By JUJU CHANG and ALYSSA LITOFF
For the Martin family, the usual morning ritual of getting ready for school and onto the school bus, is a foreign concept.
They live as though school doesn’t exist. They’re at home all day, but they’re not being homeschooled. They’re being “unschooled.” There are no textbooks, no tests and no formal education at all in their world.
“Just picture life without school. So, maybe a weekend. We wake up, and we have breakfast, and we just start pursuing what we’re interested in doing,” said Dayna Martin, a mother of four in Madison, N.H.
Martin doesn’t believe her kids need to go to school to learn their ABCs. It’s part of a radical new approach to education and parenting.
“I just personally don’t believe that humans learn best when they’re trying to learn something that somebody else is telling them to,” she said.
And she doesn’t necessarily think they need to mind their Ps and Qs. Her hands-off approach extends to other areas of the children’s lives. The kids are allowed to eat whatever they want — even pasta with peanut butter sauce — as long as it is in the house.
What’s more, they make their own decisions, and don’t have chores or rules. “Because we don’t punish, we don’t use the term rules,” Martin said.
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