John Taylor Gatto says that one of the seven lessons of our current system of compulsory institutional schooling is intellectual dependency:
“Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives” (Dumbing Us Down
I am by no means an “unschooler,” but I delight to see my boys initiating some of their own learning, just for the love of it. They are required to complete certain lessons, of course, whether they are particularly intrigued or not, but they are also learning intellectual independence. Some of their most significant learning has come not from assigned “schoolwork” but from their independent reading in their favorite areas. Forrest used to take the Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World to bed every night, and Andrew has picked up an amazing amount of scientific knowledge from some Charlie Brown encyclopedias he selected at a library sale a few years ago.
Mary Jo