Are we preparing our children for the world?

And which world would that be?

Hello hello!

I’ve been taking a teeny bit of a break from writing free posts the past few weeks, but I’m back! (sort of, in a slow way.)

I want to share some thoughts on whether unschooling prepares our children for the world, and what we even mean when we say we’re preparing them for the world.

Because I think we might be meaning different things.

We unschoolers love to say that school doesn’t actually prepare children for The Real World, which is a valid point given things like age-segregation, the semi-dictatorial nature of schooling, the apparent irrelevance of much of the curriculum, and so much more.

We love to say that living without school is better preparation because we’re actually spending significantly more time in the actual world around us, and learning directly from living.

This makes sense, of course.

But I think we also need to ask ourselves: What do we mean when we say preparing children for the real world?

Do we mean preparing them for the world of work? Preparing them to be street smart and know their way around their city or town or country? Preparing them to do well in university or whatever form of education they may choose to pursue later on? Preparing them for adult relationships? Preparing them to meet whatever measures of success are prevalent in the society they live in? To fulfill their roles, whatever they may be? To figure out who they are, how they want to show up?

There are SO many ways we could consider preparation for the world to look like, and it’s so confusing when we begin to actually pick them all apart. I can’t speak to what everybody means when they say this, but I’ll try to break down some key narratives that I’ve seen out there and figure out where we, unschoolers and homeschoolers and off-the-beaten-path parents, might fit.

Preparing our children for the world that is (aka, how to be successful within oppressive systems).

I don’t know about you, but this is pretty much why I was told I needed to do well in school growing up, why I should be trying to get into a good university, and what I should be aiming for: figuring out what might make a successful career, and how to get it.

The entire premise of this sort of preparation is that the best way to win at life, is to also rise in the ranks of our economic and social systems.

Many of us are told that schooling is key to this, but in truth, it probably plays a part for some groups of people in some places, but is definitely not the universal win-at-capitalism card we are made to think it is.

Studies have consistently shown that some of the most reliable indicators of future success (which is often measured in academic achievement, or by achieved socio-economic status), are in fact the family we are raised in, their socio-economic level, and parental education level. You can see this here, here, here, and here. There are many studies on this and opinions vary incredibly, but what seems to be consistent is that future outcomes for young people are heavily dependent on various factors related to the family and community they grew up in.

On top of this research, nobody can agree what schooling should actually be doing to create “job-readiness” (does this word make anyone else shudder?). Some people think that life skills are more important than academics, others think academics are falling need to be made more rigorous (whatever that means), others believe social and emotional learning is what matters - it’s a minefield, and everybody has opinion.

The most baffling thing about all this discussion is that nobody asks those involved: children.

Nobody consults them on what matters to them, how they might enjoy spending their childhood.

And that is partly due to the fact that when we insist on seeing schooling as an investment and children as economic units, our focus will always always be: how can we maximize our investment to create the best outcomes?

(This article is an excellent assessment of the way neoliberalism is impacting education.)

It is an utterly dehumanizing way to consider an entire group of human beings who have a right to live their lives while also being children.

Needless to say, we do not unschool to be successful by someone else’s measures, to get better grades or get into better colleges, to climb the career ladder, to win at the current system.

So while some people might see unschooling as a path to winning at capitalism, this isn’t what I mean when I talk of preparing my children for the world.

Preparing our children to navigate a changing world.

Not all of us are on board with the fact that the world is rapidly changing, but all of us have probably heard people repeat ad nauseam that many of the jobs of today won’t be around by the time our children are adults, and we simply don’t know what sorts of jobs WILL be around.

Not only that, but the fabric of society is always shifting, our culture is changing, and so is our climate. Preparing our children for a world whose sole common thread is change, feels like a good idea right now.

The beauty of this is also that it is hopeful. There will be tough changes ahead, but perhaps there will also be positive ones. I’ve always been rather utopian about the idea that I want my children to be able to hold the idea of a better world within them, and walk with it throughout life.

I still remember my high school Economics teacher remarking to my mother that I was worryingly cynical for a 17 year old. And the thing is, I’m not. I am forever hopeful, but I was definitely raised in a cynical culture. Everyone is always out for themselves, I was led to believe. The picture my family and friends painted of the society around me was one of extreme scarcity, even though by many measures we were extremely privileged. It was a bizarre way to prepare me for the inevitable depravity of humanity, and hope that it would help me claw my way through life.

It didn’t. I was a hopeless dreamer but I figured that pretending to be cynical might help me get by.

But back to my main point: unschooling has the flexibility to change based on where we are, what our place in those communities is, and what changes are under way in the moment.

Schooling doesn’t have this same ability - it takes policy to make big changes in what is learned and done in schools, and often these policies are driven by economic and political motives and have little to do with preparing children for a changing world.

As lifelong learners and unschoolers and life without schoolers, we have this advantage: we live in the actual world as it changes.

We talk to our children about how to navigate things every day. My children know how to find their way through an airport, from check-in to baggage claim. They know how to figure out public transport, look at a map of any city and find their way around. They know how to google things they don’t know, and how to stay safe online while doing it. They are used to living in countries where English is not the dominant language. They know how to read a room of strangers and figure out what might be appropriate to express and what might not. They know how to make new friends, how to dig deep into passions, how to cook a meal (in a pinch!). They can navigate a trail through the woods, swim in deep seas, keep a fire going, steer a small boat, cross a busy road safely.

None of these are things we learn in school, and all of these are so much more valuable to our current lifestyle than English grammar or Pythagora’s Theorem (and if these ever become valuable, they will probably know how to learn them!).

This is not to say we don’t also learn to read and write and solve problems and learn history - we absolutely do. But it’s learning that is rooted in an actual need, or an interest, or both. It’s learning that makes sense because it allows my children to do the things they want to do (as opposed to the things I want them to do, or I think they should be doing!).

Preparing them for a better world.

My children also know how to question things they are told. They know how to say no, and how to ask for what they need. They are figuring out, day by day, how to live with others in relationships that are not sustained by an entrenched hierarchy or by the threat of force.

They know how to navigate our outer world, and they’re also learning how we might be able to step outside of The Way Things Are Done and build better spaces.

I’m not preparing my children to fit into the world that exists (although I do give them skills to navigate that world) because I don’t think this is the key for any of us to thrive.

I try to make our life as different to mainstream so that they will see that this is possible, and perhaps also decide to continue this way. So that they will question what everyone around them is doing, rather than mindlessly diving right in.

It’s a tricky balance: as humans, we crave to be seen and to belong. And that sometimes looks like shaving off parts of ourselves to blend in better. This is not who I want my children to become: I want them to love who they are, and also make space for who everybody else is.

I want them to be able to see the many ways we might all get free, rather than narrowly focusing on their own freedom before everybody else’s. I want them to feel connection to people and places and the land.

Preparing our children for a different world is a huge feat, and I’ll only ever be imperfect at it. I don’t really know how to do it! I can’t really picture this world, either. I wasn’t raised to inhabit a better world, and I’m constantly having to re-examine what I have taken as truth.

So which is it? Do we prepare them for the world we’re in, or do we step outside of the world and prepare them to make a better one?

In reality, it’s a little bit of both.

I want to support my children in gaining skills that will help them navigate life, right now, and the way things work right now.

AND, I also hope that by embracing values that are counter-cultural, by modeling actions that feel hard and different and go against mainstream thinking, I’m empowering them to carve their own path rather than follow the one someone else has paved (and that someone else may also be me!)

Can we ever prepare our kids for anything? Is it even a fair burden to place on them?

Perhaps we need to consider that we don’t have as much control as we think we do in preparing children for anything.

They aren’t a cake, after all. Our preparation is so much more haphazard than assembling ingredients and creating something relatively predictable.

We might say things like, “I’d like my child to be compassionate,” but is it even our place to tell them what we’d like them to become? What about just being compassionate ourselves - rather than putting the burden on someone else to fulfill our vision of a better world?

How about just doing the things ourselves?

I feel like all I can do is be the things I say I’d like them to be - be their visual for what it might look like. And support them when I can. And the rest is really none of my business!

My parents thought they were preparing me for a corporate career, and here I am now - unschooling, writing, talking about anti-capitalism and making my own deodorant (tmi, but you see where I’m going).

They probably thought they had all the ingredients necessary. But I obviously had other plans, even though I didn’t know it.

I don’t think we can prepare our children to fit any sort of agenda unless they are genuinely interested and willing. And that’s the bottom line.

Our politicians want “job-readiness” but what if today’s young people don’t want to be job-ready, at least not for the jobs that are on offer?

Universities want students who can write essays to a desired standard but what if none of us want to write essays anymore? (I mean, I love a good essay but even I sometimes find myself asking what the point really is.)

So perhaps this entire question is redundant, or simply phrased rather optimistically.

And perhaps childhood isn’t about preparation.

We never talk about that, but maybe childhood could just be a beautiful time in its own right, without an ultimate agenda in mind? Because if we truly wish to see children as whole people in themselves, then we should probably start to see childhood as a legitimate time of life rather than a time of preparation and getting ready for something?

And we should probably step away from seeing parenting as a mission with a defined outcome, and towards seeing parenthood as a temporary state we inhabit.

I’m 42 this year, so should I be preparing for retirement? I mean, probably, but actually I just want to live as best as I can right now. I don’t want to always be preparing. I don’t want my entire childhood to be a preparation for adulthood which is a preparation for parenthood which is a preparation for old age.

How about not always framing each phase of life within a lens of progress or decline, and just seeing life as a continuum, a series of ups and downs perhaps, or maybe one beautiful scribble that goes nowhere in the end.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Sharing my writing helps to support this newsletter, as does becoming a paid member.