Would Children be Prepared for the Real World by going to School or being Unschooled

Rebuttal: "As you can see, my opponent is yes, obviously better than me at debating, for he is probably more experienced, and older, whilst this is my first ever debate. I shall try to attempt to be better at this current round." This is not an excuse to fail to address an opponent's argument. If anything, this is a reason to vote Con. About the survey: This is not representative of all children since it is not a simple random sample of the child population. The survey was conducted based off of my opponent's personal experience and as such, it is most likely just representative of his friends. Even if this was not the case, the survey still does not take a random sample of the population of interest. The survey only targets public school children. In situations in which children are forced to "learn," they aren't as motivated to do it. This concept is very similar to reverse psychology; pressure to do something can often result in encouragement to do the opposite. The paragraph titled "Forbidden Fruit Tastes So Much Sweeter" in this article further explains the process http://www.businessinsider.com... Also, the survey suffers from high variability and response bias. My opponent admitted that it is "a small survey," so it also has a large margin of error. The response bias affects the result mainly in the social aspect of the survey; a child might not want to say that they enjoy math in order to avoid being negatively stereotyped. Lastly, my opponent still has the burden of proof that ALL children would be better prepared if they did not undergo "unschooling." The fact that some people in the survey actually did respond that they enjoyed math shows that some students can be self-motivated. Here is my opponent's next argument: "Also, I will admit that arguments 1 and 2 are truthful, yet the third may be argued, yet as I said, I'm new at this, so I would not be sure of arguing that at this time would be for or against the standardized debating rules." My opponent admits arguments 1 and 2 are true, so those can be extended into this round. Being new at a debate is not an excuse to fail to address an argument. Furthermore, even though my opponent says that argument 3 is arguable, by omission of a rebuttal, he admits that it is true. When my opponent refutes my argument that some skills are not learned in a typical school, he does not address the last example: riding a bike. In order to show that typical schools do not cover all learning, I only need to provide counterexamples. More counterexamples include walking dogs, getting a passport or visa, shaving, card games, what to do at parties, and more generally, social events. As for his statement that many schools have home economy classes, majority of these schools do not enforce these classes, and the classes are taken as electives, meaning that the student chose to take that course. This only proves my point that students are deemed responsible enough to control their own education. My opponent's next argues that EVERY student should learn "a majority" of topics taught in school. My opponent misinterprets my arguments in order to refute them. I gave an example that a physicist wouldn't need to learn African history in order to be successful, but then my opponent's response was "If we were to stop teaching history, errors from the past could be made in the future." I am NOT advocating for people to stop teaching history. I am NOT stating that unschooling is for everyone. I AM advocating that unschooling would be better for some people. My opponent uses math as an example to show that students are not self-motivated or responsible enough to learn topics on their own. However, the parents that allow their children to "unschool" are the same parents that trust their children to be responsible for their own education. Students who are self-motivated to learn can be expected to be more successful than the reluctant learners. Also, a reason why students ask "when will we ever use THIS in the real world" is because they do not understand its usefulness. A students who chose to learn math will likely understand the reasons why they chose to learn math and its practical importance. Unschooling forces students to make the decision to learn math on their own rather than be reluctant learners. Finally, my opponent presents unschooling only in its most extreme form. While the unschooling is characterized by freedom in what to learn, freedom has its limits the same way that the Freedom of Speech is limited. Parents ultimately have legal and educational right over their child and can direct their education if current methods are unsuccessful in teaching. "I now end my argument for round 3."