I think it's absolutely essential to have a good basic education in: reading, writing, grammar, literature, philosophy, math, science, history (all not in any p

I think it's absolutely essential to have a good basic education in: reading, writing, grammar, literature, philosophy, math, science, history (all not in any particular order), maybe add some psychology. These things are essential. How you structure teaching these things is much much less important than actually getting them across. Whatever your concerns with public and private schools, you can spend some time at home making up for their faults. Homeschooling is a full-time job -- great if you can do it and are good at it, but it requires a tremendous commitment. Unschooling... I'd never heard of before, and it sounds dangerous indeed. There is no way that children will self-directedly learn the basic things they need to learn that we've accumulated over the last few thousand years -- the vast majority children don't even have the organization skills and self-motivation needed for this, and they simply do not and cannot have the perspective needed ("eventually I'll be an adult and will need to be able to provide for myself and my family, and so I need to know all this stuff and more"). To force that perspective on them might work out, but might also ironically deny them the innocence of childhood. At least going by what I see here, "unschooling" seems like the sort of bad idea that the State should throw its weight onto and squash, and I'm not one to think that the State should do that. Think seriously of all the culture you enjoy and all the implied knowledge, and tell me there's a chance that children will learn some equivalent of that on their own, and the only thing that will convince me of is the depth of your ignorance. And I say that even though I have some experience with how schools fail to deal with, e.g., students who are on the autism spectrum, or even those who aren't but who are even somewhat gifted. Maybe it's just that I know nothing about unschooling and it comes across in the worst possible way. Whatever OP has been reading, OP should consider reading other views as well before possibly inflicting a huge own-goal on their children's lives.