Frustrated with the school system and the effects of COVID-19 social distancing in schools, you may be like millions of families that are now considering homeschooling their children.
While conventional schooling provides a standardized education designed to help students become successful employees, homeschooling is an unconventional path for highly energetic, creative and gifted children that often find normal schools unstimulating and impractical.
For many families that place a high value on independence, entrepreneurship and learning by doing, homeschooling school is an attractive option because the Internet is democratizing education and giving a new generation of self-directed learners access to the knowledge they need to pursue the development of their passions and talents.
If you want to better understand how homeschooling works along with its advantages and disadvantages then here are some of the best documentaries to watch online.
1. Class Dismissed: A Film About Learning Outside of the Classroom
Class Dismissed challenges viewers to take a fresh look at what it means to be educated in the 21st century and offers up a radical new way of thinking about the process of learning.
You can watch the full documentary film on Vimeo On Demand.
2. Life Is: A Look Into the World of Unschooling
This documentary film takes a look at unschooling, a subset of homeschooling that focuses on children-directed learning, passion-driven education and freedom of choice.
3. Weirdos: A Homeschool Documentary
Fueled by a passion for creating opportunities that nurture a love of learning, Weirdos: A Homeschool Documentary offers a glimpse into why so many families are choosing homeschooling.
Discover the contemporary history of homeschooling, a community approach, and the benefits of individualized learning for the fast-changing world of 21st century life.
You can watch Weirdos on Vimeo On-Demand.
4. Race To Nowhere: Transforming Education From The Ground Up
Race To Nowhere challenges the conventional thinking that schooling is the best way to prepare children for the future.
While not specifically about homeschooling, this documentary film features the heartbreaking stories of students who feel crushed by the over-scheduling, over-testing and relentless pressure to achieve in American schools.
You can watch Race To Nowhere on YouTube Movies.
5. HomeSchool: Is Traditional Education Over?
While not a documentary film, this is a roundtable discussion worth watching about homeschooling and why so many parents are now taking their children out of the conventional education system.
6. The Story of Three Homeschoolers: A Documentary on Homeschooling
The best way to learn about the homeschooling approach to learning is to listen to the stories of the homeschoolers themselves.
In this documentary, homeschoolers share their own experiences and answer some of the most frequently asked questions about the homeschooling.
7. Yen’s World: Living and Learning In A Community of Learners
An off-beat documentary exploring a unique community of learners that is challenging the mechanistic and factory-style model of Western Education in alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
It provides a glimpse of the emergence of unschooling communities and eco-villages where families are choosing to live in closer community and have their children learn together outside traditional classrooms.
The Ultimate Collection of Streaming Documentaries
I’m a huge believer in sparking curiosity through documentaries and using them as an educational tool to inspire in-depth learning about topics of interest.
To learn more, I invite you to browse my growing collections of mind expanding documentaries, creativity documentaries and education documentaries that you can watch online.