Thoughts on Unschooling: David D. Friedman on why unschooling is the best way for kids to learn

David D. Friedman, a physicist, economist, and law professor who is the son of the famed Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, is a staunch supporter of unschooling, or the idea of self-directed, non-coercive learning that occurs either as an approach to homeschooling or in “unschooling schools,” such as those schools modeled after the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts.

I wrote extensively about unschooling, Sudbury Valley, and other “unschooling schools” in my 2019 Unschooled book.

I had been familiar with David Friedman’s libertarian writings and focus on anarcho-capitalism, but I somehow missed his focus on unschooling until recently. The most recent edition of Friedman’s well-known book, Machinery of Freedom: Guide to A Radical Capitalism, first published in 1973, includes a chapter on unschooling entitled, "Unschooling: A Libertarian Approach to Children," which also appears on his blog.