‘Unschooling’ parents put their kids in charge of their own educations. Are they actually learning?

Onami, who goes by a single name, is one of many parents – increasingly visible on social media, more unassuming offline – practicing a radical form of home teaching dubbed “unschooling”. Also known as “free schooling” or “self-directed learning”, it is an informal educational approach in which the direction is dictated by a child’s interests. It eschews curricula, testing (standardized or otherwise), homework, recess, other pupils and all the other hallmarks of conventional education. True believers regard it as a corrective to a flagging public school system, which leaves so many children behind. Critics, meanwhile, say that it’s little more than a form of educational neglect and abuse.