Book

Epilogue

The editor asked, “Phil, were you going to write something for the book?”

I was. Then my brain got overpopulated. Can I keep mine short and sweet?

“I unschool because the Internet doesn’t shame my kids for wrong answers. I hope this will help them never feel stress in relationship to knowledge.”

You know what’s funny? This feels like homework. That’s how traumatized I was by school.

I am dillydallying on my good friend’s book because I have no positive associations to assignments.

Anything that feels like homework shuts down my will to do that thing.

I have suffered professionally, educationally, and interpersonally because of this.

I have hurt people I deeply cared about.

Including letting down my good friend Skyler.

I am not lazy. I am not an asshole. But I hated homework. And this feels like homework. It isn’t. And it’s not the editor’s fault. School did this to me.

That’s why I unschool. I will not take the same risk with my children’s future dependability.

This is embarrassing and difficult to admit.

School taught me to be passive aggressive, and it taught me that there were no real consequences to not keeping my word.

This is my biggest weakness. I am ashamed of it. But I will admit it in this book.

I mean, this would be kind of a cool epilogue, right? “The person who couldn’t do the essay was Phil from the Everything-Voluntary.com podcast. Why is he being such a dick?”

And this conversation is used mostly unedited. I’m a shitty person because I still have visceral resistance to anything that even remotely resembles homework.

Tell me that wouldn’t be a clincher argument against schooling? I am the reason I unschool.

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