I’m TOTALLY with you regarding unschooling.
Any parent with ANY COMMON SENSE knows that kids have NO IDEA why they need to be educated in our world - it is us adults that have to drag them through it. If some of us want to do that through government schools, private schools, or home schooling, that is fine. But if some parents REFUSE to do that, they need to be in a business other than raising kids.
Secondly, ‘unschoolers’ do TREMENDOUS DAMAGE to the home schooling movement - where people have fought for decades to be allowed to educate their own kids, in their own ways, and not have to hide them in the attic (like runaway slaves) when authorities show up. Hell, us home schoolers are even permitted to teach math WITHOUT calculators and reading using PHONICS - two methods that would get you jailed if you tried that in public schools.
These ‘unschoolers’ take advantage of our home schooling gains, but turn around and give government VALID JUSTIFICATION to start taking back those gains. We have to be just as tough on these clowns as government wants to be on us.
(obviously I don’t know the specifics of this case...if they are actually being home schooled...then the government has committed a crime, but if they’re not being educated, they need to be moved into an environment where that will happen)
I have to agree with you in principle there, without knowing exactly how the family in question are handling it. There are always extremists in every minority situation, and they are the ones their opponents hold up as examples. — like snake-handlers or Westboro Baptists being held up as examples of Christianity, while in truth they comprise a nearly incalculably tiny minority.