

My 15-year-old, Alexus, is planting pumpkins today. It’s mid-July. It’s 100 degrees here in Central Florida. I’m typing this blog post from the comfort of my air conditioned bedroom. I can hear the rumbling of a delivery truck outside. Seeds have arrived. I get a call from my daughter. “Mom. Can you bring me my boots and some socks? The ants are eating me alive right now.”

I drive ten minutes from my house to the farm. When I arrive I see Alexus navigating her grandfather’s truck so he can get hooked up and move one of the trailers out of the way. Heaps of long, plastic white irrigation pipe in various sizes are stacked on the ground near her and I can see her visually surveying where the corn maze will be installed. The back of her hired help’s t-shirt is drenched with sweat. Her father is out on the tractor with a seeder wearing the wide brimmed straw hat we picked up in Cozumel on our last cruise.

She doesn’t own the land she’s farming. She doesn’t have to. This is the second piece she’s leased. The other farm is for her livestock. Goats and chickens. The horses live there as well. This is all foreign to me and not something I’ve taught her. This is self-directed learning. Unschooling. She loves it so she is making it happen. On her own. With us there to help her with any challenges she can’t figure out on her own.

My girlfriend homeschooled her two boys. Well, unschooled the second. Her first boy is in his PhD program at the university studying engineering. Her second boy just started his undergrad at a community college. Keep in mind her second boy didn’t do any curriculum. How did he get into community college then? He studied for one week and passed his GED. One. Week.

I pulled Alexus out of private school after 3rd grade essentially giving her nine years of freedom. Freedom to learn about herself and the world on her own terms and not on the terms of government administered education. She chose to stand in a dirt field today in 100 degree heat to plant pumpkins. 20,000 pumpkin seeds. Let’s say only half of them take. Each seed produces a plant. Each plant produces 1 to 2 pumpkins. Pumpkins range in price from $10 – $20 depending on their size and weight, $5 – $10 each wholesale. Average about 30% for waste. You do the math.

When people ask me how my unschooled kid will get into college I’ll tell them she’ll study for a week. But what I really think is that she’ll be standing in a field.