Discipline in a Love of Learning, Freedom Education, Interest-Led Homeschool

This series of three posts addresses two myths about interest-led learning/self-directed learners.

Myth One: If you are a self-directed learning family and let your children largely pursue their own interests as their education, you must not have a very disciplined home and family life. It must be chaos after all to let your kids "do their own thing".

Myth Two: If you are a self-directed learning family and let your children largely pursue their own interests as their education, your children won't learn self-discipline. They don't learn to apply themselves to less-than-pleasant tasks. In short, they are not equipped for real life drudgery.

I address myth one in my first post, in which I explained what early years discipline looked like in our home.

When our children were little we established firm boundaries, in the context of unconditional love. Now we all experience a great deal of freedom within those boundaries. And as our children get older, while still living in our home, they will learn to set their own boundaries.

I address myth two in posts two and three. In the second post of the series I propose that many people see compulsory schooling as the training ground that prepares you for a life you don't necessarily want to live and forced academics is a great opportunity, and main vehicle, for character development. People accept this as "just the way it is".

I disagree, I think our world needs self-motivated thinkers, leaders, problem solvers, do-ers and creators. And I think academics, specifically in the younger years, are not the main vehicle by which to develop character.

In the third and last post of this series I propose that children can learn to apply themselves to difficult tasks, and become self-disciplined adults by:

• participating in normal family life. The comings, goings and doings of a family require discipline, and eventually self-discipline.
• investing large amounts of time, energy, and effort in designing their own studies and self-directing their learning.

I explain both points, illustrating what this looks like in both elementary and high school years.

In the third post I conclude with tips, strategies, and a challenge to help you develop self-discipline in an interest-led, freedom based homeschooling environment.

These tips can be applied to families in any schooling situation but I believe are most effective when children truly do have a large degree of freedom in their learning.

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