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Underschooling

(v.)

Deliberately giving a child less formal schooling and more unstructured time, as a way to encourage free thinking.

They've been underschooling since sixth grade, opting out of memorizing Spanish conjugations to rebuild old computers instead. They've been underschooling since sixth grade, opting out of coding classes to rebuild old computers.

Does it ring true?

From the future, or already here?

Coinage notes

Playing off unschooling, the radical home-education movement John Holt named in the 1970s. But where unschooling opts out of school entirely, underschooling advocates for more unstructured real world experiences for learning.

Future Words book cover

There are 99 more where this came from.

Future Words: A Non-Obvious Glossary of Terms That Don’t Exist (But Soon Will) collects all 100, each with its example sentence and coinage notes, from the bestselling authors of The Future Normal. Hardcover, October 20, 2026.