I'm used to the idea of the elevator pitch as something one has prepared for those scenarios when you have to explain (sell or pitch) something to someone in a short amount of time -- the time it takes to ride with that person in an elevator. It has to be short and compelling enough to capture interest and get the person to ask questions or investigate for themselves further.

By no means am I out to evangelize something that I think is a very personal choice. But if someone asks me what unschooling is, I have to be prepared to answer. There are some elevator pitches on the unschooling.com site. You can probably come up with different ones for yourself depending on the scenario and audience. One pitch I might give:

What's unschooling? It's a method for child-directed learning that we're taking with our son. It takes him out of a formal school setting and focusses on tailoring his education to his specific needs and interests. Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of this kind of learning is that it lets him go wherever his interests take him without confining him to any conventional ideas about how, where or with whom he is allowed to learn. The world is his classroom.

I think this kind of pitch is a positive approach that talks about a few of the benefits of unschooling rather than talking about the negative effects of school. I'm tailoring my pitch to help my son's approach to talking about school, because he meets and plays with kids who are in school. Once in the library, a woman asked him if goes to school and he responded, "Some kids like school, some don't". He was a little over 3 years old at the time. We then told the woman that he's being homeschooled right now. I love our son's response because it didn't make the little girl he was sitting with (or the mother) feel like she was being judged. It was very honest.

In the end, many of us tire of having to explain our decisions to unenlightened people who want to rif on the same issues: what about socialization, etc. I've written my opinions on that issue. We've had this same experience when it comes to attachment parenting issues. If you want to be the evangelist, I guess you really have to try to be prepared to answer those questions. Being someone who is thinking about his child's education, I really feel like I've read about and talked about a lot of these issues already and may have thought about my child's education more than most schooled children's parents have. In fact, I had a great experience once when my past therapist questioned our investigation of home schooling (he was 2 at the time). I felt confident that every response I gave made home schooling sound right for our son's expressed needs at 2 and with every day, I feel like our willingness to be flexible to his needs leads not to school. But if ever his needs change, we'll work with him to find the solution that best meets his needs, whether that's in a school or outside of one.

Out in the wild, I'm not sure if I want to engage with everyone about what unschooling is. But mostly, my pitch will be about homeschooling in general, because I tend to shy away from labels and unschooling is a label that is really on the fringe. As with the AP questions, sometimes I'm just too tired to deal. But once in a while, there will be a situation where I feel like I can deliver my pitch. Receptivity and openness of the receiver always help.