When it comes to educating our children, there are really only two options. Most parents opt to send their children to school to learn. There, qualified professionals can make sure they develop skills appropriately. But some other parents choose alternatives, like homeschooling or unschooling. While unconventional, some parents manage the unschooling process successfully.
But one mom is being dragged on social media after revealing that she failed in her unschooling journey. She claims that her teen can’t read or write well, and her younger child is on the same track.
The mom posted looking for empathy.
The mom posted in the “Radical Unschooling” Facebook group, and the screenshot began circulating in a since-deleted post on X.
“How do others handle feeling like a complete failure?” the mom asked. “My 19 year old can only do very basic math and cannot spell or write and argues about everything. My 12 year old argues about everything also,” she revealed.
“I am so burned out in doing everything with zero help. How does everyone else make this work?”
What exactly is unschooling?
This concept might be new to people who only really know about homeschooling. While it is a variation on the same idea, it is a little different. According to a CBS News article on the subject, “parents trust their kids to learn organically.”
“Unschoolers are focused more on the experimental process of learning and becoming educated, rather than with ‘doing or going to school.'”
However, it doesn’t seem that this mom was ensuring her children were learning things like basic literacy.
We won’t know what her fellow unschoolers had to say, but X users didn’t hold back.
Since the original post was made in a private group, we’re not sure how fellow unschoolers responded, but the general public had a lot to say.
“US really needs to crack down on this,” one tweet reads. “You’ll often see this nonsense from parents who live in communities with high performing public schools too but they’re convinced formal education will turn their kid into a robot or gang member depending on their crank persuasion.”
Another person chimed in: “Imagine that, the people who continually yell about not listening to anyone or anything have children who will continually question their authority. who would’ve thunk it…”
Oh wow. In my experience with unschoolers, usually they realize they need to do something else, fast, when the kid is 15 or 16, and the kid spends the next couple of years being intensively tutored in math and like, how to write a 3 paragraph essay.
— Susannah (@miriparhelion) March 15, 2024
Others called this out as a typical problem with unschooling.
One person had observations about unschoolers writing: “Oh wow. In my experience with unschoolers, usually they realize they need to do something else, fast, when the kid is 15 or 16, and the kid spends the next couple of years being intensively tutored in math and like, how to write a 3 paragraph essay.”
“I always have to remind myself that there are actually some people who do homeschooling in a responsible way, because I grew up around lots of fundies and hippies, and I have several childhood friends who’s parents *permanently* f—ed up their lives by not really educating them,” someone else wrote.
Another person wrote: “So I homeschool and have homeschooled most of my children at points and I will die on the hill that unschooling is a crime. Usually see these posts when the kids are like 10-12 which is bad enough but letting a kid get to 19 like that and never saying wait this isnt working wtf?!”
