I have to start this post by acknowledging that, to some extent, I’m jumping the gun here.  Our oldest is graduating this year, but we didn’t unschool the whole time.  We did a mix of unschooling in the beginning, then relaxed homeschooling, with a bit of more structured schooling thrown into the mix until this past year when we decided to “officially” go pretty much all-in with unschooling.  But since we already have teens, that raised the obvious question of how to graduate an unschooler.

I ‘m going to share the method/plan we came up with — with the caveat that this is only sort of tried and tested here.

[EDIT: I actually wrote this post about a year ago…and then completely forgot to actually post it.  So my oldest actually hasgraduated in the meantime.  But the approach is still only partially “tested” here, since she’d completed much of her curriculum before we made the switch.]

The Dilemma

When it comes to homeschooling in general — and unschooling in particular — people usually have three main worries:

1. How can I be sure they’ll learn?  This is largely a mindset question, so there isn’t really anything you need to do to address it.  (Although hearing examples can help.)
2. How will I (or someone else) know what they’ve learned?  In other words, how do I keep records or create transcripts if we unschool?  Joan at Unschool Rules has an amazing post about creating transcripts for unschooled or “relaxed homeschooling” high schoolers.  (Fair warning: You may experience culture shock heading there from here.)
3. How will I know when they’re finished?  This was the question that most threw me for a loop — and the one we’re going to address here.

What Is “Graduated”?

Some of the self-professing “radical unschoolers” may bristle at this, but I believe that for a student to “graduate” inherently implies the attainment of a particular standard.  Our kids may reach a certain age and leave home, regardless of what they have or haven’t studied, but if I’m going to issue a diploma, I have to be willing to say that they’ve met some particular standard I’ve set.

So how does one do that, without undermining everything that unschooling stands for?

You require a certain set of standards for graduation, but you don’t require graduation. 

(This is, by the way, what the schools do, if you really think about it.)  And you set the requirements in such a way that the specifics are not excessive.  We did that by making use of a book called The Checklist (that’s really the title), and when I explain our method, this will make more sense.

The Checklist — and Graduation Requirements

The Checklist, which you can buy either in print or in digital format from Oklahoma Homeschool, is just that — a checklist.  It’s a very extensive, detailed checklist of practically every academic skill or topic you can imagine at the less-than-college level.

It is not the kind of checklist where you aim to check everything off.  (Please don’t anyone run out and do that to your kids!)  Rather, it’s super-thorough so you can check off whatever your kids do know.

We went through our copy and highlighted the things that are, for us, the absolute essentials for any child of ours to be a functioning, godly adult.

Michael and I looked through it, and the oldest two girls looked over it with us, too, and the four of us were in remarkable agreement on where to draw those lines.  There were some minor disagreements over a few points, but all in all, if you look at what we each would have individually chosen, you get pretty consistent, if fuzzy, lines.  That helps give me confidence that Michael and I didn’t get excessive with it.

Now, we don’t expect that the things we highlighted are all our children should, or will, learn.  We expect that they will all learn much more than that, in the areas of interest and passions that God has placed on their hearts.  The highlighted items are those which we believe are generally universal needs for American adults (e.g. you need to know how to read, regardless of what you’re reading about).

Without getting as detailed as The Checklist, these fall into a few basic areas:

• literacy (including research skills)
• numeracy
• critical thinking skills
• essential life skills (like how to choose a menu & make a grocery list, or put gas in the car [possibly not essential if you live in NYC or something, but…we don’t])
• basic understanding of how our government works (e.g. I don’t care if you can tell me the line of succession to the Presidency, but knowing the three branches is important for responsible citizenship)
• basic enough understanding of other subjects to understand what they are (like what the various branches of science cover), know what more you want to study, etc.

When you list it all out, it might sound like a lot, but the vast majority of these things won’t even take any concerted effort, because we use them all the time in our lives — which is exactly the point.  These are the things that are used often enough, by enough of “everybody,” that if you can’t do them well, or don’t know them, you will run into problems as an adult.

So the kids know that, by graduation time, they need to have accomplished those things and rounded them out well with other things to qualify to “graduate.” But they can accomplish those goals however they see fit, in whatever order they choose, on whatever timeline makes sense for them.

And they could choose to just reject this altogether and simply not ever officially graduate.  But I don’t think they will, in part because they find this reasonable, rather than arbitrary.