Of course the plural of anecdote isn't data. Never claimed it was.
"I think you'll quickly find (etc)" - I think you're thinking about this the wrong way. Who, exactly, are you evaluating? The average adult who grew up in the school system, who learned that 'learning' is all about being told stuff, and who now 'knows enough' to hold down their job and pursue whatever hobbies they have in what little spare time they have? Not sure that's representative of children, or how people grow up under a different system. And even there, you'd be surprised how often those adults still end up looking up information -that is of interest- to them.
I mean, heck, I'm one of those adults - outside of work what I learn is very little, because I don't have the energy. And yet, I still am curious, I still ask questions, I still read things. Certainly, I look for opportunities to learn things as -part- of my work. I am the HN crowd, sure, but I'm also a consummate gamer and waster of time. Heck, I'll even waste my time responding to HN comments. :P
Beyond that, for children, if you're just looking at kids who are already in school...yeah. No kidding. After 5-8 hours in school being 'taught' things, why they heck would someone spend their free time learning things outside of it? It's just like a job. But what about a kid who has hours of free time, and who sees, constantly, that there are people around them who 'know things', and they don't? They'll ask questions. Lots of questions. Encourage that, and you have learning.
I mean, I can't speak to you, the HN crowd at large, or people at large (nor can you), but I can say that given just the spare time the quarantine has given me, my unproductive pursuits very quickly ran dry (not for lack of them), and I've picked up learning a number of new things to fill the time. I don't think that's nearly as uncommon as you might think.
I've seen a bit of observational data that points at the hypothesis that one of the things that manifests as IQ is an increased need for intellectual stimulation. Googling for ""need for intellectual stimulation" iq" shows some authoritative people saying that they tend to coincide; I don't immediately see studies about it.
Now, I agree that school tends to squelch natural curiosity and such. I really can't say enough bad things about school.
Still, I can't shake the hypothesis that a decent amount of observational data connected to schooling and unschooling is done by smart people, looking at their social group (likely to also be smart) and at the kids of those in their social group (likely to have inherited smartness). John Holt formed some of his hypotheses teaching at a school with a minimum IQ cutoff (IIRC around 110-120) (researching, I think it was the Shady Hill school, the second one he taught at).
But at the very least, it seems to me that unschooling will work well with smart kids—the smarter, the better—and, furthermore, the smarter the kid is, the worse school will be adapted to them, so it seems pretty clear that, above some intelligence level, unschooling should be placed above school in the list of default recommendations (the specifics of the individual kid and the available schools would, of course, be used to tailor the default into the correct, but I am talking about the default). I don't know what level that should be, but I suspect it's something like 120-130 IQ.
"I think you'll quickly find (etc)" - I think you're thinking about this the wrong way. Who, exactly, are you evaluating? The average adult who grew up in the school system, who learned that 'learning' is all about being told stuff, and who now 'knows enough' to hold down their job and pursue whatever hobbies they have in what little spare time they have? Not sure that's representative of children, or how people grow up under a different system. And even there, you'd be surprised how often those adults still end up looking up information -that is of interest- to them.
I mean, heck, I'm one of those adults - outside of work what I learn is very little, because I don't have the energy. And yet, I still am curious, I still ask questions, I still read things. Certainly, I look for opportunities to learn things as -part- of my work. I am the HN crowd, sure, but I'm also a consummate gamer and waster of time. Heck, I'll even waste my time responding to HN comments. :P
Beyond that, for children, if you're just looking at kids who are already in school...yeah. No kidding. After 5-8 hours in school being 'taught' things, why they heck would someone spend their free time learning things outside of it? It's just like a job. But what about a kid who has hours of free time, and who sees, constantly, that there are people around them who 'know things', and they don't? They'll ask questions. Lots of questions. Encourage that, and you have learning.
I mean, I can't speak to you, the HN crowd at large, or people at large (nor can you), but I can say that given just the spare time the quarantine has given me, my unproductive pursuits very quickly ran dry (not for lack of them), and I've picked up learning a number of new things to fill the time. I don't think that's nearly as uncommon as you might think.