
Ask HN: Were you unschooled, or are you unschooling your children? - ismail
1. Anyone considering or currently practicing unschooling&#x2F;self directed education [0]?<p>2. Were you home schooled&#x2F;unschooled&#x2F;practiced self directed education ?
What’s your story?<p>I am considering this approach for my children. Just finished reading free to learn [1] and Peter gray makes a compelling case for this approach. Also the documentary “schooling the world” covers some of the chilling effects of compulsory schooling. [2] it has made me seriously question our current education system. A system that seems designed to surpress all of the critical skills one needs for the future.<p>Would love to hear your story And thoughts?<p>My daughter starts grade one this year so decisions have to be made on the school. We currently have her enrolled in a Montessori.<p>I have been doing some research and not think the current education system is the best for the skills that would be needed in the future.<p>originally started as a comment but think it deserves a full Ask hn.<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Unschooling<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Reliant&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0465025994<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;schoolingtheworld.org<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XLSIgZWNR9M<p>Edit:
If you do not feel comfortable  telling your story here mail me on username at ZyeLabs net.
======
Someone1234
I think it is dangerous. While giving children rope to explore and learn at
their own pace is healthy, normal, and welcomed, extremist philosophies like
Unschooling may result in illiteracy, social isolation, and difficulty to
pursue areas of interests later in life (e.g. college).

Traditional homeschooling has been made safer (in terms of outcomes) due to
professionally developed programs along with state enforcement of baseline
testing. While Unschooling as a philosophy rejects the very idea that children
should be measured like their peers (e.g. standardized tests are out), and
thus no major homeschooling programs have nor could be developed.

I find it curious and confusing that the stated objective is to help the child
develop improved critical thinking skills, while the stated philosophy
(Unschooling) seeks to never have the child try anything they don't choose to
do (learner directed education). Has intellectual isolation ever resulted in
improved critical thinking skills before?

~~~
ismail
“Unschooling may result in illiteracy, social isolation, and difficulty to
pursue areas of interests later in life”

Do you have any reading on this? Even anecdata? All the reading I have done
seems to indicate the exact opposite.

Granted i have been specially seeking out material that is pro self-directed
education. Would love to read anything that actually builds a strong case
against it.

“I find it curious and confusing that the stated objective is to help the
child develop improved critical thinking skills, while the stated philosophy
(Unschooling) seeks to never have the child try anything they don't choose to
do (learner directed education). Has intellectual isolation ever resulted in
improved critical thinking skills before?”

Inherent in the question posed here is the assumption that the child/learner
would be intellectually isolated? However from my reading this is not
necessary the case.

Once they have the means learners would seek out others with the knowledge
they require or ask for help.

If you can point me to some reading that contradicts the unschooling view and
builds a case against it, or expands on some of the points you have mentioned
that would be great.

~~~
candiodari
I could give an extreme example and show you what's wrong here. Let's say a
kid is born. And we have somehow lost all morality. Kid gets put into a room
with food, drink, whatever it needs for physics experiments and left alone.
Will the kid ever do, say, the double-slit experiment ? No. In fact it won't
even learn how to eat. It'll starve to death. We know this, because people
have done that accidentally.

Or another "experiment": show a kid only "parents" that walk on four legs.
Will the kid ever learn to walk like a human ? After all, the human body is
built so that walking on 2 legs is much more efficient. Again, accidental
experiment was carried out, in fact many times. Disney made a completely
unrealistic movie about it. Answer: no, the kid will walk on hands and feet.
They do not find the optimal solution, despite exploring. Despite being forced
into the ultimate form of self-directed learning.

But let's work from simple principles. How about we start by assuming that the
brain is neither magical, nor can it come up with information from nothing. It
must absorb information from the outside.

You can see, given those easy assumptions that the brain cannot be but almost
exclusively a behavior copy machine (which is of course why you seek out help
in the first place). Then you see "unschooling" if it works, DOESN'T work
because of it's stated principles, but because it copies things from the
parents, and/or/later teachers. Unschooling, like any other method frankly,
will work incredibly if the parents are geniuses, or otherwise regular contact
between the child and very smart people can be maintained over a long time,
and will fail spectacularly if that doesn't happen.

Second thing to consider is the information content difference between
positive information and negative information, and which random (self-
directed) information will be. Positive information is showing a particular
example that works, for some process. Negative information is showing that a
particular way doesn't work. You can easily see that this depends on whichever
is less dense in the solution space (in other words: you should show whichever
is rare, not the common case). This will in practice nearly always be the
positive information. In other words: the correct solution has lots of
information, false tries have very little information about the world.

If you just let the child try, all they'll ever hit is the common case (in the
extreme example given above: not eating the food). So you can't let that
happen. You MUST show them the correct solution, or put another way you must
transform the solution space for them so the rare and common case happen
50-50, and not 1-99999 like would be expected. Again rephrasing: It's very
easy to fail, and very hard to succeed. So a "self-directed learning" would
only ever fail. You must prevent that if you want them to learn anything at
all.

AFTER doing that, yes, you can let them try and explore more by themselves,
but it's easy to see that a behavior copy machine like the human brain will be
able to learn incredibly faster getting shown the above things compared to
trying things out itself.

This means in practice self-directed learning requires the brain to process
thousands to millions (or worse: trillions) of times more information to
arrive at the same level of knowledge. In the overwhelming majority of cases
that'll mean it will never happen.

Third problem is that skills converge. Having one skill makes almost any other
skill a tiny little bit easier to learn (even in machine learning, an imagenet
trained network can learn faster to make music than a random start network,
vastly disparate skills, but the ability to recognize squirrels allows you
learn to make music faster). The problem with that is that 0.99^1000 is a very
small number. So if you let a kid be slower, the damage that accumulates over
time is incredible. If you slightly accelerate a kid, constantly, the
advantage that builds over say 10 years is not only enormous, but is at that
point STILL compounding. Likewise, if the kid doesn't have skills the damage
will compound. Are you seriously going leave that to chance as a parent ?
Wouldn't you require extraordinary evidence in favor of unschooling rather
than the reverse ?

So self-directed learning is a lie. It cannot work. You cannot explore the
world in a self-directed manner and expect to learn much. That doesn't make
sense when you consider how the mind must work. But ! There are famous
examples where it worked ! It must be able to work. Alas, no. Or at least,
there's a simpler explanation. Like most "mysterious"/"natural"/"magical"
processes it only works when people cheat. It works when there is another form
of learning available to those kids (seeking out help, or having some other
form of knowledge easily available to them, like a genius parent).

The factor that confuses people, I think, is that Montessori schools can work
despite their bullshit method because of the teachers they hire. As long as
that method of instruction is very rare and intriguing they will have more
money and more interested, more effective teachers. And that can make a big
difference, big enough that the disadvantage of their methods is compensated.
But traditional instruction works reasonably effectively despite the teachers
being underpaid idiots that don't understand the subjects they're teaching. Is
it ideal ? No ? Fun ? Hardly. But you can easily see: traditional instruction
with actually good teachers vastly outperforms Montessori schools. It also
works much better in the practical situation on the ground that will exist in
any large society (that practical situation is, in case you're wondering: 50%
of below-average performers, and with current teacher pay, teachers will not
even be below average 50% of the time, but much more). But as long as
unschooling is done only by intrigued smart people, that will be masked.

The literature on it is unanimous: the thing that matters more than any other
in education is how smart the parents are. Second thing is how smart the
teachers are. Only third is the method of instruction used. People really hate
this, because of course it amplifies class differences, makes IQ "inherited",
but that doesn't make it any less true.

~~~
klowner
I always considered self directed learning to be less like forcing a child to
learn in a vacuum and more like letting the child drive the educatiomobile
while you help with the maps.

~~~
ismail
Exactly. The other metaphor i see used often is you provide the scaffolding
while they do the building.

------
sirspacey
I was both unschooled and unschooled my middle schooler through homeschooling.

There's something very powerful about developing "undirected learning."

Maria Montessori's fundamental insight was the way to develop a child's
ability to learn was by providing a rich learning environment - books and
projects. Montessori toys are a great place to start.

Youtube for Kids is actually a great resource in this regard - lots of easy
projects where kids can experience various natural phenomenon.

We are headed towards a project-based, self-directed world when it comes to
work. Your instincts are dead on. I founded a company to help college students
develop these skills and you can see some of that at:
[https://useed.net/spotlight](https://useed.net/spotlight)

I'd encourage you to check out a few other resources:

The Teenage Liberation Handbook (John Holt) Most Likely to Succeed (and
anything by Tom Wagner)

There is a fear that if our children are not lockstep chasing the next
learning objective, they will fall behind.

This is unfounded. Children who learn to take ownership over their learning
experience rapidly surpass those who never do.

My favorite practical teacher on this is A.J. Juliani:

ajjuliani.com

There are schools that provide this experience and co-op groups if you
homeschool.

Schools that emphasize self-directed, project-based learning are generally
great choices. Waldorf is another model worth looking into.

Today's Montessori schools are much more structured than they were at their
founding. They are a good balance, but unschooling provides a unique
opportunity for your kids:

For them to see themselves as the agents of their own education.

Once a student sees themselves as the driver of their learning, they have a
distinct advantage in any educational environment.

Feel free to connect with me directly about it if you'd like!

~~~
andrenth
I’m genuinely curious why my sibling comment was flagged. It was just a
statement of fact.

------
hypothete
I was homeschooled for most of my K-12 education, and unschooled in different
degrees during that time. At best, unschooling can encourage a child to dig
deep for new ideas, and involve them in activities that build on that
knowledge. It can also be a great supplement to more typical subject-based
homeschooling, and encourage cross-disciplinary thinking.

But unschooling requires serious engagement on the part of the parent as well.
I've seen unschooling families get lazy and end up with 18-year old ballerinas
who can't do times tables to save their life, or physicists-to-be who might
seem advanced to their parents, but get to college and find themselves far
behind their peers. The parents' worldview and involvement can easily become a
constraint for their child's growth.

I would also caution potential homeschoolers to be mindful of how they frame
their choice when they talk to their children. Making it about the child or
taking a strong us v. them stance against other options can be very isolating
for the child, especially if they ever feel like they're not getting the
education they want at home. Be moderate in your explanations, and leave the
door open if you can.

~~~
ismail
“I would also caution potential homeschoolers to be mindful of how they frame
their choice when they talk to their children. Making it about the child or
taking a strong us v. them stance against other options can be very isolating
for the child, especially if they ever feel like they're not getting the
education they want at home.”

Great point. This was one of my concerns I had having spoken to some of the
teens who had been educated like this. They all seem to have a kind of “us
versus them” mentality against traditional schooling.

“But unschooling requires serious engagement on the part of the parent”

Yep it is much easier to just send your kid to school and make their learning
someone else’s responsibility.

“I've seen unschooling families get lazy and end up with 18-year old
ballerinas who can't do times tables to save their life”

Would you care to provide details on this? Over email if you would like to
avoid a public forum.

~~~
klowner
> They all seem to have a kind of “us versus them” mentality against
> traditional schooling.

Well, watching a retired public school teacher get huffy and start chomping at
your mother about how she's ruining her child can be a polarizing experience.

------
tivert
I would be careful. As a young child I was allowed to self-direct many aspects
of my education (Montessori schools, permissive parents, etc.), and as a
consequence I immaturely neglected many "boring" activities like learning math
facts and spelling. Especially in math, shaky foundations have plagued me ever
since, and I still have deficits in that area, which I _very much regret_.

The problem with letting children self-direct themselves to a high degree is
that they're immature and ignorant. The world is a much more complicated place
than it was hundreds or thousands of years ago, and many of the skills and
activities they need to master are essentially invisible to them, so they need
a lot of guidance and some external motivation to gain them. For instance,
they might end up finding a lot of joy in advanced math, but they're going to
have to slog through some hard stuff to get there. If they don't, many
opportunities will be closed to them.

~~~
ismail
“I would be careful. As a young child I was allowed to self-direct many
aspects of my education (Montessori schools, permissive parents, etc.)“

Could you provide more detail On this? Did your parents involve you in their
day to day activities, were you completely free or did you have a choice out
of a set of activities. I know this may be a difficult question to answer as
our memories of early learning is always hazy.

------
rajacombinator
The few home schooled people I’ve met were some of the most brilliant, and my
bar for saying that is quite high. They were also socially well adjusted. And
100% of the smartest people I’ve met received substantial, although not
exclusive, home schooling in the form of parents who were academics. I would
like to home school when I have kids, both for the learning and anti-
brainwashing benefits, but it seems impractical unless one does not need to
work and is willing to dedicate vast amounts of time to it. Also I think the
kids would be missing out on certain special socialization experiences. I
think the ultimate solution is send them to a school with sports teams and
cheerleaders, have thought provoking conversations with them, and hire college
students to tutor them on the side.

------
hsthrowout88
I was homeschooled K-12. I have mixed feelings about its effectiveness, and I
harbor resentment against my parents for many of their choices. Most of it
revolves around their strong religious reasonings for homeschooling, and the
denial of my wish to attend standard high school. There was also a very strong
"us vs them" philosophy that took me years to get over.

The hardest part was simply being "normal" in the real world. Even though we
had friends outside of the homeschool groups, it took me literal years to
learn normal group interactions so I would stop sticking out like a sore
thumb. Lack of socialization is brought up as a downside to homeschooling, and
is frequently rebuffed bringing up extracurricular activities and clubs. I
believe that no matter how much you think a few clubs and extracurricular
activities may substitute, sadly our culture revolves around working in groups
and within a bureaucracy. Homeschooling and its ilk are a poor preparation for
working effectivly within those systems. I seriously felt mildly retarded when
I got out into the real world, and would frequently joke that my first few
jobs were my substitute for the social systems of HS and College.

While I do think that homeschooling can offer younger children a lot of
benefits, such as accelerated reading and math skills in the early years (I
was performing these at a high-school level in early middle school), I don't
believe that parents can ever replace the structure specialized learning that
formal schools give older children. The option of me attending a public school
for high school was never taken seriously, I wish I had at least been afforded
that.

------
souprock
I'm homeschooling a huge family.

Neither unschooling nor pre-packaged curriculum seems right to me. At first I
make math worksheets, have them read out loud until they get perfect smooth-
and-fluid phrasing, and have them write in cursive. There is a local
homeschooling group that goes over history and sort of functions like a book
club, and also has a weekly gym class. The next step, starting at age 7 to 11
depending on the kid, is to teach AP Biology or AP Chemistry. I take this
seriously, with a College Board approval of my "syllabus" (their misnomer) and
plenty of labs and a real focus on the test material. I don't wait for the
prerequisite skills to be perfect; one could wait forever for that. I'll even
start with kids who struggle to read or do algebra. The test provides a real
goal with a measurable outcome. Once a decent score has been achieved, I use
that as evidence to get the kid into dual-enrollment at the local college at
about age 11 to 15. The deal in my state is that this is free college, and the
local public school district will even loan you the books. That gets the kid
to an AA degree, which in my state will guarantee admission to a state BS
program and satisfy all the general education requirements.

Although my state does mandate that my kids can participate in public school
activities and classes, I don't bother except for one kid who needed speech
therapy. There is a municipal band here that teaches music for free. BSA
scouting provides activities, with the Eagle Scout rank actually translating
into valuable things like scholarships and military rank. My state has an
online virtual school that I use only for driver education. I almost used it
for a language requirement at the state colleges, but taking the language at
the college means 2 semesters instead of 2 years. I suggest looking into 4H as
well; for me it was a bit too distant.

Be aware that often it seems that the grass is greener on the other side of
the fence. I have trouble getting my kids to study... but my mom had that same
trouble with me in a public school. Getting the kids to study is the most
difficult problem, and that fact doesn't change no matter how you decide to
deal with education.

Bonus for homeschooling: flexible hours, flexible days, less communicable
disease, better quality food, your choice of values, and usually a smarter
instructor.

------
irishcoffee
I attended public school first grade, home-schooled second grade, private
school 3rd grade, home-schooled until 7th grade, home-schooled with a 2-days-
a-week co-op 8th grade, public school 9-12, public university. If a coin has 3
sides, I've seen all 3. Ask away.

~~~
garyfirestorm
Can you summarize your experiences for all three systems?

~~~
irishcoffee
Honestly, not really. A bad shot at it would be:

Private school wasn't any "better" than public school. Homeschooling didn't
make me anti-social. Kids are the reflection of their mentors, the system of
education applied to children is mostly a political talking point.

Will Hunting: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're
gonna staht doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the
fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don't do that. And Two, you
dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a
dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library

------
chariemc
Unschooling family here....2 boys ages 14 and 18, always unschooled other than
the first couple of months of kindergarten with my eldest when I drank the
Kool-Aid and thought we had to follow a set curriculum for them to be normal,
happy, successful humans. Happy to share our experience and/or answer
questions.

~~~
ismail
Please could you share your experiences? Did you face any of the concerns
highlighted in these comments?

------
JSeymourATL
Seth Godin recently had a thought provoking podcast on this very subject --
essentially asking, WHAT is school for?

>
> [https://art19.com/shows/akimbo/episodes/130767e0-00fa-464f-8...](https://art19.com/shows/akimbo/episodes/130767e0-00fa-464f-8b1e-e21bce1d359d)

Relative to your daughter -- what critical skills do you think she will need?
And what's the best environment for her to develop those?

------
quickthrower2
Most of the skills I learned to do my job are from self-unschooling (aka side
projects) in my spare time from an age of about 7.

That said, I wouldn't be doing very well without the traditional schooling,
especially forcing me to read and write well when I naturally wouldn't have
gravitated to those subjects.

I didn't realise I liked maths and science until they become hard enough to
challenge me.

------
protonimitate
I had an 'alternative' educational life. I attended a Montessori school from
K-2nd grade. Was homeschooled from 2nd to 9th (very loose curriculum). Went to
public high school (9th-12th). Attended a public state-school for college.

I like to think I got a good view of 'both sides of the coin'.

In general, my homeschooled years were focused on 'real world' type skill
building, developing and following personal interests, and having fun. We did
some 'regular' book-type learning for math/science/english/etc, but never
spent more than 3-4 hours a day on it.

Although I spent a fraction of the time on regular studies that 'normal' kids
did during grade school, I entered 9th grade in public school at the normal
level. I was above-average at Math and English, but struggled with Science.
This, I believe, was due more to my personal interests and learning style than
preparedness - but who knows for sure.

The biggest benefit from that time period, imo, is that I really internalized
how to a) find and develop my own interests outside of school/sports, b)
develop relationships with non-parental/non-teacher adults, c) develop strong
auto-didactic skills, and d) have a strong base of 'real-world' skills before
I was 14 (cooking/cleaning/shopping/fiscal responsibility/etc).

The biggest adjustment from non-schooling to public-school was the amount of
time 'wasted' in my eyes. The amount of material were able to cover in a full
day at school was the same, if not less, than what I was able to learn by my
self in half the time. This led to some slackerish tendencies and a lack of
concern over my grades. I did well, but was never a top-of-the-class type of
student.

The second biggest adjustment was integrating socially. Not because I lacked
social skills (which is a huge misunderstanding about homeschooling in
general), but because of my hometown. I'm from a rural area, and my class size
was small (220 graduating class from 6 towns). Most of the cliques of people
had known eachother and been forced through the same daily routine since they
were 5 or 6 years old. It's really hard to break into social groups like that
at age 14. By end of Sophomore year I was able to carve out a little group of
friends, but the first two years were quite rough. I think that's more of a
testament to location, though.

My advice is this: if you are considering homeschool/non-traditional
schooling, try it now. Don't wait. At 1st grade your kid most likely has
developed some friendships, and probably doesn't care too much about being
'different' socially. Just make sure you have a well laid out plan for
developing social skills / maintaining relationships your kid already has.
And, most importantly, take time to re-evaluate. I was lucky that my parents
were supportive of my decision to want to attend public school, and didn't
keep me from making the choice. Also, really pay attention to the social-needs
your kid has. I was pretty much fine by myself for a long time, and therefor
resisted a lot of 'normal' social activities (sports, camps, etc) from an
early age. If your kid is an extrovert and needs those social interactions to
be happy, it will take extra work to accommodate.

That ended up being more of a ramble than anticipated, but I could talk about
this for hours, so if you have Q's lmk.

~~~
jenscow
> time 'wasted'

From what I gather from my children (13 & 15, mainstream schooled), I find
there to be a huge amount of wasted time. I'm sometimes under the impression
that the teachers are basically glorified child minders.

I have a friend who home-schools their children, and they're much more aware
of the world around them compared to others of that age.

My argument against home-schooling was that the children are missing out on
the social aspects - but thinking about it, that's just wasted time which just
encourages concern over trivial matters and like you say, cliques. There's
also the concern of being around those with a less than desirable influence.
Of course, it's not entirely negative.

Now I'm on the fence. In hindsight, I would have at least given home-schooling
consideration.

~~~
klowner
My mom was a high school art teacher (masters in art ed.) before she home-
schooled me, and one of the reasons she'd often bring up was how she felt much
of the time spent in traditional education consists of shuffling kids around
from one room to the next, and she wanted something better for me.

As for socialization, that was more than likely the most commonly voiced
concern I would encounter. I'd get a lot of "but don't you wish you were with
other kids?", and I would think "who the heck wants to be stuck with a bunch
of kids?"

~~~
AnimalMuppet
We homeschooled our kids (for the most part). Whenever we worried about
socialization, we grabbed our kids, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat
them up for their lunch money.

Just kidding. But the point is, socialization in public school can be pretty
awful, even violent. If your kid is the introvert, the less physically
developed, and/or the less popular, socialization may not be a net win for
your kid. And homeschoolers _do_ get socialization - just not with kids.
Instead, they're talking to grownups at the library or the grocery store while
other kids are in class. They (often) come out more socialized to the adult
world but less socialized to their peers.

Anyway: I'm not going to tell you that one way or the other is the right way.
I'll just say that, as a parent, _it 's your responsibility_. You can send
them to public school, or private school, or a charter school. You can
homeschool, which may or may not look like unschooling. Whatever you do,
though, pay attention to how it's working out for your kid. If it's working
out badly, _do something else_. (We switched to homeschooling from a very good
private school when our daughter said that every day, when she was getting
ready for school, her stomach hurt. That told us enough to know that, no
matter how good a school it was, it wasn't good for her.)

------
bertil_s
It is a good idea in theory, but the problem comes with the lack of a social
group for the child. Unless you somehow have the ability to provide the child
with a group of similarly aged peers of at least 5, please just send her to a
school and try to support her in whatever she seems particularly adept in by
helping her find good resources.

------
tmaly
I was not quite sure if I could watch Schooling the World off their site.

I chose to send my 5 year old child to Montessori school.

This seemed to match my approach to learning.

What was your biggest takeaway from Peter Gray's book?

~~~
ismail
The biggest take away for me personally is:

We all have an inherent drive/desire to learn. It is why most of us learn to
talk, walk, run with out any direct instruction. Yet school is based on a
massive assumption which I had never questioned. The assumption that it has to
be forced on you. Education that your are not interested in has to be forced.
True Learning, which differs from education, is self directed. It happens
because you are interested and curious.

Personal anecdata I thought myself coding in high school because I enjoyed it.
No one told me to go out and teach myself this. I found myself coding and
hacking instead of learning useless facts.

Edit:

Regarding the “schooling the world” documentary I have added two links.
YouTube and the documentary website where you can rent it. I chose to rent the
documentary to support the filmmakers.

~~~
tivert
> The assumption that it has to be forced on you. Education that your are not
> interested in has to be forced. True Learning, which differs from education,
> is self directed. It happens because you are interested and curious.

That's a false dichotomy. Sometimes you need the "forced learning" to get to
the "self directed education."

> Personal anecdata I thought myself coding in high school because I enjoyed
> it. No one told me to go out and teach myself this. I found myself coding
> and hacking instead of learning useless facts.

To a small enough child, _reading_ is a "useless fact." After all, an
illiterate child has gone _his whole life_ without needing to know how to
read. Why waste time learning letters when you could look at animals and
plants outside? _None_ of the facts they teach in school are truly useless,
but rather the person who judges them useless is just too ignorant to know
their value.

~~~
ismail
Great points;

“To a small enough child, reading is a "useless fact." After all, an
illiterate child has gone his whole life without needing to know how to read”

“Why waste time learning letters...”

This is the point/philosophy of it. The child will choose to learn when they
need and want to. Having spoken to some of these children I found most taught
themselves to read without formal instruction.

“None of the facts they teach in school are truly useless, but rather the
person who judges them useless is just too ignorant to know their value.”

Exactly. So if they are useless to the person it means an EXTERNAL party has
made a judgement call on what knowledge is useful. It comes down to who
decides what Is useful knowledge and what is not. Who should make threat
decision?

~~~
tivert
> This is the point/philosophy of it. The child will choose to learn when they
> need and want to.

You're missing the point. A child is ignorant of a great many things and not
competent to make many of those kinds of choices. That's not to say they can't
have some input, but it's an abdication of your responsibility as a parent to
let them make all their educational choices based on "when they need and want
to," unless those choices are so highly stage managed that they're not really
choices at all.

> So if they are useless to the person it means an EXTERNAL party has made a
> judgement call on what knowledge is useful.

What's so bad about that? The whole point of schooling is to benefit from the
knowledge and maturity of that "EXTERNAL" party, which allows them to make
better educational choices about a great many things.

------
ykevinator
I'm not qualified to be a teacher. DIY education is not a good idea.

------
ykevinator
Plus its usually a thinly veiled way to teach about jesus

~~~
LyndsySimon
Not in my experience.

We homeschool, and use a modified unschooling approach. We were in
Charlottesville, VA from 2013 to 2018, and there are far more atheists and
hippies than fundies. Here are two distinct groups there.

Now we’re back where we grew up: Harrison, AR. It’s pretty much the reddest
area in the country, and even here, the homeschool co-op that my kids attend
has much more of an “anti-authority” vibe than anything else.

For what it’s worth, we’re Christians, but I go out of my way to ensure my
kids get a well-rounded education. Christianity is not at all incompatible
with science, and I believe that Man was created as an intelligently being for
a reason. Our ability to understand the Universe is not a mistake.

