Unschooling

  Your current television, as well as the computer monitor or phone screen you are reading this on, owes its existence to old television.

  Old television exists because a fifteen year old farmer from Idaho had the idea to connect a potato-farming technique to a particle accelerator he built in his basement to construct a television. Later in life, he also pioneered inertial electrostatic confinement in experimental nuclear fusion reactors, creating the Farnsworth fusor.

  It probably wasn't because of standard curriculum.


  Unschooling is simply not engaging in school. It goes beyond simple consent into letting the child completely direct their own exploration. It has the very, very strong advantage of preserving the child's intelligence, which is not very likely when sitting still indoors in a behavioral extermination experiment which, mostly, is creating an engineered conditioned aversion to the natural impulse to enjoy learning and curiosity.

  Most biologists, for instance, discovered their love of the craft running around in nature, not sitting at a desk.

  Traditionally, an unschooled child's interests would be supported. If they wanted to take up music, or wanted to know the genus and species of the different types of fish in a nearby pond, tutors and books would be provided, and every effort would be undertaken to support the child's expressed interests in learning.



  It is readily arguable that only unschooling can preserve a child's intelligence, as well as prevent the suppression of their tendency to explore the world. Supported and supplemented unschooling is an active and viable model against which other models can be compared.


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