Talk:Unschooling

Bias in the article, and suggestions for improvement
Article aims to convince readers about the merits of unschooling, and does not emphasize downsides in a significant fashion. Readers should be informed of both sides of discussion equally, without having every counterargument dismissed by the writer's point of view. There are not enough studies or quantitative data to suggest that unschooling is beneficial to everyone who seeks to do so, and the data that points towards possible shortcomings of unschooling are mentioned, but dismissed.

For example, under "Learning Styles", the article "[asserts] that unschooling is better equipped to adapt to these differences." The citation for this, however, is an article that deals with analogies instead of quantitative data, and does not mention overall outcomes and implications this may have for the long term prospects of a student. Similarly, in the same paragraph, the article also claims that "while teachers often use different methods, this is sometimes haphazard and not always with regard to an individual student." The cited source makes no mention that there is haphazard methodologies used by teachers, nor is the citation a reputable academic source; therefore the statement of its haphazardness is more out of analogy and opinion than a factual statement. Similar arguments can be made throughout the passage. Peer-reviewed data is seldom mentioned in the article, and the only metric we can see from this is that unschooling has managed to produce someone who has appeared on "The Voice".

Neutral statements aside, I worry that not enough is on this article to advocate for traditional methods of learning. It reads similarly to a nicely-worded blog post that strives to add citations for credibility, but is more focused on convincing others to join the movement than to achieve a neutral point of view. The only time that any significant negative effects are mentioned, is inside "Criticisms". In there it is shown that unschooling performs below the average grade level of students on standardized tests, even when the group tends to be self-selecting and biased towards having better-performing students in the study. Unschooling sounds like a wonderful idea in many ways, but it can also hugely damage long-term prospects of a student's life if the children does not receive enough attention in studying areas that can lead to advancement in higher education. One glaring example of this in action is that we do not see a single Engineer, Scientist, or other STEM-field worker in the "Unschoolers of Note". This is largely because math can be difficult to learn at times, and most students wouldn't strive to learn math if they can avoid it (path of least resistance). With STEM being a field that routinely brings people into higher income classes, unschooling's lack of results in STEM would serve to weaken social mobility amongst the people who need it most. The burden of educating the children lies on the parent when they choose unschooling, and the parents certainly did not go through 4-5 years of schooling on the best ways of educating the next generation. Possible suggestions to remedy this include providing links to help parents learn more about education, and giving more weight on emphasizing how important the parent's role plays in helping these children learn. (Personally I'd suggest taking courses from universities in order to understand the last few centuries' worth of educational knowledge and theory, since no parent alone would be able to understand how education is done best. It's similar to how we only want Andy the engineer to make blueprints for our TV set, and we don't want to give commission to Bob from McDonald's to design our TV. Andy knows how to do it right because he was educated in how to do it.) The idea that children can learn more from video games is, sadly, not a current reality; only some aspects of games are good for these children's learning, but the majority of games out there only seek the players to understand how to work with game mechanics, while providing little benefit on other areas. Unstructured learning would undoubtedly also make achieving higher education harder, due to the lack of standardized testing that happens throughout the children's education. The lack of higher education would also make it harder for these children to find high-paying professions, or to even find common ground on certain topics with peers (obtaining all education and education philosophies from one source only, will narrow down a student's mindset). I suggest for unschooling to address some of these issues before denouncing traditional education and claiming so much of the merits on this educational style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VincentAdultmanBusiness (talk • contribs) 02:30, 13 April 2019 (UTC)


 * "...not enough is on this article to advocate for traditional methods of learning..."
 * Conventional method of schooling is about teaching, not learning.
 * Learning is, by definition, "self-initiated acquisition of knowledge". Is that not good for everyone? When the need arises for vocational training, one can ask what kind of knowledge one needs in order to become competent in a chosen field.
 * In short, teachers should be assistants, not authority to learners. Janosabel (talk) 22:44, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

John Dewey
If someone has time, adding the parallels to John Dewey and his educational philosophy would be an asset to this page in terms of context. 2604:CA00:10B:851:0:0:26C:5094 (talk) 18:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Ambiguous use of "unschooler"
The term "unschooler" is ambiguously used in this page both to refer to students who are learning in an unschooled milieu, and to parents/guardians who direct the education of their children in such a manner. Is there a better term for one or the other case (or both cases) that can be used consistently to relieve this ambiguity? —Moorlock (talk) 23:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)


 * unschooler or grown unschooler should be used to refer to the people who were unschooled, and unschooling parent should be used to refer to the adults who decided to unschool their children. Tekrmn (talk) 16:46, 28 June 2023 (UTC)