Okay, well, for the record, if your point is that we are naturally specialists who will never learn anything beyond our one preferred subject unless someone forces us to
No, one of my points is that we can't assume that all kids are so naturally well-rounded in their interests that they will prepare themselves well enough for adult life, including the example someone else raised of being a responsible voter.
Being totally ignorant about a subject is both embarrassing and disabling, and nobody (who is healthy) wants that for themselves. I just can't imagine a child choosing to live that way.
Which subjects? The important ones? I don't know anything about cooking, but I'm not embarrassed. I can certainly imagine people living with the potential embarrassment of knowing little of civics, etc.-- they surround us everywhere. Whether or not their interests were dulled by poor schooling, these people haven't corrected the situation.
The point is, my kid makes healthy choices, and tries a wide variety of things, and I've seen absolutely no reason to agree with your argument that kids won't do that unless you make them. It just doesn't mesh with my experience.
Fair enough. From my point of view, assuming that children in general tend to be well-rounded, to such an extent and in such large numbers that we don't need standards and testing for homeschooled kids to catch the ones that aren't, is just too dangerous.
But I think any type of schooling that works for a particular kid, to prepare them well enough for adult life, is fine for that kid. And, of course, no child needs to be perfectly well-rounded in order for unschooling to work well enough in that way; they just have to be up to a certain level in some important achievement areas.
I see a lot of value in unschooling. I just don't think that radical unschooling is a good idea without any controls to ensure that unschooled kids are doing well, for similar reasons as I think controls are necessary for all homeschooled kids. I am on the fence whether I think controls are more likely to be needed for unschooled or homeschooled kids. I think unschooled children may be more likely to have untrapped learning disabilities than homeschooled kids; on the other hand, I think it may be more likely, based on personal experience, for someone to homeschool than unschool for the wrong reasons, and so if I had to guess, more homeschooled kids are out-and-out neglected.
What would you do if your child wanted to do nothing but read all day and build with blocks, and didn't like math, despite having just as much access to quality math materials as everything else? Would you ever step in to ensure that he or she learned some math, beyond what they'd pick up naturally by counting household items etc.? Would you figure that he or she would learn math when ready, or when the need arose, and just faithfully wait year by year for it to happen?
As another example, at what point, if a kid, say, just showed no inclination to read, would you get worried and at least have him/her tested for a learning problem?
