
How do unschoolers turn out? (2014) - alex_young
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/37091/how-do-unschoolers-turn-out
======
clarkmoody
The typical retort to home/un-schoolers is about "socialization." The article
addresses that here:

 _What stood out, he adds, is that “many more said they felt their social
experiences were better than they would have had in school.” Sixty-nine
percent were “clearly happy with their social lives,” he says, and made
friends through such avenues as local homeschooling groups, organized
afterschool activities, church, volunteer or youth organizations, jobs, and
neighbors. In particular, “they really treasured the fact that they had
friends who were older or younger, including adults. They felt this was a more
normal kind of socializing experience than just being with other people your
age.”_

For me, the last bit about having older and younger friends is something
dearly missing from the typical school experience. Regimentation by age is
present nowhere else in life, and I think it hinders lots of people straight
out of school.

Aside from not having friends your age, "adults" are also made to be the enemy
through the power imbalance in a typical school. This makes it a bit harder to
adjust to the real world in a subtle way that many take for granted. Early
career professionals should be drawn to the most senior members of the
organization to get the most knowledge they can, before that experience
retires out of the company.

~~~
aklemm
People have a hard time admitting that the normal school experience is often a
negative socialization experience. When it's good, it's good, but it should be
obvious that alternatives can also be good.

~~~
teekert
During Corona we had to home school our 7 y/o and our 3 y/o stopt going to
play school (peuter speelzaal in the Netherlands). My son flourished, he was
more social and at ease, showed interest in space and how the earth worked. I
felt bad putting him back in school. My 3 y/o daughter though was whining
constantly for the moment when play school would begin again.

~~~
aklemm
Yeah, exactly. Very similar to my experience during Covid lockdown. Our school
is amazing too, but the kids really should only be there for like 4 hours
rather than 7. It’s too grueling and doesn’t let them free enough. Of course,
for most people life demands it.

------
cortesoft
> The reason for this correlation is something this survey can’t answer.
> “Maybe unschooling promotes creativity, or maybe dispositionally creative
> people or families are more likely to choose unschooling,” Gray says. “It’s
> probably a little bit of both.”

Successful "unschooling" is a pretty privileged experience... they have to
have at least one parent who is dedicated to their education and have parents
who have the skills to guide their education.

There is also a huge selection bias in the survey; they don't call kids who
have a bad experience with this "unschoolers"... they call them drop outs.

~~~
jimmygrapes
I've never commented before so I had to make an account for this. Hopefully it
doesn't get flagged, but that's the risk of lurking I guess. The rest of this
post is anecdotal and perhaps fairly unusual, so forgive the lack of
citations.

I'm 1995 I moved from Canada to the United States. Up until then I had been in
the public school system since kindergarten. After 1995, I was "unschooled"
from late 1995 to 2001, and I have to take exception to your idea that it is a
privileged experience. I'll spare you the details but the summary is that my
mom was more worried about the physical and mental abuse I encountered in
public school (U.S. 5th grade, around 10 years old average and the first year
of "middle school") at the hands of my supposed peers, primarily based on
physical appearance and "foreign" \+ "new kid" status.

So after this very brief stint in American public school I was told by my mom
that I would be doing "homeschooling" instead of getting my face rearranged
for being white (whoops, spoiler).

Interesting fact: my mom had no idea how to homeschool. We had food stamps,
sometimes, but usually it was just living off of combinations of flour, water,
and salt. She became "religious" in order to get food boxes and a hope of
networking to get work. We lived in rooms most of you would consider closets.

Her version of "unschooling" was to tell me that I need to learn math,
science, history, and English, that way I could get a job when I grow up. She
walked with me to the nearest library, and got me a library card, and told me
(paraphrased due to memory): "read until you figure out what to do" her tone
implying that I should learn the topics she mentioned.

I did. I also worked; I didn't have a computer at home (yet) but I knew how to
use VCRs to record cable, and I could move furniture (even as a 10-11 year
old), so my mom's church network got me a few dollars a week to save for
myself. I saved up and bought a Commodore 64 from Goodwill after a big fight
about "useless shit."

I taught myself BASIC, at first from a library book that showed how to draw
Christmas trees and math problems (original leetcode I guess), then from the
help files. When I wasn't doing that, I was reading science fiction.
Absolutely no educational material.

My mom soon made enough to get a 386 Acer PC on credit, and I learned QBASIC
with its infinitely more helpful help system. The computer had a modem and by
late 1995 my mom had learned about ISPs from her friends at church. She called
the owner of the local ISP and essentially traded me for internet access; I
would go to their "office" (a repurposed shipping container) to answer tech
support emails, and at home we could dial in for free.

This is where "unschooling" truly began. I had Microsoft Encarta that came
with the PC, I had a book called Internet For Dummies, and I had virtually
unlimited access to information.

I also ate once every 2 days, and it was rice and shitty meat more often than
not.

I won't say where I am today, but I will say that it all worked out for the
both of us.

Hope that helps someone.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> I also ate once every 2 days, and it was rice and shitty meat more often
> than not.I won't say where I am today, but I will say that it all worked out
> for the both of us. Hope that helps someone.

Your story is exactly why I always talk to my non-tech friends about how
critical the Internet was for those of us that could learn on our own at a
young age, and its Life defining experiences like this that make this place
worth coming back to.

In moments of struggle we find out who and what we really are, and while my
situation was no where near as difficult as yours, for many of us the Internet
and the access to all of the information you could take came to be how we made
sense of what was otherwise an insurmountable challenge due to circumstance(s)
beyond one's control.

If you have time, consider reading Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, the way
he describes his experiences is so typical of the People who I have come to
have a near instant bond/connection with as they often have a similar story as
your own.

------
paledot
I unschooled K-2, was in a traditional school 3-5, then did a mix of
unschooling and traditional homeschooling until high school (depending on the
subject and year). I dropped out of a criminology program in my third year,
ran unsuccessfully for public office, and have since been following a
successful career as a programmer for 10 years.

I credit unschooling with some of the things I like most about myself, but
also some of the things I like least. It's my good fortune/dumb luck that one
area I fixated on turned out to be in demand and high-paying, because I am
constitutionally incapable of giving any focus to subjects that don't interest
me. I have a particular depth and breadth of knowledge, albeit one that
doesn't always coincide with things that "everyone knows". I certainly am
self-reliant and able to teach myself (particularly valuable as a programmer),
but I feel none of the motivation that many respondents mentioned. I have mild
diagnosed ADHD; whether it's caused by unschooling I can't say. It was also
intensely lonely for me, though I'm not sure I fully understood it at the
time.

My feeling is that I am a better person for the experience, and I wouldn't
change it if I could. But I do have a sense that I rolled the dice and won.
I'm not certain that I would make the same choice for my children.

~~~
kelnos
Your conclusion that your unschooling worked out for you more by chance than
design got me thinking more generally. While we certainly have some amount of
agency in directing our own course in life, many of the things that happen to
us that push us into a better or worse situation happen completely by chance.

I was traditionally schooled, but, like you, believe strongly that my current
success is largely attributable to the luck of my enjoying programming to an
immense degree, and falling into it a few years out of college (where I
studied hardware because at the time I wanted to design microprocessors,
something I wasn't all that good at and ended up not enjoying). Obviously our
stories make for a sample size of two, but that suggests to me that any
particular method of schooling doesn't matter, as long as there's an
environment in childhood and adolescence that facilitates learning.

~~~
paledot
I wouldn't say it doesn't matter, just that there are many paths to the same
destination. And yes, anyone who tells you that your decisions are the primary
determinant in how your life goes is a liar. 1% inspiration, 9% persperation,
90% dumb luck.

------
jojobas
I suspect there is a serious bias in that cohort, namely on parents being
higher than average education and dedication.

I know I couldn't educate my kids to university enrollment standard other than
in physics, maths and such. That would cross out half their possibilities in
education at least.

~~~
caseysoftware
> _I know I couldn 't educate my kids to university enrollment standard_

Other than the elite schools, I suspect you overestimate the standards and
requirements.*

If you have a successful white collar career, you are at least a mediocre
writer. That may be enough to pass on to your kids and get them into many
schools. If you acknowledge your gaps - sounds like you have - even better,
now you can fill them with anything from online courses (anywhere from free to
expensive), tutoring (expensive), local community college (depends), or even
trading favors with other parents with opposite skills gaps (bartering ftw).

* I have a homeschooled kid looking at colleges now and the standards are lower than I expected. He passed the minimum requirements years ago.

~~~
nostrebored
Exactly.

Often you don't have to educate kids if they don't see education as a chore.

Restricting things like television and access to video games can lead to
boredom. Boredom is a gift that leads to socialization or exploration.

Many of these 'elite schools' are possible to transfer into, and a bigger
predictor of success than prior learning is wanting to explore.

~~~
jojobas
No boredom will make one able to write essays on War and Peace to university
acceptance standards or memorize the order of English kings and their wars.

~~~
nostrebored
That's an interesting take, but it's not borne out from the people I've met.
Often they do have gaps in knowledge, but reading and writing definitely
aren't the problem. Most of the unschooled people I've met have had a broad
knowledge base with gaps in specific areas (admittedly, most commonly math or
science).

But they've all been able to learn when faced with a problem. Most learning up
to high school is pretty decidedly useless. Most high school subjects, like
math, are taught very inefficiently and a student can catch up.

Beyond that, community college transfers to prestigious universities are
common. The most important piece is the ability to learn and understanding
that not knowing specific subjects will be limiting in the long run.

------
gregjor
Every time the subject of homeschooling or unschooling comes up in HN the same
tired arguments get trotted out: Kids will suffer socially, most parents
aren't qualified to teach. There's some irony in the usually libertarian-
learning HN audience defending schools, which are a system designed to deprive
individuals (children) of their freedom and to limit their opportunities.

These arguments are not supported by evidence or history. They are based on
misconceptions about homeschooling/unschooling, and a limited frame of
reference because most of us went to school and have no experience with
alternatives. Unschooling does not mean locking kids up at home, depriving
them of friends or opportunities to learn. It means letting children follow
their own interests, at their own pace, and allowing them to participate in
the larger world rather than getting locked up for 7 or 8 hours a day in a
rigid and coercive environment where critical thinking and discovery are
actively discouraged. It means supporting and encouraging education tailored
for the child rather than forcing them into 12 years of government-mandated
curriculum, standardized tests, strict regimentation, surveillance, and an
often toxic environment that resembles jail more than living in the real world
as productive adults.

These worries strike me as similar to the argument that people can't live
moral lives without religion. We know that simply isn't true. I suspect many
more people on HN grew up morally without religion than grew up educated and
socialized without school, so maybe some of the critics can step back a bit
and examine their assumptions, and ignorance of unschooling, before posting
the usual objections.

~~~
anelson
^ This!

In all my travels I've only met a handful of people who were not at least
skeptical or downright disparaging of home schooling, at least until they
learned about my background and either politeness or exposure to contrary
evidence required backtracking.

I often encounter a kind of reverence toward teachers in particular and our
educational establishment in general which is woefully misplaced. The
structure the American education system (and maybe in other countries although
I only went to school in the US) is in direct opposition to the formation of
qualities like curiosity, independence, auto-didactic inquiry, and skepticism
that are as vital today as literacy was a century ago.

I was lucky to be raised by parents who had no respect for the establishment
and chose to live in a state that did not force them to educate their children
in accordance with government mandates. As a result they were free to bring us
up in the way that they hoped was best for each of us. For me that ended up
being unschooling.

~~~
gregjor
Great to read your success story. My own kids have similar experiences, and
none of them think I deprived them of anything by not sending them to school.

Two of my three children easily got to self-sufficiency. My youngest, 21 now,
has not. Ironically that’s mainly because he chose to go to school, first
public high school and then college. He has slowed his path to self-
sufficiency by putting himself in a system that imposes arbitrary requirements
(credits, tests) and timetables for graduation geared to group conformity and
performance. And he still has to work hard on his own to actually learn
anything. I support his decisions (and pay for them) but I can’t help but
think he could be self-sufficient already, more or less, if he hadn’t added
the drag and friction of school to his life. I would understand if he needed
credentials for medicine or law or teaching, but I think he could have learned
Spanish faster by living abroad for a couple of years rather than going to
classes. I did suggest that but I have to eat my own dog food and respect his
choices, at least for another year or two.

------
agentbellnorm
Other than some interesting themes and anecdotes, I’d be very careful to draw
any conclusions based on the survey.

There are many intuitive reasons why unsuccessfully unschooled people would
not answer this survey.

A huge concern with unschooling is lack of social development, and the
respondents are found through social networks.

In the worst case, suicide would prevent someone from answering the survey.

The title is misleading because the survey can’t possibly answer the question
with a survey like this, and without addressing the issue of equal
opportunity, which might be the biggest factor when designing education.

~~~
anelson
Granted this survey isn't robust enough to be taken as evidence of the
superiority of unschooling or even homeschooling generally. It's anecdotal,
and if I had to guess I'd say the target audience is parents who have already
decided to unschool and want some social validation, or at least parents
leaning that way.

That said, I think your huge concern is that unschooled kids are at a higher
risk of insufficient or delayed social development, and a survey that recruits
on social networks will biased against such socially underdeveloped children.
And furthermore that those socially underdeveloped children are at a higher
risk of suicide than their conventionally-educated peers such that a survey
which doesn't count the dead ones is further biased.

If that's a correct assessment of your concern then I'd be really interested
to know upon what facts or even anecdotal experience it's based. If it's just
that the idea of unschooling seems suspect, or that you can't imagine how such
a system could produce better outcomes than conventional education, then
you're certainly not alone in that position but I would submit that you are
misinformed.

In my experience the social (to say nothing of intellectual) development of
the average American high school graduate was laughably primitive when I was
that age 20 years ago, and nothing I've seen since makes me think it's gotten
any better. As for suicide risk I find it hard to believe that an educational
style that presumes a higher than average degree of parental involvement and
an almost certain lack of bullying and abuse in school leads to a higher
propensity to suicide. In fact I would confidently wager that, were such data
available, it would show the exact opposite.

~~~
agentbellnorm
I do not have have any data, and maybe you are correct.

But I am not claiming to answer a research question. To answer the research
question, you need a better method.

I am just pointing out the bias.

------
Konohamaru
It's almost as if human beings have a built-in learning mechanism to recognize
language, social norms, general background knowledge and social relationships
that has been operative for thousands of years before school even existed.
Woooooaah man, that's freaky!

------
tbenst
I’m not sure this even qualifies as science. Doesn’t even compare to a group
of schooled children. There may indeed be positive outcomes associated with
unschooling but this gives us little useful information for assessing this.

~~~
hatmatrix
It's just a collection of anecdotes.

------
owenshen24
Interesting, but only 75 responses (and selection bias) make me wary about
drawing broader conclusions.

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
Selection bias is the most powerful force in education and indeed child
rearing in general. It's hard to infer anything about the outcomes you might
expect for a child in general from the observed outcomes of those who did
choose to unschool.

~~~
tprice7
Sure, but I think this at least demonstrates that unschooling deserves to be
within the window of discourse. I've seen many people express the opinion that
unschooling is inherently completely insane.

~~~
gregjor
Because they only have their own experience in school to judge from.

------
carlita_express
On this subject, there is a subreddit (
[https://old.reddit.com/r/homeschoolrecovery](https://old.reddit.com/r/homeschoolrecovery)
) dedicated to those trying to mentally/socially recover from their
experiences of home/un-schooling, which can highlight some of the darker
experiences, marked by extreme isolation, social anxiety, and depression

~~~
iateanapple
> which can highlight some of the darker experiences, marked by extreme
> isolation, social anxiety, and depression

There are high rates of social isolation, social anxiety, and depression among
school kids.

Close to 10% of teens have an anxiety disorder etc.

What would be interesting to know is are the home schooled rates significantly
higher?

~~~
carlita_express
Anecdotally, I was homeschooled and experienced all of these above, in
addition to my ADHD which was ignored by my parents, who didn't have enough
experience to diagnose common symptoms.

~~~
iateanapple
> Anecdotally, I was homeschooled and experienced all of these above

Unfortunately they seem part of the “normal” teen experience.

~~~
carlita_express
Most “public” school teachers have experience recognizing the symptoms of ADHD
that parents don’t have.

------
bradgranath
My parents homeschooled me from age 4 to 17. I wish they hadn't. They didn't
know what they were doing and it has caused me no end of problems.

Public school is not fire and forget, but at least there is SOME oversight
(for white kids anyway).

My parents didn't just get away with their ineptitude, but were encouraged by
WA state to continue isolating me in the name of "choice".

This not as simple as "take the kid out of school and they will obviously turn
into a better person because school is such a bad place".

Learning to get along with your peers and interacting with authority figures
is not something you can pick up by reading about it.

I should know.

------
alex_young
I would have been excluded from this survey if I knew of its existence since I
attended (only) 12th grade and graduated. I was unschooled prior to this age,
and I consider myself quite successful.

Several have pointed to a perception that one must be of financial means to
unschool your children, and at least in my case the opposite is true. However,
while my parents did not have the encumbrance of wealth, they were both highly
educated and valued knowledge and family highly.

I consider my experience mostly positive, and credit the notion of
facilitating learning when there is active interest as a basic cognitive tool
useful in many areas of our society.

------
coderintherye
I wouldn't have considered myself for this group, but I suppose technically I
fit into the 3rd group, having dropped out after 9th grade, gotten a GED and
worked my way through community college then university.

I've gone on to have what I consider to be a very successful career and high
life satisfaction. And pretty much all of my lifelong friends came from
outside school settings.

I'm privileged to have gotten to take this path.

Just another self-reported data point.

------
gregjor
Relevant, one of the reasons I decided to homeschool and then go full
unschooling with my three children:

[https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)

Also “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich.

You start by examining and questioning what you think you know about school
and education. Most of us only have our school experience to go by so we
interpret any other path as inferior, subversive, deviant. There’s more than
one way to get a useful education.

My kids all turned out just fine, two went to college, they have careers,
active social lives since very young.

I think the biggest mistake parents make is thinking they can shape their
children into something. They fail to see their children as individuals,
separate from the parents, with their own personalities and desires. Schools
by and large follow that model, trying to force children to conform and behave
and learn the same things at the same time and rate as everyone else.
Montessori comes closest to unschooling, but it’s quite expensive.

------
atemerev
Well I am fine, more or less (was homeschooled in the early 90s, lived in 6
countries since then, worked as a software engineer in finance for most of the
time since then, now on track for a biomedical PhD). I am, however, probably
the poorest (ex) financial software engineer you ever saw... but I have
serious ADHD, so there’s that.

------
totorovirus
I think there is a bias because giving a kid unschooling/home schooling means
that the parent's are reasonably interested in educating their kids.

Article has a mild opinionated view of success, which values job satisfaction.
High portion of cohort has selected self-contained jobs like those which are
readily convertible to a free lancer job(i.e. software developer, carpenter,
entreprenuer etc). If you measure the success in social dominance and being
closer to apex of hierarchy (becoming a policitian, CEO), I think schoolers
would have much better performance on this because school also teaches how to
take advantage in social relationships, winning a conflict or making allies.

~~~
gregjor
Parents not taking an interest in the child’s education is the number one
reason professional teachers cite for failure in the classroom.

------
seibelj
I believe I would have benefited greatly from some sort of alternative
schooling environment. I despised school because it was so boring and
structured, and also I was (and still am) a night owl that routinely stays up
late on weeknights (often until 3am or so). Waking up at 630am to get my ass
to school by 730 first bell was atrocious. My senior year of high school I
somehow legitimately missed 35 days of school! That’s almost 2 full months!

I also had all manner of tricks to come in late and leave early (cut the last
class) without formal repercussions. For example, I realized that if I carried
my trumpet case I could basically have my run of the school because no school
officer suspected a band geek of cutting class. So I would get my trumpet,
exit a side door, walk to my car, wait 5 minutes to make sure I wasn’t caught,
then drive home! I did this countless times.

What I did like was working and partying. I started working in 8th grade
reffing soccer, then I worked retail, and since I’ve been 13 years old I’ve
never been unemployed for more than a month. When I graduated college I
received my diploma on a Friday and started working on Monday. I’ve never had
extended time off of work in decades!

On the partying side, I discovered alcohol in 9th grade and marijuana in 10th,
and also did my fair share of cocaine and research chemicals during my latter
high school and college years. I had a blast!

And how did I turn out? Fine! Better than fine! I followed my passion into
computers and all of the people who told me I would amount to nothing were
very much incorrect.

In summation, a one-size-fits-all approach to education is completely absurd.
The fact that schools have not materially changed in over a century, where
everyone sits in a chair and listens to some hack’s opinions, is ridiculous! I
can remember a few amazing teachers from my pre-college days and the other 95%
of them were totally forgettable.

Teachers, their unions, and administrators who refuse to allow any change
whatsoever are living in the past. Change happens gradually then all at once.
I praise unschooling and any movement that tries to change the horrible,
stale, boring education system that makes the majority of students hate
learning and associate it with authority, chastisement, and being told they
are failures.

------
jv22222
I was in boarding school from the age of 9-15 in the UK.

For me, it was an absolutely horrific experience. I was physically and
emotionally abused and bullied for the entire time I was there due to being
very obviously sensitive and an easy target.

I did not do well at academics of any kind because I was mainly dealing with
the emotional effects and also just didn't "get" it. My only pass was in art,
which I didn't really like and was not very good at everything else was a
fail. I was pretty sure that I was stupid and was not academic at all.

They had a computer lab with BBC Model B and I tried some basic coding and I
was not interested in it.

I left school at 15 and then travelled around Europe and came back to London
where I spent a few years working high street jobs (shoe shop sales, etc).

Then, when I was 18 a friend of mine got me a job as a courier at a firm of
architects (1987). They had Macs and I became interested because I had a go
and I seemed to understand how to use them. I made a few newsletters for the
company in Quark Express.

Feeling kind of cocky I BS'd my way into a Tech Support position at an Apple
store in London. After a year working there I was enjoying helping customers.
I even made a few experiments in Hyper Card and realized I quite liked
computers.

A few years later "the internet" happened and I wanted to make a "chat" site,
so I learned "C" because I was obsessed that I needed to learn "the absolute
fastest language" to write a cgi script.

(the irony, the html cgi chat script executed instantaneously but took aaaages
to get around the internet and down peoples modems)

Anyway, I kept coding, moved to perl, then php, then javascript, then mobile
and now I love all things computers.

Long story short, I was able to have a career in spite of school not because
of it.

For me, school was the worst experience of my life. When I look back on it I
see a dark time in a sort of psychological prison that lasted for years.

I find it hard to think of school in a positive light and that might be why
one of my roles is being CTO of a company that's main goal is to modernize
education.

For me, I only started to be inquisitive and learn "anything" after I had been
out of the school environment for 3 years.

I no longer think I am stupid or unable to do anything academic. I plan on
revisiting Math one day when I have gotten all this entrepreneurial stuff out
of my system.

------
jnwatson
The problem with the term “unschooled” is that it implies hands-off teaching.
It isn’t that. It is guided, self-directed learning.

Couple this with the very real problem of neglected home schoolers, it is
quite a problematic word.

One value of the public school system is that it does meet some minimum amount
of care, and it does allow home problems to be mitigated. At least kids get
1-2 meals a day at school, which some “home schooled” kids don’t get.

~~~
dillonmckay
So daycare, not education?

------
actfrench
Unschooling is a very loosely defined concept. I've seen a spectrum of
unschooling ranging from 1-2 hours a day with a parent/teacher of formal
instruction coupled with self-directed learning and socialization to
completely allowing children to do what they want whenever. A lot of it
depends on the child (how self-directed they are) and the ways that the family
is able to support their learning through the learning environment (often
known as the child's third teacher.)

Does the parent engage the children in learning all the time, engaging with
them when they ask why? And guiding them to their own answers? That makes a
big impact.

Often unschoolers tend to be very autonomous. If they do transfer from being
unschooled to schooled, teachers love them because they are self-motivated and
curious.

There's a lot of great books on self-directed education, though this is
someone different than unschooling as a concept.

I run an organization that supports families learning from home and we've
reviewed a couple resources related to unschooling and homeschooling that
might be helpful.

The Alliance for Self-Directed Education has great research and information on
unschooling:

[https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-
education/asde](https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-education/asde)

Free to Learn is possibly the most important book on unschooling and how kids
turn out [https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-
education/freetolearn](https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-
education/freetolearn)

Class Dismissed gives a taste of what happens when you give kids a period of
deschooling [https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-
education/classdismisse...](https://www.modulo.app/self-directed-
education/classdismissed)

I think what's most important to remember is that different approaches work
better for different kids and that unschooling means different things to
different people.

Some equate unschooling with secular homeschooling. Others see it as self-
directed education.

Some view homeschooling as a more inclusive approach to education that
reinvents the school schedule, so children are learning and socializing in a
more organic way than a 9-3 school schedule.

------
actfrench
Famous unschoolers [https://www.unschooling.com/t/famous-
unschoolers/296](https://www.unschooling.com/t/famous-unschoolers/296)

------
dang
If curious see also

a bit from 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9017648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9017648)

------
fzeroracer
Where's the wealth/income breakdown on the families and individuals? I don't
see anything in either the article or the study at hand.

I feel like that's a more confounding factor than the unschooling bit, because
having a certain level of income to be able to support unschooling is kind of
a big deal. When you start to control for that, I feel like there would be a
different trend to come out of this data. Which is to say, you'd see a large
amount of selection bias from individuals whose wealth enabled a lot of what
they attribute to unschooling.

~~~
burfog
The cause and effect there is wrong. Saying that wealth causes success in
school is like saying that an increase in the use of air conditioners causes
people to go to the beach, or that Christmas shopping makes the days get
shorter. There is a different factor causing both.

~~~
fzeroracer
Wealth buys your family quite a lot of relief. Not having to worry about
eating, or being shamed because you eat the free lunch for poor kids, or
having access to better schools and computers and so forth are all huge
compounding factors for school performance.

This is with ignoring that wealth quite literally buys you seats at various
colleges, tutors for personalized lessons etc.

Which leads into my original point that any discussion about the value of
unschooling cannot be done without taking into account the income and wealth
of families that went that route.

------
zxexz
This article, though not exactly thorough, does have some interesting
anecdotes. I think an important take-away here is to realize that there are
many non-conventional paths through the educational system, for better or for
worse. I took a non-conventional path, and it worked out for me.

From the article: _" Most of those who went on to college did so without
either a high school diploma or general education diploma (GED), and without
taking the SAT or ACT. Several credited interviews and portfolios for their
acceptance to college, but by far the most common route to a four-year college
was to start at a community college (typically begun at age 16, but sometimes
even younger).

None of the respondents found college academically difficult, but some found
the rules and conventions strange and sometimes off-putting. Young people who
were used to having to find things out on their own were taken aback, and even
in some cases felt insulted, “when professors assumed they had to tell them
what they were supposed to learn[...]"_

This mirrors my experience closely (though I would say I definitely found the
_structure_ of university difficult/oppressing). Being a 14 year-old enrolling
in community college was initially daunting, but it was one of the most
important formative experiences of my life. Looking back at the experience,
being surrounded by people from all walks of life was invaluable to me. I
personally feel that community college, and numerous other 'real-life'
experiences made possible through unschooling, prepared me for adulthood way
better than university ever did. One of the largest failings of the
conventional school system, IMO, is the lack of socialization between
different age groups. YMMV; there is not a single 'magic bullet' for
education, and everyone's experiences will be different.

A recent post[0] here also generated a lot of discussion about
unschooling/homeschooling. As a former 'unschooler', I'd like to plug my
comments from that post[1].

I would love to hear from some other unschoolers on HN! I'm forever curious to
hear how it worked out for others (email in profile).

Side note: When I was quite young, I actually tried out the Sudbury Valley
School mentioned in the article. I hated it. I know several people who went
there. Some loved it, some hated it. Most are doing well, some much better
than others, some not so much. Just like with unschooling, homeschooling, and
conventional schooling.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010079)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23014490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23014490)

------
anelson
During my childhood I experienced the full spectrum of American education
systems, including /laissez faire/ unschooling, homeschooling with a
structured curriculum, a one-room country schoolhouse, urban public schools,
and even a Catholic private school. I was fortunate that my parents,
particularly my father, were willing to try multiple approaches to learning
based on what was and wasn't working.

I hated almost every moment of my public school education, and private school
was only slightly better. My urban public school was little better than a
gladiator academy, and even in private school the curriculum was not
challenging or engaging in any way. I was an awkward child and was frequently
bullied (in fairness this did teach me the importance of being willing to meet
violence with violence, a lesson which fortunately I've not needed to apply
since my school days). I would find every opportunity to get out of school and
work on my own self-edification projects; vaguely defined "sick days" were my
stock in trade.

My last year of "normal" education was the 6th grade, in a public school in a
small midwestern town (population: ~750). Having explored the gamut of
educational styles it was clear that I learned best on my own.

I spent a lot of time exploring different subjects based on what caught my
interest. By the time I was 13 I had already decided I wanted to go into EE. I
saved my meager allowance and over time managed to procure the entire library
of Forrest M. Mims' "Engineer's mini notebooks", and could reproduce the
schematics in each one practically from memory. I was already looking at how I
could get into the field without waiting until I was 18 and could go to
college, but then I discovered digital circuits...

After extensive lobbying on my part my parents finally bought a computer in
1994 (a Gateway 2000 486 DX2 66Mhz). From then on I've been immersed in
computing, at times to an obsessive degree. If you'd asked my father in 1995
if unschooling me had been a mistake, he might have shared his concerns that
my humanity was slipping away as I spent every waking moment on that "damn
machine". He couldn't have known at the time that I was laying the foundation
for an incredibly satisfying career as a software engineer.

I always assumed I'd get around to a GED and then a college degree, because it
was taken as an article of faith in my family that one must, if nothing else,
graduate with at lease a bachelor's degree in something. But it never
happened. I started community college like many unschoolers do as a way to get
around age and testing requirements in four year schools, but by then I was
already working as a software engineer and I didn't see the point in taking on
debt and spending a few years in a CS curriculum, so I dropped out and never
looked back.

I've seen some other comments here talk about the "socialization" question. My
mother was very worried about this also. As others have mentioned, in the end
I was better socialized than my age peers, because I had more meaningful
interactions with people outside my age cohort. My coworkers, boss, in some
cases even their children were all older than me, and that taught me how to
act both professionally and in informal settings like happy hours and parties.

On the topic of privilege, I certainly count myself privileged to have been
raised by two involved parents who had the insight to let me develop outside
the accepted bounds of our society. However my family were very poor for the
first ten years of my life, and barely middle class during my teens. One of my
parents had a serious substance abuse problem which contributed to our
poverty. Whatever aspect of my background and upbringing gave me an advantage
in life, it was definitely not socio-economic.

Who knows if my experience reflects the superiority of one system over
another, or if I would have turned out this way anyway, or some complex non-
linear space in between. The key takeaway I think is that education is in no
way a solved problem, and the system we have now (particularly in the US) is
in no way the apotheosis of pedagogy. Just like we vigorously debate the
merits of programming languages, tech stacks, type sytems, methodologies,
business models, etc here on HN, how we educate ourselves and our children is
at least as much of an unsolved problem.

Whether or not unschooling is a good fit for a particular child or their
particular parents, the movement has nonetheless done us all a great service
by proving convincingly that it's OK to question the education orthodoxy, that
there are is no priestly caste of teachers who possess the wisdom of the
pedagogical gods. In the early 80s this was by no means apparent, and my
parents took a lot of shit from a lot of people for their approach. Now my
sister is free to unschool her four kids with little to no hassle from the
state.

