Unschooling is more than fine. It is the only sensible approach to education. 4 papers may not be enough to understand the subject. You repeat a great deal of false claims mass-produced by the system or by the power of parrot-like peer reviewed research biased by career or financial interest. Here are the sentences based on inveterate myths of schooling: “excellent empirical evidence that early years education”, “functionally illiterate people have difficult lives”, “improvement in cognitive capacity and teaching the ability to make abstract, logical deductions socialization aspect”, etc.
Also: “improving impulse control” has many negative sides effects. In the end, without “impulse” you lose your love of life, incl. love of other people. Russian peasants did not have access to the Internet.
Last but not least, imagine your feelings if someone put you to jail and said: “I just reject your claim that prison is that unpleasant”. That’s a failure of empathy
Compulsory schooling is a violation of human rights, and no utilitarian claim can override. The parallel with slavery is striking.
If you are 19, you have a better standing in this discussion. If you liked school, you have the right to underestimate the damage. Perhaps overtime, with some analysis, you will realize that most of your smarts and knowledge come from your own work and passion, and the impact of school was minimal or perhaps even a distraction. You need to realize, however, that in a global picture you are a lucky outlier, esp. at this age. Defendants of the school in your age category are a minority, and recruit mostly from Straight A high achievers who hate their golden path questioned. If school was ok for you, no wonder you do not feel your rights were violated. If you come from a friendly school system (e.g. Finland, Norway, etc.), you may have actually been gently indoctrinated that school is a fantastic necessity. It is very unhealthy to be told to learn things outside your interest, and accept it without protest. Protestlessness indicates amazing coincidence of interests, or unhealthy conditioning in which you are partly deprived of your own reasoning in matters of knowledge assessment.
When you say “school is fine”, it is a horrible verdict. I say “learning is the best thing in life”. In my book, school robbed you of 12 years of the best thing in life and gave you “fine goods” in return. If you count how many hours you spent in a school bench, and how little it would take today for your to learn it all on your own, you cannot but just be outraged with that “fine effect” at the cost of 20,000+ hours. Imagine you could get all this time back now and turn it into some thing productive or something you love. Still feels fine?
Impulse control can be healthy or unhealthy. If you develop a stoic mind, you will live longer. If you control your urge to sleep to show up for school in time, you will damage your brain.
A great deal of prisoners are very much like school graduates. They got accustomed to the comfort of having few decisions to make. For many prisoners, life after long sentences is more scary than prison itself. Similarly, graduates experience a culture shock when they are supposed to show autonomy, intelligence and own decision making. Those qualities wither in conditions of captivity.