When you're either too radical or not radical enough
The case against gatekeeping unschooling.
You’re currently a free subscriber to a life unschooled. If you value writing on youth autonomy and intersectional unschooling and are able to support this newsletter please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
You will get an extra paid post a week, extra audio or video posts, conversations in threads and a monthly zoom to support you in living a life unschooled.
I made an IG post last week that seemed to resonate with people, so I thought I would write a few more words about it.
My post was about my experience of unschooling sometimes feeling like I was never quite doing it “right”; I was either not unschooly enough for some unschoolers, or too out there for many homeschoolers.
I was too middle of the road for some of the more radical unschoolers (radical in a very specific way I’ll define later on); but also, homeschoolers were put off by my sometimes radical views on youth autonomy and self-direction.
Turns out, I’m not the only one.
Over the years, and in the past week or so, I’ve spoken to several people who felt judged by unschoolers and homeschoolers alike, who felt like some unschoolers were gatekeepy and unwelcoming, like there were too many rules attached to unschooling, too many ways to get it wrong. I’ve also spoken to others who embraced unschooling and then felt judged by homeschoolers for being too out there, too permissive, too radical, or just not raising their children how people believe they should be raised.
It’s the age-old story of nothing you do will ever be right enough for everyone.
But it’s also more than that. It’s a story that is very specifically about the unschooling world and the way something potentially open-ended and freeing can sometimes feel a range of confusing, threatening, prescriptive, and yet another thing we are trying to be perfect at, or being told we don’t belong in.
I’m going to look at this issue from two different perspectives:
the perspective of new unschoolers or eclectic homeschoolers who feel like they don’t belong in unschooling because there are too many perceived rules.
and the perspective of unschoolers who feel rejected by other homeschoolers (and people generally) for being too radical or out there.
I have experienced both things, sometimes at once.
When unschooling is supposed to be freeing, but instead feels judgy
We assume deschooling takes us all to the same place. This has always bothered me so much. I’m not the only person who has entered a radical unschooler Facebook group and been kinda horrified by some of the advice given to desperate parents: the issue is inside of you, you need to deschool more.
And while I am ALL FOR deschooling - all for questioning the narratives we are presented, deconstructing all our assumption (everything is a construct, remember?), I also worry that this risks taking us out into the same field of moral relativism with nothing to truly hold on to.
I’m a strong believer that deschooling is going to take everyone somewhere entirely different, and that unschooling is going to look different for every family. I feel that our version of unschooling will reflect our own unique blend of culture, our relationship to people and place, our values, our lived experience and who we are as people.
I think assuming that when we deschool enough (whatever enough means) we will all come to the same conclusions is just BS.
Unschoolers (especially some radical unschoolers) *can* be judgy
According to the internet, radical unschoolers are unschoolers that extend unschooling principles beyond education, to all aspects of life.
I suppose that by that definition, we are radical unschoolers.
But when I refer to radical unschoolers I actually mean the FB group variety of radical unschooler, which if I were to massively generalise, is predominantly American, white, libertarian, individualistic, and whose conception of freedom is what I would consider virtually license. Okay, this is a generalisation - but in many cases it’s not too far from the truth. These are the people who took John Taylor Gatto’s and John Holt’s words and turned them into an anthem for hyperindividualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality in all areas of life.
As someone who did not grow up in the US - I don’t feel like I belong there. And I can imagine all sorts of other people not feeling they belong either.
Is there a different kind of radical unschooler? Maybe, but these are the ones I see out there doing some of the policing and gatekeeping around unschooling. There seem to be some very basic principles (that sometimes feel a lot like rules) that some unschoolers wield as truth: unlimited screen usage, no rules/guidelines around food or bedtime, very little interference in their children’s daily life for fear of it seeming like coercion.
There seems to be a general sense that even though top-down rules are technically anathema to unschooling, there is actually a right way, and more importantly, there is a wrong way ie. many ways that are NOT unschooling.
It’s ironic that a lack of rules often actually becomes a rule in itself - we forget that actually, even our version of non-coercion is itself a construct: it is what we believe non-coercion looks like, it is still made up by us!
Is it going to be what freedom and consent looks like for everyone? Nope, it is not.
More dogmatic unschooling can sometimes look like martyrdom or neglect, and I don’t think this contributes to people’s understanding of unschooling.
I remember reading a book that advised you, the unschool parent, to always be available to your child no matter if you were deep into something or otherwise occupied. Your child’s interests had to come first. Excuse me, WHAT? I respect my children’s interests and time, and I absolutely expect them to respect mine too. Not in a harsh way, but in a way that tells them I have personal boundaries, personal needs and desires, and don’t intend to be a martyr mother.
Another similar book spoke about how children self-regulate and we just need to leave them to it. Now that I know more about how crucial co-regulation is, this feels really dangerous for some families.
One grown unschooler I spoke to said that some of her experience unschooling felt like educational neglect, and while I know this is not most of the unschoolers out there, I think that when people speak from lived experience we need to listen.
I find this brand of radical unschooler problematic - but also, they are free to do it their way, of course. Where it gets tricky is that when you’re not as “radical” as they are, you end up feeling like you’re being judged, you haven’t deschooled enough, you’re not a real unschooler - when actually, your idea of freedom is a very different one.
“Schoolish” is thrown around a lot.
One person I spoke to said they felt super uncomfortable in groups of unschoolers because their child is really interested in more structured learning, and it was essentially frowned upon and labelled as “schoolish.”
This is a tough one for me because sometimes the ways we raise our kids are schoolish because we haven’t actually challenged and critiqued the impact of living in a schooled culture on our parenting and education; and other times, we totally have done that and our child still loves to do worksheets or read history books or follow more structure learning programs.
Judging people’s level of unschooling based on what their child is or isn’t doing, is gatekeepy. Full stop.
We don’t actually know where that family is in their journey, we don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, and frankly even if we did it’s none of our business to have an opnion on it!
We are not the unschool police
There is nothing less unschooly than policing other people. As far as I’m concerned, unschooling is about divesting from dominant systems and narratives that lay claim to our autonomy and agency, and about the ways we can do this to free us all from oppression - policing is one of those entrenched behaviours (not to mention an entire oppressive system) that has no place in unschooling.
If someone tells me they are unschooling - that’s good enough for me. I may have opinions, but I am not in the business of telling people whether what they’re doing is really unschooling or not.
Unschooling is not peak youth liberation
I’m sorry if this is unpopular, but unschooling is not peak anything: peak homeschooling, peak freedom, peak youth autonomy, whatever.
It is one way, of millions of ways, we can live alongside our young people. I love how fiery unschoolers get about youth liberation, but I don’t love the inability to hold multiple truths that so often comes with it.
I don’t love the way unschoolers often feel like we have the monopoly on freedom - and I think it also serves to alienate people who perhaps would like to sit under the unschooling umbrella, but feel like they aren’t doing it right, or people who are passionate about children’s liberation but don’t want to label themselves unschoolers.
When unschoolers feel rejected by homeschoolers (and people at large).
This is a very real thing too. It’s not without a basis in actual experience; I can see why people who aren’t unschooling don’t want all the stuff I mentioned above in their lives.
Equally though, I’ve often felt negatively judged for being an unschooler: without necessarily knowing me, I get lumped into various categories of permissive, crunchy, anti-government, neglectful, and so on.
I can TOTALLY see where this stereotype comes from. There is some truth there. I’m concerned with educational neglect in some unschool circles. I’m concerned with some of the advice being given to desperate parents. I’m concerned with some unschooler’s willful ignorance around learning disabilities, neurodivergence, capitalism, intersectionality, and a host of other things.
That said, I do not want to be lumped into the box labelled “All unschoolers are the worst stereotype of unschooling possible.”
I see why unschoolers feel triggered or rejected by more schooly homeschoolers because we work so hard on deconstructing a lot of the societal BS, and don’t necessarily need to see it reinforced in homeschooling circles.
And frankly, sometimes it becomes hard to have open, respectful conversations with homeschoolers because they, too, are convinced that their way is the one right way.
They, too, might feel triggered by some of the choices we make - either because our choices feel like a judgment on theirs, or because deep down they believe our choices are wrong or harmful, or because they simply don’t understand them.
It can feel really hard to tread the line between staying true to our values, and also open to other people’s very different choices, without ever falling into judgment or self-doubt.
It’s a bit like the way homeschoolers as a group tend to trigger school-going families just by existing outside of the school system, as if our choices were somehow a direct judgment on theirs, or somehow in direct opposition to their own beliefs.
Part of the issue, is simply that unschooling has become such a vague term that it almost means nothing at all.
I unschooling just a lack of constructed ways of being? Or is it an actual construct in itself, and which case, who gets to define it?
Does it even matter?
I don’t think so. Here’s how I see it.
When John Holt coined the term unschooling, he really just meant learning without school, or learning in ways that are different to school - it was a very broad term for a very specific moment and movement in the US at the time.
Now, the term encompasses so much more. Many of us can see that actually, unschooling is more like living as if school were not a thing - and that people have and had been doing this for millenia. John Holt did not “invent” this.
We all have our own unique definitions of what unschooling is - which is part of why it gets confusing.
For some it is still very much about freedom to learn, play and explore; for others it is about youth rights; some see it as a way to reclaim educational freedom; others see unschooling as collective healing and liberation, or as divestment from oppressive systems.
I still feel like we should keep unschooling as a very large, very accommodating umbrella term - much like the way the neurodiversity community uses the term neurodivergence. There is a push to broaden the umbrella of neurodivergence far and wide - this means you can have one or multiple specific labels (like ADHD or autistic or OCD) and also sit beneath the ND umbrella.
I think we should do this with unschooling too. Some of us might call ourselves unschoolers and some might call get more specific too: I’ve often defined our family as consent-based and self-directed.
And we can still all sit under the unschooling umbrella.
The wider and the more accepting, the better as far as I’m concerned. The more people feel welcome underneath it, the bigger this movement will grown.
And sure, maybe people will be like, “I unschool on weekends!” or “We unschool everything apart from Maths” but so what??
They still get to sit under our umbrella. That’s the sort of unschooling I can get behind.
Tell me your thoughts! Have you ever felt judged? Do you feel like unschooling should only apply to those doing it a certain way?
Hmm. I with you on staying open-minded and welcoming. But I feel resistance to the idea of “unschooling on the weekends” in particular.
Similarly, someone might say “I’m vegetarian on the weekends” and I’d think (not necessarily say) “huh, cool, but… isn’t that more of a flexitarian?” And yes it’s great for the planet if people eat less meat, I don’t want to discourage them, and they can use identifiers for themselves how they prefer.
But words matter a lot to my hyperlexic brain that loves to make sense of the world through words. When we are talking about philosophies and identities, I do think it gets muddled and confusing by ideas like “oh, I’m that on the weekend.”
I think people can be unschoolers and their kids can go to full time school. I also think it’s problematic to say “we unschool on the weekend” and to mean “we don’t direct or coerce our kids on the weekend, just the rest of the week.” That doesn’t make sense to me at all.
I hear what you are saying about being more expansive opening up the idea for broader appeal. But maybe that isn’t necessarily what we want, if the term is being co-opted and no longer has any real meaning.
It reminds me of the Vawasai (?) conversation Antonio had with Bria and David about the term SDE being taken over as well.
I’ve been thinking lately how I’ve always felt sort of ambivalent to the term unschooling, even though that is what we do. It’s certainly not a term I would use with someone not familiar with it or what it entails - people’s brains seem to glitch a little when I tell them we homeschool our son, so unschooling might send them over the edge! I do prefer self-directed learning, perhaps because it describes what we do/what we’re for rather than what we don’t do/what we’re against. There’s obviously a lot to unpack here, but that’s kind of my thinking at the moment.