Unschoolers Are Douchebags: Or, Why I Recommend Staying Away From Unschooling Conferences and Other Places They Lurk

The title of this post was originally a sort-of joke. I have had a variety of negative experiences with unschoolers comparable to that of public schoolers and was complaining about this to a fellow unschooling friend of mine who corroborated that most unschooled teens are indeed douchebags.
She described them as "promiscuous pooping pissheads" and stated that she "generally loathe[s] them".

I thought, "AH! Somebody finally understands!"

See, I may be an unschooler (read: I don't go to school, don't homeschool with a curriculum, and generally am anti-school) but there are other aspects to my philosophy that separate me from much of the unschooling population who grew up unschooling. They did not make the conscious choice to stop going to school so therefore do not come from the same base as me, and their philosophies tend to vary from mine in many different ways.

I come from a position of:

• trusting myself
• freedom from authoritative figures
• recognising myself as the author of my life
• believing that the world is the proper place to educate a person (not in a classroom)

Not of:

• my parents decided to homeschool me
• I am friends with people who also are homeschooled
• I was raised this way

In the latter, I think, perhaps they do not understand as acutely the schooling struggle and traditional paradigm many of us late-life unschoolers are coming from. We went through this suffering, grieving, and deschooling phase.

So there is hence a disconnect, I believe. It is extremely difficult to establish the base of a friendship with someone when you have almost nothing in common with them - unschooling (and how people come to this lifestyle) is very different from person to person so it is not a sufficient base to begin with. It's like saying that all people who go to school have a base required for friendship... this is clearly not true.

I would like to state a call-to-action for fellow unschooled teens:

STOP BEING DOUCHE-BAGS

NO, REALLY

JUST STOP 


I left school to get away from

• hate
• exclusion
• judgement
• disrespect
• ignorance
• closedmindedness

And guess what? I found all of these in the unschooling community, too. Why? I guess they're human problems, not schooling problems. So what I want to say is:

STEP 1
If you are not an unschooler, become one. Then move onto step 2


STEP 2
If you are an unschooler I would like you to ask yourself a few questions:

1. Am I trying my hardest to practice respect, openness, inclusion, nonjudgement and openmindedness?
2. How can I improve the way I treat others and myself?
3. Am I trying my hardest to be welcoming and friendly at conferences and gatherings? Am I reaching out to people who seem lonely or are alone?

You don't have to be perfect. It is really important though that you ask yourself these questions on a regular basis because they help you become a better person -- and that should be a concern for everyone!


P.S. I don't actually recommend staying away from unschooling conferences or gatherings. They're a good place to meet people who also agree that school sucks, even if you have nothing else in common, and the people don't seem very welcoming or awesome. If you go to one, though, it's important to be aware that some of them don't ask themselves these questions on a regular basis.

Edit, Feb 2020: This is, thought incomplete, still a bit of a touching and relevant post. I have been out of the loop for a while (this draft is from a decade ago)  but I feel it's an important message to (finally) share with the world. The exclusion I felt from the unschooling community has persisted. I have, as of 2020, maintained zero meaningful relationships with individuals who identify with the unschooling movement. This is due to many reasons, but the attitude of exclusivity and extremism is among them. I am publishing this post because I understand that these thoughts may be relevant to teenagers today, and I want to let you know: You are not alone! And this community may not be for you. There are good connections to be made from it, and it does get better, but it **may not be the community for you** and those within it may really demonize this fact. There is nothing wrong with finding you do not like people within the unschooling community or the community you have found is not to your favor. Do not be afraid or hesistant to listen, learn, move on and find people whom you share a better connection with.

I am now 26 years old and have graduated with a Bachelors degree in Mathematics (yes, math! the subject I originally loathed most of all -- aside from perhaps chemistry). But, I did go through all of this identity politics and though it was largely troublesome, I still learned quite a bit and am able to speak to others intelligently about this community and what I gained (and struggled) from becoming involved with it.

You are not alone!

Making the choice to leave school is not the same as being raised without school and these individuals bear little-to-no understanding of what school is like and the pressures and ideology associated with formal schooling. They are not terrible people, I feel the need to add. I have known some "unschooled for life" individuals that I felt only minimal disconnect from.

However, one thing this community has refused to acknowledge is that the adolescent unschooling community consists of two very different kinds of teenagers, and some (perhaps all) will not be able to identify with your background, experience, and conceptualization of formal education. And, they will not, for example, be able to understand certain complexities of the experience of having attended middle school or high school, such as the aspects of being caged-in, subject to checks-and-balances by teachers and administration, the lack of self-determination, or even stupid things like finding out where you can sit at lunch time with minimal negative interaction -- and so forth. They have no understanding of being forced to run laps for P.E., of minimal to nonexistent breaks (both for moving between classes and for lunch), of being sent somewhere that you literally have no choice of leaving. And, etc., so on.

Please, send me a message if you have any questions, a desperate plea, or are in need of guidance surrounding what 'TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE'. My e-mail is in the sidebar. I would be happy to just chit-chat with anyone going through these kinds of struggles because I know what it's like and I remember how hard it was.

You are not alone!