Unschooling: America, WTF is wrong with you?
Seriously. Why are all these braindead ideas always coming from the US? I’m sick of getting dragged into them. I DO NOT consent to being in these communities.
Read on for the dangers of unschooling, why it ALWAYS has a narcissistic undertone, and how to avoid the communities by learning to identify the dog whistles they use.
I swear, I’m getting over some of the horrifying experiences I had in my life with crazy people; But sometimes I watch video essays like the following one… And I finally find out the bigger overarching reason why I went through shit. That’s when it gets extremely difficult for me to stay silent.
…And all I’m left with is a frustrated sigh and a burning question: America, WTF is wrong with you? Because in case you didn’t know, the rest of the world isn’t suffering this same problem to the same extent. Once again, it’s the US creating problematic ideologies… And occasionally spreading them abroad in a stealthy way that just leaves people confused and wondering what’s going on. Well, here is what’s going on. Someone finally called it.
In order to talk about the Unschooling trend, (or just so you’ll understand why I know about the dog whistles used in the Unschooling community to “accidentally and gradually” recruit unsuspecting outsiders), here is some of my experience with the people who adhere to it and their underlying obsession with taking things on their own hands. Ladies and gents, brace yourselves for an exposé of narcissistic people who tried (and sometimes succeeded in) brainwashing me and my near-and-dear.
The anti-medicine and anti- “Big Pharma” cults in my teenage.
When I was a teen, I suffered medical neglect by my natural-health-obsessed mother, to the point I only found out about a disease in my ovaries when it got bad, since she wouldn’t take me to a gynecologist and insisted instead that this or that ONE vitamine, this or that ONE miracle cure (or whatever was fashionable in the latest fad promoted on TV) would solve every health problem imaginable. You’d think she was trying to save on medical care, but no, for starters we didn’t live in the US, we lived in a place with universal public healthcare and affordable private healthcare; Secondly, the miracle cures she bought into were far more expensive than the conventional alternative.
She loved going on and on and on about how religious cults are dangerous, but ironically fell for every single “detox” cult imaginable. I guess she just assumed cults can only be religious, and ran with the assumption like a blindfolded idiot.
The thing is… When someone obsesses too much with opposing something, this is usually a sign of projection. I didn’t know at the time (in fact this is a lesson I’ve only learned this year!), but watch out for that. “Oh I’m so against cults, I’m gonna talk about it every single day and every chance I get-” Beware! This person is probably prone to falling for cult-like ideologies, and their subconscious is telling them that, and that’s why they’re projecting it externally so hard. There’s nothing wrong with activism… But when activism becomes a neurotic obsession, watch out.
I totally get thinking outside the box when you’re not having success healing from your condition, but should this be anyone’s FIRST resort? No. Mentally healthy people know that first you try the conventional answer; then, and only then, you explore alternatives. What’s with the crowd who goes for the unconventional straight off the bat, then? Well, my educated guess is that they feel too “special” or too “important” and “superior to the mere peasants” to go for the tried-and-tested that everybody else is doing. Good old narcissism. In fact, with my mother specifically, I am certain that was the case! She’d even project that onto me: God forbid I ever stand out from the crowd with the way I dressed or how I kept my room or how I expressed myself artistically, oh no, I was “attention-seeking” by wanting to buy my own clothes or have a say in how I looked. Suuuuure. But she definitely wasn’t attention-seeking by wanting to side-step conventional medicine to pursue fads that celebrities were known for. Uh-huh. Sure. Do as I say, don’t do as I do. Classic projection.
The “Celtic reconstructionists” who never give a fuck about the Gaeltachtaí.
So, I originally moved here to study and work. That’s the official excuse. In reality, I just wanted to go somewhere my mother wouldn’t follow me and engulf me again. But I did end up enjoying Ireland a lot, even married into a local family in the end. The local culture is very rich and has a lot to offer. When people ask me why I help preserve it, I just say it’s the least I can do. I’m always of the opinion that wherever you are, you should at least make an attempt to get to know the local traditions. If they’re not your cup of tea, great, maybe move somewhere else, but at least try. Society pushes us to only look for individual success, individual growth, individual wealth, individual this-and-that — but where is our sense of community? We sure need it. We can’t keep denying that we need it. Let’s NOT conform to this wave of narcissism fostered by Capitalism, for feck sake. And by community I DO NOT mean “start a cult and isolate a bunch of people”. NO. What I mean is go out into the world, get to know the human beings you ignore so often and assume so much about, and foster some basic rapport. You’d be surprised how many people are less “sheeple” than you thought.
Anyway, from the very start I got involved in the cultural and language revival here — which, yes, welcomes beginners, and yes, welcomes outsiders, and you would know that (I’m looking at you, Irish people born and raised in big urban centres who never bothered to show a little gratitude for your ancestry) if you only gave revivalists a bloody chance. But what do some of these people do instead? Oh, they have never visited a Gaeltacht in their lives, but jump to conclusions and go ahead and label all of us radicalists and communists and every insult in the book (a projective knee-jerk reaction I’m sure, to the repressed anger they feel for themselves for despising a part of their own heritage so much) when in fact we are normal people like everybody else, work normal jobs, go to normal events and never once in our lives threatened anyone. The only unique thing about us is we don’t speak English daily. That’s it. Not a monster in the closet. Not this big scary thing that people steer clear from because of misinformation.
I’m sounding a bit ranty, but seriously, I’m sick of this bullshit. Stop it already! Have some fecking common sense! You can’t just dehumanise communities you don’t know like that. But this is a common theme with the kind of people who would fall for “unschooling”, ISN’T IT? Writing off reality completely, and just basing their conclusions about the world on assumptions and rumours.
There’s a parcel of the Irish population, heavily influenced by US culture, who would rather import back into Ireland the “reconstructionism” they’re doing overseas than drive a few miles to the next genuine community where we preserve genuine traditions. Like oh my god, make it make sense! Excuse me for the tone, but you can’t tell me this isn’t outrageous. They’re usually the same crazy idiots who protest immigration because “Irish traditions are dying” — Oh, really?! Irish traditions are dying? AND WHO EXACTLY IS HELPING KILL THEM?
Enough said.
The anti-census “rebels”.
This connects to the previous point, except I’m no longer talking about locals. The overwhelming majority of people who gave me a hard time when I worked for the CSO collecting data for the national census were [narcissistic] immigrants from the US.
Let me put things into perspective for you: during the training for this job, we get briefed about specific groups that can be hard to contact, and these include immigrants from China (because they assume every government in the world is authoritarian like theirs, so they’re sceptical of any public correspondence, even if it’s something as unassuming and friendly as the national census); the traveller community (lovely folks, but they may be elsewhere when the time comes to collect back their filled-out forms); other kinds of caravans and mobile homes (for the same reason); and the Muslim if the census happens during Ramadan because some may interpret it as wasting time and not answer.
Got it? Ok. On to what actually happened, not only to me, but to 5 other coworkers in my area only, comprising 1/5 of a small town (which means I can only wonder what the national situation was)…
All of these above groups we were briefed about? Collaborative and friendly. Some needed to read the translated handout to understand why I knocked because they had little English, but all super helpful. The only troublemakers? Americans who came to Ireland (among other reasons, I only hope) to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Do you realise the magnitude of this problem? Immigrants from authoritarian areas of the world, who would have actually good reason to believe conspiracy theories about the Irish census collecting general information about them… collaborated. Meanwhile (not all, but a significant number of) the American, from the “land of the free”, did not.
Again, enough said on this section.
The anti-schooling music teacher and her eco-fascist friend.
So… *sigh* Where do I start?
One of my recent music teachers was in favour of “unschooling”. The red flags flew right over my head and I legit did not notice because I’m an adult learner with zero interest in pursuing a classical music career or the formal qualifications it entails. I just reached out to her because I wanted to learn to read sheet music and arrange a few pieces for my instrument. Very informally like that. Her original ad mentioned a “student-led” approach, which my naive and ill-informed self just read and thought, “huh, interesting, I guess it’s a match because I’m looking for something flexible anyway”. Little did I know that she did not mean the normal kind of flexibility you’d imagine for any kind of education (still having some basic structure and direction, plus encouraging suggestions and feedback from the students)… but the unschooling dog whistle instead.
Well, the first few classes were great, up until the one year mark when I no longer knew how or where to “lead” her teaching (because, guess what, I wasn’t the professional in this dynamics. Obviously). Looking back at the experience now, I can tell why in the beginning it was great — I was focusing more on literacy and technique, which are pretty straightforward skills and there is little room for deviating from the manuals anyway. Plus, this teacher REALLY KNEW her subject and had great attention to detail. I was amused. (On the flip side, though, I wonder how much more she knew and simply refused to teach because of her ideology — because I’m sure she would be pretty good at it, but ya know, some people have messed-up ideologies that ruin everything).
My parcel of blame for how things got completely out of hand with this person is in how I overshared about some of my mental struggles that didn’t specifically relate to music. I was still idealising potential friends, having only cut contact with my mother/abuser a year before, so I wasn’t on top of my mental health at all — but I’ll hold myself accountable here anyway. This totally uncalled for oversharing could have resulted in her setting boundaries with me and left it at that… But no. She proceeded to start recommending resources and counsellors she trusted, which I thanked her for, tried, and always ended up realising there was something weird about them. I couldn’t put a finger on what exactly, but I had this nagging feeling that something was off. All in all, I’m thankful I made the mistake of oversharing with her, because (as you’ll see in the next paragraph below) it led me to understand a harmful ideology I was unaware of: unschooling.
I decided to go for the one person she recommended I still hadn’t tried, who happened to charge a lot more than the others — and that’s who gave me a strong dejavu feeling. For starters, he also blogs, and I could see in his writing a lot of emphasis on how “our education system” is problematic. I initially nodded in agreement at these statements (which are always empty of further explanation and based on vague feelings like that), assuming they were figuratively referring to flaws in the education system in the US, where he lives, because “fair enough, there are many things that could be improved”, I thought — but no. I was wrong. It wasn’t about flaws, it was about the whole entire thing. He actually meant we should abolish formal education itself, worldwide, irrespective of the intricacies of individual culture-based systems of education. I had many other problems with his so-called wisdom which is always too broad and “big picture” to be of any use, and I won’t get into it here, but I initially attributed my unease to a possible misunderstanding on my part. That’s not just me being overly nice now; in truth, I simply had no idea that his level of delusion could exist at all (which is why my head went straight to the more graceful explanation first, instead of just “crazy person alert! Danger!”). But yeah… It was only when I looked back on his wacky and self-absorbed ideas that I started going like “oooohhhhhh, now I get where my music teacher was coming from”, and moved on from her too.
Anyway, this story shows you in practice a snippet of what can happen when you embrace this recent “unschooling” ideology because of the hype, without applying any critical thinking to it. On a surface level, it may seem wonderful to break free from the mold and encourage curiosity, intuition and creativity… But HOLD ON A SECOND. Can’t we have all of these benefits within a structured approach to education which still offers learners the sense of direction they [don’t always want but] always need? Of course we can. Unschooling is taking things a step too far, and when you really think about it, it’s impulsive and childish. If education as a whole could always be student-led, then what are teachers for? Can’t we just Wikipedia our way out of school? Mentally fucked-up people would say “yes” (it’s always the narcissists and the sociopaths who think they’re too-cool-for-school), but the answer, objectively, is “no”. There are many things we’re unaware that we don’t know, unaware that we need them, and unaware of all the ways in which these things can help us. People who ignore this fact probably have an out-of-control arrogance about them, borne out of a struggle with object constancy, and are therefore likely to have narcissistic traits (click for an article specifically about that).
What all of these people have in common:
- They claim to advocate against “conformity” (I mean, same…) but do nothing to try and get something substantial done, at a social level, about the problems they perceive in the current status quo (and that’s where we differ). As you can see, even from my anecdotal examples (let alone actual research done on this phenomenon), their claims to “non-conformity” are actually bogus; What they really mean, and would say, if they were self-aware enough to say it out loud, is “I’m not humble enough to actually debate the scientists / the religious leaders / the politicians / the communities / the educators I’m trying to oppose, offer my hypothesis to scrutiny by non-believers, or even test my theory myself to see if it really holds up before I start teaching/spreading it”. Yes it requires humility, more than courage. When you’re humble, you’re open to finding out something you didn’t previously know or consider which may or may not cause you to rework your thesis [of non-conformity] or abandon it altogether (because now you know you lacked fundamental knowledge, not because you’re “dumb”, but simply due to the Dunning-Kruger effect that happens to all of us).
- Instead, because they’re too afraid of getting their emotion-driven activism disproven or invalidated, (since that would invariably uncover and force them to face the initial fear/ prejudice/ arrogance/ feeling of helplessness/ etc that ACTUALLY motivated it) they cling to their beliefs and put up defensive walls against external input, claiming that “the establishment is trying to censor” them (when really, the so-called establishment doesn’t even know they are on this quest of non-conformity to begin with, let alone wanting to censor them). Re-read the first bullet point, these people tend to be very private and/or very deceitful to outside observers, relying on loopholes in the rules of social conduct to stay under most people’s radar, not engage with the external world, and live in echo-chambers most of the time. So they’re censoring themselves and projecting that onto an imagined external enemy. A very narcissistic trait. Some of them claim that “that’s why they’re so careful, the establishment is out to get them”, which is an even more narcissistic claim because it inflates their sense of self-importance beyond reasonable levels. Let’s face it: unless you’re hiding a nuke, a few billion dollar, or a unique biological weapon in a room somewhere, chances are the people who have the power to spy on you wouldn’t waste their time on you “just because you’re doing a non-conforming thing”. There are 8 billion other people on the planet! You don’t matter that much.
- There’s always a sentiment in favour of too much freedom and experimentation (often at the cost of actual productivity), hinted at by dog whistles such as child-led or student-led learning (in the context of unschooling), detox and holistic medicine (in the context of anti-Pharma, anti-GMO and anti-vax activism. I’ll make an article on GMO, stay tuned), rewilding and reindigenising (in the context of reconstructing lost traditions, which is eco-fascist lingo for rejecting modernity and embracing their chosen bigotry), etc. These are dog whistles, and not overt expressions of ideology, because these terms co-opt ideas that can be legit depending on their context. However, the potentially legit ideas they hold (as I’ve come to realise) only exist in contexts where the terms, themselves, aren’t actually used outright.
- For example: I am actively working with a company that facilitates reindigenising a local community (a Gaeltacht, more specifically — ensuring the Irish language indigenous to the area doesn’t die)… But the word “reindigenising” is simply not used. Not even as Gaeilge. We don’t need to use it, because we’re doing the work in a way which is approachable and welcomed by the community anyway (and thus not self-serving or self-aggrandising), so using the word to announce what we’re doing would be redundant. Who uses the word, instead? Well, as far as I’ve observed, opportunists born and raised in industrialised areas (especially in the US. Quelle surprise!) who can’t even be arsed to get to know local indigenous leaders or help these tribes achieve their own objectives in any capacity.
- So, to summarise: empty carts are often loud. Beware people who use eloquent language, but whose actions don’t match the magnitude or all-or-nothingness of their words.
All these traits, and more, can be perceived a mile away once you know what they are — luckily for you. It took me a while, I must admit, because I overestimate people’s ability to be genuine. I’m always looking for the silver lining, always telling myself, “but maybe this person didn’t mean it that way. I must give them grace”. No, Lucy, some people are arseholes. Believe what they show you.
The above isn’t meant to crucify anyone for being human. I’m sure we all deviate from common sense and believe logical fallacies, fall for the Dunning-Kruger effect, etc, every now and then. That’s fine. What is not fine is when we see it happening and still insist on the error because we’re too proud to admit we need to do better (and that’s when narcissism enters the chat).
In the end of the day, narcissistic people will use every excuse in the book to justify their (sometimes covert) sense of grandiosity and “saviour syndrome” — but it remains there nonetheless. The excuses are always weirdly convenient for them. For example, “oh but this indigenous community actually practices agriculture, which indicates they once were conquerors and usurped this land from hunter-gatherers so that’s why I’m not actively engaging with them”. Aaaawwwww, how lovely! This totally justifies not doing anything concrete to help out surviving indigenous communities because they don’t have a flawless and pristine History going back to the motherfucking Big Bang. Tell me you’re trying to escape responsibility without telling me you’re trying to escape responsibility. Same as saying “but in the end of the day, the perfect solution doesn’t exist” — yes, suuuuure, that’s why a cult under your control is preferrable. Fuck you!
I know “Unschooling” is the name of a trend relating specifically to formal education, but on a more fundamental level, I think we can apply it across the board to all these self-centered control fantasies people have (which became popular in America, more than anywhere else) mislabeled as a quest for “freedom from the system”. After all, what is unschooling if not basking in your ignorance of a system you claim to oppose but know next to nothing about because of a fear of having your illusion of knowledge shattered? That’s the underlying problem with the anti-vax movement too, and a bunch of other dangerous trends. These people can try deluding themselves all they want, they can say all they want that they “are simply staying low-profile because they’re anti-establishment” (and we debunked this one already), or they “don’t trust conventional sources of information” (but fail to prove why — which is a thing ANY serious debunker would do — alluding instead to a general feeling of unease and some word salad that says nothing substantial). You see, I’m not exactly calling them “dumb”. I don’t think they are dumb. And I’m not discarding anyone’s theory. The trouble is, I’m not seeing a theory at all. Theories need a plausible explanation beyond just “I feel it in my heart”. What I’m seeing is a thinly-veiled rage against the idea that other people could (gasp! God forbid!) know or control more than them about any given topic. So it’s about who controls what, who knows what, who is on top and who is on the bottom. It’s personal and childish. It’s based on lack of humility to submit to any authority no matter how ethical and good it is (Because if it was about that, they’d first try to improve the system, not jump straight to opposing it altogether). It’s not really about freedom from anything.
“Indoctrination” is another common term thrown about in the unschooling community. While it has a nugget of truth in it (I mean… I’m sure students in North Korea, Afghanistan [or insert dictatorship here] are indoctrinated in classroom instead of just learning useful skills, so the problem *exists*. It’s just not where you think it is), a lot of the people who are crying wolf about indoctrination aren’t ACTUALLY SEEING indoctrination take place. It’s not like your child, in the US (or insert Western democracy here), is forbidden from or facing a life threat if they tell you teacher so-and-so is acting too authoritarian in classroom and they’d like to change schools. There’s plenty of freedom to do that! There’s plenty of freedom to homeschool, too! No “big brother” is out to get you. People who obsess over a fear of indoctrination as an excuse to support unschooling are just having an overly sensitive response to basic hierarchical structures that keep society minimally organised. And that is, as we already saw, a very common narcissistic trait. It goes beyond paranoia, there’s also a pathological individualism behind this mindset, fuelled by an overinflated ego— as if saying, “I’m so unwilling to listen to anything and anyone external that I’ll isolate from collectivity as much as possible and take everything I can into my own hands”.
In the end of the day, even if I agreed in principle with these crazy unschoolers (I don’t, but let’s imagine a parallel universe where I do), I suppose I’d still be suspicious of them because of their level of arrogance. I mean, anyone who thinks they need to “helicopter parent” whoever they’re teaching or educating because the world is such a scary place full of traps and pitfalls… Obviously doesn’t believe in these students’ autonomy or ability to grow and walk with their own feet and make decisions on their own. That’s arrogance. That’s smothering. It is not a healthy take on life.
Our normal life cycle goes like this: we’re born, then we grow, then we become independent, reproduce, and die. Are we supposed to stay dependent on a caretaker during ALL of these phases? Are you sure about that? Yeah, I know that deep down you know the truth. And the truth is “no”. There comes a moment when no matter what you drill into somebody else’s brain with your never-ending harping about what’s “wrong” and what’s “right”, and how to do this and how to do that… This person will have the power to disagree or ignore if they feel like it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
No amount of control and manipulation is going to give you the accolade you secretly want as a hero who saved the day. That’s narcissistic. Stop it. Get some help.
(And if the message above isn’t for you, I hope the article was informative nonetheless. Be careful out there, trust your gut, the world is full of wolves in sheep’s clothing).
