Unschooling is Intrinsically Rewarding

I’ve been reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Many ideas in the book resonate with me. This one I encountered last night is a good example:

“When experience is intrisically rewarding life is justified in the present, rather than being held hostage to a hypothetical future gain.”

It connected for me because I’ve been thinking about unschooling lately and I think the truth of his statement helps to explain why unschooling is natural and compulsory education is unnatural. When learning is intrinsically rewarding, life is justified in the present. When learning is compulsory, life is held hostage to another’s desired future.