Originally Posted by Val
Originally Posted by AvoCado
Here's an unschooler with a PhD in IT who works at Google: http://www.ivillage.com.au/unschooling-sounds-great-except-one-thing/

That's nice for him. But what about his brother, who still struggles with reading at age 19, and the other sibs who didn't pick it up until they were 11 to 14?

Where was that love of learning in adolescents who still couldn't read, or in adults who couldn't write and self-admitted that they didn't learn until forced to? Some schools may be bad, but they aren't THAT bad.

This is what bugs me about movements like this. The parents make an emotional decision with zero real evidence supporting it, and then stick to it in the face of extremely compelling evidence showing that it's not working.

Then, as noted in the first quote above, the success story is highlighted while ignoring the functional illiterate who "works with horses."


Maybe they all have LD and wouldn't have learned to read until that age anyway, school or no. The "functional illiterate who works with horses" is still working, still able to self-sustain, as the PP put it. Why do they have to learn to your standard of what learning is? (Playing devil's advocate here, for sure!)

Originally Posted by MegMeg
DD6 is "unschooling" herself in riding her bike like a maniac and making forts in the bushes with her friends.

I'm going to be non-un-schooling her over the summer. Just a little bit each day, but she will probably burn through most of 2nd grade math. Which she would not, if I left it up to her.


Would it be so bad, if she didn't?