Please read the above quote again if it didn't sink in.
If our governments took our newborn babies away for most of the day ... and sent them to the "experts" to teach them to babble, roll over, crawl, then walk and run and talk ...
... would we soon be thinking that a baby couldn't learn these things on their own at home with their parents?
If a parent refused to put child into government baby school, would they be labelled as 'neglectful' parents?
Babies learn all these basics because LIVING IS LEARNING.
They want to do what everybody else can do, and they will get there no matter what! It doesn't matter how many times that they fall down -- they will keep trying again and again and again until they can stand and walk without falling.
When they first start talking and nobody can understand them, they don't give up. They keep listening, trying to comprehend, and trying to speak until they figure out what works.
This is the way that older children learn too. They don't stop learning on their own once they reach the 'magic' age of 5 and public (or private) school begins!
If children want to learn something badly enough, they will!
Of course it helps to leave lots of resources available to them, and to be a resource when they request help from you.
When your child, whether age 5 or age 12, wants to read, or realizes finally that they need to read to get what they want in life ---- THEY WILL LEARN IT! Same thing with writing or math.
It's pretty hard to get by in today's computer world without reading skills, and using computers may be the way they learn those skills.
My three children are Unschooled.
This means that they learn what they want, when they want, and in the manner that they want.
In an earlier article I wrote (below) about my Right-Brained 12-year-old son. Typical reading expectations and methods did not work for him. But that's okay because he is learning it in his own way --- largely through typing commands on Minecraft and typing to his friends on Minecraft actually!
Honestly, "Google University" has helped my son in tremendous ways! He has watched hours upon hours of videos on things like electricity, repairing eletronics, building computers, and a host of topics.
At the age of 9, we had a visit with an electrician and he had a long chat with my son who was showing him the remote control car that he was modifying and repairing. He later informed us that our son already knew all the stuff that they teach when you start out in Electrician Training at Tech School. He was very impressed that a young child already knew it.
My husband operates Excavators and my son had helped him a few times with work around our property plus visited his dad's job sites. My husband showed a video of our 9-yr-old boy running the Excavator to his employer, and the boss remarked that our boy could operate that machine better than several of the grown men that he had hired!
Isaiah also fixes many of the broken machines around our house and repairs things when needed. In fact, his friends bring their malfunctioning computers over to our house for him to repair.
This is an example of what a child can do when they have the time and encouragement to follow their own interests and passions!
Stories abound of unschooled children who taught themselves 3 or 4 school years worth of a subject in a matter of weeks or months, all because he decided that he needed or wanted to. Simply waiting until a child is older and ready and able to learn something can save years of drudging through the subject before he was ready.
I believe that academics are usually "Better Late Than Early."
In the young years, let them play. Afterall, playing is a child's work!
