UNSCHOOLING AND SOCIAL JUSTICE/MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Record: Kristan Morrison, “Unschooling and Social Justice/Multicultural Education: (Un)Realized Potential” in Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives 7, no. 2 (2018): 97-117 [available here]

Summary: Morrison of Radford University performed an online survey to discover how social justice curriculum is integrated into the unschooling system.

Considering that unschooling focuses more on developing the interest of the child, there is seldom a curriculum followed by the parent. Because of this, Morrison wanted to know how much exposure unschooled children receive about ideas of social justice. She designed an online survey for unschooling parents to tell their experiences teaching about “others” in society. She then coded the responses into three categories: engagement in exposure to “others,” critically analyzing systems and institutions which created, maintained, and perpetuated inequities, and envisioning/creating a better world. These categories were abbreviated as exposure, analysis, action.

The results of the survey revealed that the dominant source of multicultural education for unschoolers was exposure. This was broken down into two subcategories: personal interactions and secondary interactions. Personal interactions involved attending diverse festivals or ceremonies, traveling to new communities and locations, or by proximity. Secondary interactions involved encountering representations to other cultures through literature or art.

The second most dominant source of multicultural education came from analysis. In analysis, parents communicated a deeper level of engagement with social justice topics. These topics tended to reflect conscious self-exploration which encouraged children to view circumstances from diverse perspectives.

Action was the least common category reported in the survey. This category included volunteer work, participating in protests, standing up for the underprivileged, and having discussions about social change.

The survey also reported that approximately 15% of participants indicated that nothing was being done in regard to multicultural education.

Morrison compared her findings of unschooling families to data on public school families and found that, in both cases, exposure is the most dominant source of multicultural and social justice education. She hypothesizes that this is due to the surface level of understanding of social justice issues within popular culture.

The research also indicated that the parents’ intentions for unschooling were related to their inclusion of multicultural education. Some parents are focused on the self-actualization of their children. These parents are less likely to include aspects of multicultural education as they are more focused on allowing their children to find themselves. Other parents are focused on empowering their children to challenge the status quo in society. These parents are more likely to include multicultural education in their children’s education as it provides them with different world perspectives to compare to their own society.

Appraisal: Morrison’s idea of examining multicultural education for unschoolers is intriguing, offering a novel take on the common connection made between homeschooling and moral formation. Considering we live in a diverse world where social justice issues are at the forefront of many conversations, it seems important for children to become familiar with social justice concerns.

Since unschooling does not follow a set curriculum, that means that parents have to either make the choice to intentionally expose their children to different perspectives or not, or that children have to develop an interest in these matters on their own somehow. For many of the unschoolers who participated in this study, multicultural education was something that was a side effect of whatever the child was learning.

I appreciated that Morrison compared her findings to public school families. This helped to establish what the “norm” for multicultural education is and whether or not her findings indicated anything of particular interest in regard to unschooling families. Her findings, at least for this convenience sample, seem to indicate that there is not much difference between the exposure to multicultural education for those who choose to public school and those who choose to unschool.

 

Marissa Donlevie, Messiah College

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