She doesn’t sound like a good friend at all, so for that YANBU! It’s horrible to be sending you articles about school being awful, is she really sending them directly to you? Sharing on FB generally is one thing but if she’s messaging them or tagging you it is remarkably socially unaware 🤔
I’m not against unschooling but we are a bit structured ourselves. That said it’s only recently that we’ve increased the amount of sit down and write type stuff, as the trauma my eldest particularly was carrying from school (and then later due to a bullying situation) was so deeply affecting her that she was scared to try anything. Stepping back was the only way to protect her mental health, but we did what we could still because I think particularly with maths and literacy, if you know you are behind it can affect self esteem. It’s a difficult balancing act.
They are really thriving on this new structured approach but we will all treasure the extra freedom they had before this, and I do think that time gave them more space to discover what subjects they really love with no pressure. They’ve really surprised me. And a lot of that did come from TV (history and human biology particularly) - picking up knowledge from shows has increased their confidence and made them feel more ready to pick up formal learning. Unschooling properly doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means ensuring there are opportunities and resources around. For example I am really glad I just left an Usborne lift the flap periodic table book on the side rather than jumping straight into working on it - my 8yo picked it up months later and barely put it down since, and is now going to be working on KS3 chemistry because it’s ignited a passion that I never dreamed was there, especially as he was a bit “meh” about the primary science curriculum. It’s a challenge for me too as I had such a mental block about science at school. But it’s really exciting!
We are lucky here that there’s a huge and thriving HE community and we were never short of things to do, so they always had plenty of socialising time and museum trips, science workshops etc - I tend to tell new HEers “friends first” as building a good support network makes a huge difference and happy children who aren’t isolated are more likely to learn anyway. Being away from school (both are autistic and it was just too much for them) meant they were more relaxed and they now do loads of after school activities as well, so they aren’t isolated away from school children either.
I have a different view I guess as we experienced school first (we did nearly home ed from the start but decided to try school). But I don’t like the evangelising that comes from some about unschooling. Only some. Most of the home ed community here at least is really chilled and varied and everyone just supports each other, but I have also faced criticism IRL and online for daring to do actual sit down learning 🙄 most of my friends are anti school (due to the experiences they’ve had) but that’s not the same as being anti education. Most people recognise that you can do “formal” learning while still enjoying the freedom that HE provides.
It sounds like your friend is desperate to justify themselves TBH. Most people don’t put down others and their choices.
I am not really sure about the endless TV time and iPad etc. There’s a lot of opportunity for learning, for example we spent ages on the iPad yesterday (their “free choice” game time has always been limited though) learning Japanese - and they are learning much faster than when we tried using books alone. There’s a lot of great TV available now. So it’s not impossible that they could be learning loads. You can’t really know unless you are there I think.