Hil, I've read about this unschooling thing. It kind of sounds like lazy parenting to me.

From what I've read about it, and a few unschooled kids that I taught during summer programs, it seems like it can work well if it's done right and with real thought put into it. What this person is advocating doesn't sound to me like the way I've generally seen/heard about it practiced, though.

I know one gung-ho unschooler. She's bright and dedicated to her children, but I've also seen (through her) some of the weirder philosophies behind "unschooling." It's very Lockean at its core--the "noble savage" and all that.

FWIW, unschooling is mostly in Texas--where the homeschooling laws have been gutted by Christian fundamentalists who don't want the evil, sectarian gubbement telling them what to teach their children. But it's been embraced by granola, new-age hippies as well. So you get a wide-spectrum of practices within the unschooling movement that ranges from really teaching kids based on their own interests every day to having a 14 year old who can't read because he didn't want to learn.

I'm not exactly an advocate of child-led education. I know where my kids would lead me if they could.

And are there any results of the "un-schooling" out and about trying to make it as adults now?

Yeah, the girl I knew who was unschooled was definitely from the crunchy granola side of it. Great kid. I can't really say anything definite about her academically, since I didn't teach her, but to get into this program (for the class she was taking) required getting something like 550 on the verbal section of the SAT in seventh grade.

Most of the stuff that I've read about it has been from the John Holt/Learning All the Time side of it. I haven't seen much "noble savage" stuff there, more of a "kids won't learn much if their motivation is grades or gold stars or praise from a teacher -- learning how to get the right answer is a totally different skill than learning the material" philosopy. But I'm been purposely staying away from the totally crazy ends of the spectrum.

I think my sister started her kids off with unschooling and still does some of it, but she's found that her son learns better from teachers that are not his parents and benefits from some leading and her daughter just loves going to school (she's in a Waldorf school now, I think), so she hasn't completely stuck to it.

Locke was tabula rasa, Rousseau was noble savage. FWTW.

And are there any results of the "un-schooling" out and about trying to make it as adults now?

Somewhere in something I was reading, it mentioned an unschooled kid who's now a student at Georgetown. I recall something about another one who took a few years off to travel and figure out what he wanted to do, then settled into being a carpenter, then decided that he wanted to go into engineering and went to college for that degree. A quick google search isn't finding me either of those articles right now, though.

OK, found it:

Or Skolnik, 19, was unschooled in Phoenix, and the first official test he took was his driver’s license test.

The next test he took was an admissions test to attend community college at age 16. He got a perfect score.

Today, he’s a junior at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., majoring in government.

When his fellow students learn that he was unschooled, they are sometimes surprised he’s not socially awkward — the stereotypical image of a home-schooler, he said.

[link]

So, were these the kids of parents who didn't teach at all or the kids of parents who just waited to see what their kids were interested in?

Is that Indigo Child stuff part of the unschooling movement? I just saw that Jenny McCarthy is on a website called Indigo Moms, because her son is, I believe, autistic. Which isn't exactly what "Indigo children" are about, as far as I know (which is admittedly, like, almost nothing).

Unschooling is a little scary to me. I know exactly where it would have led us with Jake, which is, sadly, not far from where we are now, even with him in school. I think the expectation that the world is going to indulge your whims, and that you can make your own rules all the time, is a dangerous, and ultimately disappointing, one to encourage in your kids.

Oh, yeah, Holt is a big unschooling guru. The woman I know spoke at this conference last year and will be again this year. They're more on the sane side of the spectrum.

I think the Indigo Children thing is something to do wit the Celestine Prophecy. I am very unsure about that.

I think unschooling is one of those things that is very easy to do badly and really hard to do right and works for some and not for others even when it's done well. I don't know much abotu it specifically, but that seems to be the case with a lot of alternative education that sounds so wonderful in theory but is actually very difficult to implement effectively.

Eta: I know that some of my sister's motivation for exploring alternative education was that she felt she was badly served traditional schooling - not that she had bad teachers but just that the whole system of sitting in a class studying a set curriculum impeded her more than it helped her learn.