Evidence That Self-Directed Education Works by Peter Gray

Author:Peter Gray [Gray, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: education, Educational Psychology, Special Education, General, Research
ISBN: 9781952837029
Google: mCWRzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Tipping Points Press, The Alliance for Self-Directed Education
Published: 2020-09-15T23:20:16.296953+00:00

8

Survey of Grown Unschoolers I

Overview of Findings

Seventy-­five unschooled adults report on their childhood and adult experiences

june 7, 2014

In a study that preceded the one to be described here, Gina Riley (professor of education at Hunter College) and I surveyed parents in unschooling families—­that is, in families where the children did not go to school and were not homeschooled in any curriculum-­based way, but instead were allowed to take charge of their own education. In that study we asked questions about their reasons for unschooling, the pathways by which they came to unschooling, and the major benefits and challenges of that route of education. I posted the results of that study as a series of three articles on my Psychology Today blog (reprinted here as Essays 5, & 7). Gina and I also published an academic article on that study (Gray & Riley, 2013). [Editorial note: Gray and Riley have, since, also published two academic articles on this survey of grown unschoolers (Gray & Riley, 2015; Riley & Gray, 2015).]

The respondents in that survey were very enthusiastic and positive about their unschooling experiences. They described benefits having to do with their children’s psychological and physical wellbeing, improved social lives, and improved efficiency of learning and attitudes about learning. They also wrote about the increased family closeness and harmony, and the family’s freedom from having to follow a school-­imposed schedule. The challenges they described had to do primarily with having to defend their unschooling practices to those who did not understand them or disapproved of them, and with overcoming some of their own culturally-­ingrained, habitual ways of thinking about education.

The results of that survey led us to wonder how those who are unschooled, as opposed to their parents, feel about the unschooling experience. We also had questions about the ability of grown unschoolers to pursue higher education, if they chose to do so, and to find gainful and satisfying adult employment. Those questions led us to the survey of grown unschoolers that is described in this article and in three more articles to follow.

Survey Method for Our Study of Grown Unschoolers

On March 12, 2013, Gina and I posted on my Psychology Today blog an announcement to recruit participants. That announcement was also picked up by others and reposted on various websites and circulated through online social media. To be sure that potential participants understood what we meant by “unschooling,” we defined it in the announcement as follows:

“Unschooling is not schooling. Unschooling parents do not send their children to school and they do not do at home the kinds of things that are done at school. More specifically, they do not establish a curriculum for their children, do not require their children to do particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress. Instead, they allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. They may, in various ways, provide an environmental context and environmental support for the child’s learning.

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