Conference Program

Unschooling is often seen as a sort of escape from school, which is mainly considered as a guarantee for democracy. As a consequence, unschooling is mostly perceived as an anti-democratic form of education, as a way to avoid social duties, solidarity, respect for institutions, and the social dimension in general, as a way to keep away from what is “different” and from the difficulties and challenges you face at school.

This might be caused by a misunderstanding or a lack of knowledge about unschooling.

In fact, being per definition a child-led and non-coercive learning path (Holt 1967), unschooling can be seen as a democratic approach to education, where learning happens naturally (Vezzola, 2020) through life experiences in everyday society, by encouraging participation in daily decisions, collaboration, and social awareness and by nurturing fairness, respect, and empathy (Piffero, 2019). Children learn from an early age that their voices matter and this prepares them for lifelong engagement and social justice.

In this way, children are recognized as present-day citizens who can make decisions and are encouraged to engage in community action and social responsibility.

So, children can experience a democratic, respectful, negotiation- and participation-based way of growing, learning and relating to people from very different backgrounds, conditions and origins (Leali, 2025).

This paper aims to show some experiences of democratic education based on the principles of equality and citizenship in unschooling.