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.
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.