My friend Scott sent me this TED talk by a 13-year-old unschooler who is hacking his education.

It's worth 11 minutes of your time.

Also see:

By Leo Babauta

Yes, you absolutely are. Because not getting a high school education like everyone else means your kid will know nothing useful, and be unready to get a job and unsuited for life.

OK, sarcasm aside, let's take a look at this question sincerely. It's a legitimate worry, because unschooling parents are taking a big risk -- if everyone else is doing regular schooling, that's the safe play. Doing something radically different with something that could affect your kid's future life means you're taking a huge risk with a potentially huge downside, right?

Well, actually I don't think so. Let's look at the risk ... and in doing so we can see at why unschooling is actually improving your kid's life.

By Leo Babauta

I talk to other entrepreneurs a lot -- often founders of startups here in San Francisco, or online publishers like me. And when I do, if they're having a kid soon or have a young child, I invariably give them my pitch: you should unschool.

I like to give this pitch to expecting parents, or parents of young children, because the truth is, they're the best candidates for considering this radical form of education. Why? Because parents with their kids already in school tend to not want change, and tend to be invested in the school system. No parent wants to believe they've been making a huge mistake, and so if you've been sending your kid to school for years, to believe in unschooling is to admit you've been wrong (in their eyes).

There are exceptions, of course -- my wife and I pulled our kids out of school (one was in middle school, another in late elementary), because we felt the school system wasn't doing a good job with our kids. We started to see the problems with trying to mass educate kids in a way that makes them not want to learn, bored, just following instructions.

But parents who aren't in the school system yet are the most receptive to the idea of breaking from the norms.

By Leo Babauta

Unschooling is a version, a subset, of homeschooling -- schooling at home. I also think it's the best version of homeschooling (or learning in general), because it prepares you for life, for being an entrepreneur, for learning anything, for being autonomous.

What makes unschooling different from other homeschooling methods? Often when people homeschool, they just do school at home -- do a curriculum with math, science, reading, history, etc. at home, often with similar teaching methods and books.

But that doesn't take advantage of the freedom of homeschooling! We can do whatever we want, because there are no rules, no one to tell us we're doing it wrong, which means we can get creative as hell.

So unschooling throws all the rules of school out the door:

By Leo Babauta

I tell all my kids they should start their own businesses someday. I think it's an amazing way to make a living, an amazing mindset to have, and it's a school like no other that you keep learning from all the time.

Besides marrying my wife and having my kids, starting my business is the best thing I've done.

And then a little while ago, I realized that there's nothing stopping them from starting a business now, while they're young.

By Leo Babauta

My colleague Derek Sivers, a writer I much admire, wrote a fantastic piece today that you should go read right this second: What if you didn't need money or attention?

As I read his article, I found myself nodding ... not just as an entrepreneur, but as a unschooling parent.

Because the arguments are the same in both cases.

If you have a job you hate, or a business that you don't really believe in, it's not only worse for your happiness, it's worse for the world. You're just doing it for money (or attention) and not because you care, not because you love it, not because it will make a difference.

By Leo Babauta

This is for anyone considering starting Unschooling, but not sure where to start.

Start with one article at a time.

Getting Started:

By Leo Babauta

The question of college is one of the top 3 questions people ask when they first hear about unschooling (including me):

Well, more on math soon, but today let's talk about college.

I'd actually like to answer two questions today: can they go to college, and should they go to college?

By Leo Babauta

A friend recently asked:

"As parents who don't feel they can take the plunge into fully unschooling, what can we do that will give us some of the benefits of unschooling while still having our kids in a traditional school system?"

Great question. And this is one of the brilliant things about unschooling -- there's no one way to do it. It's a mindset and an approach, not a method. It's about breaking free from the reliance on a teacher for information, allowing the student to direct his own learning, to be self-reliant, to figure things out, to break down the line between Learning and Life. They're the same thing -- learning doesn't only happen in a classroom or while you're doing homework.

So how can you unschool while going to a traditional school? However the hell you want! :)

By Leo Babauta

Whenever I have a question about unschooling -- motivation, how kids learn, how to learn math, etc. ... I ask myself one simple question:

How would I learn this or deal with this, as an adult?

Because the simple truth about unschooling is that it's no different from how adults live and learn, in the real world.

Let's take some examples, of school vs. adults vs. unschooling: