Unschool

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To educate a child outside conventional schools, letting learning follow the child's own interests rather than a set curriculum
2. To raise and teach a young person without enrolling them in formal classes, allowing self-directed learning through daily life
3. To free a child from the structure of school by encouraging them to learn through their own curiosity and experience

Etymology: "Unschool" is a plain formation: the prefix "un-" attached to "school," meaning to remove formal schooling from a child's education. The verb is built the way many English reversal words are, by adding "un-" to a base verb to signal the undoing of its action. Here, "school" is the base, so "unschool" carries the sense of taking a child out of conventional instruction rather than merely not attending a particular institution. The word's real interest lies in how the idea behind it was used. "School" traces back through Old English "scōl" and Latin "schola," borrowed from Greek "scholē," which originally meant leisure or free time, the sense that schooling was a use of spare hours. The reversal therefore points, rather loosely, toward a fuller circle: the "un-" removes the institutional structure, while the older root hints at a time when learning was something done at leisure.

Synonyms: deschool