A life full of sights, sounds, tastes...

My favorite definition of unschooling is providing an environment in which learning can flourish. School prescribes what should be learned, and in what order. Then they build an assembly line, and put all the students on it. They reward those who get through easily, and punish others. School at home is like an assembly line for one.

Unschooling is a way to homeschool, but without the schoolishness. Things can be learned in whatever order they come along, and the learner will eventually connect all the information he has gathered, but maybe not in the same way or in the same order as the assembly line would have had him do it.

When a child’s life is full of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, people and places, he will learn. When he feels safe and loved, he will learn. When parents begin to recover from their own ideas of what learning should look like (what they remember from school), then they begin a new life of natural learning, too.

Learning for Fun: Interview with Sandra Dodd, by Rashmie Jaaju, 2012
photo by a self-portrait set-up at a conference, of Sandra Dodd wrapped in a quilt made by Lori Odhner