Danish homeschooler Jesper Conrad talks with Pat Farenga about driving around Europe while living and learning with his family, creating a month-long event for traveling homeschoolers in Spain, and how his family manages to make it all work.

“Are your parents teachers?” “Do you have any friends?” and on and on. It’s come to the point where I feel like saying, “It’s really none of your business.” I don’t say that, of course. …

“I told him one evening that I was unable to read a book to him because of a headache. He said, “Well, you just rest and I’ll read a book to you.” He proceeded to read an entire book flawlessly, at a level of more difficulty than I would have guessed he had been able to read. Thus it sometimes happens in the natural course of living with a child that we receive more direct and specific information about his progress.”

Educators often criticize unschoolers for having no structure since they are learner-directed, and unschoolers often criticize conventional schools for having too much structure and being authoritarian. But is this classification really useful?

“School should be a place where children learn what they most want to know, instead of what we think they ought to know…”

Before the words homeschooling and unschooling existed, the word “deschooling” filled their space. What is that all about?