Hiya,
Unschooling is a bit of a funny one. When children are young, most of us have no problem relaxing and focusing on all those good things like exploring, and connection, and interests, and lots and lots of play.
But the older our children get, the harder that way of living is to stay true to. Because our heads start filling up with all sorts of totally understandable noise.
Like...how will they stack up against their schooled peers in adulthood? What if they don’t work out what they want to do until quite late, only to realise they’re missing subjects or qualifications they need? Will a university degree be required for the thing they want to pursue? If it is, will our choice to unschool prevent them from being able to get one? How will they prove what they’re capable of without grades, certificates or a normal school record? Will employers give them a shot? Will they be able to adjust to deadlines, exams, and doing things they haven’t chosen? Could they catch up later if they needed to, or will doors already be closed? Are we protecting their freedom now, but by doing so actually limiting their freedom later?
To simplify this in my own mind, I like to boil all these questions down to one: Will unschooling narrow my child’s career options?
And the answer is not what you'll expect, because to start with it’s...yes.
Hold on. I’m going to narrow their career options?! This is not good, not good!
Oh, but it is. Trust me. Because here are the career options that probably won't be available to them:
Jobs where they don't like their boss
Jobs where they don't like their work
Jobs that don't balance well against their life
Jobs where they can't be themselves
Jobs where...
Ok, you get the idea.
The very nature of developing a child, teenager and young adult along a creative, collaborative, entrepreneurial, expressive, free path will mean they're highly unlikely to accept a job that has those characteristics. You have narrowed their career options, yes, but in the best way possible.
They haven't spent 13 years in a hierarchical environment being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and what they should be getting out of it. School children are conditioned to these things over a very long period of time, but a person who was homeschooled or unschooled as a child would be incredibly uncomfortable in a career with those characteristics.
Which is lovely and all, but obviously raises other questions. Like...surely an unschooled child is going to grow up very uncomfortable with a boss or structure? On the surface it just won't work, right. We picture a child running free through life only to have it all come crashing down when they hit the workforce as an adult. They don't respect authority, they have a problem with their boss, they can't structure their day...the whole thing is a mess, and they either quit or get fired. What have we done?!
I honestly do get this worry, because it’s one of the things I had to overcome early on myself. And after much research and reflection, I can confidently say this concern couldn't be further from my mind these days. Why? Because what we're instilling in our children through unschooling is the idea of choice and meaning. Choosing who they respect and why, choosing who and what they invest their time in and why, choosing who they will serve and why...and they will use that same choice and meaning muscle when it comes to their career - whether they're starting something themselves or working for someone else.
What I’m saying might sound a bit utopian, but let me give you a real-world example of my own experience:
I worked for a business where I didn’t like the old-school management style at all, so I did something a lot of people said was rash at the time - I started my own company. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to make sacrifice after sacrifice, and so did my young family, but I scrapped and worked and fought for it because I wanted to build something that treated people differently. It was an infinitely harder road than just sticking around and complaining about my old boss with everyone else, taking that regular pay cheque, but I was way happier because what I was doing had meaning to me.
Years later, I went back to working for someone. Only that time, it was someone who I respected. The culture and the management style aligned with who I am. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the ‘boss’.
The point being that when you have a strong sense of what you do and don’t want in an environment, you can either create the thing you want or find someone else who has. It will be out there, for sure.
So with that said, we should be able to accept that an unschooled child will be able to work for someone else. They’ll be able to have a boss. They’ll probably be more picky about who that might be, but that’s good.
But, also, that naturally leads on to the next worry -
How will they get the job they want in the first place if they're up against a pack of candidates who are formally educated?
Well, I can help here again. Because while I’ve spent a long time working for someone, I’ve also spent a long time being the person people work for. I’ve run companies, and departments and functions within companies, and a natural part of those experiences is hiring people. Which I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of times over the years.
Which brings us full circle. As someone working in a business I have chosen because the culture matches what I’m looking for, what am I looking for in the people I’m bringing into that space?
Who stands out? Who gets an interview, and who doesn't?
Well, it’s really not rocket science. These are the qualities I believe are primary success drivers, and thus what I look for in anyone applying:
Confident, independent thinker
Creative and passionate
Honest, transparent, no ego
Communicates well across any age/society/culture/socio-economic group
Problem solver
Obsesses over outcomes rather than in/outputs (i.e. it’s not the boxes you tick along the way that are important, it’s the result you achieve)
Seeks out meaning in life (someone with meaning is always more engaged in their work)
And now the penny drop moment. Almost all of these qualities is disincentivised by the very nature of school. I watched the flame go out in my young son’s eyes after just one year in a classroom, and I watched my other more academic son get into an uncomfortably comfortable rhythm of ticking boxes (inputs) rather than diving into things with passion (and thus producing outcomes with meaning).
I can confidently say that most qualities I look for when hiring are the ones that are heavily de-prioritised in the school system. Over the years I’ve seen the same kind of candidate over and over and over...the same school background, the same degrees, the same style of thinking. That's fine, but they don't stand out. Then an application will land on my desk that has a different vibe to it - they've taken a different path in life, or they've focused on projects that give them experience rather than education, or they’ve built something interesting or contributed to something interesting or worked hard to develop themselves in some way...just something outside the normal box. That application will probably get my attention, and that applicant will probably get an interview.
And if they DO need a formal qualification or degree for something? Then yes, they may have some work to do. They might need to learn things they haven’t covered, meet particular entry requirements, and find a way to package up their experiences so far to show someone who they are and what they stand for and what they want to achieve. Unschooling won’t guarantee that every possible door will be sitting open the moment a child reaches adulthood. But neither will school. The best we can do is help them become someone who can work out what they need in order to get something they want, then go learn it, make a strong case for why they belong there, and go after it with everything they have.
(which, by the way, is pretty much the definition of an ideal University level student)
To wrap up, the irony of this worry is that it's school that isn't preparing our children for career success. Particularly for the version of this world that will exist in 5, 10, 15 years from now. Unschooling - at least the way I see it - creates free, respectful, confident thinkers with strong problem-solving skills and an internal radar that has been honed to seek out meaning in life.
Exactly the kind of person the best companies are searching for.
Talk soon,
Issy.