I've always felt strongly that unschooling should be about the ideas and not about the individuals. No one book, website, speaker or conference should try to be (nor be expected to be) everything for anyone, but unschooling parents should gather and glean what they can from all the real world around them. We don't need to all agree, or all be on the same list or at the same conference for families to learn and grow with unschooling.
It helped me think more clearly about unschooling when I realized unschooling isn’t something kids do. Unschooling is something parents do. Unschooling is *parents* creating a learning environment for kids to explore their interests in.
Unschooled kids aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. They’re merely doing what comes naturally. They’re doing what all animals with lengthy childhoods do. They learn by doing what interests them in an environment that gives them opportunities to explore.
Unschooling is parents doing something extraordinary. It’s deliberately creating an environment where kids are supported in pursuing their interests.
I really believe unschooling works best when parents trust a child's personhood, his intelligence, his instincts, his potential to be mature and calm. Take any of that away, and the child becomes smaller and powerless to some degree.
Give them power and respect, and they become respected and powerful.
I know in the nitty gritty of my heart, I'm not okay with a life philosophy that centers on "if it's fun I'm here, and if it's not, I'm gone."
Joyce Fetteroll responded:
Don't think of what we're talking about as fun, then. Think of it as joy. Or fulfilling. Or satisfying.
Even the most joyful life isn't all peaches and cream. Sometimes it rains when we wanted it sunny. Sometimes a friend cancels when we wanted to do something together. Sometimes accomplishing something means working through a period of frustration.
Life will naturally throw lemons at us fairly regularly. But what we don't need is to squirt life with artificial lemon juice to prepare us.
Problem:
My son spends a lot of his time playing video games. I have accepted that this is his passion... and maybe very well play a part in his career path. but lately he's also been watching videos of other people playing video games on YouTube! Please help me see a reason that this is not just a waste of time... I know you'll have a good way to look at this latest passion.
An idea:
Musicians watch videos of other musicians. Athletes watch videos of other athletes. Chess players have even been known to watch other people play chess with something approaching awe and rapture. Woodworkers watch woodworking shows. Cooks watch cooking shows. Dancers watch better dancers and learn like crazy!
[and there was more, ending with...]
Don't worry about what kids choose to do. Make sure they have lots of choices, and don't discriminate between what you think might be career path and what might "only" be joyful activity and self-expression, or what might seem to be nothing more than relaxation or escapism. Let them choose and be and do.
The first step is finding something that's better than what you have.
The second step is wanting to change.
The third step is figuring out how to change.
So, as you read along, you may wonder why I suggest that parents
basically make life more difficult for themselves. The reason is
because I believe it leads to a much better place. And that better
place is a more joyful life for our children and our families.
If someone knew almost nothing in the world but trivia relating to
popular music for the past 100 years, that would make a HELL of a good
grid over which to lay other things. And I don't think a thorough
knowledge of pop music (in any culture or language) over this
particular past hundred years, which saw the proliferation of recorded
music available in homes, the advent of radio broadcasts, movies with
music, television variety shows, transistor radios, cassette players
in cars, CDs, iPods and cell phones that store a ton of music could
help but create a timeline of the culture. Wouldn't songs from Marx
Brothers or Fred Astaire movies remind people of The Great
Depression? Can anyone hear big-band swing music and not also think
of the hairdos and costumes? Does "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" not remind
anyone of WWII? Knowing some of the context of Gene Autrey and Roy
Rogers brings up LOTS of stories about where those songs were first
heard.
The lyrics of some of the songs make specific mention of historical
events, and that could help dating things, too, if a person were
trying to figure out what came first.
Any hobby delved into deeply becomes another portal to the whole
world—real and imagined; past, present and future.
"Trivial" connections are real
video from Young Frankenstein, 1974
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written (in part) by, and starring, Gene Wilder
What does a tree need for its leaves and twigs to develop more?
What does a cat need for its brain to develop more?
They need a lack of abuse. They need water and food, sunshine. The
cats can use things or people to play with, and people or other cats
to groom them, pet them, lie down next to them sometimes. The tree
might need to be less in the shade of other trees for optimal growth,
or might need not to be where the wind is banging their branches
against a cliff or building or fence or something.
If you think of people as the natural, biological beings they are,
rather than as school kids who either are or are not in school, things
become much clearer.
Schooling works by pouring expertly selected bits of the world into a child. (Or trying to, anyway!)
Unschooling works by the child pulling in what he wants and needs. It works best by noticing what the child is asking for and helping him get it. It works best by running the world through their lives so they know what it's possible to be interested in.
. . . .
Real learning travels the child's path of interest, from one bit of information that interests them to the next. Real learning is self testing by how well it works in the situation the child needs it for. Real learning is about understanding enough to make something work.
A person can only "refuse" what is demanded, maybe, the same way a child can only rebel against something that is required arbitrarily. Because if the mom can explain persuasively why she thinks something should be a certain way, the others might understand, and choose that for the reasons stated, not because the mom said so.
If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.
Some unschoolers become confused on that, and they begin to frolic in the "freedom" that they are pretty sure some stranger online granted them, and that unschoolers have inalienably from God, bypassing all forms of government and the limitations of wallboard. And so if an unschooling family is up at 3:00 a.m. playing Guitar Hero, they seem mystified that the neighbors have called the landlord.
If he had a bedtime, we would have missed our 2:00 am chat about My Little Pony, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Shakespeare, cellular peptide cake with mint icing, the two Queen Elizabeths, the nature of cats in general and ours in specific, word play, fan fiction, Lord of the Flies, specism (like racism and ageism), Harry Potter, and Heinlein.
It's something I would never have known I was missing out on, and I love these conversations and insights, and how they change as he grows.
One wonderful thing in unschooling is realizing you don't know whether it's a school day or not. It is evidence of deschooling.
Don't forget school days completely, though, because you can plan outings when the museums and playgrounds are empty. There won't be a crowd at the cinema.
Lean, one choice at a time, one conscious thought at a time, until your choices and thoughts are solidly in the range where you want to be, and you no longer lean that other way so much.
Your new range of balance will involve better choices and options than your first attempts did.
Once someone wrote that babies had no experience and no way to communicate except "frustrated cries, screams and babbling."
I responded:
There is touch. There is gaze. Have you never just looked into the eyes of your child, communicating? Have you not touched them soothingly, and felt them touch you back sometimes? They can tell the difference between an angry look and a gentle look.
QUESTION: But I wonder how we are preparing them for adulthood then?
Joyce Fetteroll's
ANSWER: How did you prepare your newborn to be a toddler? How did you prepare your toddler to be a 6 yo?
They learn what they need now. The nows just naturally keep coming along and the kids end up where they are today already knowing what they needed last year and acquiring what they need for today.
I love Joyce's answers. My own to such questions has usually been "Does high school prepare people for adulthood? Does a university degree teach them everything they need to know?"
Kids who haven't been to school are different, but here is Joyce Fetteroll's advice for helping kids deschool when needed:
The best thing you can do while they're deschooling is let them play. And help them play. Make play dates. Make sure they have things they enjoy playing with. *Be* with them. Find out why they enjoy something so much. When they feel free—rule of thumb is one month for each year they've been in school, starting from the time when you last pressured them to learn something—be more active about running things through their lives: movies, TV shows, books, places to go: ethnic restaurants, museums,
monster truck pulls, walks in the woods, funky stores ....
Look for the delight in life and it will infect your kids. 😊 As long
as it's *honest* interest and delight! If it's fake interest to get
them to pay attention to something you think would be good for them,
they're going to notice and avoid it. It's the tactic they've been
awash in since kindergarten: "Learning is Fun!"
