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I was unschooled, and I think that it really depends on what passion your kid has (which you can't predict, but can impact). If your child becomes really interested in the law, he will have unlimited time to pursue that goal. If your child is really interested in math, he will be able to study that in a much deeper way than someone similarly into math attending public or private school. He can learn not only at his own pace, but his own depth.

My younger brother, also unschooled, quickly began reading so he could use the computer and google things (like funny YouTube videos) but later things like free drawing applications (independently finding and installing Inkscape) and emulators (learning on his own how to install, find, and download, and play emulations of old NES and N64 games, around age 8) - which in my mind requires not only reading and literacy but deep comprehension. My point is, their passions will drive their knowledge. I think if you have a passion for technology, math, etcetera it will inevitably rub off on your children. You need to convey to them a passion for the subject, and a hunger for knowledge.

Much depends on the options that the kid even considers. If they're growing up on a farm environment, then their natural curiosity will drive them towards the skills that are useful and interesting in that environment - from the article it appears that they are learning a lot of skills that are useful for a farmer or a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, since it brings immediate feedback and is consistent with the opportunities that they have there.

Have they interacted with lawyers, saxophone players, programmers, art historians, ballet dancers or microbiologists in any meaningful way to practically consider it a viable lifestyle that they could understand and identify with, to consider it as a normal available option? Given their current situation, will they do so in any time soon? A few years in college would do it but that's a bit too late. You can't really understand if you'll like a profession if you haven't seen/felt how the daily life of it looks like, that's why this choice is often dominated by your local environment and public role models.

The point of general education is that kids are in the process of 'searching for themselves' and a large part of them don't and can't choose their future direction until near-adulthood or later. If at the age of nine you're consciously preparing to be an astronaut ninja fireman or unconsciously preparing to be a farmer, then it doesn't really correlate with "what your passion is" and what you'll want to do when you're 20 or 30. And at that time point, if you have significant gaps in key education areas, then it cuts off your options. If after puberty you figure out you'd really like to be a doctor, and you spent two hours per month (as the article states) on science and math, then you're simply not getting in med school.

For what it's worth, I was unschooled, and I scored a perfect 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. I didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as these kids, though; I gravitated toward computers from a young age.

My daughter is unschooled and taught herself to read and type mostly from the web browsing.

Most people somehow assume that because they learnt to read and write at school that one cannot do it out of school, and more efficiently. This despite the fact that they themselves didn't get good at reading until they found books they were excited about and wanted to read for their own reasons (reasons, btw, that might include hunting and fishing).

And if they think about it they'll correctly predict that asking adults on the street what 7 times 8 is will yield the wrong answer, or no answer at all, despite many years of compulsory arithmetic and socialization. Yet the commonly proposed solution to this deficiency is more compulsory education rather than less.

> taught herself to read and type mostly from the web browsing.

first. thumbs up if u agree lolz ndb smh

G-d. If my college freshmen came in knowing how to add fractions and understanding the meaning of x^2+y^2 = r^2, they'd do pretty well in precalc or calc. As far as I can tell many American students learn nothing mathematically between 7th grade and 12th grade, except a big old mental block about math. These kids will be fine with math when it happens.

>He says they read fine, but reading is something that must be done almost every day for years to get to a highly literate point. Literacy and reading comprehension are essential skills to navigating the modern world.

Almost all of my reading was done on my own time. School work was a detriment to the reading ability of me and my siblings. I read for fun, and by forcing me to spend time reading things I didn't want to, I spent less time reading overall.

Without doubt, school was an impediment to my reading.

My favorite class in high school was US History. I had an interest in the subject, so I already knew everything that was being taught in class... so I read a book instead. The teacher called on me repeatedly during the first week or two because he saw I wasn't paying attention. I asked him to repeat the question, then answered it correctly every time. Then, he stopped asking me questions and let me read my book in peace.

Then there was the time that my health teacher called my parents - and my girlfriend's parents - in for a conference. Turns out, when a 15-year-old boy knows the difference between a vagina and a urethra, he must be having sex in the janitor's closet or something. The fact that when I was curious about the mechanics of sex I went to the library and checked out anatomy textbooks apparently never crossed his mind.