Classical Education and Unschooling

Found this really good post online. I wonder if I know the author; it sounds like it could be one of my wonderful 4reallearning friends~ !

I’ve wondered many times if the things I’ve posted on this board in the past have given a simplistic view of our family’s educational life. Our school has never been structured like a traditional school, but there has always been structure. Our structure has been influenced by many learning philosophies. We don’t follow any of these exactly, but we have been influenced by Charlotte Mason (no twaddle, real books/great literature, art, classical music, nature studies, narration), the Moores (relax, use the world around us as a curriculum, simplicity), classical education (great books, ideas, understanding the classical influence on our culture and filtering it through Biblical truth, developing thinkers) I’ve also been influenced by some of the ideas in other methods, by articles I’ve read, and by books I’ve read. So, we’ve come up with our own philosophy and methods of learning, taking ideas from here and there because it seemed natural for our family to do so. We have a structure, but not a detailed plan. We have educational goals, but our methods of accomplishing them are challenging and require a lot of energy because we work to motivate the kids to learn for themselves in a deep and meaningful way. It’s harder to motivate a child to read Plato than it is to assign him the reading.

The whole main site looks good.