The other day my DD9 and I had a conversation about why we unschool. The subject began when she told me that the father of her BFF asked her, "How can you learn anything when you do nothing all day?". He assumes that because we don't force on our kids any rigid curriculum or "learning" schedules that it means they do nothing and therefore learn nothing all day. That is an illogical statement since, unless one is dead, one cannot truly live life doing nothing. Every human being at all moments of life, even in sleep, is constantly soaking in and processing information as they experience whatever circumstance they happen to be living in.
I asked DD about her opinion on being unschooled vs. traditional homeschool. She said that when I used to homeschool her in the "mini-school" way she felt as if she was "trapped in a cage starving", "desperate" and that she "couldn't wait to get out". She said that she didn't feel like she was learning anything and she simply did the work to get it over with. And that when we began to unschool she finally felt" happy and free" to love learning. That was the first time she had ever expressed her feelings about the subject in that way. Her analogy is perfect for the way I felt like in school too. It's just too bad that it took me a couple of years of homeschooling her for me to realise that I was "trapping" her mind in the same way that schools do to children. But I am grateful to God that He showed me and Nick a better way!