Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Gist of Unit Studies: Any topic of interest can be used as a springboard to understand many (if not all) the subjects
Part of my How Homeschool? Series
You might start with a unit on ancient Egypt: study its mythology and hieroglyphics (what can you draw?); the engineering of the Pyramids (can you build a model?); how the Nile contributed to the local agriculture (with maybe a sub-unit on its crocodiles); the ecosystem of the desert; the economics and politics of the place (including biographies of significant pharaohs); where it comes up in the Bible; how modern archaeology uncovers its secrets; all of which may culminate in a visit to a museum, or maybe an interview with an Egyptologist, or perhaps even an actual trip to Egypt.
Figure 1. The most stereotypical student of unit studies, who will inevitably discover that a mummy’s favorite type of music is wrap.
Then you would pursue a unit on crime: a statistical study of who commits what type of crime where in the United States; you’d study the physics of ballistics (perhaps accompanied by a visit to the shooting range or even mimicking some of the training done at a police academy); the chemistry and biology of forensics; criminal psychology; literature, including true crime like Wire creator David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets but also Dostoyevsky; you might arrange a ride-along with a police officer in a major city; and then, finally, you’d organize a debate between siblings about what the most effective legal response to crime is and invite an audience (perhaps a judge) to judge.
And then you’d move on to the next units on aviation, the Constitution, water, exploration, Little House on the Prairie, investing, house management, and so on - whatever big topic you and/or your kids find interesting - and then digging into just how deep and complicated it is across the breadth of human understanding. In unit studies, you reject the typical attempt to compartmentalize every subject into its own silo and instead see subjects all together, interrelated, and applicable to real-world situations. Interdisciplinary is the key word and any topic you can think of is a symphony of knowledge, waiting for you to study each of its instruments.
Significantly, if your child absolutely loves one thing, this is a way to teach a lot of things through that one thing. Unit studies claims to improve upon unschooling’s child-directed learning by also ensuring that whatever topic your child is interested in, she learns about it formally through lots of subjects. You might start choosing unit studies that interest you, then work with your child to create unit studies of mutual interest, then supervise and approve unit studies your child creates herself. Unit studies adherents say their approach is a natural way to learn - Valerie Bendt says you probably didn’t know much of anything about pregnancy before it was relevant to you. But then you read about it, consulted an OB, went to a birthing class, etc. Bendt says that’s a unit study.
Another name for this approach is “project-based” learning - and many unit studies adherents put a big premium on learning by doing, whether it’s model-building or laying out meaningful choices in a thoughtful simulation (would you have joined the American Revolution or stuck with the King?) or performing a real task (like taking flying lessons at the end of an aviation unit). One very nice thing about unit studies is that it’s fairly easy to come up with a public end product that isn’t simply a standardized test score or essay (though why not finish a unit with an op-ed in the local newspaper?). Not every family can “roadschool,” but unit studies gives families who can travel the country (or the world) the opportunity to dig deep into anywhere they happen to be, learning the local history and heroes, preparing and eating local cuisine, etc. Immersion clearly helps with language, why not a whole culture? If you’re able, why not give your children an unforgettable childhood going to the world’s most fascinating, most magnificent sights -- and not just getting the brief tour, but learning deeply about them?
Figure 2. You can go to Pisa and learn all about how their leaning tower had to be corrected by engineers so it wouldn’t collapse - but also not too corrected because otherwise you wouldn’t visit
And if arts and crafts aren’t your thing, you can still pursue book-based unit studies, reading lots of books with different perspectives and opinions on a single subject - and that kind of clustering can be quite informative, if the subject is important enough to you (it’s basically what I’ve done in preparing this homeschooling series).
The trouble with unit studies is that a lot of the ways you can “dig deep” into any subject require prerequisite expertise - in order to digest the statistics of crime, you first need to know statistics. The reason why subjects are “siloed” is that they have building blocks that cumulatively construct knowledge. There are pre-planned unit studies you can buy or find on the internet but, if you want to build your own unit studies based on your and your children’s particular interests, that’s quite a bit of work. Trying to formulate each unit study such that in each subject your child is advancing is even more work. Interestingly, unit studies is sometimes advertised as being perfect for a large family because you can all study the same topic together but at different levels - but that requires still more work. This cumulative knowledge issue is especially true of math, such that some unit studies programs just do math like a traditional subject and everything else with their particular approach.
Experts spend entire lifetimes devoted to some of the subtopics unit studies touch upon - it’s often difficult to know quite when to stop. When they do stop, unit studies adherents know there’s so much more they could have done - but perhaps that’s a rewarding insight as children consider potential professions. On the flip side, unit studies managers have to choose topics big enough to accommodate multiple angles and subjects.
One institution that does an especially good job at unit studies is the Acton Academy (locations differ in quality, but at its best). Inspired by the case studies of Harvard Business School, Acton asks their students provocative questions like, to elementary students who don’t even know much history yet, “Was John F. Kennedy the ne’er do well son of a rich man or America’s greatest president assassinated in his prime?” The children are then dispatched to do their own research and come back with their own opinions. Their fundamental premise is that every child is a hero who can change the world (though heroes are flawed and the way you may change the world is by delivering quality plumbing services). Every few weeks, Acton puts on a public exhibition of their children’s work. Acton tries to set up hard games for their elementary school students and then sets up older kids with apprenticeships with adults. Notably, they do go through a separate, dedicated math program via Khan Academy. Acton is worth learning about, but it is not designed for the home and they don’t publish their curriculum - my guess is that Acton would insist that an institution is better because another part of their approach is to encourage children to create systems of self-governance and mutual accountability to learn responsibility.
Figure 3. While not a ne’er do well, JFK was only a middling president with a reputation artificially enhanced by his glamor and martyrdom. His perceived weakness invited the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis, both of which entrenched totalitarian regimes. And JFK was focused on foreign policy: most of his domestic goals went unachieved. JFK did cut taxes - but he also ended tight fiscal and monetary policy that attempted to responsibly manage the government’s budget, leading to America’s first non-war, non-recession deficit. For more long-lasting damage, JFK granted federal employees the right to collectively bargain. America could do worse - and it did, immediately, with his successor!
But perhaps the most interesting thing that Acton does is host the equivalent of science fairs for young entrepreneurs, in which children can pitch their business ideas to their community. It’s not crazy to say that Traditional school as we know it was designed to shape obedient employees for the Industrial Revolution - it certainly does not intentionally foster a spirit of entrepreneurialism. A lot of homeschooling approaches are flexible enough to accommodate this goal if desired, but unit studies has the special advantage of trying to work through all the angles that an entrepreneur might want to consider, not just telling a kid “go start a business” but understanding all aspects of how businesses operate - and then looking at every single unit through the lens of how businesses make money and whether or not there is a missed profit opportunity.
But how might other homeschooling approaches critique and comment on unit studies? (Note that this is imaginative speculation, not quotation, from each point of view)
Evidence-based Traditional: before you can get the most out of interdisciplinary studies, you first need to know the disciplines - and it seems rather unlikely that the best way to teach every subject would use the same examples. Children need to master material, which involves correctly answering 90% of the questions in each sequential step before moving on. Inevitably, the odd mixture of breadth and depth in unit studies will leave children with knowledge gaps that may very well render them culturally illiterate, with a piecemeal perception of how things work. Think about the problem of summer loss - the idea that children out of school regress - and you’ll see a similar problem with unit studies that doesn’t hit every subject every time.
Pragmatists: It’s silly to read Camus’ the Plague to help you really understand first aid. You don’t need to study the history of how the Venetians innovated double-entry bookkeeping to learn how to manage your household budget. Admittedly, knowing something about probability and the Secretary Problem might help you get married to the best spouse - but almost nothing requires a cross-all-disciplinary approach. Learning by doing and cultivating entrepreneurialism are good ideas, but unit studiers exaggerate just how much their pursuit of knowledge involves real world application.
Figure 4. Unit studies is a Swiss army knife that tries to use every single tool every single time.
Specialists: In some ways, specialization is just one big unit study. Unit studies adherents themselves realize that a lot of their subjects could go on forever - specialization embraces that in pursuit of excellence. But while unit studies would demand more topics and that all subjects be studied through that one thing, specialists would ask (and potentially test) whether academically studying the physics of football is really going to be more helpful to a child’s game than just throwing the ball more; or whether studying however you can apply calculus to the law makes you a better lawyer than reading more precedents or practicing your oral presentation skills.
Classical: Unit studies lack coherence between units; it’s a methodology of (poor) tactics that add up to no educational strategy. Traditional is indeed too siloed but the way to pursue cross-disciplinary insight is not through narrow unit studies but through a broad understanding of history (in particular, looking at one era at a time, understanding its literature and scientific discoveries chronologically). Unit studies also ignores the Trivium, combining all three phases in every unit, and pays too much attention to a student’s interest, risking depriving them of the greatest minds of Western civilization. If you’re building a house, unit studies looks at the history (and chemistry and literature etc) of plumbing and then of framing and then of roofing while Classical provides actual blueprints (and the end-result is not some modern monstrosity but Classical architecture).
PhD Dad Art Robinson: unit studiers jump into the deep end of the pool without first learning how to swim. Traditional schools are bad enough in that they try to pursue all subjects together when kids fail at the basics; unit studies tries to pursue advanced versions of all the subjects through a series of very narrow prisms. The “real world application” is completely overrated at this level of education - mastering the abstractions of math enables the cross-disciplinary application unit studiers are interested in. Unit studies is a particular disaster if it does not systematically pursue math outside unit studies. But that doesn’t solve all the problems: math is the language of science and math mastery ought to be formal science’s prerequisite. That leaves the humanities, and unit studiers are in danger of dumbing things down as they try to find the “age-appropriate” material for their kids in each subject. Unit studies is just another one of these academic fads, one that has unfortunately taken hold of some segment of the homeschooling community, and that requires an immense amount of work while risking failing the necessary basics.
PhD Dad Bryan Caplan: It’d be fun and informative to formally think through the economics of lots of topics, though that will eventually require significant numeracy, and it’s certainly not necessary for every topic and not all subjects could always be fun and informative lenses. If you’re shooting for higher paying jobs, math really does need to be its own pursuit. The arts and crafts sounds like a lot of work for parents but children could pursue a series of high-quality literature-based unit studies in their reading time - and it might be especially good as one prepared for a major AP exam (though, again, it’s easy to imagine how unit studiers might go too far in trying to integrate all the subjects). Unit studiers do have potentially more fun ways to signal what they are doing (including conscientiousness and potentially intelligence) but the method certainly doesn’t need to be compelled. Unit studies seem like a fun tour of the academic supermarket, but you might end up with a cart full of random items and no ingredients for a solid career.
Charlotte Mason: Unit studies is fundamentally academic and fails to systematically teach character. Academically, unit studies encapsulates way too much hands-on and multi-sensory learning, which makes childrens’ minds lazy. “Learning styles” are a myth; we need rich literature to train our minds so we can easily grasp abstract ideas. Some unit studies adherents are inspired by Charlotte Mason in their selection of living books, but they are too wed to a child’s interest or a narrow subject of a parent’s own interest, rather than offering a broad education of the best possible living books. When unit studiers do read, they read too much, too fast, rushing to the end of a unit rather than dwelling in and truly remembering the best work available. Another big problem with unit studies is that it is too reliant on the teacher pointing out all the connections that each topic has to all subjects rather than relying on children to form their own understanding of such insights. Worse, much of the parent-drawn “connections” are contrived attempts to fit a square peg in a round hole (i.e. students don't need to calculate the number of supplies needed for the Armada as a math lesson in order to grasp the history of the failed Spanish invasion of England).
Montessori: Unit studies admirably has a greater appreciation for the mind-body connection than almost any other approach but it fails to effectively take advantage of limits. Best to give children a limited number of proven options than try to come up with something from scratch every single time (though that’s what Maria Montessori originally had to do). It’s possible that some commercial unit studies programs effectively do this but, otherwise, unit studies might be too imposing of mom’s interests or too open to a child’s interests and in neither case designed perfectly to teach the intended points. Notably, Acton sees itself as building on the legacy of Montessori and this is all arguably a recognizable, advanced variant. Also, unit studies may be too focused on real things; working with abstract materials may better help transfer of knowledge.
Pioneers: Admirably open to kinetic learning, so long as the topics of the unit studies are chosen either by your boys or with the interests of boys in mind, this can work very well. But don’t start formal academics too early, make sure to incorporate math and science which tend to be more interesting to boys, and give your sons plenty of opportunity to go outside. In an ideal world, you’d be able to form unit studies around something competitive. But, generally, a series of focused units on things boys love sounds great!
Unschoolers: Unit studies are fine as an invitation but not as a requirement. Too much unit studies just follows whatever a parent is interested in. If a child just doesn’t have an interest in the literature of water (or literature itself), don’t force it, that’s just going to create the same problem as the Traditional program in killing learning. If you really want to pursue unit studies, you have to make it attractive to your kids. But, despite unit studies’ claim to follow a child’s interest, a fundamental problem with unit studies is that it still tries out as many subjects as possible, even when it’s clear a child is not interested in particular subjects. Unit studies still has a formality that can conform children, undermining true autonomy and their creativity. Unit studies does appreciably consider a worldwide classroom but robs children of awe if it tries to make everything a required formal lesson. Imagine exploring the magic of the Amazon rainforest… and then being forced to catalog every plant species you encounter, analyze the pH levels of different water samples, and answer various quizzes about facts, figures, and related people.
Mentors: You could try to facilitate adult relationships based on each unit study, the choice of which might be dependent on what the best adults available to you are experts in, and that might be very worthwhile - but you need to accumulate and not discontinue relationships as you move on to other topics (and maybe you ought to consider not moving on if you have something great going). Unit studies is another example of a utilitarian approach that just tries to get learning and not relationships. But unit studies can help you focus on a particular field’s geniuses rather than trying to come up with generic examples - and the depth and interdisciplinary thoughts unit studies inspire could impress the right people. But even geniuses in a particular field rarely know all the different ways that other subjects would look at it - and that should give you pause about the value of unit studies.
Bible First: Your faith should be the lens through which you permanently see everything. Unit studiers are in danger of siloing faith into just one of many lenses. You should think of physics as part of God’s design for the universe, not as its own separate secular subject through which you come to understand, say, aeronautics and then move on to search for where the Bible mentions flight or weather. Make sure to invest time and attention to goodness. Certainly before any unit study, the question must be asked: will this allow us to better glorify God? How will each element of this allow us to better glorify God? And perhaps: are we falling into too secular a mindset? It may be better to instead think of all of education as a unit study on faith.
Cyberschoolers: Other homeschooling approaches have a fairly clear end in mind but it’s not clear at all what that is for those who pursue unit studies. There are certainly inspiring elements of the methodology - simulation can be part of a broader gamification of education. But unit studiers need to clarify what exactly they’re trying to achieve before they force everything through this particular methodology. When they do identify an end, they need to weigh this tool against others in achieving it.
My own takeaway: unit studies can inspire creative ways of learning but it may be my least favorite approach because it requires so much work. Theoretically, you could look at a standard curriculum’s stated goals every year and attempt to check them off through the unit studies you choose, but I don’t know that that’s the most efficient approach. I am more sympathetic to the books-based version but also understand the objections of unit studies trying to go too deep too fast. The idea that Traditional school is something for model employees, not creative leaders, is interesting but I am not sure if unit studies is the best response (and, as ever with academic homeschooling, it misses character). Ultimately, the combination of personalization and formal studies does seem to head in the right direction - and this is one significant way of channeling a child’s interest. It’s also a rather beautiful idea that nearly anything you choose to give more consideration to has a wealth of knowledge behind it.
Figure 5. The fictional vibe of unit studies is somewhere between Indiana Jones (going on adventures around the globe uncovering very particular mysteries) and Sherlock Holmes (who seems to be able to deduct everything from anything).
Further reading and viewing could include:
Jordan Peterson’s interview with Jeff Sandefer, co-founder of Acton Academy, an institution worth examining for its rethinking of modern education but that does not have a version easily available for homeschool. I especially appreciate Sandefer saying kids have to fight three monsters to succeed: resistance, distractions, and victimhood.
Unit Studies Made Easy by Valerie Bendt
Apparently the modern classic of the genre, it is pretty dated. I am not sure if it actually makes unit studies “easy” but it does help you understand what unit studies are. What interests you as a parent? Go do a bunch of projects around that! Start with biographies, then relevant places, then events; include fiction and nonfiction. Surprisingly draws more on Charlotte Mason than I would have guessed (because hardcore Mason adherents are definitely not unit studiers).
There are various vendors that promise unit studies curricula but I have not personally evaluated them and so I would just encourage you, if you’re so inclined, to start testing things out (perhaps at a homeschooling convention). But my impression is also that once you get the hang of what unit studies are, it can be just a matter of brainstorming yourself all the different connections and then executing.