An Overview

The unschooling model presents an interesting, radical trend in education among some homeschooling families that provides fascinating insight into how kids act when not given educational direction.

The unschooling model asks how kids would develop educationally if almost everything we associate with school were stripped away: No tests; no set subjects; no schedule. Instead, unschooling lets students' study whatever interests them whenever they want.

While we think the unschooling model goes too far, it does act as an intriguing control and yields a valuable baseline. In the absence of any structure, what will unschooled kids actually learn by young adulthood and how prepared will they be for the world? Through answering these questions, we can better understand what structure is actually needed to teach kids.

The Effects of Unschooling

One study with 232 participants by Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College, found that around 83% of unschoolers go on to pursue some form of higher education, with 44% completing at least a bachelor's degree (these included degrees at an even range of colleges, ranging from Ivy League universities to state schools). This is markedly better than the general population, with 66.9% for men and 71.3% for women pursuing higher education after high school. Unschoolers furthermore beat the general population in terms of college completion, which currently sits at 36.7% for men and 38.3% for women. In fact, the average unschooling student starts taking college courses at the age of 16. Thus, it would seem that if we view unschooling as the default, the traditional school system slightly hurts rather than helps a child's ability to get into college and thrive once there.

While the above study did not account for participants' socioeconomic conditions, essentially doing nothing shouldn't even come close to achieving the same results of a long-standing education system, much less producing worse outcomes, regardless of demographic externalities. This is the most extensive study that currently exists, however we are conducting another with more controls. 

Academic Achievement

What effect does the absence of traditional educational structure have on children's and adolescents' academic achievement and learning? Here the results seem to closely match what we see from studies on homeschoolers and other less structured learning environments. While unschoolers come out ahead on average, they usually fall behind in math. (Out of fourteen peer-reviewed papers on homeschooling, eleven found students came out higher than average academically than non-homeschoolers.) In addition, unschoolers often develop problems with test anxiety, not knowing how to handle the judgment and time pressure associated with testing they encounter for the first time in college. Finally, a lack of socialization and feelings of social isolation appear to be major concerns for many unschooled children.

Student Satisfaction

What do the children think of these radical systems? Out of the 232 participants mentioned earlier, only three reported dissatisfaction with the experience and in all three of the cases the poor mental health of their primary caregiver was noted as the reason for this dissatisfaction (with religious extremism being cited as an additional issue in two of those cases). Contrast this 1% dissatisfaction rate with the 75% of kids dissatisfied with traditional schooling systems. Obviously, selection bias is at play here because it would be unethical to randomly assign families to an unschooling vs non-unschooling condition. However, this is not relevant in the creation of our schooling alternative because it will be subject to the same selection pressures and is not designed to replace the general education system for all families.

Data in Case Studies

If the traditional schooling system has a largely negative effect on educational outcomes, are there any sources of data on radical educational structures that have proactively created a dramatic positive effect? Here we will need to turn to case studies, with that of László Polgár being one of the most informative as it involves “shot calling.” Were you to interview parents of the fastest kids in the world about how to make fast kids, you would likely get a just-so story, as someone will inevitably be one of the fastest people in the world. However, if a parent says they will train the fastest kid in the world and then ten years later this kid breaks world speed records, you know they likely had some influence on that outcome given how rare a claim like that is. László Polgár represents an example of this kind of "shot calling" and an example from which  we can glean some insight.

László Polgár

In the 1960s, László Polgár put out an ad looking for a wife to attempt to create genius children after extensively studying education and top achievers. He decided to focus on an area of education where he could achieve an objective measure of the outcome: Chess. Of his three daughters, the worst was the sixth best woman in the world at chess; Polgár's two other daughters were the first best and second best—with one being considered the best female chess player in history. The day in 1989 when the 14-year-old Sofia Polgár beat several grand masters to record the best open tournament performance to date is known in chess history as “the Sack of Rome.”

While the effects of László Polgár’s educational method are somewhat mythologized, it appears the core difference was early exposure to experts in the field who engaged with them as equals. This small iteration on the educational process allowed for reliable production of individuals at the top end of a skill set in human history. A system designed to achieve something similar at scale for more practical skill sets can have world-changing impact.