Folks often discuss the difference between classic homeschoolers and unschoolers. Which also roughly correlates to Christian homeschoolers and secular homeschoolers. Of course, folks will bicker about these labels. These same labels will also shift their definition within families, depending on who the teacher/parent is talking too in any given moment. There are many ways to talk about what unschooling is and how that relates to a Classic education, as "classic" is understood among homeschoolers. Add the specter of God and appropriate behavior for children in society to any such discussion, and its easy to see there is plenty of wiggle room in every definition. And passions run high. These are words whose technical definitions defy precision yet matter profoundly to the homeschooling community if not to all teachers or all parents.

We homeschoolers carry these classifications around ourselves like cloaks, sheltering cloaks. We think it matters a great deal, which side we're on. If we're with the classical religious folks or the breezy avant garde of theoretical pedagogy. But we're wrong. These distinctions are not most important.

The most important distinction is not how you homeschool, but why. All the different forms of schooling children can work well. The single most important factor in growing a baby to an adult will be parental input. In that way, all children are homeschooled. But among parents who identify as homeschoolers, the most important factor in getting their children educated is not a classic format nor unschooling nor any gradient between. Mind-bending as it truly is, all those different ways work. And work well.

I can tell you the different ways work and work well because I've seen the evidence with my own eyes. I've watched the kids grow up and leave home and display competency and ability to do what they want or need to do. And the scant research that's been done correlates well with positive results. Also, major universities adore homeschoolers---classic as well as unschooled. They will take them in almost any form they can get them. They will take them in a box, they will take them without sox, they will even take them from a fox. Universities love homeschoolers. So much, they have a tendency to wave all the stupid bullshit requirements they have for schooled kids. Which is a huge and scandalous secret. Don't tell anyone. But if you can demonstrate a homeschooling background and you are an intelligent person with integrity, you can probably go to college. Which, to my way of thinking, is a pretty solid indicator that something right is happening with homeschoolers. Universities have noticed the difference and they approve. No one can argue with that.

So what does it mean that how one homeschools does not matter as much as why one homeschools? Process is not as important as intention? That is an interesting proposition.

One thing sad thing I've noticed, lately, is that expelled homeschoolers--kids pulled out of school and thereby "homeschooled"--tend not to do well. Probably because their parents never intended homeschool. Their why isn't in the right place. Consequently they seem to have a hard time finding their how.