Last night I attended a happy hour with some former coworkers in Bethesda. I worked with them before I worked at the Library of Congress. I worked with them for 4 1/2 years, the longest I've ever been at a job. In fact it was my first real office job. (I don't count the printing service bureau, where I worked the 2-10 pm shift and didn't have a desk.)

I knew most of the people at the happy hour. Two of them I had hired and supervised. The others had been at the company for over 10 years (and are still on obviously upward career tracks).

I never knew that one of them had a daughter, and that his wife homeschools their daughter, and that not only does she homeschool, she unschools. Unschooling is an extreme form of homeschooling that has no curriculum, no tests, no homework, and nothing that you would recognize as school. Instead the child's own interests lead her education, and the parents facilitate. In this particular case the mother takes her daughter on outings almost every day. She also leads a Girl Scout troop of homeschooled girls. ("Like herding cats," her husband said.)

The Washington Post published an article on unschooling last year that sparked some interesting discussion between E and me. Would we ever do that? Would it be good for the kid? Never say never, but I don't think we'll be unschooling. (Relax, mom and dad.) For one thing I'm not sure I have the interest in being a full-time facilitator of that kind of education. For another it would really depend on the kid's aptitude. I think some children would thrive with unschooling and others would do much better in a very structured environment.

I must admit the more conservative part of me recoils from the idea of unschooling, crying, "But the children won't be prepared for life!" Then I think about how much of my life after school resembled anything that happened in school: none. Absolutely none. (In fact this was a source of great disappointment to me; I excelled in school, aced my tests, and delighted my teachers, and after I graduated -- nobody cared. I wasn't sure what my motivation was supposed to be anymore.)

The more I think about it, unschooled children might be better prepared for life. After all, they are learning from real-world examples. I'd love to know more about what happens to grown-up unschooled kids.