Deschooling, or unschooling, as it used to be called, has always seemed impractical to me. (I homeschooled for 8 years.)
If you happen to live in a state where you know your child will need to be tested each year to show they are at "grade level," I don't know how you could just sit back and let the child "choose" their own course.
In certain subjects, history, reading, and science, I did follow my son's lead on what we taught each year. But on math, grammar, and writing, it's just like many things in life, a discipline that must be learned, whether you want to or not.
I don't homeschool, but we are seriously considering this.
One of my daughters would do math, and the other would read some stuff on the computer. However, I think mostly they would sit around and do art projects.
I think my son could sit on the computer playing games all day long for many months if I let him.
We thinking of homeschooling my daughters, and I've already been asking them what they would like to learn. So far the leading topics are volcanoes, Egypt, and sea animals.
I think those are two different things, Dawn.
Deschooling is a strategy for taking some time off from any learning activities to give the child time to de-stress from the public school culture.
Unschooling is a method of education used by some homeschoolers in which the interests of the individual child are used to direct his/her learning, rather than structured lessons.
For example, if the student is interested (delighted) in dolls, you use dolls to teach history, math, etc., by basing the learning on the relationship between the subject and dolls. The name I've used for this method is Delight Directed Learning.
Some parents use unschooling to allow the student to direct all his/her learning, with the parent in the position of observer more than teacher. IMO, in the extreme, this can be dangerous to the student's learning. But, to each his own, I suppose.