Utah legislator calls for end to compulsory education

Lyv

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Utah legislator calls for end to compulsory education

The idea of forcing children to attend school is outdated and should be scrapped in favor of a system that encourages learning by choice, state Sen. Aaron Osmond said in calling for an end to compulsory education in Utah.

"Some parents act as if the responsibility to educate, and even care for their child, is primarily the responsibility of the public school system," the South Jordan Republican first wrote on a state Senate blog on Friday.
"As a result, our teachers and schools have been forced to become surrogate parents, expected to do everything from behavioral counseling, to providing adequate nutrition, to teaching sex education, as well as ensuring full college and career readiness."

So, his solution to those issues is to make it optional for parents to send their kids to school. I find it howlingly stupid, but I wondered what others here might think.

One of my dearest friends had a hellish start in life. Her mother tried to abort her at home one day (I'll spare you the details, though her mother liked to tell my friend about them often). When that failed, she often left my friend, N, alone in the backyard in a playpen with a box of cereal. All day, and when she got a little older, she was left for days. No one noticed. School probably saved her life.

And not just because people noticed that she was bruised and malnourished, but because she got an education. Her mother, had she the option and not the legal responsibility to get her child an education, would not have sent her to school. And her hard life would have been harder for longer.

It would, imo, weaken us as a society, as a country, to abandon mandatory education for all children. But am I missing something?
 

Billtrumpet25

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Just when I thought politicians couldn't get any more stupid. :( It's in our country's best interests to promote and improve our educational system, not say "screw it" and let it hinge on a "learning by choice" concept.
 

Fokker Aeroplanbau

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I'm not sure I agree to end the schooling altogether, but I can't help thinking that our current system is radically broken. With the explosion of student debt there seems a strong case, at first glance, that students these days are being raised in a culture where the classroom is the central focus of life. But, ultimately, that's not helpful for millions of them. The student debt bankruptcies attest to that. There's a cycle where kids are shoved through a system whose implications they don't understand and whose results they may not even want. They end up at the other side with some nice 'achievements,' some nice 'awards' but there does not seem to be overwhelming evidence (to put it lightly) that they translate into real world success. For many, it's quite the opposite. If breaking this meat grinder and opening up the system to different ideas means ending compulsory schooling I believe that's an acceptable cost.

One thing that jumped out at me was his quip about sex education. At this point I'm surprised he even cares about sex education because if the Department of Education is teaching that subject as 'well' as they teach reading or math he has little to worry about.

Structurally there is too much emphasis on devoting too much of one's life to learning that, at best, is unhelpful and may even be a detriment to long term financial (much less emotional) health. Do we need UPS drivers to have college degrees? Do our electricians need 20 years of schooling? There's nothing wrong with them having a 'dummed down' GED equivalent and sending them out, in those two examples at least, to a job whose security makes the cadres of recently laid off lawyers (with their 200k of student debt) mouth water. This assumes, of course, that a GED is even required to be a good electrician. I don't think that's the case at all.

Imagine a world without a GED. Perhaps it's time for a German styled transition to schooling that, in part, is an elaborate vocational school. And since America is not as urban as Germany, perhaps a piece of the system should be that these vocational schools hand out accreditation to individuals who--even if they never spend a day in a 'official' classroom--still manage to learn the skills. It just boggles my mind that Imperial Valley farmers need to spend four (sometimes five) years getting a GED then another four or five getting a BS in agriculture all so they can do what they already know.

In many cases I even doubt the usefulness of 1st-8th education. Too much is looking forward to college. 1st-8th should always be required in some sense, but the way its set up makes high school--even college--a requirement de facto for kids who have no business being there. There is a small minority of students that need to know the most recent historical 'interpretations' or the newest 'experience' of the Civil War. For the majority 1861-1864, Lincoln, Gettysburg Address and a few other pertinent facts is enough. Like the Merchant Marines today or Melville's protagonist in Moby Dick the nuance can be provided from books they read on their own. The ship was his Harvard and Yale. The fields will be their's.
 
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Gale Haut

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Ludicrous. This Sen. Osmund guy is thinking about it from a very narrow perspective. If this sort of thing actually were to happen, next thing you know the PTA starts strongly encouraging some parents not enroll their smelly children in subsequent years.
 

Don

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So how's compulsory, government-monopolized, government-approved, government-financed primary education working out these days?

Well, there's this:
Thirty-three percent of 4th grade public school students are at or below the “Basic” level on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading tests.
Twenty-six percent of 8th grade public school students performed at or below the “Basic” level on the NAEP reading test (NCES, 2009).
Among 4th graders, 53 percent of African American students, 52 percent of Hispanic students, and 48 percent of American Indian students scored below the “Basic” level on the NAEP reading test.
Among 8th graders, 44 percent of African American students, 41 percent of Hispanic students, and 37 percent of American Indian students scored below the “Basic” level on the NAEP reading test (NCES, 2009).
Forty-nine percent of 4th graders eligible for free and reduced-price meals finished below “Basic” on the NAEP reading test.
Forty percent of 8th graders eligible for free and reduced-price meals scored below “Basic” on the NAEP reading test (NCES, 2009).
The number of high school seniors who read at or above “Proficient” has been declining since 1992, according to the NAEP reading test (NCES, 2002).
Forty-three percent of adults read at or below the “Basic” level. This accounts for roughly 93 million individuals (NAAL, 2003).
And then there's this:
U.S. Scores Poorly Internationally. The U.S. is the only country among 30 OECD free-market countries where the current generation is less well educated than the previous one.
High School Dropout Rates Are Staggering. Every year, one in three young adults—more than 1.2 million people—drop out of high school.
Low Literacy in Burgeoning Prison Population. One in every 100 U.S. adults 16 and older is in prison or jail in America. About 43 percent do not have a high school diploma or equivalent, and 56 percent have very low literacy skills.
And finally, this bit from the National Adult Literacy Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics:
Twenty-one to 23 percent — or some 40 to 44 million of the 191 million adults in this country — demonstrated skills in the lowest level of prose, document, and quantitative proficiencies (Level 1). Though all adults in this level displayed limited skills, their characteristics are diverse. Many adults in this level performed simple, routine tasks involving brief and uncomplicated texts and documents. For example, they were able to total an entry on a deposit slip, locate the time or place of a meeting on a form, and identify a piece of specific information in a brief news article. Others were unable to perform these types of tasks, and some had such limited skills that they were unable to respond to much of the survey.

Having watched the last 40 years go buy, I highly doubt that throwing even more money at the problem is likely to resolve it.
US-Spending-and-Test-Scores-Cato_zps763383fc.jpg



Perhaps having a voluntary audience will improve school performance.

One thing I remember from government school: "Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results."

We need to quit doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. That's insanity.
 

Shadow Dragon

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SOne thing I remember from government school: "Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results."

We need to quit doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. That's insanity.
This is one part I agree with, though I'd disagree with government run education considering the best school systems in the world are government run. I'd say instead just look at the school systems that are successful, like Finland, South Korea, etc, and finds ways to emulate their success.
 

StormChord

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Sorry, Don, but even the kids doing well in school often really don't want to be there. I think the more likely result will be that you'll get kids who really want to be in school, and then you'll get many more kids whose parents force them to go to school. The overall results will most likely be the same as they are today, even without the government doing anything.
 

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I'm sure many kids, given the chance of summer vacation forever or learning all that boring English and math, would opt for vacation.

One thing to remember though (among many) is that children are not given the choice. Parents decide whether or not they wish children to go to school.

So if a kid wanted to say, get an education rather than work on the family farm, too bad for him or her.

There's been a resurgence lately in the "unschooling" movement, sort of an offshoot from the homeschooling movement.

It's a great idea - if there are problems with the public school system (which there surely are) let's not do the hard work necessary to make it better. Let's just stop sending kids to school. Problem solved.
 

Lyv

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Perhaps having a voluntary audience will improve school performance.
Who says the "audience" would be voluntary? Parents would be deciding for children under a certain age. There would still be kids at school who don't want to be there. There would not, however, be kids there with certain types of bad parents, or even certain types of good parents.

Here is more from the actual article he wrote:

When a parent decides to enroll a child in public school, both the parent and child should agree to meet minimum standards of behavior and academic commitment or face real-life consequences such as repeating a class, a grade, or even expulsion.
So, you could a really motivated kid who wants an education with parents who don't want him or her to have it and the parents get to deny the child that education. You could have abusive parents who realize this is a great way to make sure no one notices the bruises on a child. You could have a kid who has a hard time in school and whose parents don't or can't meet these supposed standards and that kid is kicked out of school. You could have a kid who does well in school, but whose parents don't meet the standards and that kid gets kicked out.
 

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Smart guy.

Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he graduated from Creighton Preparatory School. He went on to study at Saint Louis University, at University of Vienna, Austria, through IES Abroad, and at Loyola University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English, cum laude, in 1957.

Instead of spending two or three years teaching children things they will inevitably learn anyway, why not teach them some things they will not inevitably learn and that they would actually enjoy learning at this age? How to navigate by the stars, for example. How to tan a hide. How to distinguish edible foods from inedible foods. How to build a shelter from scratch. How to make tools from scratch. How to make a canoe. How to track animals--all the forgotten but still valuable skills that our civilization is actually built on.
Smart people are just as capable of dumb ideas as are dumb people.
 

DancingMaenid

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There are some serious issues with the education system, but the idea that parents will be forced to take more responsibility for their children without schools to help out just seems very flawed and nonsensical. Really irresponsible parents are still going to be irresponsible if their kids are home with them.

And doing away with the public school system would mainly affect lower-income families. Parents with the means will probably pay for private schooling, or home school. Parents who can't afford private school or can't afford to have a parent home don't have as many options.

With the explosion of student debt there seems a strong case, at first glance, that students these days are being raised in a culture where the classroom is the central focus of life. But, ultimately, that's not helpful for millions of them. The student debt bankruptcies attest to that. There's a cycle where kids are shoved through a system whose implications they don't understand and whose results they may not even want. They end up at the other side with some nice 'achievements,' some nice 'awards' but there does not seem to be overwhelming evidence (to put it lightly) that they translate into real world success. For many, it's quite the opposite. If breaking this meat grinder and opening up the system to different ideas means ending compulsory schooling I believe that's an acceptable cost.

I think there are a few different issues at play here. For one thing, college tuition has risen a lot, making working your way through school less of an option for many people.

You're right that focusing on academics just isn't the right path for everyone. I wish trade schools and entrepreneurship were treated like more serious options. At the same time, however, a bachelor degree is increasingly being treated like the bare minimum you need for a lot of entry-level jobs. And there's a lot more competition for jobs today than in the past. When my mom was my age, she had no problem getting some pretty good secretarial positions with just a high school diploma. These days, most administrative assistant positions I find require a college degree.

For that reason alone, if I were a parent, I'd be hesitant to encourage my kids to forego college. I wouldn't make them go to college, and if they didn't want to, I'd help them brainstorm about other possibilities and support them. But I'd be concerned.

However, I feel like there can be too much pressure on kids to perform academically today, especially considering all the work they have to do doesn't seem to be resulting in more knowledge or better test skills. Kids are often given so much homework, and there's so much more emphasis on schooling at a younger age than there used to be. Maybe it was just my parents and the community I grew up in, but when I was young, kindergarten was treated like something that was normal but optional, and pre-school was an extra thing. Now, while kindergarten is still optional in a lot of places, it's treated like a much bigger deal. And pre-school is increasingly becoming the norm. Particularly since a lot of parents work, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I'd probably rather send a child of my own to pre-school than a daycare. But I also don't think there's anything wrong with 3- 4- and 5-year-olds spending more time at home with family.

In many cases I even doubt the usefulness of 1st-8th education. Too much is looking forward to college. 1st-8th should always be required in some sense, but the way its set up makes high school--even college--a requirement de facto for kids who have no business being there. There is a small minority of students that need to know the most recent historical 'interpretations' or the newest 'experience' of the Civil War. For the majority 1861-1864, Lincoln, Gettysburg Address and a few other pertinent facts is enough. Like the Merchant Marines today or Melville's protagonist in Moby Dick the nuance can be provided from books they read on their own. The ship was his Harvard and Yale. The fields will be their's.

I kind of agree and disagree.

The thing is, kids don't always know exactly what they want to do. Not only can exposure to different topics help them decide, but if they wait to study some of this stuff until they know exactly what they want, it may be too late.

When I was studying engineering, I was behind a lot of my classmates in math because I didn't take calculus in high school. I entered college at a pre-calculus level. If I'd wanted to jump into engineering in my first semester, I wouldn't have been able to do much. I'm not suggesting that calculus should be required--it's just an example of how the education you receive in your teens can affect you years later.

However, that said, math was the only topic where I really needed a strong foundation in order to move forward. There were a few topics, like physics, that I picked up for the first time in college and adapted to well. Maybe some high-school level experience would have helped me, but maybe not. A lot of freshman-level college courses are a lot like high school classes I think--just more in-depth.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I'm not sure I agree to end the schooling altogether, but I can't help thinking that our current system is radically broken. With the explosion of student debt there seems a strong case, at first glance, that students these days are being raised in a culture where the classroom is the central focus of life. But, ultimately, that's not helpful for millions of them. The student debt bankruptcies attest to that. There's a cycle where kids are shoved through a system whose implications they don't understand and whose results they may not even want. They end up at the other side with some nice 'achievements,' some nice 'awards' but there does not seem to be overwhelming evidence (to put it lightly) that they translate into real world success. For many, it's quite the opposite. If breaking this meat grinder and opening up the system to different ideas means ending compulsory schooling I believe that's an acceptable cost.

But surely "student debt" refers to post-high school education which must be paid for, rather than free public education for all through high school, which is what State Senator Osmund is proposing eliminating.

While you are correct that there are grave concens about the cost of higher education (particularly at private, for-profit institutions), it is not clear why that should mean eliminating free basic education funded by taxes for the commonweal.
 

Don

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I'm sure many kids, given the chance of summer vacation forever or learning all that boring English and math, would opt for vacation.

One thing to remember though (among many) is that children are not given the choice. Parents decide whether or not they wish children to go to school.

So if a kid wanted to say, get an education rather than work on the family farm, too bad for him or her.

There's been a resurgence lately in the "unschooling" movement, sort of an offshoot from the homeschooling movement.

It's a great idea - if there are problems with the public school system (which there surely are) let's not do the hard work necessary to make it better. Let's just stop sending kids to school. Problem solved.
Unschooling doesn't mean uneducated, or as George Bernard Shaw put it succinctly:

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

Or, in a bit more detail, selected bits from this essay:
One alternative approach is "unschooling", also known as "natural learning", "experience-based learning", or "independent learning".
...
Unschooling isn't a method, it is a way of looking at children and at life. It is based on trust that parents and children will find the paths that work best for them - without depending on educational institutions, publishing companies, or experts to tell them what to do.
...
Then what is unschooling? I can't speak for every person who uses the term, but I can talk about my own experiences. Our son has never had an academic lesson, has never been told to read or to learn mathematics, science, or history. Nobody has told him about phonics. He has never taken a test or been asked to study or memorize anything. When people ask, "What do you do?" My answer is that we follow our interests - and our interests inevitably lead to science, literature, history, mathematics, music - all the things that have interested people before anybody thought of them as "subjects".

A large component of unschooling is grounded in doing real things, not because we hope they will be good for us, but because they are intrinsically fascinating. There is an energy that comes from this that you can't buy with a curriculum. Children do real things all day long, and in a trusting and supportive home environment, "doing real things" invariably brings about healthy mental development and valuable knowledge. It is natural for children to read, write, play with numbers, learn about society, find out about the past, think, wonder and do all those things that society so unsuccessfully attempts to force upon them in the context of schooling.
I can't speak for anyone else, but looking back over 61 years, the vast majority of my education came in exactly that way, not in a classroom memorizing facts in order to pass tests. YMMV.

The whole essay is worth reading, IMO.

It seems nowhere are people more afraid to think outside the box than when it comes to education, which is exactly when we should be learning to think outside the box. Any system that's miserably failing at least 25% of its "customers" needs to be seriously reconsidered.
 

rugcat

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When people ask, "What do you do?" My answer is that we follow our interests - and our interests inevitably lead to science, literature, history, mathematics, music - all the things that have interested people before anybody thought of them as "subjects".
What if your interests run to watching TV and eating Cheetos?

Smart kids with smart parents are going to come out OK whether they are schooled, home-schooled, or unschooled.

For the average kid with average parents, schooling is an absolute necessity.
 

ColoradoGuy

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Having watched the last 40 years go buy, I highly doubt that throwing even more money at the problem is likely to resolve it.
US-Spending-and-Test-Scores-Cato_zps763383fc.jpg

I'd love to see some data about how much of that increase in spending has gone to classroom instruction and how much to the increasingly long list of social services the public schools are now mandated to provide. A key reason for requiring public schools to be a social work agency as well as provide instruction is that our society has chosen not to provide those kinds of services by other mechanisms. It has fallen to the schools to do that.
 

little_e

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Um, but public schooling is already basically not mandatory in the US--all a parent has to do is fill out a bit of paperwork saying they're going to home or private school the kid. Since the vast majority of people prefer the public school option, it makes sense to have this be the easiest 'default'.
 

rugcat

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Um, but public schooling is already basically not mandatory in the US--all a parent has to do is fill out a bit of paperwork saying they're going to home or private school the kid. Since the vast majority of people prefer the public school option, it makes sense to have this be the easiest 'default'.
No, public schooling is not mandatory.

What is mandatory is that the child receive an education -- one that meets certain standards, whether they attend public school, private school, religious based school, charter schools, home schooled, or whatever.

Society has decided that is in the best interest of the country that all children be educated, whether they or their parents are interested or not.

Note this tidbit at the end of the article:
Utah's public education system is currently the lowest-funded in the nation in terms of per-pupil spending.
 

little_e

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No, public schooling is not mandatory.
Are we disagreeing or agreeing? It sounds like disagreement, but looks like agreement.

Note this tidbit at the end of the article:
Utah's public education system is currently the lowest-funded in the nation in terms of per-pupil spending.
I wonder how Utah compares on test results? I've never had the impression that its students were doing particularly badly.
 

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Miguelito

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So how's compulsory, government-monopolized, government-approved, government-financed primary education working out these days?

Pretty well, actually.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/data...tion-rankings-maths-science-reading?fb=native

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/12/07/tech-education-oecd-rank.html

Canadian education is ranked number 3 in the world and it's run very much like in the U.S., with responsibilities delegated to the provinces who have set up some very large public-school systems.

So, please, let's stop with this canard that public education = bad. Often, public education can do very well (just as it can do not so well). What matters most is how it's done. For example (from the cbc article):

The study also found that high-performing school systems tend to prioritize teacher pay over smaller class sizes, a conclusion that may be surprising in Canada, where some provinces have caps on class sizes in the elementary grades.

So, maybe if you pay your teachers like shiat, expect them to churn out students who perform like shiat. It's going to be more complicated than that, of course, but the U.S. has some of the most poorly paid educators in the developed world.
 

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I'd rather have a poorly run education system than none, and I'd rather have a well run education system than a poorly run one. And, just speaking for myself, but if I hadn't been forced to go to school, I wouldn't have learned a goddamn thing.

I may have been nice all my life, but I sure as fuck wasn't inquisitive or excited about learning. That took several years of crowbaring.
 

Xelebes

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So, maybe if you pay your teachers like shiat, expect them to churn out students who perform like shiat. It's going to be more complicated than that, of course, but the U.S. has some of the most poorly paid educators in the developed world.

It should also be noted that the pay is highly variable in the US, resulting in some teachers. There is no established class: some barely scrape themselves into the lower middle classes and some are more firmly in the middle class. Some teachers make some good money, others scrape by. It varies by school district and by state.

As ColoradoGuy states, a good portion of the budget that goes to schools goes to services that would normally be done by other institutions. I never remembered there ever being a school nurse in school here, for example. A nurse might visit for a scheduled lesson but that was it.
 

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I wonder how Utah compares on test results? I've never had the impression that its students were doing particularly badly.

I found the NEA Rankings of the States 2012 and Estimates of School Statistics 2013 ( http://www.nea.org/assets/img/content/NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates-2013_(2).pdf ).

It does not have academic scores, but it has some fascinating statistics.

It looks like public education in Utah is under a lot of strain. It is possible that it has been starved for a long time.

According to the report, Utah is #1 of all the United States in percentage of population aged 5-17 (p. 6) and number one in percentage of resident population under age 18 (p. 7).

Utah has fewer school districts than all but four states (p. 11). Its public school enrollment in sheer numbers is right in the middle of the pack, but its percentage change in enrollment between 2010 and 2011 is higher than every other state.

Utah, in other words, has had a bigger increase in new public school students for its population than any other state between 2010 and 2011.

Utah is dead last for percentage of enrolled students who actually attend school (p.11).

It has a low-average number of teachers in K-12 schools, and the second-highest number of enrolled students per teacher. (pp. 16-17)

It pays teachers less than 38 other states do (p. 18). It is 48th in per capita personal income (p. 26). It is dead last in personal income per enrolled student, but it is quite high up in the list, 19th, in terms of "personal income from government and government enterprises" (p. 28) (putting it far above states like New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts in terms of personal income from government handouts.).

Utah is 47th in terms of tax revenue per capita (p. 32). Its people pay lower taxes than 80% of all the states (p. 33).

Utah is 50th in the amount of revenue it gives schools per student (p. 39), but because it has such a low percentage of enrolled students actually attending (see above), it is only 41st in revenue per student in average daily attendance.

Utah's public K-12 per student expenditure is 50th in the US (p. 54).

TLDR:

Utah is first or close to the top of the list in:

Percentage of school-age children
Rate of increase of new students entering the system
Number of students per teacher

Utah is dead last or close to it in:

Teacher pay
Percentage of enrolled students who actually attend school
Money spent per student in public schools
 
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DancingMaenid

New kid...seven years ago!
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What if your interests run to watching TV and eating Cheetos?

Smart kids with smart parents are going to come out OK whether they are schooled, home-schooled, or unschooled.

For the average kid with average parents, schooling is an absolute necessity.

No educational approach is right for all families or children. A kid who had zero motivation to engage in educational things would not be a good candidate for unschooling, and even the most enthusiastic learners still need some support from their parents to make sure they have the opportunities to learn. But Don is correct that "unschooling" doesn't usually mean ignoring education altogether.

My education probably fit the definition of unschooling in some regards. I did have some formal textbooks in some subjects (like math), but other subjects, like history and English, I mostly learned informally. It worked out pretty well. The only real downside was that I was kind of nervous when starting college because I wasn't used to taking many tests or having formal assignments that I had to turn in. But I never had any trouble.