Record: Peter Gray and Gina Riley, “Grown Unschoolers’ Evaluations of Their Unschooling Experiences: Report II on a Survey of 75 Unschooled Adults” in Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives 4, no. 2 (2015): 33-53. [Available here]
Summary: Gray is a professor of psychology at Boston College, and Riley is an educational psychologist who teaches courses at Hunter College and Mercy College. This post will review the second report of their two part series about unschoolers’ evaluations of their unschooling experiences. In Report I they performed a literature review, discussed their methodology, and described some general findings about their sample’s unschooling experiences. In Report II they address the participants’ experiences with higher education and careers.
After a brief review of Report I, they begin discussing their findings:
- Higher education. 44% of the sample had completed a bachelor’s degree or were full-time students. They attended a variety of public and private universities as well as one mention of an Ivy League school. Another 39% pursued a different form of tertiary education like vocational school. 17% of the respondents were enrolled in or had competed a post-graduate degree program. This all adds up to 83% of the sample that had pursued some sort of higher education. The remaining percentage without higher education either expressed plans to do so later in life, or they said that their career choices did not demand it.
- Getting into college. Unschoolers face an additional challenge of getting accepted to college, since they do not have the standard high-school education that is centered around a curriculum. Some of the respondents received their GED or a similar high school equivalency diploma, but most got into college without having an official diploma. Many were able to achieve this by taking community college courses during their teenage years that did not require a high school diploma, but others circumvented the lack of a diploma through interviewing with colleges and presenting them with portfolios that demonstrated their achievements.
- Adjusting to college. Respondents reported little difficulty in adjusting to college. Many reported that unschooling had caused them to develop more motivation and self-regulation than most of their schooled classmates. While some mentioned an initial difficulty of adapting to formal schooling, these problems did not hold them back in the long run. Instead, they merely felt annoyance at course requirements that made it difficult for them to pursue their own interests. Also, many respondents were annoyed/surprised that many of their peers were not interested in or capable of critical thinking. Their difficulties in adjusting to college were more social than they were academic since most of them took schooling seriously and did not want to drink or party like many of the other students.
- Employment and careers. 78% of the respondents were earning enough money at the time of the survey to be financially self-sufficient. If they were not employed, they were likely full-time students or a new mother.
- Continuation of childhood interests. 77% of the respondents expressed a clear connection between their career and an interest that they developed in childhood.
- Meaningful and enjoyable careers. The respondents generally chose careers that were meaningful and enjoyable over ones that were high-paying. The continuation of childhood interests plays a part in this, but it also has to do with the values that took root during their childhoods. Many of the respondents expressed willingness to change careers throughout their lifetime.
- Types of careers. 48% of the respondents had a career in the creative arts. This figure grew to 79% among respondents that had always been unschooled. The category of entrepreneurship overlapped with creative arts, since 53% of the respondents had started their own business or were clearly working towards that. Finally, 29% of the respondents were pursuing STEM careers. The authors hypothesize that so many unschoolers pursued the arts because of the creativity that unschooling fostered, but it is impossible to know for sure.
Appraisal: The fundamental question that this article answers is: What is an unschooler capable of achieving? Clearly, unschoolers are capable of doing a great deal. They can attend Ivy League colleges, enter honors programs, maintain straight A’s, and have successful careers, all without having a typical high school diploma. As discussed in the review of Report I, the findings here can not be generalized to unschoolers as a whole, but Gray and Riley are at least able to show that unschooling is not incompatible with success.
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