Raising Adhya & Anju Without School: Our Answers To Your Questions
- Madhukar Dama
- Aug 30
- 8 min read
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🌿 Prologue
Most parents do not send their children to school because they truly believe in the power of education. They send them because of peer pressure.
“What will relatives say?”
“What will neighbors think?”
“Without school, will our child survive in society?”
The fear of being judged as “irresponsible” or “backward” makes parents surrender their child’s freedom. Deep inside, many parents sense that schools are not serving life, joy, or creativity—but they cannot fight the collective voice of society.
Unschooling parents, especially, suffer from a tremendous internal conflict. They see their child thriving in curiosity, play, and freedom. Yet every visit from relatives, every comparison with schooled children, every sarcastic remark about “no future without degrees” chips away at their confidence.
The real problem is not lack of courage—it is lack of factual, concrete, and confident answers.
When questions like “What about exams? What about marriage? What about jobs?” are left unanswered, even the strongest parent begins to doubt.
This guide exists for that reason.
It arms unschooling families with ready responses, real examples, and undeniable facts. Instead of feeling cornered, parents can now stand tall and reply with clarity.
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📖 Unschooling Defense Booklet
A guide for unschoolers and parents to confidently respond to fear-based questions from a society that believes school = future, career, marriage, money, respect.
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🎓 Education / Career
Fear Q1: Without curriculum, how will your child learn the basics?
Counter Q: Didn’t humans live, farm, invent, and heal long before schools existed?
Answer: Children learn math by handling money, science through nature, language through conversation.
Example: Malvika Joshi, an unschooler from India, got into MIT purely on her coding skills—not board marks.
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Fear Q2: No exams, no syllabus—how will they get into jobs or higher studies?
Counter Q: Are exams the only gateway? Or do skills and projects matter more?
Answer: Companies like Google, Tesla, Infosys no longer demand degrees; portfolios matter. Unschoolers can appear for NIOS or open university anytime if needed.
Example: Ritesh Agarwal (OYO Rooms) dropped out, built a billion-dollar startup.
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Fear Q3: Who will respect them without certificates?
Counter Q: Does respect come from papers or from contribution to society?
Answer: In India, even to be Prime Minister or President, no educational qualification is required—only trust of the people. If the highest offices of the land don’t demand degrees, why should a child’s life be chained to them?
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💰 Money / Survival
Fear Q4: Without structured study, how will they earn a living?
Counter Q: Isn’t adaptability and creativity the real wealth today?
Answer: Unschoolers explore projects early—coding, art, farming, music, writing.
Example: Tanmay Bakshi (homeschooled/unschooled) became an AI developer with IBM at age 13.
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Fear Q5: Won’t they become lazy?
Counter Q: Is free play laziness, or the seed of creativity?
Answer: Free play leads to innovation. Einstein credited playful curiosity for his discoveries.
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❤️ Marriage / Social Status
Fear Q6: Who will marry them without a degree?
Counter Q: Should marriage be based on marksheets or on kindness and compatibility?
Answer: Education doesn’t guarantee happy marriages. Many rural and tribal communities thrive without it.
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Fear Q7: What will relatives say?
Counter Q: Should we raise children for relatives’ approval or for freedom and wholeness?
Answer: Relatives may mock now but will boast later if the child succeeds.
Example: PV Sindhu’s parents ignored critics when they pulled her from regular schooling—today she’s an Olympic champion.
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👥 Social / Peer Pressure
Fear Q8: Won’t they miss friends?
Counter Q: Is friendship only found in classrooms with same-age kids?
Answer: Unschoolers make diverse friends—through clubs, communities, travel, online networks.
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Fear Q9: Without discipline, how will they survive hardships?
Counter Q: Is true discipline obedience to orders, or self-mastery?
Answer: Unschoolers build real discipline by pursuing passions deeply.
Example: Gitanjali Rao, unschooled innovator, created a water purification device at age 12.
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🧠 Knowledge / Learning
Fear Q10: Without textbooks, how will they gain knowledge?
Counter Q: Is knowledge confined to textbooks?
Answer: A child learns ecology from farming, economics from running a shop, language from stories.
Example: Aranya Johar, unschooled poet, became globally known through spoken word, not textbooks.
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Fear Q11: What if they never learn important subjects?
Counter Q: Does compulsion guarantee learning—or does it kill curiosity?
Answer: Unschoolers learn fast when they need something. Aaron Swartz, co-creator of RSS at 14, was mostly unschooled.
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🏛️ Authority / System
Fear Q12: Isn’t unschooling illegal?
Counter Q: Where does the law say “learning must only happen in a classroom”?
Answer: Indian law doesn’t ban unschooling. Many families use NIOS or open pathways for documentation. Thousands already unschool freely.
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😱 “What If” Fears
Fear Q13: What if they regret later?
Counter Q: Do school-goers never regret wasting 20 years memorizing useless facts?
Answer: If they later want school or college, doors remain open. But the freedom and creativity of unschooling is rarely regretted.
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Fear Q14: What if they fail in life?
Counter Q: Does school guarantee success?
Answer: India has millions of unemployed degree-holders. Success comes from adaptability and resilience—qualities unschooling nurtures best.
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🌍 World Leaders Who Proved School Isn’t Everything
Many of the world’s most influential leaders had little or no formal schooling. They rose to the highest offices not because of degrees, but because of courage, self-learning, and leadership.
🇮🇳 India
Giani Zail Singh (7th President of India, 1982–1987)
Very limited formal education.
Self-taught through scriptures and literature.
Rose to become President of India.
Charan Singh (5th Prime Minister of India, 1979–1980)
Interrupted education due to poverty.
Grassroots political experience shaped his rise to PM.
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🇺🇸 United States
Abraham Lincoln (16th President) → Less than 1 year of formal schooling, self-taught.
Andrew Johnson (17th President) → Never went to school, wife taught him basics.
Harry Truman (33rd President) → Couldn’t afford college, self-educated.
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🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Winston Churchill (Prime Minister during WWII) → Performed poorly in school, never attended university, later Nobel Laureate.
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🌍 Others
Nelson Mandela → Fragmented education, self-taught in prison.
Golda Meir (Israel) → Minimal schooling, became PM.
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✨ The Lesson
The highest offices in India (President, Prime Minister) have zero educational requirements.
Many world leaders had little or no schooling, yet shaped history.
What mattered? Character, courage, resilience, curiosity, leadership.
Exactly the same qualities that unschooling nurtures.
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🌱 Final Note
Unschooling isn’t about rejecting learning.
It’s about trusting life itself as the curriculum.
When society fears “no school = no future,” remind them:
👉 Even the Prime Minister or President of India can hold office without any educational qualification.
👉 If the nation’s leaders don’t need degrees, why should children be chained to marksheets?
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🌱 Epilogue
Peer pressure is the silent schoolmaster of our society. It does not live in classrooms—it lives in gossip, comparison, and the fear of rejection. That is why most children go to school, not because their parents are convinced, but because their parents are afraid of being questioned.
When unschooling parents cannot answer those questions, the fear seeps inward, creating guilt and self-doubt. They begin to wonder: “Am I destroying my child’s future?”
But the truth is the opposite—unschooling frees a child to live, learn, and create without chains.
This Defense Booklet is more than a set of arguments. It is a shield. It restores the parent’s confidence by proving:
That life itself is the curriculum.
That success does not come from certificates.
That even the highest leaders of nations have risen without degrees.
With this knowledge, families can silence the noise of society. They can walk their path with dignity, knowing that freedom is not a gamble—it is the most natural inheritance of every child.
In the end, unschooling is not about fighting against school.
It is about choosing wholeness over fear, freedom over conformity, and trust over doubt.
This booklet is a companion for every family that dares to live differently.
The Monster of Questions, The Freedom of Answers
They come early morning,
eyes sharp like knives,
tongues dripping fear,
voices rehearsed in the classroom of society.
“What about discipline?”
they spit at me,
as though discipline is
rows of chairs,
bells ringing,
hands folded behind your back.
And I say—
Discipline is watching Savitri grind masala,
not missing a beat,
even when the firewood smoke blinds her eyes.
Discipline is Adhya watering the plants daily
without a reminder.
Discipline is Anju building a clay pot,
hours and hours,
until her small hands find balance.
No bell.
No punishment.
Only rhythm.
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Another one shouts,
“Without exams, how will they know their worth?”
Exams—
as if a child’s soul
fits in a paper with four options.
Worth—
as if red ink is God’s stamp.
I answer:
Anju knows her worth
when the papaya she planted
grows taller than her head.
Adhya knows her worth
when she writes a story
and her grandmother laughs,
cries,
and claps in the same breath.
Our worth is not in grades,
but in the echo of real life.
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A neighbor tilts his head,
cunning:
“Without uniforms,
won’t they grow wild?
Like weeds?”
Weeds?
I laugh.
We are wild,
and we bloom in ways
your manicured lawns never will.
Adhya wears mismatched clothes,
Anju sometimes paints her face blue—
but their hearts
grow straight,
not bent by shame.
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An elder aunt frowns,
“But how will they learn respect?
School teaches respect.”
Respect?
I ask.
Respect is not standing up when a teacher enters.
Respect is when Anju feeds rice to a street dog
before she eats herself.
Respect is when Adhya listens
to her grandfather’s slow, trembling words
and doesn’t interrupt.
School trains obedience.
Home teaches respect.
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One man, nervous, mutters,
“What if they turn lazy,
wasting their lives?”
Lazy?
Look around:
every day they work,
because curiosity never sleeps.
Adhya spends afternoons
figuring how shadows bend with the sun.
Anju spends evenings
mixing mud with cow dung,
making toy bricks,
dreaming of houses.
Lazy is sitting in a chair
eight hours a day,
copying notes without meaning.
Our children do not know that disease.
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Another voice, bitter with pity:
“What about English?
Without school,
their tongues will never shine.”
I grin.
English?
Adhya plays with words like kites in the wind.
Anju invents riddles in two languages.
They pick up English
the way they pick up marbles—
rolling, tossing,
laughing.
Languages belong to ears,
not to classrooms.
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Then someone from the shadows asks,
“But aren’t you afraid?
No certificates,
no papers—
what if one day the gates close on them?”
Afraid?
Yes, I was.
Savitri was.
But fear is a lock.
We chose not to wear it.
The world has cracks,
and light seeps through.
A certificate is one kind of key—
but living,
really living,
is a master key.
Doors open for those
who knock with confidence.
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They turn now to Savitri,
“But won’t people laugh at you,
a mother without schoolbags,
without report cards to show?”
She smiles,
slicing onions—
“Let them laugh.
Onions sting too,
but we keep cooking.”
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They corner the children—
Adhya, Anju—
with the cruelty adults save for little ones:
“Don’t you feel left out?
No friends?
No benches to share?”
Adhya lifts her chin:
“My friends are birds.
They never betray me.”
Anju giggles:
“My friends are goats.
They follow me everywhere.”
Then both, in chorus:
“And we have each other.
Isn’t that enough?”
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And when all questions are exhausted,
they sigh,
heavy,
the last bullet saved for the end:
“But what about the future?
The future!
Without school,
they have no future.”
I breathe.
Slow.
Deep.
The future—
no one owns it,
least of all schools.
The future is not tomorrow.
It is here,
now,
in Anju’s muddy hands,
in Adhya’s ink-stained fingers,
in Savitri’s steadfast eyes,
in my refusal to bow.
The future is unschooled,
because life
never had a classroom.
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And so the monster of questions rages,
but we—
we feed it patience,
truth,
and a smile.
Because our answers are not polished,
not stamped,
not certified.
They are lived.
Every day.
Every breath.
Every harvest.
