I don't agree with your strict stance against unschooling. Yes, for some kids it's probably quite harmful - something I occasionally saw first hand when I was h

I don't agree with your strict stance against unschooling. Yes, for some kids it's probably quite harmful - something I occasionally saw first hand when I was homeschooled - but for other kids it seems to work very well. And for the kids that it works well with, I think it helps instill a true drive to succeed that's difficult to do for those kids in an institutional environment; for some kids that's a drive that gets driven out of them. FWIW my own experience was more on the unschooling side than not, although I also was in high-school full time after grade nine. Particularly when I started working full time I found it strange seeing most of my coworkers and interns just not being willing to take initiatives and learn on their own, something that to me seemed very natural - if I didn't when I was a kid nothing would happen. Meanwhile I advanced very quickly because I did just that. And from talking to others with similar unschooling backgrounds, that's not an unusual experience to have. Part of why unschooling seemed to work for me is probably the environment. Growing up I didn't have access to computer games or the internet, and TV was strictly an evening thing. So for many hours a day I had nothing to do but learn. Sure, I didn't have all that much direction on how I was supposed to learn, but I seemed to figure that part out well enough on my own; the main structure I was given was to always have math textbooks around to work through, and I was expected to spend time every day studying them and doing problems. Programming on the other hand, was something I spent a lot of time learning on my own in a very self-directed fashion because I wanted too - same for subjects like economics, science, and art. An exception to all this though was spelling and grammar: when my parents took me out of school in grade five I still wasn't able to read to write very well, so for about the first year I remember my mom spending a lot of time with me on those subjects. But that year was all it took to finally catch up; once I knew how to read sufficiently well learning on my own beyond that was much more practical. Of course, I have to give a lot of credit to my parents there: the environment I had while "unschooling" was likely no accident... I'm sure they worked quite hard to make that happen.