How my unschoolers transitioned into higher level studies

Recently I shared this post on my Instagram about my daughter who is self-studying bioinformatics and computational biology through open courses.

I mentioned in this post that my daughter has not followed a curriculum or done any formal school study before she started on this pathway.

People think that if kids aren’t taught in a formal way since childhood, they won’t be able to cope with academics later in life. I am glad to tell that this notion is not correct. Since this girl hasn’t studied a single textbook before starting on her bioinformatics journey around two years ago, Alhamdulillah.

I received many messages by people who were interested to know how she learnt enough to start university level courses. And also how my kids went from unstructured learning (a.k.a. playing all day 😀) to academics in such a short time.

In this post I am trying to write about this transition. But it is by no means a guide. This is just what my kids did. It may answer some of your questions or help you in helping your children. At the least it will give you a glimpse into how child led learning or unschooling may work out for teens or young adults.

My kids have always been self-taught. But they have different personalities and learning styles and they learn in different ways.

For example, my son started reading at age three by himself, and he has always been a champion reader. He will consume anything and everything and could hardly sit without a book.

My daughter on the other hand didn’t start reading until she was six, neither was she much interested in books and reading. We always thought that she will not grow up to be a reader. She caught the reading bug when she was around eight and since then she has been an extremely enthusiast reader.

On a side note, my youngest is seven and he loves books and has consumed more books than either of my older kids did at that age. But he still can’t read! He asks (read “demands from”) everyone to read books to him and I am totally okay with that.

Similarly, not following a curriculum or syllabus or not doing school at home doesn’t mean that the kids are not learning. They are learning all the time, just in a different way.

Since we do not limit screen times the bulk of their learning happened through various websites, and of course books. We have quite a library in our home, as unfortunately there aren’t many well stocked libraries around us. We have also used tons of paid and free websites and resources to learn more about whatever topics they were interested in.

Apart from the books they were reading and websites they were browsing, they also loved hands on activities, science experiments, imaginary play, role playing, outdoor play, sports, and so much more.

They were also extremely interested in the tech field in general and had mastered the block programming languages like Scratch at an early age. At that time, I was running a free coding club for kids, and I asked them to help me run it. They mentored many kids there and learnt a lot in the process themselves, including soft skills.

A lot of their learning also happened from the workshops they attended. For example, they both took on campus training for first aid (all three levels) with Medi Response a few years back. Recently they both finished their training and certification for Basic life support health care providers (paramedics). My son also volunteers to work on the ambulance.

They also volunteered with community police, and other community projects, learning things which are not possible to learn from books. Both of them had already been helping in our family business since before they were ten. They balanced books, did admin tasks, and made themselves generally useful.

As a result, by the time they were ten to twelve years old, they knew more stuff than an average high school can teach. Yes, there were gaps. For example, my son could build a PC from scratch at age twelve but knew next to nothing about chemical equations. And my daughter could write a research paper on horse genetics but didn’t have a clue on supply and demand chain.

Can you see a pattern? Kids learn best when they want, about things they want to know.

Around that time, they had already started thinking about their careers or what they wanted to do in life. And they started experimenting with different fields and grew their horizons.

My son went ahead and did every course/training under the sun on installation and maintenance of security equipment (CCTV cameras, alarms, electric fence, gate motors etc.). At thirteen he became the youngest qualified security equipment installer of many major brands of South Africa. He was known as ‘that young boy’ within the industry as he started working as a lead technician for our family business. 😊

A lot of these courses required classroom style teaching and exams, which was a new thing for him. He does not have a temperament of sitting through lectures and courses, or classroom style teaching and would rather learn things in a hands-on way. But since he was very passionate about this topic, he even sat through even the most excruciatingly boring lectures and got distinctive marks on all his exams.

He was genuinely bewildered though at the way his course mates would take long notes on topics which were already written and explained in the training material. I bet he bewildered the school minded course mates as much by never taking a single note and still achieving the highest marks 😀

At the same time, he started learning computer programming in Python, and C++ through open courses and YouTube videos. He also learnt cyber security and ethical hacking and toyed with the idea of starting a cyber security consultancy. He also did the Udacity nano-degree on programming drones and autonomous flying vehicles. Later he learnt web development, especially backend development with Python, and cloud development.

At this stage he wasn’t sure which filed he would go into and was still experimenting. But he pushed his knowledge in the general field he loved – the tech industry. He learnt new things, experimented with stuff, made and break stuff and so on.

He even wrote about some of the stuff he learnt, and he admits himself that he would rather get his hands muddy and learn things the hard way 😀

I downloaded the ISO and created a Virtual Machine. I was ready to do this. I had read all sorts of horror stories about how beginner users shouldn’t download Arch but should instead begin with Ubuntu and once they are familiar with Linux they should attempt Arch. But I refused. I hated Ubuntu. Besides, I love getting my hands muddy and learning things the hard way.

As a result of his varied skill set, he managed to secure his first job recently at the age of eighteen (apart from his contribution to the family business) in a health tech start-up as a software developer, Alhamdulillah! He still works part time as the lead technician for our family business and is still learning new things, still by skimming through open courses and YouTube videos. Alhamdulillah!

At the same time, he is an extremely well-read person and has amazing amount of knowledge on various topics apart from tech industry including history, languages, and psychology. He volunteers on ambulance as a paramedic and is an agile horse-back rider. MashaAllah!

My daughter started her journey much the same way. At age ten she was already part of the family business doing the backend office stuff.

Her first foray into the world of structured learning was when she started learning Python through Python for everyone. By the age eleven she was already programming in Python. She even took a course on web development and JavaScript but didn’t enjoyed it much.

Unlike my son, she has a more academic mind set and doesn’t mind sitting through lectures and courses. She loves animals and wanted to be a vet. So around that time she was going through a lot of biology books and websites. She also joined several communities on Facebook on animal genetics and I must say that those communities taught her as much as the books and websites, if not more.

I was doing a course on EdX myself at that time and found very good reviews of an open course on edX “Introduction to biology – the secret of life” by the amazing Professor Eric Lander and sent her the link. She enrolled in that course and loved it. And although she hadn’t done the high school level biology yet she kept up with the course, researching the topics as she went.

This course piqued her interest in biology, biochemistry, and genetics. She kept reading more on the topics and learnt a ton of stuff just by informal reading.

Meanwhile she started toying with the field of data science. She completed the complete track of data science from Data Camp. It was an interactive course where she had to do many hands-on labs along with theory lectures. She enjoyed the programming and data analysis part, but she didn’t enjoy working with financial and business data.

And that is when she discovered the field of bioinformatics and she found that it combines both the fields she enjoy – python programming and genetics. She started following the OSSU pathway of bioinformatics through open courses.
But as I have mentioned before, there were gaps in their learning. Which, I want to point out is not a bad thing. We all have gaps in our learning. The important thing is that she recognised her weaknesses and studied in a way to fill those gaps by going back to basics wherever she needed. She even wrote about her journey and has written about the gaps in her understanding in a humorous way.

I was very eager to begin the second course, which being all about chemistry, appealed to me a lot. However, it turned out to be a lot more advanced than I expected. I discovered, rather harshly, that my chemistry knowledge was rather feeble. Unable to understand the principles from the first lecture, The Importance of Chemical Principles, I was forced to dash my hopes of understanding the MIT course, and turn my gaze to Khan Academy, instead.

Rather disgruntled from this sudden transformation of my studies, from a MIT course down to high-school courses again, I nonetheless pursued Khan Academy’s chemistry track. I tried to bail out repeatedly, but bitterly discovered that watching a week’s worth of high-school chemistry videos hadn’t, unfortunately, given me the ability to understand Lecture 1: The Importance of Chemical Principles.

So, dismayed, I resigned myself to high-school chemistry again, and for the next couple of months, refrained from trying my luck at the MIT course.

Two months later, if memory serves, I revisited Lecture 1: The Importance of Chemical Principles, and I discovered, to my delight, that I could finally comprehend the lecture!

Very pleased with this turn of events, I eagerly set off to finally begin the course. Unfortunately, I encountered several hitches along the way – the basic knowledge of chemistry which had carried me till Lecture 1 failed me a few lectures later.

Thankfully, Khan Academy and Google came to my rescue again, and after skimming the Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry sections on Khan Academy, I could Google my way down the course.

Finally, several months and several hitches later, I reached the end of the winding journey that was 5.111: Principles of Chemical Science.

😂😂😂

She is still braving her way through the third year of OSSU, MashaAllah! And at the same time, she is also learning scientific illustration and animation as a fall-back option. But where her bioinformatics study is all very formal and academic, she is learning scientific illustration and animation in a much more laid-back style. Through YouTube and a community of artists she follows on Instagram.

Apart from that she is, like her brother, an extremely well-read person, MashaAllah. She is the one who told me about the old civilizations and their worshipping of Sirius star – a discussion which got us started on a detailed study of surah an-Najm, Alhamdulillah! She is also a superb photographer, macro photography of nature being her niche. She also makes digital art in her free time and is a very good horse-back rider, and archer. MashaAllah!

So, what about exams? And degrees?

At one time they thought about writing the A level exams, skipping O levels completely, in case they ever need a school leaving certificate. I confess that it was more my doing than their inclination 😎 But I was worried that they will face problems in their professional life without any kind of credentials.

Turns out I was wrong.

They even started (and almost completed) the syllabus for A levels with Math, Physics, and computer science, and in case of my daughter math, biology, and chemistry, as their major subjects. But in the end, they decided against writing the exams as they found the textbooks extremely boring, and useless. And they realized that they were wasting their time preparing for an exam which doesn’t add any value to their life. And which no one cares about anymore. I am glad they didn’t listen to me. 😊

My son was hired a software developer and the start-up that hired him didn’t care if he has any degree or certificate. All they were interested in was his portfolio and the projects he had made.

So, this is how my kids have transitioned from casual interest-based learning to a world of more structured and career based learning.

I hope you found it useful. If you have any questions drop them in the comments below.