Unschooling in the News

While homeschooling generates a lot of media stories, there is definitely an increase in the number of stories devoted to unschooling in recent time. Here are a couple you might want to know about.

1) National Public Radio did a feature on unschooling, written by a 16 year old. It begins:

I didn't have a reason to read until I was 10, so I didn't. Eventually, when I did learn, it wasn't because of a book, test, a teacher — or even because I was embarrassed I didn't know how. I learned to read because of a card game I wanted to play called Magic the Gathering.

In order to play this new and exciting game, I had to be able to read about the different characters on the cards. I'm 16 now and I learn what I want to learn, when I want to learn it, and not always in the conventional ways.

You can read or listen to Sam Fuller’s complete segment on NPR's site.

2) Dr. Carlo Ricci, publisher of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Studies, is interviewed on Canadian television. The interviewer asks many of the usual questions that both homeschoolers and unschoolers typcially get ("What about socialization? What about getting into a well-known college?") and Dr. Ricci responds to these inquiries with clear, authoritative responses.