The only education is self education, said professor of biochemistry and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. I would add that the best education is self-directed education. All people – children included – are happiest and most productive when they are free to choose the direction of their own lives. When learning is a chore, what is really being learned?

I was unschooled. My mom chose to keep me out of school because she knew me well enough to know that I would not flourish in a classroom environment when I was five years old. She did not sit me down and teach me what school children are taught because I was not interested. She is philosophically opposed to the laws governing homeschooling families and therefore chose not to follow the law. She did not keep attendance records or lesson plans and did not have me tested by the state (I think I would have failed those tests). The Department of Family and Children Services came to our house more than once. I presume our neighbors, or whoever it was who made the call, thought my mother was raising a heathen.

Between about the ages of seven and ten, I enjoyed learning from math textbooks and gained a solid foundation in basic math by myself. Outside of math, I learned nothing from textbooks until I entered public school at age ten. I was not interested in learning how to read so I didn’t. My childhood memories are mostly of playing outside with the neighborhood kids and my sister. I climbed trees, built forts, swam in the lake and neighborhood pool, played with our cats and ducks, jumped on our trampoline, dug clay out of the creek to make pottery, camped in our backyard, rode my bike, made up games and songs, and did other things kids normally do when not stuck in a classroom. I remember free play taking up the majority of my time instead of it being a privilege I had when I got home from school and finished my homework.

My parents divorced and my father took custody of my sister and me when I was ten and she was six. My father used my lack of formal schooling against my mother to win the custody battle. We were forced to be vaccinated and put in public school. That was traumatic, but the secure and healthy attachment I had to my mom gave me the confidence to know that I was in charge of my life. When I started school, I went into a regular classroom and did regular work, even though I previously could not read. Once in school, I just started reading. I have no memories of learning phonics. I remember volunteering often to read aloud in class. If I stumbled on a word, I sounded it out or the teacher helped me. I don't know how or exactly when I learned to read. I started reading much like a baby starts walking one day after observing others walk. I was doing well in class spelling bees in a few months. Math was no problem. Grammar was intuitive. Socially, I fit in but I didn’t know there was such a thing as peer pressure. I don’t know and didn’t care how “popular” I was. I remember being intrigued that there was one boy in my class who everyone was mean to. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t.

I got mostly As except in handwriting, where I consistently got Cs. I still don't like to write in cursive and have trouble reading it. By seventh grade, I was bored with school. I enjoyed reading novels, I wrote poems for fun and I liked to draw, but I didn’t routinely do any of those things in school. Most drawing and reading assignments I did in school were hurried and I was simply trying to get that check mark in the grade book indicating that I completed my work. I didn’t care much for the writing topics given in school, especially when my good grade depended upon my essay being in the “five paragraph bing bang bong format.” My math class was okay. I very much did not like science and I can’t even remember what seventh grade science was about.

At 13, I told my father I was going to live with my mom and that I would take him to court to make that happen if necessary. My mom was struggling financially because of the divorce and subsequent court battle, but being free to direct my own life was more important to me than having stuff. My father released me without a court battle.

In eighth grade, I used a formal curriculum to learn at home while my mom worked full time. The summer between eighth and ninth grades, I worked as a cashier and lifeguard. When I was younger, I had decided that as soon as I was 14 (the age required at the time), I would get a job at the water park my mom took my sister and me to every year. It was a lot of fun and I think that working was a very valuable part of my education. Besides learning the skills to be a cashier and a lifeguard, I also learned about being an employee and having my own bank account.

I decided to go to public high school in ninth grade. I took pride in my school work and enjoyed learning, but there were certainly things I didn’t like about the public school system. For example, if I thought a required class was a waste of my time, I skipped it and walked somewhere to study for another class. There should be no such thing as a required class, except in universities and other adult education programs that are geared toward a specific career field. All it did was require me to find creative ways to avoid it, which I suppose can be a useful skill, but is that really what we want to teach 15 year olds?

My biggest problem with school was probably the dress code. I really didn’t want to deal with the length of my clothing being measured first thing in the morning by some teacher who might also be violating the dress code. My skipping class and dress code infractions didn’t please the administrators but I kept myself out of trouble most of the time and maintained an A average throughout high school. My mom never asked me if I had done my homework or scolded me for "talking back" to my teacher. I was not punished or rewarded for anything. I remember her telling me that it was just fine with her if I wanted to drop out of school. I thought that was cool because my friends got in trouble at home when they didn’t do as well as their parents wanted them to in school.

In high school, I worked part-time, played sports and participated in school plays. By the time I was driving at 16, I was interested in those ridiculous high school parties, but my mom was not on a mission to make sure I was never around teenagers and beer at the same time, so I did not feel compelled to rebel. I knew I was responsible for myself. When I think back on those party experiences, I think I learned something important about growing up that can only be learned by living.

We moved to another school district before 11th grade. I thought I would like it better but it turned out to be academically inferior. My mom and I were both very angry at the principal for not letting me take the English class I wanted. I stayed there for 11th grade but I had plans to leave. I took the SAT and attended a local college full time for 12th grade. I still played sports at my high school, which I enjoyed very much. I flourished in the college environment without the restrictions of public school. I would say that I was not treated like a child, but I don’t agree with treating children the way they are treated in public schools anyway. Unlike in public school, I was not treated like a failure waiting to happen if I was allowed to make my own decisions about what homework I did or didn’t do and how I dressed.

When I was 16, 17 and 18, I was a camp counselor during the summers and I loved that. I saw a lot of kids on ADHD drugs and it made me so sad. Those kids looked like their spirits had been broken. They were being made to conform to the system that most children are placed in at increasingly younger ages. That could have so easily been me if my mom had made me go to school when I was a child. I enjoyed being with children all day and I noticed that I handled so called “misbehavior” differently than some of the other counselors. Unless someone was getting hurt, I usually didn’t intervene. I cared a lot about “my” kids being happy and I wanted them to have fun. The topic of my college entrance essay was “describe your greatest accomplishment.” I chose working and learning at summer camp. It wasn’t one isolated occurrence, but rather the whole experience that I consider an accomplishment. I could never have learned the relational skills that I learned working at camp in a classroom.

I graduated high school with an A average, but I disliked so many things about the school system. I went to a traditional university to study mechanical engineering. I met my future husband in my freshman dorm and we got married two years later during winter break. The school system combined with controlling parenting styles seem to encourage children to grow up later than if they were directing their own lives. When we announced our engagement, many of our peers thought I was pregnant and we were crazy. I was not pregnant, but we did decide to get pregnant less than a year.

While in college, I developed a passion for kids living in poverty in the inner city. When I was a sophomore, I volunteered to start and maintain the academic part of an after school program for inner city middle and high school. I wrote the curriculum and recruited other college students to teach, including my husband, who was my boyfriend when the program started. I did that until we moved four years later for my husband’s job. The public schools these kids went to were some of the worst in the nation and it was not uncommon for a 15 year old to barely read and struggle with elementary math. They were so helpless, victims of their parents’ circumstances, who were likely victims of their parents’ circumstances, and so on. I saw very little self-motivation and very little consideration for other people or things. I saw a lot of kids whose needs have not been met and so they don’t know how to take control of their own lives. These are difficult kids to help because they lack the independence and curiosity that come after a secure attachment to a parent is established.

The kids I worked with were part of my wedding and my college graduation. Our son, Gabe, was born at home one month after I graduated from college. I took him with me to teach since my husband still had a semester to go, and it was interesting to see the kids’ reactions to Gabe. Breastfeeding and carrying contented infants is not part of their culture. My having a baby with me naturally led them to tell me about “how when my sister was a baby…” or (unfortunately) “my friend’s baby...” I was told about babies who are “bad” and cry all day. A 15-year-old girl had a baby while I was there and I saw what they were talking about. People who were never cared for with empathy naturally don’t easily develop empathy. I think I learned as much from working with those teenagers as I did from my college classes. It’s a different type of learning for sure, but very important nonetheless. I’m finished with college and finished working with kids that are not my own (for now), but I consider every day part of my ongoing education.

My childhood and early adulthood education is not the model education. It is an example of a self-directed education. I think the main point that my story illustrates is that what children need most is a trusting attachment to at least one parent who will nurture their independence and grant them the freedom to learn as they want. Education is not only or even mostly about classrooms and textbooks. Education is about learning how to live cooperatively with other people and to contribute productively to the world. Both of my parents were raised and schooled conventionally. Fortunately, my mom learned to trust herself, not social norms, in mothering. What she had to learn comes naturally to me. Gabe has the benefit of having two parents and a grandma who believe passionately in attachment parenting and child-led learning.

Do I think everybody should be homeschooled? I think that all children should not have “a” say, but should have “the” say in their educations. Parents naturally want their children to be successful, but letting go of expectation frees the child to just be and discover life. Children whose freedom and interests are nourished are creative, compassionate people, who in their own ways will make our world a better place.

This is one of a limited number of articles available in full for free on this website. To read all of our back issues since 2002, plus future issues, subscribe today.

Michelle Stille lives with her husband, Ryan, and son, Gabe, in northwest Florida where Ryan is stationed with the military. She is a stay-at-home mom and she and Ryan plan to have more children in the future.