Is Unschooling Too Easy?

Hi! If you’re new here, I’m Missy, a former public/private school educator turned homeschooling mom, and, eventually, an unschooling cheerleader. My two children, now young adults, never participated in the conventional K-12 model. We pushed aside the idea that children must follow a curriculum in order to “become educated”. We questioned the typical way of childhood that required structured learning, in a building other than home, during the hours of 8am and 3pm Monday-Friday, and, instead, embraced interest-based learning with gusto.

I have shared our journey on multiple podcasts which you can find on my website (scroll to the bottom of the page). I have also recorded conversations with a variety of guests for my podcast, Let ‘em go Barefoot, on the topics of homeschooling, unschooling, education, and parenting. I kicked off my podcast several years ago with my first born who was 19 at the time. We addressed some misconceptions about self-directed education and interest-based learning. It is one of my all-time favorite episodes! You can find it here.

Last, but not least, I wrote an e-book with fellow unschooling parent, Ann Hansen, “Life Unschooled: A Guide to Living and Learning Without School” which provides insight, guidance, and assurance that living and learning without school is not only possible, but in many cases, preferrable. It’s for the unschooling curious, those new to unschooling, or families who have been unschooling for a while but have hit a wall of doubt.

Ok. So, let’s get to the burning question… Is unschooling too easy?

For the sake of argument, I’m going to address the too easy question from the perspective of unschooled children not doing enough “school”, i.e. following the typical daily grind of a school schedule and all that comes with it (lectures, readings, tests, projects, book reports, worksheets, note-taking, etc.).

There’s a perception that unschooling children are allowed to bypass difficult tasks and sidestep academics. As a result, they are believed to be missing out on vital skills like discipline and grit, or worse, failing to live up to their full potential because “all they do is play”.

I admit I once shared some of these views.

Having been immersed in conventional schooling for so long then trained as an educator, the idea that children could build foundational skills through play seemed silly at best and irresponsible at worst.

Doesn’t a child’s education require adult management?

Aren’t we doing them a disservice if we aren’t grading and assessing and charting the minutia of their skill development from year to year?

Surely, unschoolers are just being lazy if they choose to replace dedicated desk work with field trips and backyard adventures.

Psychologists even have a term that gets at the fear underneath this, even if we don’t always know how to say it out loud. They talk about us as cognitive misers: our brains tend to conserve effort and use shortcuts whenever they can. This isn’t a problem that only unschooled kids could experience; it’s a basic feature of being human. The real question isn’t “Will children avoid hard thinking?” but “What kinds of environments teach them when effort is worth it?”

*****

It’s remarkable what time, exposure, and honest questioning can do. Being around other unschooling families allowed me to see unschooling in action. Conversations with other unschooling moms, including several former teachers like myself, gave me a chance to ask questions and go through my list of “what abouts” to which they each had thoughtful answers.

What it boiled down to for many of the unschooling families I talked to is respecting childhood as the unique time it is. The central issue, it seems, leading people to unschooling is that childhood—a natural time period of rapid growth and a deep need to anchor oneself— had been hijacked by a system of separation and control and hyperfocused on cognitive output using grades and testing. (Not an ideal system for encouraging a love of learning.)

The authors of A Hunter- Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century write about school and childhood in their book. Here’s one of many insightful things they share about childhood:

Spending time as children allows animals to learn about their environment. Therefore, stealing childhood from the young-by organzing and scheduling their play for them, by keeping them from risk and exploration, by controlling and sedating them with screens and algorithms and legal drugs—-practically guarantees that they will arrive at the age of adulthood without being capable of actually being adults. All of these actions—almost always well intentioned—prevent the human software from refining our crude and rudimentary hardware.

Dr. Stuart Brown, author of the book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, reminds us that play isn’t a waste of time:

Peter Gray’s work and his play research are vital to understanding the importance of time in childhood.

“Self-education through play and exploration requires enormous amounts of unscheduled time—-time to do whatever one wants to do, without pressure, judgment, or intrusion from authority figures.”

Play isn’t a waste of time. Unschoolers who honor play during childhood are not being academically lazy. You could say they are consciously rejecting a paradigm that prioritizes adult-designed instruction over physical movement and interest-based learning.

I have watched how my own children’s play has led to serious study. They would dive deeply into a topic through play which often led to more questions, more research, and a genuine desire to learn more because they were interested, not because they were being forced or coerced to learn. And the kicker? They remembered what they learned, too! In fact, they became quite educated in the topics they chose to explore. I share about their interests and how they evolved over the years in my essay, The Power of Curiosity.

I know parents and teachers don’t like to hear this, but children can actually learn a lot more when we get out of their way.

If we try to predict what they should know or take over every time they show an interest by creating lesson plans, learning objectives, and schedule “learning time” we run the risk of slowing them down and even stifling their growth.

Imagine if every time you showed an interest in something your spouse immediately took control and told you when you’d learn about said thing.

What if they bought books without your input and created lesson plans and interrupted your natural flow to teach you from their perspective?

How would that make you feel? Do you think it would encourage you to learn more or would it cause you to slowly retreat and stop sharing your interests?

Maybe we need to think about this with our own children.

Let’s say you can get onboard with a less academically focused, schooly sytle childhood. Let’s say you can see the benefits of a childhood full of adventure and exploration and family bonding. Then you think, they aren’t going to be children forever, so what about after childhood? Glad you asked.

From a developmental and neuroscience perspective, a play-rich childhood is not a detour from “real learning” but the exact route the brain expects to travel on its way to more abstract, formal work.

In the early years, play builds self-regulation and executive functions which are vital for holding information in mind, filtering distractions, and being flexible.

All of these skills are what tend to predict later success much better than starting academics early or drilling preschoolers on letters and numbers.

Executive functions develop through rich, self-directed play. They are exactly the skills we use to override our inner cognitive miser. It is what allows us to stick with something hard because it matters, not because someone is hovering over us with a gradebook.

As the prefrontal cortex strengthens in late childhood and early adolescence (roughly ages 10-15), children become more capable of sustained effort, planning, and complex tasks and reasoning. When unschooling prioritizes rich play, relationships, and meaningful projects in the early years, it is quietly building the neural scaffolding that formal academics will rely on later.

Crucially, there is a developmental shift. As executive functions and abstract thinking capacities surge in late childhood and adolescence, many young people naturally become more interested in long-term goals, future selves, and “real world” competencies. This makes sustained effort and formal study feel more purposeful instead of imposed and it blends in beautifully with Self-Determination Theory. (If you have followed me for some time, you probably know it’s one of my favorite theories on human motivation!)

Adolescence is a second window of heightened brain plasticity for a reason. It’s where networks for abstract reasoning, future thinking, and sophisticated memory strategies are especially responsive to practice, feedback, and real-world use. The trick is to support teens by ensuring they have opportunities to tackle challenging, meaningful work rather than endless compliance tasks.

So, is unschooling too easy?

I don’t think so.

Instead, it tracks with development because play and exploration are front-loaded. Self-directed projects are being prioritized while the brain is wiring its basic control systems. Unschooling removes the school pressure of heavy academics and schedules and trusts the built-in trajectory of development. And, as children’s internal drive toward mastery and formal goals emerges, we can partner with them by offering resources, options, and environments that respond to their direction, rather than seizing control of it.

Unschooling honors a child’s growing capacity to make decisions versus controlling learning. I find this to be a far healthier way than a system that dictates the when, what, where, how, and who of learning from the outside, don’t you?

~Missy

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