In other news, ColinsMum likes to present quotes out of context. Here's my actual quote in full, for convenience:
no5no5 and Kriston, I disagree in part. I think that at least radical unschooling is guaranteed to produce lower-caliber voters than even a mediocre school education. I doubt that most radically unschooled kids, at least, would naturally teach themselves civics and other things that should be in the complete mental kit of every citizen, and which are at least less-inadequately taught in most school systems.
The unschooling mythos even contains stories about children growing into their teens and twenties without being able to read, and that's considered to be fine by some. And maybe it is, in some ways-- but not in obvious others, including trapping and treating learning disabilities, as well as preparing people for adult life, including voting.
It was clearly identified as a statement of opinion, in other words. And I think there is plenty of reason shown for that opinion-- including that there is no real basis for any assumption that discarding schooling entirely, and trusting to forces such as embarrassment to result in well-rounded people, will in general work as well as schooling in ensuring minimum levels of competency, or for preparing people for adult life, for example by producing decent voters.
In that very post I pointed to a specific sort of claim made by unschooling advocates, and I doubt that most people would disagree with my conclusion, at least without some sort of proof to the contrary.
Anyone can feel free to prove my opinion wrong with some valid evidence. The thing about radical unschooling is that there are no statistics I've been able to find, although unschooling advocates seem to be ready with a quick anecdote for just about everything, even brussels sprouts.
Those summary thingies can be tricky; they've got to present information properly, or they can be misleading. Anyone can feel free to read the words I've written, in their proper context.
