Unschooled: A Movie Review

I have two strong impressions after viewing the movie Unschooled. One because I personally know Peter Bergson and the second because of my experience advocating for unschooling and self-directed education.

I went to the screening already knowing that Peter was upset with his portrayal in the film and it's over-riding narrative of “kindly white person saves inner-city minority youths.” And I see why Peter is upset: by focusing on him and the pushback he receives as he grows the Natural Creativity Center the film diminishes the case that children can be trusted to learn on their own, which has always been the purpose of Peter’s work. Peter Gray sums it up well in this section of his FB post about the film :

"However, for people who are seeing this as their only exposure to Self-Directed Education, it can give the wrong impression. The focus of the film was on how Peter Bergson and the other adult facilitators very patiently and lovingly helped these young people come out of their shells. But normally that is not how SDE works. If this film had focused on younger children or on teens who had been less harmed to begin with, the role of adult staff would have been much less and the focus could have been more on the ingenuity and abilities of the kids, not the staff."

So, yes, it is a disappointment that a movie titled Unschooled didn’t really show what unschooling is like to the general public and was edited to fit into a conventional Hollywood marketing campaign. (I suggest the films of Jeremy Stewart and Clara Bellar for how children learn on their own at home and in their communities with unschooling.) I was prepared for this before I watched the movie and I think it is a valid criticism, but not a totally disqualifying one.

I think this film shows some things very well, namely the importance of empathy, patience, and how it takes considerable time to build trustful relationships with children and parents.

Educators and a lawyer in the film criticize Peter’s efforts as just another white guy who wants to help but doesn’t understand the real problem: these kids need credentials and discipline to succeed in the future, not free time, play, and a sense of being accepted for who they are now.

All three teens had trauma in their lives that public school was contributing to or ignoring, and they came from struggling families in struggling neighborhoods on top of that. Nonetheless, patience, kindness, and respect for each teen is shown to pay off educationally in this film.

Though not the main story, a strong storyline I find in this film is how adults become unschooled over time. We watch as these children and their families struggle with conventional school’s demand that children must learn a particular set of skills at a specific time and place, and how the Natural Creativity Center’s (NCC) approach is in direct contrast to the conveyor-belt of school.

The time and effort NCC puts into building trustful relationships causes the families in the film discomfort. They openly express their doubts that letting their young teenagers play and talk freely is somehow educational, and Peter listens to them closely. Peter’s resolve and abilities not to let anyone’s doubts undermine the deschooling, trust-building, and development of self-confidence processes we watch unfold for each of these young people is remarkable.

I think the movie title refers to the adults in it far more than the young; the adults are having their ideas of what schooling should be challenged and, like most people, they resist change. I know from my years in unschooling that self-directed learning is a tough idea for most parents and educators to grasp, often because they don’t understand what their role should be if not instructor or director of education: “If children learn on their own, then what do I do?” This attitude is clearly shown in the film as various professionals criticize the lack of direct instruction and how such permissive ideas about children and learning are not educationally worthy, especially for inner-city youth.

But NCC has a long-term view of how people learn, and when the young people return for a second year at NCC we see them using games and mentoring much more actively now that a baseline of trust in the NCC staff and process has been established. All three teens flourish in different ways and their parents recognize and appreciate the changes.

Nonetheless, one family is told by a school official that their previously quiet and withdrawn 14-year-old son Miles—who developed an interest in photography at NCC, studied it with a mentor, and put on a successful gallery show—must return to public school. Miles couldn’t do grade-level math despite years of public schooling, yet, despite improvement in his social behavior and his good work with film, he gets yanked out of NCC after just two years for not being up to grade level in math.

Peter shows that patience and listening to what a child is saying is often more important than giving them direct instruction, and that putting yourself in the child’s shoes—getting to know their family, neighborhood, and personal interests—helps inform how you can help them better than a school transcript and standardized tests can.

Anyone who wonders how to facilitate learning instead of directing learning can benefit from watching how it is done at NCC. Peter doesn’t respond immediately to every question or request from a student with a quick, definitive reply; he is often quiet before replying, allowing silence to exist for thought and reflection. The small teacher-to-student ratio is deliberate; personal conversations are made easier in small, less regimented environments, as is getting to know the families of the students.

This film does a good job of showing this, and that’s no small thing. The year-long deschooling process for these children and their families is fascinating to watch as it captures the common doubts and anxieties so many people express about letting children learn on their own schedules and refutes them with the positive outcomes that unfold. This is made more dramatic because we see the distressed homes and districts where the families live, a stark contrast to most films I’ve seen about unschooling which usually feature middle-class, suburban, white families.

The noise, drama, and sheer energy of children drives many people crazy, as we can read each day in the media’s pandemic parenting stories. But it is exactly those qualities that most children need to express, and NCC demonstrates and Peter discusses how to work with those qualities rather than stifle them.

At the end of the showing of Unschooled there was a good panel discussion about the film and it included Miles, now 17. He reflected on how weird it was to see himself on film when he was younger and that he couldn’t believe how he behaved then. He’s now working with young artists in Philadelphia to help promote their work and his own; his exposure to photography and film certainly paid off. We didn’t learn, or at least I didn’t hear, if he was still in public school and what he thought about it; at the end of the movie it notes that Miles’ mom still hadn’t found a public school that was a good fit for her son after four months. But Miles’ confident presence on the panel further boosted the legitimacy of NCC’s approach.

Peter has retired and works as a consultant to NCC and did not participate on the panel. NCC’s co-director, Krystal Dillard, was on the panel and did a great job advocating for self-directed education.

I recommend Unschooled for people who want to know how unschooling ideas can be incorporated into learning centers and other alternatives to school, particularly in low-income areas. Future presentations of Unschooled will be announced at https://unschooledthemovement.com/[][4].