This is an excerpt from the 2013 book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
In terms of numbers, homeschooling is the largest truly alternative schooling movement in the United States. The number of US children of school age (five to seventeen) who are homeschooled grew from roughly 3% or about 2 million students pre-pandemic to about 3 million students in the 2021/22 school year*. Not all parents who choose homeschooling do so primarily for the sake of their children’s freedom. Roughly a third choose it for religious reasons, and some no doubt choose it because they are unusually directive; they want to control their kids’ schooling themselves rather than leave that task to others.
Regardless of their initial motives, however, most homeschooling parents become increasingly relaxed, less directive, over time. Both they and their kids typically find the planned curriculum to be boring, so they begin to do more interesting things, usually initiated by the kids. With experience, homeschooling parents become increasingly trustful of their children’s abilities to direct their own education, and some of them become unschoolers.
Most homeschooling parents become increasingly relaxed, less directive, over time. Both they and their kids typically find the planned curriculum to be boring, so they begin to do more interesting things
What is unschooling
Unschooling is the category of home-based education most compatible with trustful parenting. The term was coined in the 1970s by the educational theorist and former teacher John Holt, in his magazine Growing Without Schooling. Defined most simply, unschooling is not schooling. Unschooling parents do not send their children to school, and at home they do not do the kinds of things that are done at school. They do not establish a curriculum, do not require particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress.
Instead, they allow their kids freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. They believe that learning is a normal part of all of life, not something separate that occurs at special times and places.
For official record-keeping purposes, unschoolers are lumped in with homeschoolers, so nobody knows exactly how many there are. However, people in the homeschooling movement generally estimate that roughly 10 percent of homeschoolers are unschoolers, which seems reasonable based on the proportions I see at homeschooling conventions. That estimate would be higher, probably much higher, if so-called relaxed homeschoolers were also included. These are families who sort of have a curriculum for their kids but don’t necessarily follow or enforce it.
The move from home lessons to unschooling occurred because the child and parents found the lessons to be tedious, stressful, or both, and to be unnecessary because the child was learning without them.
Recently my colleague Gina Riley and I conducted a survey of 232 families who identify themselves as unschoolers. We are still analyzing the questionnaire responses, but some results are already clear. More than a third of the families started off sending a child to school, but removed the child from school because of damaging effects the school seemed to be having on the child—such as depression, anxiety, anger, or loss of interest in learning. Nearly half of the families tried a more conventional form of homeschooling, with regular lessons at home, before moving on to unschooling.
In essentially all of these cases the move from home lessons to unschooling occurred because the child and parents found the lessons to be tedious, stressful, or both, and to be unnecessary because the child was learning without them.
Going against the current
In response to our question about the main advantages of unschooling for their family, the majority talked about the positive effects it had on their children’s happiness, assertiveness, or self-confidence; the positive effects it had on their children’s curiosity and learning; and the positive effects it had on family closeness and family life in general. Many who previously had a child in school commented on what a relief it was not to have to schedule their personal lives around the school schedule.
To our question about the disadvantages of unschooling, the most common response by far had to do with the stress or annoyance of having to explain and defend unschooling to relatives and others who were critical of their decision. Many also commented about having to overcome their own self-doubts about doing something so different from the norm. It can be difficult to swim against the current. That is one reason why many unschoolers have formed strong social networks with one another, both locally through community meetings and more broadly through Internet groups, in which they provide social support for one another.
All in all, unschooling “ungraduates” seem to have no particular difficulty getting into colleges and doing well there if they choose that route, and no particular difficulty getting good jobs with or without college.
Unschooling has been around long enough that there are now many adults who skipped all of what would have otherwise been their primary and secondary school years. So far no formal study has been conducted to see how they are faring, but many case examples can be found in articles, books, and blogs written by unschoolers. All in all, unschooling “ungraduates” seem to have no particular difficulty getting into colleges and doing well there if they choose that route, and no particular difficulty getting good jobs with or without college.
To give you just one example, in 2013 I spoke with Kate Fridkis, a delightful then 25-year-old living in New York City who had never been to school until she entered college. Her parents chose unschooling for Kate and her brothers from the beginning, because they believed that learning should not be separate from life.
Kate told me of all kinds of advantages that seemed to come to her because she was unschooled. She could follow her own interests and develop her own passions, which became many and diverse. She could go places and join activities that others couldn’t, because they were in school. She could make friends with people of all ages, in many different contexts, without feeling that she had to confine herself to people her own age. She never had to adapt to a conformist school culture, which allowed her to enjoy and to feel no embarrassment about the ways she differed from others and allowed her to appreciate differences in others. At age fifteen she got a paying job at her synagogue as a lay clergy member, leading services for the whole congregation, which would have been impossible because of the time conflict if she had been in school.
Her experiences at the synagogue led her to develop a passionate interest in religion as a social phenomenon, which led her to study comparative religion in college and then to obtain a master’s degree in the subject at Columbia University. She had no trouble adjusting to the academic demands of higher education. Her main disappointments as an undergraduate came from the immaturity and lack of intellectual interests among her classmates and the boring lectures she had to sit through. Today she is happily married, is a freelance writer with articles in a variety of prominent publications, works as a cantor at a synagogue, continues to pursue diverse interests for fun, and authors two popular blogs—one called “Skipping School” and the other (on body image) called “Eat the Damn Cake.”
Unschooling is not for everyone
I don’t think that unschooling is the answer for every family, or even for most, unless societal changes occur to help support it. It requires a considerable commitment of time and resources.
Generally, at least one adult has to be home when the kids are young. Most often that adult is the mom, which means that she must be willing to forgo or postpone a career, or able to manage a career from home. Although unschooling parents don’t direct their children’s learning, they do make efforts to provide a rich learning environment for their children and to help them find ways to pursue their own interests.
I don’t think that unschooling is the answer for every family, or even for most, unless societal changes occur to help support it. It requires a considerable commitment of time and resources.
Unschooling also typically involves a lot of family togetherness, which may be wonderful for some families, but could be awful for others. Some kids need to be away from their parents more than is typically possible with unschooling, and some parents need more time away from kids. In our culture of relatively isolated nuclear families, where most adults work outside of the home, it can be hard to spend the day with kids and still have enough adult companionship.
An advantage of Sudbury Valley or a similar school for self-directed learning is that it gives kids a chance to spend time in a stable setting separate from home, where there are rich opportunities for play, exploration, learning, and friendships that the parents don’t need to provide or arrange. But for many families, according to their own reports, unschooling is a terrific option.
*updated to show current data