A Primer on Unschooling

What it is, what it isn't, and what the research says.

TGIF, everyone! Today I’m excited to be talking about unschooling — a term I’ve heard many, many times but, if I’m honest, never really understood until recently. To me, it always sounded like a new, extremely progressive, anti-establishment anti-schooling movement. Well, I was wrong.

Today’s newsletter is a Q&A with educational psychologist Gina Riley, a clinical professor and the program leader of the Adolescent Special Education Program at CUNY Hunter College. Riley has studied and written about unschooling for many years; one of her books is Unschooling: Exploring Learning Beyond the Classroom. As a single mom, she also unschooled her son, who is now an adult and has written about his unschooling experience.

In the edited Q&A that follows, I ask Riley to define unschooling, to talk about its benefits and challenges, to explain what the research says about it and to share resources for parents interested in learning more about how to do it.

Dr. Riley, thanks so much for sharing your expertise on this fascinating topic. Let’s start with an easy question: What is unschooling?

People unschool in different ways, but, generally, unschooling is homeschooling, but without a curriculum, without assessments — really learning through life and learning through a student's own intrinsic motivation. About 20 percent of homeschoolers unschool. But we know that that number is really growing, just like the number of homeschoolers are growing.

In terms of what students do all day, it really depends. Unschooling falls across a spectrum.