Unschooling Is A Problem, Lets Talk About It 👏
Look, I'm an anarchist. I fucking hate the American education system. It's a tool of capitalist indoctrination designed to create obedient workers, it enforces white supremacist curricula, it criminalizes disabled and neurodivergent kids, and it operates as a pipeline to prison for Black and brown youth. The public school system as it exists is violence.
So when I say unschooling is a bourgeois fantasy that abandons kids to educational neglect, understand I'm not defending traditional schooling. I'm saying unschooling is somehow worse.
What Unschooling Actually Is
For those who don't know: unschooling is the idea that children should direct their own education entirely based on their interests, with no curriculum, no structure, and minimal parental guidance. It's 'child-led learning' taken to its most extreme conclusion. The theory is that kids are naturally curious and will learn what they need to learn when they're ready.
Sounds nice, right? Very libertarian. Very 'trust the process.'
The Class Politics of Unschooling
First off, unschooling is almost exclusively practiced by middle-class and wealthy white families who have the resources to make it work. You need:
At least one parent who doesn't have to work full-time (or at all)
Enough money to buy educational materials, fund 'interest-led' activities, travel for 'experiences'
Social capital to connect kids with mentors, classes, and opportunities
A safety net so that if your kid reaches 18 without basic skills, they won't end up homeless
Poor and working-class families don't have these luxuries. Single parents working two jobs can't facilitate unschooling. Families in food-insecure households can't prioritize whether little Timmy feels 'called' to learn fractions today.
Unschooling is a privilege that only the comfortable can afford, and it's sold as some kind of radical educational philosophy when it's really just another way wealthy people opt out of systems the rest of us are trapped in.
Disability Justice and Unschooling Don't Mix
As a disabled person with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia, let me be clear: unschooling is a fucking nightmare for disabled and neurodivergent kids.
You know what I needed as an autistic, ADHD kid with learning disabilities, and multiple mental illnesses? Structure. Routine. External scaffolding. Accommodations. Explicit, systematic instruction that worked with my brain, not against it. Someone who understood my disabilities and could help me navigate learning despite them, not just wait around for me to stumble into education on my own.
Unschooling assumes kids will naturally seek out what they need. But neurodivergent kids often need explicit teaching of skills that neurotypical kids pick up incidentally. Social skills. Executive functioning. Self-regulation. These don't just emerge from 'following your interests.'
And here's the thing about learning disabilities specifically: I have dyscalculia, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. You know what doesn't help those? Waiting for me to become 'naturally interested' in reading, writing, or math. I needed specialized instruction. I needed someone who understood how my brain processed information differently. I needed interventions, strategies, and tools designed for people with learning disabilities.
If I'd been unschooled, I'd have avoided everything that was hard—which was reading, writing, and math. I would have never developed the skills I have now, limited as they still are. That's not educational freedom. That's abandonment.
And let's talk about mental illness. I've lived with depression. Some days, my interests include 'staring at the wall' and 'not dying.' If my education had been entirely interest-led during those periods, I would have learned nothing.
Unschooling also tends to ignore learning disabilities entirely. Kids with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, or processing disorders need intervention, not the hope that they'll magically become interested in reading or math when they're 'developmentally ready.' That's just educational neglect with a progressive veneer.
The 'Natural Learning' Myth
Unschooling relies on this idea that learning is natural and kids will just... do it. But that's not how learning works, especially not for disabled kids.
Yeah, kids are naturally curious. But curiosity alone doesn't teach you to read, write, do math, understand history, or think critically. Those skills require *instruction*. They require someone with more knowledge scaffolding your learning, correcting misconceptions, pushing you past frustration, and adapting teaching methods to how your brain actually works.
Left entirely to their own devices, most kids will pursue what's easy and pleasurable. And that's fine for hobbies! But education needs to include things that are hard, that you don't initially want to do, that require discipline and effort.
I'm not saying kids should be forced to memorize state capitals or do busy work. But there's a middle ground between authoritarian schooling and complete educational abandonment.
A lot of unschooling is driven by parental ego. Parents who want to be the 'cool' parent, the one who 'trusts' their kid, the one who rejects mainstream society. It's homeschooling for people who read The Libertarian Manifesto and thought 'but what if we applied this to children?'
But kids aren't little adults. They don't have the metacognitive skills to design their own education. They don't know what they don't know. And when parents refuse to provide structure or curriculum because they're ideologically committed to 'child-led learning,' that's not respect for the child—it's neglect.
And it's especially harmful to disabled kids, who often need adults to advocate for them, seek out appropriate resources, and provide the structure their brains require to function.
What Kids Actually Deserve
Kids deserve educational liberation, not educational abandonment.
They deserve learning environments that are anti-racist, anti-ableist, and anti-capitalist. They deserve teachers who are paid well and respected. They deserve curricula that teach accurate history, including the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the realities of colonialism and slavery. They deserve accommodations for disabilities and neurodivergence. They deserve specialized instruction for learning disabilities. They deserve to learn critical thinking, not rote memorization for standardized tests.
They deserve schools that are democratic and community-controlled, where kids have real input but also real support. They deserve a system that recognizes education as a collective responsibility, not something wealthy families can opt out of while everyone else suffers.
Unschooling isn't radical. It's not liberatory. It's just individualism dressed up as progressivism, and it leaves the most vulnerable kids—disabled kids, poor kids, kids without stable home environments—behind.
Abolish the current school system, yes. But replace it with something better—not with nothing.
