As a urban parent who plans to unschool our three kids, I think this article only gives a single perspective to the unschool movement - namely a rustic one, which happens to be very popular with this movement.
What is overshadowed in the article, largely because it is an outdoorsy magazine, is that the philosophy behind unschooling is the difference rather than the specific skills learned.
Case in point, my kids will be getting hands on experience with robotics and computing as early as they can read and form abstractions - which includes mathematics and physics education. The distinction is that we will teach at the pace of their understanding and curiosity rather than set milestones in the form of testing.
I think your metaphor generalizes too widely however I do agree that done right, unschooling truly is a rich mans school (time, effort and materiel) because it is so narrowly tailored.
What you are describing sounds more like the author's definition of homeschooling than unschooling. That said, he is teaching them the skills to run a farm, so at what point are you exposing children to something rather than instructing them.
You have to do some instruction around the edges, but largely the idea is that you offer different avenues for exploration and then they choose which way to go. Homeschooling generally has a fixed curriculum, often as restrictive as traditional schools - so that is the distinction.
What is overshadowed in the article, largely because it is an outdoorsy magazine, is that the philosophy behind unschooling is the difference rather than the specific skills learned.
Case in point, my kids will be getting hands on experience with robotics and computing as early as they can read and form abstractions - which includes mathematics and physics education. The distinction is that we will teach at the pace of their understanding and curiosity rather than set milestones in the form of testing.
I think your metaphor generalizes too widely however I do agree that done right, unschooling truly is a rich mans school (time, effort and materiel) because it is so narrowly tailored.