts of my university education were, for example, you know, the, the summers where I'd go off and do internships or practicums. Right. I remember, you know, sure, I took strength conditioning and, and periodization and exercise physiology, physiology courses etc at University of Idaho. But you know, for example, one year I went to Duke University and I worked with all the athletes the NFL was sending down there for rehab and for training over the summer and for me to be able to have to sit down with what a linebacker was expected to do or you know, a defensive end with some kind of a knee injury and talk back and forth with their coach over the phone, learn how they should be training and rehabilitating in the weight room, take them out to the field and actually see how they're, how they're cutting, how they're moving, you know, design workouts for them to do in, in the pool to rehab their knees, take them into the exercise physiology lab and actually see, you know, the actual oxygen they're consuming and the carbon dioxide they're producing in a real world format rather than in a textbook. You know, and even, you know, summers where I'd teach kids sports camps rather Than simply learning out of a textbook. Developmental psychology, for example, being forced to figure out how to 5 versus an 8 versus a 10 year old would learn how to play say ultimate Frisbee. All of those experiences were far more valuable for me in college. And so just this idea of practicums, internships, apprenticeships and life experiences experiences as a way to educate a human, I just think those trump classroom time. There's even a, I don't know if you're familiar with, with something called the cone of learning, but the cone of learning is something I paid a lot of attention to when I was putting together river and Terence curriculum. And you know, at the bottom of the cone of learning, like some of the least effective ways to learn, it's like reading, watching documentaries, looking at pictures. And then as you can imagine, higher up on the cone is actually participating in a discussion, giving a talk, doing a presentation, teaching an experience, simulating an experience and just life rather than formal curriculum. And that cone of learning, which anyone could Google and find an image of is incredibly insightful when it comes to just seeing how humans act actually learn. And it's, it's just, it's kind of funny. I've talked before about how I think the traditional American food pyramid should be turned upside down. Like the healthy, nourishing fat should be at the, at the base of the pyramid and all this sugary, starchy carbohydrate should be, you know, towards the top of the food pyramid. It's kind of similar with the cone of learning, right? Like it seems like modern education has all the stuff that children learn the least efficiently through at the base of the pyramid. Right? Like reading and watching movies and having their nose stuck in a curriculum versus being out and living life and experiencing education through life which should really truly be at the base of that, that learning pyramid.

Exactly. And the more we know about brain science, I mean we, nobody heard of learning styles 20 years ago, but now we're trying to in corporate. So the more we learn, the more I hope things change. But yeah, experiences and the more post secondaries talk to the business community and find out what, what they want in, in educating students at that level too as well as the school system, in talking to business. Like do you want kids that can communicate and collaborate and, and you know, put, put, put their creativity into solutions? That's the more people talk, I hope the more things change. For sure.

Yeah. Now in terms of resources, we mentioned your book, of course, we mentioned John Holt's GWS resources and I will also link in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com another book that I read that I thought was very helpful called Free to Play, which kind of delves into this concept of play even more. But are there any other favorite websites or books or resources that you would point people towards if they want to take a deeper dive into this whole concept of unschooling and free play?

I think there's a lot of resources out there now that I really liked Thomas Armstrong's work. He wrote books on multiple intelligences and he wrote a book on schools. I can't think of the name right now. The schools our kids deserve, I think. And it's a book about unschooling but how it can be incorporated into the educational system. Because like I said, you know, some parents will always need schools. It's a valid option. But my goal is to get parents to understand there's lots of options out there. But Dr. Thomas Armstrong, I liked him. I like Peter Grace. Free to learn, Free to play. He does a lot of research on play and its health benefits and wonderful, wonderful things. There is, there's the self directed alliance which is spearheaded by Dr. Peter Gray on sharing resources also for self directed schools. So that's very helpful. There's just, just Google unschooling and there's a lot of resources that come out now. And we're our association, Unschooling Canada association is a advocacy group to promote self directed education in Canada. We're a formal legal group. I don't know if there's an equivalent in the US but in each country there's a homeschooling group on Facebook. There's unschooling groups on Facebook.

Yeah. One thing that, that I also did, even though again it's, it's more homeschooling oriented than unschooling was. I went to my local, you can just Google, you know, homeschool law and the name of your state. And in the case of Washington state, it's, it's the Washington homeschool law website, hslda.org and it just, it's homeschooling under your law. HSLDA.org has a website for each different state that walks you through the legal requirements for your state to ensure that your child isn't labeled as truant, to know what kind of annual assessments you need to cover, which subjects are required to be taught, etc. Even like preset templates to, you know, file a letter of intent to homeschool or unschool with your local community and, and then the other thing that I found useful on that site was they linked to some different forums in the local community, like different homeschooling forums, for example, that offer things like field trips and other social opportunities with other kids, et cetera. So hslda.org was another useful website that I found. And what I'll do is I'll kind of collect all this stuff, you know, books by Thomas Armstrong and Peter Gray, etc. And I'll put them all in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com unschoolingtouniversity and of course, Judy's book is a fantastic place to start as well. If you have comments, if you have questions, if you have feedback. I know this education tends to be controversial and sometimes polarizing. Sometimes I'll say something about whatever vaccinations on Twitter or talk about even nutrition tends to be highly dogmatic and polarizing. And I realize education tends to be the same way as well. So I of course want to make this an open platform, open to discussion, open to ideas. So again, if you have comments, questions, feedback, just leave them all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com unschoolingtouniversity and either Judy or myself or both will kind of watch what you have to say over there. So, Judy, in the meantime, thank you for writing this book and thank you so much for coming on the show and discussing this topic with me.

Oh, thank you for having the topic. It's wonderful to talk about it and especially you're doing it now. That's incredible.

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. And I find myself questioning my capabilities and whether or not I'm doing everything right. But, but thus far, just having done this for the past several months, it's absolutely amazing just being able to put my kids on an airplane. I'm taking them to. We just got back from Switzerland and we're turning around this fall. I'm taking them to Dubai and to Egypt and they've got all sorts of Arabian and Middle east cultural books and learning materials are going through in preparation for that trip. And just it all seems to make sense. It's very logical. Takes a little bit more of my time. But you know what? I'd much rather be with my kids than doing just about anything else. And this, this definitely paints me into that corner quite well. So I'm enjoying it.

And travel is, is so amazing. Like just, just watching my 16 year old son, you know, cry when I take him to Dachau, the concentration camp. And it's so much more real than reading about it in a book. It's just incredible. So. Yeah, and you were doing an excellent job. You just remember, you can't. You can't force a child to learn, and you can't stop them from learning.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's crazy. You just surround them with the resources they need and then watch them take off, and it's. It's crazy what happens even. Even outside the borders of a school. So. All right, well, again, the URL is BenGreenfieldFitness.com unschoolingtouniversity. The book is Unschooling to University by Judy Arnall. Judy, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield and Judy Arnall signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.