> "Unschooling: Allow more freedom for students to pursue their academic interests with less guidance."
This, big point here. I started programming by firing up Visual Basic Express 2010 on a laptop running Windows XP with 1GB of RAM and a single-core Pentium M. I was 9 years old, and it was so interesting. I was blessed to be homeschooled - I would never have branched out the way I have if I had spent my days overloaded with homework. (I also entered college at 16 straight into Calculus I, so... my education was certainly not neglected either). Call it a sample size of 1.