Fantastic comment overall. This surprises me, though:
> Done wrong [unschooling] can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet.
In a world where many people change careers several times as adults, this seems unnecessarily pessimistic. Okay, maybe their first career won't be that lucrative. Most people don't make that much in their twenties anyway. But that doesn't mean they won't find something better eventually.
In the economy of the 21st century, I think pursuing one's own passions is a likelier route to success than trying to follow the well-worn paths. No, there's no guarantee of success that way, but the well-worn paths offer no guarantees either. What I think is important in childhood and adolescence is to spend enough time and effort on something to come away with a sense of mastery, so that you feel that you can master anything else that you care to, and you have some idea of what's required to do that. But it doesn't matter what the "something" is. It's the experience that counts, not the information; information is free now.
Still and all, I agree partially with what you're saying. If I had kids, there would be things I would want them to know. (Many of these are not taught in any school, like how to deconstruct advertising -- an essential skill in modern life -- but that's another discussion.) I would certainly try to interest them in many topics. But I would try to do it at the right moment -- if they have no interest, it's not the right moment -- and I would also very much try to support them in developing their own interests.
I guess the unschooling idea could go too far if parents took it as devaluing their own potential contributions to their children's learning opportunities. Maybe some of that tends to happen. I don't think John Holt meant it that way.
Thanks. The reason I said that unschooling done wrong can set your children up for not being able to make ends meet was perhaps a bit harsh but based on experience. Out of my wife's six cousins they all regret being unschooled. I don't blame them. Their father didn't do it out if some sense of enlightenment. He is an unintelligent man who made his livelihood working with his hands. Unfortunately it's much harder to make a livable wage these days in a job where you sweat. Other than building a cabin (a very well made cabin I might add) his children are weak at reading and writing and are horrible at math. His daughter wanted to be a nurse but couldn't make it through nursing school, one of his sons is a prison guard, the gregarious one is a fantastic jewelry salesman. His kids have a fantastic work ethic but will likely never come close to their full income earning potential. Had the parents focused more on academics and less on grooming horses they might not have to work in retail, a prison, or be restricted by a spouses earning potential.
The great benefit of unschooling is that you raise emotionally very well rounded kids. I don't know what it is about the outdoors but it sure does work.
I take your point -- unschooling is perhaps best done by parents who are at least self-educated, who are intelligent people, curious about the world, and enthusiastic readers themselves. If the parents can't feed the kids' minds in some way, they should recognize that and find someone else in the neighborhood who can (other parents, perhaps), or use some source of lesson plans, or something.
In this case it sounds like it might be too generous to call this unschooling -- it sounds more like simple neglect. If parents aren't unschooling out of a conviction that they will actually give their kids a better education than the schools would, why are they doing it? Sounds more like sheer laziness to me.
Anyway, the question now is, what can these kids, now adults, do about their situation? I'll hazard a guess that they watch as much TV as the average American. If that's anywhere close, I'd say the first step is to get the TV out of the house. That will free up several hours a day. The second step is to get online. That will give them a reason to read and write. Even just doing that a few hours a day will, in a few years, change their lives. There's Wikipedia, there's Khan Academy, ... well, I don't have to explain this to you, I'm sure.
I can't accept that it's too late for them to turn this around, but it will take quite a bit of initiative on their part. If their work ethic is as good as it seems, maybe it's possible.
I don't know how close you are to them, but if you have any ability to reach them, I would encourage you to try. Their lives could be very different in ten years. I know that and I hope you know that, but they don't (else they would already be working on it).
I know I'm being presumptuous here. Please forgive me if I'm belaboring the obvious. I hate to see wasted potential.
> Done wrong [unschooling] can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet.
I will direct you to this comment from the original article: But “self-directed, adult-facilitated life learning in the context of their own unique interests”
I homeschooled my sons. At age 16, my youngest officially became a high school drop out so we could evade local reporting requirements, essentially. I was going through a divorce and living with relatives and it didn't look to my relatives like my kids were doing anything educational. One of their projects that year was a study of AI. We discussed a list of movies and TV shows and some learning goals (and went with that because AI -- the three laws and all that -- is intimately interrelated with fiction in part because it is still being dreamed up). I watched a lot of those things with them and had high level discussions about it with them during and after the viewing. But it looked to outsiders like my kids just dicked around all day.
They want to make video games for a living and want it to be kind of "next generation of AI" type video games. However, they are, currently, basically losers who can barely make ends meet. (We all are -- we are still together.) But that's in part because I and my oldest son have a very serious medical condition that we are dealing with in an unconventional/alternative manner and that is even harder to explain to outsiders than "unschooling."
So, basically, unschooling looks like the kids just dick around all day and, if the parents aren't on the ball, it can actually become the kids just do, in fact, dick around all day.
> Done wrong [unschooling] can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet.
In a world where many people change careers several times as adults, this seems unnecessarily pessimistic. Okay, maybe their first career won't be that lucrative. Most people don't make that much in their twenties anyway. But that doesn't mean they won't find something better eventually.
In the economy of the 21st century, I think pursuing one's own passions is a likelier route to success than trying to follow the well-worn paths. No, there's no guarantee of success that way, but the well-worn paths offer no guarantees either. What I think is important in childhood and adolescence is to spend enough time and effort on something to come away with a sense of mastery, so that you feel that you can master anything else that you care to, and you have some idea of what's required to do that. But it doesn't matter what the "something" is. It's the experience that counts, not the information; information is free now.
Still and all, I agree partially with what you're saying. If I had kids, there would be things I would want them to know. (Many of these are not taught in any school, like how to deconstruct advertising -- an essential skill in modern life -- but that's another discussion.) I would certainly try to interest them in many topics. But I would try to do it at the right moment -- if they have no interest, it's not the right moment -- and I would also very much try to support them in developing their own interests.
I guess the unschooling idea could go too far if parents took it as devaluing their own potential contributions to their children's learning opportunities. Maybe some of that tends to happen. I don't think John Holt meant it that way.