Don’t send your children to school, but teach at home. That is the basis of ‘unschooling’, a form of home education that has come over from the United States. Parents are increasingly asking for exemption from compulsory education to teach their offspring themselves. Daphne and Janna are two mothers who believe in unschooling. “I’m not afraid that my children will fall behind,” says Janna.
“The term unschooling can sometimes come across as very intense. As if you do nothing at all and say ‘find it out’,” says Janna* from Breda. “But it is very intensively focused on the child.” The woman from Breda, who prefers to tell her story anonymously, has two children, one of whom is already of school age. “I take my job as a home teacher very seriously. I am constantly working on what I can offer my child.”
Daphne from Den Bosch is also in favour. “We like the bit of freedom, but that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that my children grow up free and develop their gifts instead of being measured by society’s standards.”
“It’s a shame if he comes back completely exhausted.”
Daphne has two children. Her eldest will start at a primary school in September, but she has already indicated to the school that she is considering unschooling. “It’s such a shame if we send our child to school full of zest for life and fun and he comes back completely exhausted.”
Unschooling is a life without going to school. There is ‘teaching’ at home, but in many different ways. “That could mean looking things up on the computer together. But also visiting exhibitions, museums, the library, working creatively together with letters and numbers and so on. Unschooling assumes that the child absorbs something better when it takes an interest in it. You start from the trust and then want to figure it out yourself,” explains Janna.
Education is compulsory in the Netherlands. Children aged 5 to 16 are of compulsory school age. Parents are punishable if they keep their child at home. You can, however, get an exemption from compulsory education. According to the law, you can apply for an exemption if you object to the direction of the education. That is the basic idea of the school, based on a certain religious conviction or philosophy of life. You must explain your objection for every school within a distance of six kilometers from your home.
According to research program Argos, the number of children with an exemption based on this objection has doubled in ten years. In the 2021-2022 school year, 52 children in West Brabant had this exemption, according to figures from the Regional Bureau of Learning (RBL) West Brabant. In that school year, there were 22 students in the northeastern part of the province. Nationally, this concerns 1,711 children.
“We are different in life anyway.”
Will the children not lag behind in their development due to unschooling? “That’s a question I get a lot,” says Janna. “But within unschooling there is no such thing as falling behind, because you keep learning all your life. In school systems you stay behind if, for example, you don’t know the alphabet well in group three. With unschooling you have confidence that the child will learn. Is not in group three, or in group four or five.”
“In any case, we have a very different view of life than the average Dutch person,” says Daphne. “We have plans to leave the Netherlands. We are also very busy with sustainability, nature and living in the moment.” Janna agrees. “I don’t believe there is only one possible path to a child’s development.”
*Janna’s real name is known to the editors.
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