Ancient, recent and future history

Sorting out news from "current events" from history isn't as easy as it once was, with the internet and with so many sources and resources. Some history isn't very old at all, while other history is archeology and paleontology.

If you think of it all as stories, people, places, things, trivia and connections, it won't matter what label school might have put on it. Have fun with history!

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Sandra Dodd

A problem with chess...

Some people play chess well,
     but it's not for everyone.

In 2006, a mom wrote:

I still can't play chess or behave well.

My response:

Hey!
I don't like chess because there's no storyline, no characters. 🙂 And when in the ancient days I was in school, my worst grades were always in conduct. I failed to make the Honor Society in high school not for grade average, but for... conduct. 🙂

I wouldn't have changed it. They rewarded dullness and conformity. They honored meekness.

— Sandra

SandraDodd.com/lists/excision
scanned image by Sandra Dodd
Scanner Art

Part of being human

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

Unschooling is at its core an understanding that learning is a part of being human. It is a recognition that school undermines that by saying that learning needs to be organised, structured and handed down. School argues that certain things are so hard to learn that they must be taught. If you unschool partway you are mixing up your messages. If you unschool math and science and reading but structure nutrition and media studies you are arguing that while a rich and engaging life may make the three "r"s obvious they won't help you to deal with the difficult studies of food and televisions and video games and computers.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Sarah S.

Understanding

Joyce Fetteroll wrote, twelve years ago:

Natural learning is easy to understand. It's not so easy to feel confident that natural learning is as good as (let alone better) than institutional learning. Natural learning *shouldn't* test as well as school learning. It isn't geared to passing tests. It's geared to understanding. And understanding is hard to test for!

If natural learning were easy to trust Sandra could have put up on her website:

Create a rich environment. Support and feed their interests. Connect with them.

And none of us would still be sitting here nearly 20 years later, still explaining that it does work. 😉

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/simple
photo by Christine Milne

Who needs to know what?

In a discussion about things unschooling parents have learned from their kids, I told a story involving my Uncle Billy Jack, a fun guy I didn't see much:

When I was a kid, 10 or so, my mom's youngest brother (who was probably 24, 25 at the time) asked me "What's the capital of South Dakota?"

I said "I don't know, what is it?"

He said "I don't have to know—I'm not in school."

That moment is branded in my brain.

I went and learned it [Pierre, SD] when I got home, and haven't forgotten, though it will NEVER matter to me in any way whatsoever. It's trivia disguised as "knowledge." But the idea that there were things kids needed to know and adults didn't care anything about stayed with me.

---

Unschoolers see their kids learning all kinds of things joyfully, for fun. I'm definitely NOT opposed to trivia. Trivia means "it won't be on the test." Without tests, everything can be entertaining trivia.

SandraDodd.com/trivia
photo by Alex Polikowsky

No guarantee

Someone wrote:
I guess I need more reassurance so it doesn't seem like such a huge gamble.

I responded:

Would school seem like less a gamble to you?
Would buying a curriculum seem like less a gamble?
Moving to a fancier neighborhood, or to a country not involved in any wars?

I cannot make my children's lives good. I can't ensure their success. I cannot make a tree grow. I can water it and put a barrier near so Keith doesn't hit it with a lawnmower, and ask my kids not to climb in it while it's young.

I could destroy that tree, all kinds of ways. I could do it damage. I could neglect it. But I can't predict where the next branch will grow, or whether it will double in size this year or just do 1/3 again of its height. Not all years' growth are the same.

I could mess my kids up and make them unhappy and keep them from having access to things, but I cannot make them learn. I can't make them mature. I can give them opportunities and room to grow, and food and water and a comfortable bed.

I can't guarantee anything for anyone else, nor for my own family. I know what does damage, and I know what might help.

from the page "Huge Gambles (or small gambles)"
SandraDodd.com/guarantee
photo by Cátia Maciel

About Teaching and Learning

List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.

Try to think of three friends who make a living at things they learned outside of school (list by occupation/skill).

—Two of seven questions on a 1997 handout
for an "Intro to Unschooling" workshop

SandraDodd.com/introduction
photo by Sandra Dodd

Reading, thinking and doing

Alysia Berman wrote:

It took several years before I stopped having those fears creep into my thoughts every once in a while. I can finally say that after about nine years of reading about, thinking about and doing unschooling those fears don't enter my mind anymore.

I tell people that I'm amazed every day by what my kids know and learn. It seems miraculous. It's not, really. It's normal. I see it as miraculous because I was indoctrinated to believe that none of this could happen outside of school and without teachers.

—Alysia Berman

---

At first, it's not easy to see learning.

After a while, it shows easily.

This Friday, see if you can step away from learning, just for a while.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Jo Isaac

One seamless whole

Tina Bragdon wrote:

More and more I am beginning to understand what you say about the power of our words, the semantics of them, and what they reveal about our thoughts deep down. I used to think long ago this was a bit nitpicky, but really can see what you mean when I really stop and think about it.

I think that awareness (for me anyway) is easier to come by with some of our loaded words like "lazy", "she-he always/never.." and such, but most of us weren't homeschooled let alone unschooled and as such don't realize the impact of being graded, sorted, and categorized from the age of 2-3 or so (ie-being regarded as "toddler", preschooler" and so on).

The more I take the word "teach" out of my vocabulary and am conscious of it the better it is for me and the easier it is to see my children's lives as one seamless whole and not divided by subjects.

—Tina Bragdon

The School in my Head

Mindful of Words

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Holly Dodd

Out of order

The past few days have been glitchy, but I was calm, from years of practice.

Yesterday's post was lacking a link to something I think you might enjoy. My question and the beginning of the response are here, and it should link to the rest (but scroll up, there):

Sandra: why does freeze frame sound like the Ramones or Devo ChatGPT: If by "Freeze-Frame" you mean the 1981 hit by The J. Geils Band, I can hear why it might remind you of both Ramones and Devo, even though it isn't really either one. A few things overlap:...

If I had a graph of the order in which I've learned different kinds of music, it would seem glitchy, too. I'm still figuring out lots of things I missed while I was more involved in traditional music, English ballads, madrigals, and medieval and Renaissance Christmas music. Some of that was singular, or duets. Some was leading groups of people. Keith and I spent years immersed in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and weren't paying much attention to what was new and current.

Keith was in high school, listening to The J. Geils Band, The Doobie Brothers, Steppenwolf and Jethro Tull, while I was at the University of New Mexico, playing in the first iteration of their early music program (then called "The Keller Consort"). I listened to albums, but not much radio. I was "studying" Elton John, Cat Stevens, and Joni Mitchell.

Keith and I have been a couple for over 45 years and have done vocal and instrumental music together, and shared each others' old favorite music. He didn't know anything about Donovan, and I think he knew Paul McCartney and Wings better than he knew The Beatles. I couldn't tell Steely Dan from The Doobie Brothers.

It still works if things are learned out of order. When I was little, I could read music before I could read words. Music is in and around me.

I'm still curious, and I'm still learning.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Holly Dodd

P.S. Keith still goes to SCA events and does music. I wandered off.

See the light, lightly

If we concentrate more on politics and the awfulness of school, we're not paying attention to our kids. I won't sacrifice my family on the altar of social change. My family will be a light, not a bonfire.

SandraDodd.com/issues/choice
(A Downside of Choice)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Seeing and enjoying children

Katherine (Katherand2003) wrote:

To see children through school eyes is like continually longing for a fish to climb a tree. It's a view that insists on an improbable future or that looks mostly for a child's potential, perhaps never able to enjoy the present moment.

To see children as they are is to have the capability to enjoy them now. Without that view, I think unschooling is hard or impossible.

—Katherine

SandraDodd.com/normal
photo by Colleen Prieto

Games, toys, museums, trips, books...

I cringe when I hear/read/see a mom thinking unschooling will take less effort and cost less than having children in public school. Anyone unschooling to save time and money is going the wrong direction. It might cost less in absolutely-required expenditure compared to buying a curriculum or paying private school tuition, and most unschoolers I know are content with plain or used or funky clothes (compared to school uniforms or required fashions and name brand things that might get stolen or lost at school). But if parents don't want to spend ANY money on games, toys, museums, out-of-town trips, books, whatever it is the kids might be interested in, then I think that's not the best the parents could do as unschoolers.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Cátia Maciel

First day of school

Concerning Kirby Dodd and driver's ed, twenty+ years ago:

Finally, when he went, he was nearly seventeen. That was his first day of school, ever. He took an apple and gave it to the teacher saying, "I've never been to school before; I understand this is what people do."

On that first day there was a pre-test with a question booklet and a separate answer sheet. Kirby was circling the letter and then writing out the right answer.

When the teacher asked if everyone was through, Kirby had three more left and said he was still writing. The teacher said "writing?" So Kirby's only problem with driver's ed was his total unfamiliarity with the traditions involved with test-taking. He got seven out of ten. He missed one about hydroplaning, which he said wasn't worded well to get the answer they wanted. I doubt that many of the other kids were analyzing the construction of the test questions.

SandraDodd.com/driversed
photo by Sandra Dodd
(previously used with other text)

A new kind of change

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way!

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/math/phobia
photo by Christine Milne

Clearly powerful words

In a discussion unrelated to this, I had written:

There are no "preschoolers" when you're not planning to send a child to school. There are young children. In the same way that it's better, for unschoolers, to say a child is eight than that he is a third grader, the designation "pre-schooler" is jarring.

Tina Bragdon wrote:

Thank you, Sandra for posting this! More and more I am beginning to understand what you say about the power of our words, the semantics of them, and what they reveal about our thoughts deep down. I used to think long ago this was a bit nitpicky, but really can see what you mean when I really stop and think about it.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Annie Regan

Deschooling and Games

Lyle Perry was one of my favorite unschooling-volunteer-helper writers, and the following were his responses to someone who shall remain nameless, who was complaining about Yu-Gi-Oh. The indented sections are Lyle's pull-punches-gently responses. —Sandra

---

I wonder when he will ever learn anything!

Maybe he's wondering when you will ever SEE what he's learning. Maybe he's wondering when you will join him in what he's learning, or at least express some joy and satisfaction that he IS learning. (He IS learning, you know.)

That's all he talks about. Yu-Gi-Yo Cards

What do you talk about? Anything BUT Yu-Gi-Oh cards? It sounds like you're waiting for him to get through a "phase" or something so he can really get down to some serious learning. The problem is, he's already there, he's just waiting for you to catch up! You're the one that's behind. He's doing the learning, he's moved on, and you're still stuck on the same chapter. It's time to turn the page. Or better yet, put that book down, wrap it in some gasoline soaked newspapers, and offer it up as your last sacrifice to the School Gods. Their powers are obsolete now. Break free from the academic death grip they have on your mind and set yourself free!

And he doesn't know how to play the game, and I am so not interested in trying to teach the game.

Well, that's a pretty depressing attitude. Would you be interested in teaching him geography? Biology? Seismology? Are those the important things? Your things are important and his things are crap? If that's true, I don't blame him for not being interested in your stuff. Why should he get excited about your stuff when you look at his stuff with disdain and revulsion? Don't forget that he's learning something about the signals you're sending him too. He's learning ALL the time. Don't let him learn that his mom thinks what he does is stupid.

—Lyle Perry, the responses
(more here)

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Colleen Prieto

How will they learn everything they need to know?

"How will they learn everything they need to know?"

Do the best of the high school graduates know everything they need to know? No, and at some point, ideally, they start learning on their own. Some fail to get to that point, though. Unschooled kids have a head start. They know how to find what they need to know, and they have not been trained to ignore things that won't be on the test.


SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Ideas, pulled in

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Teaching is pouring knowledge over a child. Whether a child takes it in is not in the teacher's power. Which is why teachers punish and reward to make not taking in an idea less pleasant.

Learning is a child pulling in ideas. Those ideas are most full of life when those ideas connect to other ideas the child is fascinated by. It makes no difference if those ideas connect along a particular path. Which is why natural learning looks so chaotic and meandering compared to school.

It makes it hard to create an environment for a child to explore freely and pull in what fascinates them when someone is unschooling through a fog of TEACH.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/teaching/problem
photo by Amber Ivey

Learning and loving it

Can they go to college/university?

I've never heard of anyone being turned away from higher education because they were homeschooled in any manner. If tests are required, the kids can take the test cold and then prepare if they didn't do as well as they had wanted to, or they could study in advance of taking the test. Some universities will let people in on a trial basis, and if they do well they're in. Some will accept a portfolio in place of a school transcript.

There are dozens of stories from professors saying they love having unschoolers in their classes, and tales of unschoolers who enjoyed classes, and excelled.

SandraDodd.com/faq
(Answers to the Most Repeated Unschooling Questions of All Time)
photo by Nina Haley,
inside The Globe Theatre