Why we don't use a curriculum

[This post started off as a comment I left on Hawksbill & Barbnocity's blog....]

Most of the unschooling families we know use some kind of curriculum, albeit on their own schedule, and with modifications. I asssume that non-unschoolers are even more likely to use curricula. But I've been very resistant to the idea.

For one thing, I don't believe in an academic canon that every educated person should know. The world is a gigantic place, and any canon is necessarily limiting. The idea of "universal knowledge" has historically been used for elitist and exclusionary purposes, particularly by the 19th century aristocracy in their attempt to cling to privilege in the face of the "new money" merchant class. I also think that defining the "important" knowledge is inevitably ethnocentric when it comes to history, geography, politics, or the arts.

I've also accepted that my kids are going to specialize in certain fields long before they ever get to college, which means a curriculum could only ever be supplementary. When we first decided to homeschool, I read every homeschooling blog I could get my hands on, and for a couple of weeks I was freaked out. I would read about a 9-year-old obsessed with astronomy, a 13-year-old Shakespeare afficionado, the 8-year-old who loved algebra, etc, and I would conglomerate all these talents into one imaginary Genius Homeschooler. Eventually I realized that homeschooled kids have freedom to pursue their interests, and they retain more of their natural desire to learn, therefore there is no way they're all going to learn the same set of facts and skills. I had to let go of my old schooly idea of "education" as one particular set of knowledge, everything else being merely a hobby. I began to realize that my kids would know more than other kids in a few areas, and less than other kids in many areas. Just like adults. Who decided specialization shouldn't occur until college, anyway?

I do encourage math and reading, but I see those as tools we are picking up along the way, not as the main topics of study. Anya can read words like "heart," "brain," and "caudal fin" because she's obsessed with her books about fish; other words and true reading will follow because they are useful to her. I've told her numerous times that scientists use a ton of math, and if she's going to be an icthyologist she'll need to keep learning math. These tools get picked up while she pursues her own particular interests, and it would be a lot harder to teach these things in any other context.

I believe that learning is the weaving of new data into a sort of mental narrative of the world, a narrative which is unique to each person. This web of accumulated knowledge is most efficient if it is allowed to develop organically, using whatever connections come naturally to that person. A curriculum organizes information on your behalf; it draws connections between topics on your behalf. And if today's Study Unit is ancient Egypt, that discourages you from going off reading about the domestication of cats or the Aztec pyramids, because that would mean interrupting today's lesson.

I am constantly noticing how everything relates to everything else. Recently Anya asked me about Canadian money; then we talked about why no women were on American coins; I explained that men have more power now but that was not true 30,000 years ago; then we Googled Queen Elizabeth II, which led to more Googling of famous crowns, scepters, and jewels; which took us to geology and mining, and touched on economics (rarity = higher value). Oh, and Persia came into it as well, as their crowns put European crowns to shame. I don't want to interfere with this intense linking of concepts (and neurons) which I witness on an hourly basis. Even the most Waldorf and informal curricula still imply that "Now is the time to discuss X, we'll get to Y later..." which is in some sense preventing connections from occurring.

I know that unschoolers use curricula mostly for suggestions, but it seems to me that if you follow a kid's stream of consciousness you wind up touching on most everything. I can barely keep up with Anya's curiosity-- I don't need suggestions!