Welcome to The Educating Parent Beverley Paine's archive of articles about homeschooling and unschooling written over a period of 30 plus years

Free download a quick guide to getting started with homeschooling and unschooling by Beverley Paine The Educating Parent in this excellent Resource Directory
Introduction to
Home Education

 

Free directory of Australian homeschooling and unschooling support groups organised by national, state and territories National and State
Support Groups

 

Plan, record and report all in the one document! Always Learning Books planners available in each year level to suit your homeschooling needs, includes curriculum checklists
Yearly Planner, Diary & Report

Let Beverley and friends help you design and write your own curriculum to suit your child's individual learning needs, learn how to prepare lessons, unit studies and more, record and evaluate your children's learning in this series of 3 parent workbooks developed on Beverley's popular homeschool manual Getting Started with Home School Practical Considerations

Homeschool Course for Parents

this Always Learning Year 7 Plan is everything you need to get started a comprehensive collection of curriculum aligned resources and links to activities, lesson plans and unit studies for your year 7 homeschooling student
Homeschool Learning Plans
go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

Can you successfully unschool without unrestricted access to technology?

by Beverley Paine, Mar 2014

This interesting question is asked quite frequently on Unschool Australia (Facebook group).

My answer will depend upon the definition of technology. I'm going to assume you mean 'screen technology', that is, anything interactive with a computer chip and a screen.

When my children were young this question was posed as 'can you homeschool without a TV'. Some - many of us - battled with the whole addicted to TV thing. (I actually remember my mum complaining about me having my 'head in a book all the time' when I was a kid so it seems that the issue is much deeper than 'technology').

Of course you can unschool without the use of these technologies. Personal computers didn't exist (in Australi) when my daughter was born, arriving soon after. The expense of them meant she didn't use one until she was about 8. By then many of her peers were well and truly immersed in playing hand held games like Space Invaders and Tetris. A few owned computers. We got one soon after but because we only had solar generated power it could only be used an hour a day. It wasn't until she was in her teens that she had access for more than an hour a day to a computer.

Not having unfettered access to using information technology devices as children didn't translate into not being able to use them effectively as adults.

For the same power constraint reasons my children didn't enjoy unrestricted access to the television, video and DVD players.

I'm saying all this because the question asked if it was possible to unschool without unrestricted access to technology and the answer is definitely yes. It is possible, it can happen, and in our case, it did happen.

But that's not the issue. The issue that we all need to work through for ourselves, individually, and for our families, is do we value this technology, do we think integrating it in a small way right through to almost every aspect of our lives is important, okay, healthy, desirable? What our are fears? I think the only way to successfully answer this question is to expose our fears and work through them logically and rationally, drawing on evidence if we can, and then working out what will work to meet our individual and family needs.

Bottom line for me is if it is in the house and we as adults are using it, then our children need to use it too. They will want to. They are driven by a powerful need to learn how to be autonomous and independent and to copy what we do. My tiny granddaughter would rather play with the TV remote and the car keys than the replica colourful toys we've bought to amuse her. There's an important reason why: we play with the real keys and remotes, not toys.

If you don't want your children to want to use 'screen technology' don't use it yourself. If you value it for yourself - for whatever reason - assume that your children will value it too and want to learn how to use and use it for the same kind of reasons you do: as a tool for communication and for entertainment.

Browse our comprehensive library of articles!

keep up to date with new posts to this website daily by clicking here to subscribe

Support Groups: National SA VICWANSW QLD TAS ACT NT
Registration Guides: VIC NSW QLD SA WA TAS ACT NT

Looking for support, reassurance and information? Join Beverley's
The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of ours!

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of our Always Learning Books homeschool year level learning plans, packed with links to FREE lesson plans, unit studies and activities for each curriculum subject area, hundreds of suggestions, use what you want, only $18

Want to learn how to write your own education plans to suit your unique children's individual learning needs?

itap into Beverley's four decades of home educating experience and learn how to write your own homeschool curriculum and learning plans to suit your child's and your family's individual needs, a complete how to homeschool course for parents in 3 self paced workbooks each focusing on a different aspect of home educating, planning, recording, evaluating and creating lesson plans image shows 3 workbooks, plus samples of pages, and 3 children walking in bushland

The Educating Parent acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present.

click here to become a Fearless Homeschool member giving you access to all past summit workshops as well as exciting new content and webinars, online discussion platform, and more

Twinkl downloadable Home education resources helping you teach confidently at home

say goodbye to home education registration stress with this ultimate rego bundle from Fearless Homeschool

make homeschooling a lot easier, zero to homeschool's excellent course is here to help

go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

The opinions and articles included on this website are not necessarily those of Beverley Paine, The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books, nor do they endorse or recommend products listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements on pages within this website.

Without revenue from advertising by educational suppliers and Google Ads we could not continue to provide information to home educators. Please support us by letting our advertisers know that you found them on The Educating Parent. Thanks!

Affiliate links are used on this site that take you to products or services outside of this site. Beverley Paine The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books assume no responsibility for those purchases or returns of products or services as a result of using these affiliate links. Please review products and services completely prior to purchasing through these links. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question before purchasing or signing up.

Text and images on this site © All Rights Reserved 1999-2025