a list of questions

• How did I learn to read, anyway?
• How can I control my everyday life?
• Do I want to control my everyday life?
• Who are the people in my community who will understand and accept my need to unschool?
• Am I an intellectual person?
• Am I an inherently gifted person?
• Do I have talents?
• Do I have the capability to teach myself anything?
• What would have been different if my parents unschooled me from the start?
• How did I begin thinking about alternative education in the first place?
• Am I as smart, or as dumb, as I think I am?
• Can you make a mistake in unschooling?
• How many mistakes should I allow myself?
• Who thinks highly of me?
• Is my opinion of myself based on their reasoning?
• How comfortable am I with formality?
• Will I really make an effort when I quit school?
• Will I forget what I teach myself, the way I forgot what I learnt in school?
• What do I think about standardized tests?
• What do I think about the grading system?
• Are my current interests influenced by school in the first place?
• Would I never have discovered my current interests if I hadn't been in school?
• Which parts of school have worked for me?
• Which parts did I excel at, but which did not challenge, inspire, or educate me?
• What would happen if today everybody left school?
• Am I mature?
• Should I go to college?
• Should I also look at opposing viewpoints before considering unschooling?
• Who is an authority on unschooling?
• What is an authority, both in schooling contexts and a larger sense?
• Which set of words could I use for describing my education?
• How is my greater family going to react?
• Were my former teachers good role models?
• Do I just have the wrong attitude towards school?
• Should kids with disabilities be unschooled?
• Should people who like school, for the most part, be unschooled?
• Is an apprenticeship a superior way to learn than simple reading or self-teaching?
• In what way does a teacher learn more than a student?
• In what way does a student learn more than a teacher?
• Does one grow smarter as one grows older, proportionally?
• What's the difference between wisdom, intelligence, and cleverness?
• What's the difference between schooling, learning, and education?
• Why do I enjoy some subjects and not others?
• Is it wrong of me to be uninterested in certain subjects and more interested in others?
• Should I only learn about what I'm interested in?
• Can I unschool while ostensibly being in a school program?
• Am I romanticizing unschooling?
• Am I describing school as worse than it really is?
• Is it my fault that I despise school?
• Am I well-read?
• Am I truly motivated?
• Why did/do I procrastinate on schoolwork?
• Do I have discipline?
• Will I ever stop being an unschooler?
• Do I want to be busy, or to go slow?
• What does my being a youth have to do with anything?
• Do I want to play?
• Do I want to study?
• Is unschooling an art?
• A science?
• Can anyone be unschooled, or would some not succeed?
• Does unschooling lend itself to a particular political ideology; if so, which?
• Are all unschoolers inherently more mature and motivated than schooled people?
• What do I believe about high schools? (What are my general beliefs and critiques of high schools, the way they function, what they teach, etc.)
• What do I believe about middle schools?
• What do I believe about colleges?
• Do I consider myself to be a "real" unschooler?
• Am I a good example of how unschooling can turn out?
• What are some arguments that could persuade people against unschooling; which sorts of people would be persuaded by that argument?
• What is insight?
• Am I creative? Who is?
• Do I perform well under pressure?
• Do I always have desire to learn about something?
• Am I afraid of schools?
• What will happen to the unschooling movement, if it continues growing at a fairly steady rate, after 50 years or so?
• How has school harmed me?
• Does anything or anyone make me ashamed to be unschooling?
• Is there anyone who wants me to feel ashamed?
• Am I afraid of failure?
• Have I crossed boundaries and learned what I "knew" I never would?
• Why did I quit school?
• Why should the average intelligent kid quit school?
• Are there positives to school learning?
• If kids were suddenly presented with the choice of either going to school or not, how many would leave? Of the first day they learned of the choice? On the first day of the second week?
• Who is a teacher?
• What do you want to learn but you know you could never ever do it?
• What don't you want to learn, but you think you should?
• Have you ever wanted to be a "teacher when you grow up?" Why/not?
• What would you be like if you grew up among different people?
• Is there an infinite amount of knowledge contained in the world? Someday, are you going to learn it all?
• What do you love about the way you learn?
• If school is a game, what are some of its rules of gameplay?
• Is it ethical to place a child in school? Under what circumstances?
• Do you feel sorry for people who haven't learned much, or is it their own fault?
• Do you consider that you learn best alone?
• What are you striving for? Intelligence? Peace? To be a decent person? A Pulitzer Prize in literature?
• Public schooling was set up, in part, because the government didn't want parents to employ their children in farmwork. Would a child be educated if they worked in a farm all day; if so, would that education be as good as, worse, or better than school education? What if the farmwork was overmuch, and affected their health?
• Which are the most important subjects, ones everybody should learn?
• Do I need to be taught some things in order to learn?
• Can anyone ever grow bored with learning?
• Can anyone grow permanently bored with learning, after school, in such a way that unschooling will be unsuccessful?
• Does unschooling produce people who are capable of living in 'the real world?'
• If everybody was unschooled starting now, what would the world look like after a month? A year? Fifty years?