The New York Times today has a front-page article on unschooling (see also the Wikipedia article on unschooling). They profile an unschooling family from the North Side of Chicago and give a pretty good summary of the “child-led learning” approach to bringing up our children. We hear that children can learn how to read essentially by themselves because they want to learn how to read and that basic arithmetic comes very easy once you try to keep track of your allowance.

There is the obligatory establishment curmudgeon, who says things like “it is not clear to me how they will transition to a structured world and meet the most basic requirements for reading, writing and math” and somewhat scary-sounding things like “as school choice expands and home-schooling in general grows, this is one of those models that I think the larger public sphere needs to be aware of because the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally. If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.” (The article does not challenge the presumption that the question of whether unschooling produces productive citizens should be addressed by consulting the feelings of the public and of policy makers, rather than checking in with reality: just find out whether unschooled children actually turn into effective adults – by which I don’t mean standardized testing, as hinted at in the article, but simply checking whether the adults that were unschooled as children now lead productive and enjoyable lives.)

The article does not draw the connection to free schools, such as Sudbury Valley (see also the Wikipedia article on SVS) which is where my children go to school. In my mind, such schools add to the unschooling idea the advantage of giving the children a space of their own (I am suspicious of the power structures involved in homeschooling) and a much more complex social environment than they face in their own home.

BTW, there is an Associated Press article on the Brooklyn Free School, which is being picked up by many news outlets around the nation, such as the MetroWest Daily News. Today, an abbreviated version appeared in the Boston Globe.