I came here from Idzie’s blog. We’re unschoolers and I find your question 3, and partially 4, to be the core of your (former?) and lizlongcore’s ignorance about unschooling.

Unlike schooled kids who are herded like cattle and forced to memorize meaningless, often inaccurate, crap, and who are taught to NEVER question authority, unschooled kids are given room and time to think. It’s a critical difference.

Curriculum? Is that like the Christian Bible, handed down to us from God on high, or is it a construct of pedestrian, flesh-and-blood people? People with their own agenda and prejudices. Some of whom IMHO can’t tie their shoes without a diagram.

Well, I’m getting a little wound up and I don’t mean to dump on you. I got a teaching degree in 1970 but like John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, and a host of others I quickly came to the conclusion that the U. S. education system is broken beyond repair and is useful to no one, except as a babysitting service.

Even the Romans knew that forced “education” was nonviable, as evidenced by the aphorism: Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur. And that was more than two thousand years ago.

Oh, and if you can’t translate that, it means that you haven’t studied Latin. How can you possibly get into college or pass “basic skills tests,” whatever the hell those are, if you don’t know Greek, Latin, and The Calculus? That’s what *my* curriculum contended. Apparently current curricula are different. OMG! How is that possible?

Cynicism aside, unschooling is the only honest educational philosophy. All others, especially the U. S. public education system, are coercive. Coercion is always bad. Always. Even when it’s useful. There’s another great old maxim, this one’s in English: Beware of what works.

And public school doesn’t even work in a minimalist sense. How pathetic is that?

I’ve been doing unschooling, although a variant of it — freeschooling. It’s basically an on campus version of unschooling with an actual school, but similar applications — no structure. It has the benefit of community and paid staff/actual campus (although there are only about fifty students.)

Idzie’s story isn’t rare — more of the norm, actually. You were right about one thing — you don’t get much out of unschooling if you’re not motivated. Unsurprisingly, you find that unschoolers are all pretty motivated and pretty involved.

Unschooling might not be mainstream, but it’s pretty big, so saying that people who do unschooling aren’t normal kids doesn’t quite apply — and I could tell you that the kids who I go to school with are perfectly normal, and do most of the same things as other kids their age at public school.

My experience with college math? you need ‘basic’ math that you’ll never need to touch once you’ve got your bachelors. You hop through hoops, you do it, get it past you, and then you’re ready to do a math-free education from then on out.

I’ve also found that you don’t need math past what you’ve outlined — day to day things. Anything you do need, you end up picking up quickly. Math isn’t unneeded or useless, but it’s not going to kill you to be unable to tell someone what a + b = 27x means.

Been doing classes part time at college for five or so quarters now. Idzia (sp?) could definately be in college now if she wants.

I very much hope you can inspire your students to learn everything they can! it works for many of us