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POLITICS & COMMUNITY School Sucks: The Virtues of Unschooling by William "Upski" Wimsatt Web Resources: The Unschooling Homeschooler National Homeschool Association Homeschooling Resource Guide The Homeschooling Zone Homeschooling Support Groups Also from Upski: An explanation of why he quit college. Interview: We ask Upski about his book "Bomb the Suburbs." In Defense of Wiggers: You know, wiggers. White kids scorned by their peers for listening to rap. Coming up: Upski interviews seven unschoolers. Survey: Discuss your own educational experiences in the Tripod survey.

Like most Americans, you probably spent twelve of your most formative years in school. What do you have to show for it besides a degree saying you can get a job or attend more school? As Ivan Illich writes in his 1970 classic, Deschooling Society: "The pupil is schooled to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work." Everything you've ever suspected was wrong with school is wrong. School makes C students feel stupid about subjects they could be brilliant at and gives A students a false sense of mastery and achievement. Schools confuse young people, and undermine their natural strengths. Schools dull our outlook by dividing the fascinating universe into boring committee-approved subjects and serving them dead on a textbook. Schools teach young people that adults are idiots. School instigates anti-social behavior by demeaning students. It ghettoizes them by age, emphasizes appearances over substance, requires passivity, and permits a narrow range of choices. Why not quit school? Kids who don't go to school, or "unschool," figure out their priorities a lot sooner. They're closer to their families, not as caught up in trivia, brown-nosing, clique maintenance or fronting. They develop a clearer sense of what they want to do with their time because their time is their own. Their curiosity, ambition and self-confidence are allowed to flourish. They remember what they learn because they use this knowledge, and they take initiative to do the activities they want to do. "Learning" is about doing, not about being in a classroom eight hours a day. Educator A.S. Neill observed in 1962: "When I lecture to students at teacher training colleges and universities, I am often shocked at the ungrownupness of the lads and lasses stuffed with useless knowledge. In their outlook on life, they are infants." While their peers are in school preparing for life, unschoolers are out living (and building resumes, portfolios, connections and gathering experience). Or creating their own jobs. Or going to college. If you don't believe me, read Homeschooling for Excellence by David Colfax. He describes how his three "unschooled" children received degrees from Harvard. We all know that our schools are in a bad state. In School's Out, Lewis J. Perelman makes the case that technological innovations are rendering schools useless. Automation, argues MIT Economist Jeremy Rifkin in The End of Work, will make many good high school and college students expendable, from cooks and managers to doctors and lawyers. What can't be automated are jobs requiring judgment and independence. So quit. Let your kids quit. Tell anyone you know with kids to quit school. All kinds of evidence is coming out which suggests that kids learn better without school. In his study, Talented Teenagers, University of Chicago sociologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concluded that most of the kids he studied acquired their gifts outside of or in spite of school. Also, book knowledge is only one kind of intelligence. Howard Gardner and others have begun to explore "emotional intelligence" and "multiple" intelligences -- knowledge which schools usually ignore or punish.

So quit. Let your kids quit. Tell anyone you know with kids to quit school.

Historically, homeschooling has mainly been a Christian movement, and Christian groups have done much of the legwork required to have homeschooling legalized in most states, but now all kinds of people are speaking of its virtues. John Gatto, The 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, and author of Dumbing us Down, says schools are impossible to reform and counsels students to get out while they can. David Guterson, public high school teacher and author of Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense is another homeschooling advocate. The most powerful new unschooling advocate is Oregon-based Grace Llewellyn, author of the Teenage Liberation Handbook. She also edited two anthologies of unschooled kids telling their stories and runs a camp called "Not Back to School Camp" [you'll meet some of the kids next week in the second installment of this series]. Writing directly to teens, Llewellyn anticipates her skeptics. She offers practical, no-nonsense advice on the advantages and potential pitfalls of quitting school. Deviating from the norm takes courage, but also planning. Llewellyn's book inspired me to quit college, and that is another story all together. Next week: Upski explains his decision to quit college and interviews seven unschoolers. William "Upski" Wimsatt is the author of "Bomb the Suburbs," a collection of essays about America's unfounded fears of the inner city. To order a copy, send seven dollars to The Subway and Elevated Press Co., PO Box 377653, Chicago, IL 60637.