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Where's the wealth/income breakdown on the families and individuals? I don't see anything in either the article or the study at hand. I feel like that's a more

Where's the wealth/income breakdown on the families and individuals? I don't see anything in either the article or the study at hand. I feel like that's a more confounding factor than the unschooling bit, because having a certain level of income to be able to support unschooling is kind of a big deal. When you start to control for that, I feel like there would be a different trend to come out of this data. Which is to say, you'd see a large amount of selection bias from individuals whose wealth enabled a lot of what they attribute to unschooling.

burfog 6y ago
The cause and effect there is wrong. Saying that wealth causes success in school is like saying that an increase in the use of air conditioners causes people to go to the beach, or that Christmas shopping makes the days get shorter. There is a different factor causing both.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  Wealth buys your family quite a lot of relief. Not having to worry about eating, or being shamed because you eat the free lunch for poor kids, or having access to better schools and computers and so forth are all huge compounding factors for school performance. This is with ignoring that wealth quite literally buys you seats at various colleges, tutors for personalized lessons etc. Which leads into my original point that any discussion about the value of unschooling cannot be done without taking into account the income and wealth of families that went that route.
anelson 6y ago
All things being equal, I'm sure a random sample of children from the top SES quintile will have better educational outcomes then the bottom quintile (as measured by test scores, graduation rate, lifetime earnings, pick your metric). However my anecdotal experience based on my own background and other unschoolers I know is that unschooling specifically is not biased toward the wealthy. Rather it seems to correlate with parents who for whatever reason are willing to go far outside societal norms and the comforting embrace of social proof in the interest of doing what's best for their child. This isn't a value judgement one way or another; that statement could apply as much to an anti-vaxxer as an unschooler. The point I'm trying to make is that if a family enrolls their children in private school, hires tutors, arranges legacy admissions to $ivy_league_school, etc, no one will question the advantages they are conferring on their children. If instead they keep one parent at home and unschool their children, they will be doing so against a very strong current of social pressure, likely including their own extended family, and depending on where they live they may be acting against the will of the state itself. If anything, homeschooling in general is a way for families who lack the wealth to buy into elite education to try to provide their children with better educational opportunities than those afforded them in the local public school. It requires considerable sacrifice, particularly if it means giving up a second income and moving to a cheap place in the country to make the numbers work. Whether or not it's actually better for the children in question is ultimately up to the parents. I count my hybrid schooling/homeschooling/unschooling experience as a privilege in the sense that it's made me better than I would be otherwise. But it has nothing to do with wealth or income. I could arrange to be born 1000 times to 1000 wealthy families and not have the same advantage as I did with my poor family.

burfog 6y ago

The cause and effect there is wrong. Saying that wealth causes success in school is like saying that an increase in the use of air conditioners causes people to go to the beach, or that Christmas shopping makes the days get shorter. There is a different factor causing both.

fzeroracer 6y ago
Wealth buys your family quite a lot of relief. Not having to worry about eating, or being shamed because you eat the free lunch for poor kids, or having access to better schools and computers and so forth are all huge compounding factors for school performance. This is with ignoring that wealth quite literally buys you seats at various colleges, tutors for personalized lessons etc. Which leads into my original point that any discussion about the value of unschooling cannot be done without taking into account the income and wealth of families that went that route.

anelson 6y ago

All things being equal, I'm sure a random sample of children from the top SES quintile will have better educational outcomes then the bottom quintile (as measured by test scores, graduation rate, lifetime earnings, pick your metric). However my anecdotal experience based on my own background and other unschoolers I know is that unschooling specifically is not biased toward the wealthy. Rather it seems to correlate with parents who for whatever reason are willing to go far outside societal norms and the comforting embrace of social proof in the interest of doing what's best for their child. This isn't a value judgement one way or another; that statement could apply as much to an anti-vaxxer as an unschooler. The point I'm trying to make is that if a family enrolls their children in private school, hires tutors, arranges legacy admissions to $ivy_league_school, etc, no one will question the advantages they are conferring on their children. If instead they keep one parent at home and unschool their children, they will be doing so against a very strong current of social pressure, likely including their own extended family, and depending on where they live they may be acting against the will of the state itself. If anything, homeschooling in general is a way for families who lack the wealth to buy into elite education to try to provide their children with better educational opportunities than those afforded them in the local public school. It requires considerable sacrifice, particularly if it means giving up a second income and moving to a cheap place in the country to make the numbers work. Whether or not it's actually better for the children in question is ultimately up to the parents. I count my hybrid schooling/homeschooling/unschooling experience as a privilege in the sense that it's made me better than I would be otherwise. But it has nothing to do with wealth or income. I could arrange to be born 1000 times to 1000 wealthy families and not have the same advantage as I did with my poor family.