Why and How we shifted from unschooling to a daily list

And what Charlotte Mason has to say about it

Long-term readers will know that when I started this blog (back in the distant mists of… April), we called ourselves unschoolers. Today, each child (aged nearly 6 and 8) has a daily list and we try—and often fail—to get through the following:

• Maths

• Writing practice

• Spelling

• French

• Ancient Greek

A reader recently asked about how and why this change happened, so here’s my attempt at an answer. I am currently reading Charlotte Mason’s A Philosophy of Education, and her many wise words are liberally sprinkled throughout this post. You can judge for yourself which side of the argument she falls on—I have a lot more reading to do, and Mason has a lot more to teach me. I’d love to hear your own thoughts and experiences too.

A gentle shift

When we unschooled, I knew exactly what each child ‘should’ be doing according to various curricula, and I made an effort to weave these things and others into our daily lives. I knew what the targets were although I didn’t worry about when we hit them. We often played maths games. I put Greek words on the blackboard for the children to puzzle over in the morning. The whole of the past year we immersed ourselves in Greek myths and the Classical world, as per The Well-Trained Mind. The children loved it, asked for it, did it all willingly. I never pushed learning on them, they came to it themselves and lapped it all up. It wasn’t left entirely up to them, though I was always happy to follow them down whatever rabbit hole they chose.

…a natural love of learning which should carry us through eager school-days, and give a spice of adventure to the duller days of mature life, is effectually choked; and boys and girls ‘Cram to pass but not to know; they do pass but they don’t know’. The divine curiosity which should have been an equipment for life hardly survives early schooldays.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Today, they have a daily list. But they still spend most of each day not working (if you’ll excuse a simplistic delineation between work and play, for the sake of brevity in this post). When I look back at the earliest posts, the stuff we did is not hugely dissimilar to today. So don’t imagine that we have moved from carefree days skipping through cornfields to days spent hunched over our workbooks. It’s been a very gentle, subtle shift.

I am not advocating one approach or another. I’m not saying there was anything wrong with our unschooling—on the contrary, we all loved it. In some ways I am slightly ambivalent about where we have arrived at today, and I know the shape of our days will continue to evolve.

The How

I think it all started with Multiplication by Heart, at the beginning of this year. This is a daily flashcard system where you work on a different set of facts each time you do it, so it works best to do it daily or nearly daily. It takes less than five minutes. The children (mostly) enjoyed it, so it was no big deal to add it as a fixed item in our freewheeling days.

Six months later, I purchased the first of our Jolly Phonics workbooks. I hadn’t pushed writing up to this point, but it was becoming clear that both children would benefit from some regular work in this area. We decided (in truth, I expect I decided) to do one page a day—again, this is barely five minutes, though it can take longer if the child complains about it for twenty minutes first! Again, they mostly did this happily, and my daughter rapidly completed the first book and moved onto the next.

In July, I read Rachael Ringenberg’s post about the power of a daily to-do list and decided to give it a go. It works really well for us, and we’re still using this practice five months later. The lists started off very short and simple—really, just writing down what we were doing already. Gradually, they have grown to what I listed above (maths, writing, spelling, French, Greek). Sometimes I add other subjects (like me reading aloud from a history book, or setting up a science experiment), but often I just add that work into the day more organically.

[Children] want a great quantity of the sort of food whose issue is conduct, and that is why poetry, history, romance, geography, travel, biography, science and sums must all be pressed into service.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

The Why

Mason wrote in 1922 that ‘working men will have more leisure in the future and how this leisure is to be employed is a question much discussed.’ Today that question seems even more pressing. I believe that if our leisure is not to be frittered away on Netflix, a robust education is our best line of defence. ‘Science, history, philosophy, literature […] all classes must be educated and sit down to these things of the mind as they do their daily bread.’

In a very exciting and inspiring way, not a crushing and defeating way, there is so much to learn! It’s like the world’s biggest chocolate box! I want to take the children out of their comfort zones, gently and kindly, and introduce them to things they might never explore by themselves. As Mason says: “his education must prepare him for wanderings in these realms of gold”. I also trust that they will explore independently, and that’s one of my aims for their education—I don’t want them to be restricted to what is on ‘my’ curriculum. But I think that both can happen, and there are strengths in both routes.

I loved our unschooling days. I loved that we never knew what each day held, that the children were tirelessly enthusiastic because it was all coming from them. (Though I realise that my vision of our unschooling time has probably become rose-tinted. There was whingeing and boredom then as there is now.) I don’t like that now I sometimes have to cajole and coax them to get through the daily work. I don’t have to bribe or threaten and if it got to that point, I wouldn’t. But the fact is they don’t always come to the table with their sleeves rolled up, ready to get to work.

Once again, though we do not live on gymnastics, the mind like the body, is invigorated by regular spells of hard exercise.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

But it is also true that there are many things they have learnt because of the gentle rigour of a daily list, that they wouldn’t have learnt otherwise. They mostly know their tables to 10 x 10, which matters to me (it needs constant revision and reinforcement, I’m not saying it’s ‘done’, but it’s a good place to be at 7 and 5 years old). Since French became an almost daily practice instead of waiting for the moments when they requested it, the children have made more progress in a few weeks the they had in the past few years. Ditto spelling and handwriting. And it’s not just me who’s noticed—the children can see the progress for themselves, and they feel great about it.

I should like to emphasise quantity, which is as important for the mind as for the body; both require their ‘square meals’.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Mason cautions against applying education externally like a layer of cosmetics, rather than a child’s learning being something which nourishes them from the inside. “Life is sustained by what is taken in by the organism, not by that which is applied from without.” I don’t want the children to receive “much teaching with little knowledge”. Occasionally, going through our daily list does feel like going through the motions, like I’m painting the education on the outside. Sometimes it’s a grind. Sometimes I can tell I’m reading aloud and nobody can hear me. But overall, our morning stack hugely increases the amount of learning that takes place each day. And it’s good to learn that you can show up and do something you don’t particularly want to, and that you can feel good about it afterwards, or even start to enjoy it once you get going. I feel that the balance between work and play—a balance we all need, whatever our age—is better now.

Education is not after all to either teacher or child the fine careless rapture we appear to have figured it… there is always effort to be made in certain directions.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Much of it, I think, is simply to do with age. My daughter will turn 8 soon. There’s a big difference between a five year old and an eight year old. I am not saying it’s time to put away childish things, far from it, but it certainly feels like she’s gradually become ready for a little more rigour and structure. I am deeply grateful that we have been able to do this on her own timetable, not on a school’s or a government’s. And as I said at the beginning, she still spends the majority of her time ‘not’ working.

No one can enjoy leisure fitly, whose mind is not brought into active play every day.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

I have noticed that because the ‘work’ part of the day is now very clearly defined the children are often less keen on work at any other time. Previously, there was no ‘work’, because it was all entirely self-chosen. So they might make a map of Europe in 1940 one evening, or do three pages of a maths book before breakfast, or ask me to read about volcanoes after lunch. Now, once their morning work is out of the way, they definitely feel the rest of the day is for play. I don’t love that distinction and I fought it for a while. It’s not ironclad; a science experiment is welcome any time, for example, and they both read for at least an hour at bedtime, anything from a book about life cycles to Norse mythology or a Beverly Cleary story. They often ask me to read non-fiction aloud at mealtimes. But I also think the work/play distinction is probably part of life, eventually. Freud said work was essential to human happiness, and Mason has a lovely quote about mathematics: “a mountainous land which pays the climber”. Maths can be hard. Climbing can be hard. But the challenge can also be satisfying, even exhilarating. And the rewards when you get to a summit…

via Unsplash

But unlike mountaineering, with education, there is no summit. Even when you climb Everest, there’s always another mountain. How exciting is that?

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