#unschooling

What else would you call me? I was taken out of school in the 4th grade because I was being bullied, falling behind in studies, and I was a biracial non-Christian fat kid in the 2000s Bible Belt.

There was a brief attempt at homeschooling me "properly" but it quickly fell to the beast that was my undiagnosed ADHD, assisted along by my mother's chronic depression. Eventually, "homeschooling" became "unschooling" became I spend my time watching television, reading library books, and being on the internet, while adults sort of just milled about in my periphery.

I dropped out in 4th grade. I never got my GED. I have a Google-printed "High School Diploma" my parents signed when I was 18 to show I had "graduated." I was going to try to go college on that background; reasons why I developed a massive anxiety trigger around the idea of it.

If I'm not an elementary school dropout, how am I meant to refer to my own history? But because it makes other people feel bad, I should just ... go back to what I was encouraged to do for my entire childhood and early adulthood:

hide it. lie. do whatever i can to pretend like I'm just like you.

That doesn't sound familiar at all.

I wasn't allowed out of the house before 3pm, because walking the half mile from our house to the library would be suspicious to the cops. I'd already been taken away by my grandparents once. And we only registered me as being homeschooled that first year, and never sent in further paperwork for subsequent years. Not that anyone noticed.

(Louisiana's homeschooling laws were trash then, and I doubt they've improved.)

I could've gotten picked up for truancy, which would've led to more eyes on my home situation, and I could've been taken away again. And I didn't want that to happen, did I?

So I hid it, and I pretended, and I faked it as long as I could make it.

Being as open about this as I am has been hard fucking won. And I maintain that I would've continued hiding it as long as possible if I had not met another person with similar experiences -- right down to "the right diet will cure ADHD and autism" kind of bullshit. (Not that my parents thought I had it; but boy did they have opinions about the parents of the kids that did.)

My startpoint was 4th grade, so I jumped about 8 grades in math WOOHOO! Still at rock bottom in every other subject, but I plan to fix that as well (at a healthier pace, haha).

(the site UI looks different because this screenshot is actually from three years ago. I didn't get any education between then and last March.)

I'm glad I could prove to myself that I can do this. Entirely self-directing your education is really, really hard. I don't get check-ins or deadlines. If I don't feel up to doing it, it doesn't get done.

Educational neglect has been a building source of dread and shame for me for many years, so... I guess that made it easier to commit to fixing it, and fast. Out of 111 days I only took 2 off (when I got sick). Sometimes learning was all I could think about, haha. That's how badly I needed this.

I used to be so far behind, I couldn't even envision a day when I'd be up to my age level. Thinking about what would happen to me when I became an adult scared me, so I kinda... pretended like it would never happen.

I wish I knew back then that it wouldn't turn out so bad. I even collected one normal statement to say about myself! "I started learning Precalculus when I was 18." I can say that now! And it's true! I never thought that'd be possible!

Besides education, I've learned a lot more about myself as well. I've gotten a better grasp on how I work, and what my relationship to learning is, and I've been processing my structureless childhood a bit better.

It never quite struck me how unfair it all was. I was supposed to learn how to fit into routine, and cope with work, and do things when I don't want to do them, and figure out all of irl socializing, but those are all skills I'm going to need to develop as an adult. And I'm only recently starting to understand that that was kind of messed up actually. It's been good for me to let myself grieve and hurt about that a little.

I actually used to believe my neglect was a gift, but that's a whole other tangent I'd prefer to get into some other time :P (this post would get soooo long ouhh)

Anyway, anyway, uhh. I can start drawing again YEEAAAHHHH!!!!! >:DD

I wanted to learn more about Statistics & Probability, but I'm out of time for that before Artfight, so I'll put it off until August. I thought Statistics & Probability were necessary to finish 12th grade, but my friend says it's optional and she graduated high school without it, so maybe I'm actually for real for real caught up with math? >:O

I'd like to learn it anyway though, because education for education's sake is fun and awesomes! That'll be the last of my high school math before I start catching up on another subject, then. Maybe I'll do biology or english?

Oh yeah, I did all this with Khan Academy. They've hopped on the AI train unfortunately, but the genAI stuff is paid-only and I haven't financially supported them in any way.

However, though his goal is to defend public schools, I think his arguments provide plenty of fodder in argument for homeschooling/unschooling when possible. If it's really true that teacher quality doesn't matter—then parents really can't mess it up!

I assume he's right that a large percentage of the population continues to believe that one's income at age 30 is strongly affected by one's teachers at age 10, at that these people ought to be corrected on the facts of the matter. But to those of us for whom education is far more than skill transfer, not only is that argument beside the point, it further supports prioritizing educational settings on values with no regard to skill transfer—which may be most fulfilled by homeschooling, unschooling, or schools with alternative educational models.