The Rise of the Unschooled

Salon has an article on some who reject public school in a big way:

Celine Joiris has never failed a test. Never eaten crappy cafeteria food. Never been picked last during gym. It's not that she's a supernaturally lucky 16-year-old -- she's simply never been to school. "I like the idea of studying, but school is just like incarceration," she explains. Her brother Julian, 17, agrees. "My approach is, planning, schedules -- OK. Tests, OK. College, OK. Whatever. But I don't really want to think much about it," he shrugs. "I can't tell you where I'll be in two years."

What's that? A smart 17-year-old without a plan? A bright, middle-class teenager who's not stressing out about SATs and admissions essays? In an era when college prep begins in preschool and adolescents need Palm Pilots to manage their after-school activities, such nonchalance has the power to shock. What about all those stories about home-schooled kids dominating national spelling bees and hogging spots at Harvard? Surely "whatever" is not in their vocabulary.

But Celine and Julian Joiris are not your typical home-schoolers -- they are unschoolers, followers of a radical approach to education that rejects not just the routines of traditional school, but the authoritative ideology it represents. Unschoolers make up approximately 5 to 10 percent of all home-schoolers. They learn without teachers, curricula or exams; rather, their whole lives are laboratories in which skills and smarts are acquired piecemeal, through casual interaction with the world around them.

The tentacles of John Dewey aren't everywhere.Anyone interested in education should read this excellent article.