I was homeschooled from K-6th, and unschooled from 7th-12th, circa 90s-2000s. I have thoughts. I wound up fine, by which I mean I managed to get a B.S. and M.S

I was homeschooled from K-6th, and unschooled from 7th-12th, circa 90s-2000s. I have thoughts. I wound up fine, by which I mean I managed to get a B.S. and M.S, and have a good-paying job. IME, this is in no way the norm for either group. To be fair, my upbringing was also conservative Christian (but in a weird way, like my mom encouraged me to do a comparative religion study in high school), so many of my peers were on the "college is useless and indoctrinates you" track. I was able to do a lot of self-directed learning, which in retrospect was useful. For example, I showed a strong interest in computers since I was about six years old. As such, I was encouraged to explore them, had books purchased for me on the subject, etc. As a counterpoint, before unschooling, I was forced to learn Latin and Greek roots. I hated it at the time, but these have proven to be remarkably useful in life – turns out a stunning amount of English words have Latin or Greek roots, so you can figure out much of a word's meaning from them. I think there are some things that kids are unlikely to be interested in, but just like being forced to eat a balanced diet, are still the right choice. My wife is a Montessori teacher, and I think it's the best middle ground. Kids are encouraged to learn what they're interested in at a time that they're interested in it, and a love for learning for the sake of learning is encouraged. At the same time, if a kid stubbornly refuses to learn anything, eventually they will be forced to go through lessons, because at some point, you have to have a baseline level of education.