Unschooling Rather Than Highschooling
This is a particularly long piece, but I think it captures the essence of what “unschooling” can be during what would conventionally be ones high school years. It chronicles highlights of the educational journeys of my two kids (Eric now 25 and his sister Emma now 21) who made the decision (with their parents’ consent) not to go to high school, which facilitated their own self-initiated “deep learning” projects done instead.
To set the context for their unschooling experience, we pulled Eric out of school in February 2000 a month after his 14th birthday because it had become clear that he hated going to school and, being a total autodidact, had a profound incompatibility with the conventional instructional academic environment. The previous year we had hired an educational specialist who had worked with him for several month trying unsuccessfully to help him develop study skills and get past his determination not to to do any home work he considered “boring and
