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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP here.  I don't know that I'm a fan, but from folks I know who do unschool their kids it takes both very motivated parents and very motivated kids to end up with educated teens/adults.

An example:  A kid is interested in nature, maybe asks why leaves are green.  From there, they might explore online, via books, or science experiments and learn about chlorophyl, the bloom cycle of trees and so forth.  That might lead the child to wonder "well, if leaves are green, why is the sky blue" and they're off and running to all sorts of other exploration, visting a planetarium and on and on.

We have friends who unschool.  Their children's interest in legos led eventually to a lego robotic tournament and their team of home and unschooled kids came in second in the state.  The robotics portion led their son to an interest in computers and programming.  He's 16 and has now voluntarily taken a class or two at the local community college in computer programming and has written code for some basic video games.

A family cycling trip to Italy was prefaced by studying maps and planning the trip.  The vacation was filled with history and art and culture hands-on rather than reading a book and writing a report.

It's organically growth in learning.  Their daughter expressed interest in theater and dance from a young age.  They watched lots of Shakespeare and other theater, enrolled her in dance classes, explored the history of jazz, and a host of other things.

Based on their experience their kids actually spent lots more of their days reading for enjoyment or being active physically than your average child simply because they had the freedom to do so.

As a parent, I don't think it's a route I would take, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

The question for those of you who say you wouldn't go to an unschooled surgeon or CPA, the question really is how do you know?  They have a college and medical degree on the wall.  Do you often question your physicians or accountants or plumbers about where they went to high school?[/quote]

Most of us do that stuff (studying maps, pursuing things our kids are interest in, etc.) in addition to schooling.  It's called being a parent. That's why it's mind boggling people considered it their kids' sole form of schooling.[/quote]

It's also mind boggling that you don't seem to understand that with an extra 40 hours a week due to not having school, commute, or homework, you could do more of those things.

I'm a working parent (a public school teacher, ironically) so my kid went to all day preschool.  There were lots of great things he learned there, but I assume that had I been able to stay home with him as a 2, 3, and 4 year old he would have learned the same things, or other equally important things.  [/quote]

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