Seeing and living harmoniously

I don't really care as much about the definition of unschooling as I do about helping real individual families to unschool in a way that works, that can last, and not just be a temporary respite from school or curriculum, but that can be sustained and enlarging in and for their whole family. If learning stops where "parenting" starts, how will unschooling be "learning from life"? . . . .

It doesn't matter if no two families decide on a definition. But when I'm asked "How did you do that?" I'm going to be honest. It's not about academics. It's about having changed how I saw the world and children, and then living harmoniously with my children in a world I *know* to be filled with all the elements they need to thrive. I suppose someone could spend a lot of volunteer time telling people how to unschool without changing their attitude or parenting. I haven't seen that, though, because I don't know of any truly happy and successful unschoolers who have clung to traditional parenting. If it can work, no one who's doing it has come out and helped others do it that way too.


From a 2004 discussion on why unschooling isn't 'just' unschooling, or something
photo by Cátia Maciel

Who's asking, and why?

When questions come up about what to say to others who ask about what we're doing with our children, the answer is going to depend on who's asking and why. No one has an obligation to give a long defense of homeschooling to strangers in planes or elevators. Short answers can be the greatest. But because questions are phrased differently different times, and the relationships between the people vary, I'm going to provide several responses collected over the years. It might help to read them and adopt the best parts for your own purposes.

Sometimes it's a stranger, and sometimes it's a structured homeschoolers wanting to know why you're not using a curriculum.

Here is the collection of people's ideas:
SandraDodd.com/response
photo by Cathy Koetsier

What John Holt didn't know

NOTE FROM SANDRA: I was speaking, not writing, so when you get past that stuttery beginning, it might flow.

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One thing that John Holt, when he was writing about Teach Your Own, he, too, had a curriculum in mind. He, too, was thinking, not "Teach a curriculum," but "Do this, instead of school, until school is out, and then you will be done, and it will be cool, you will have dodged the bullet, you will have missed out on the damage of school." That’s worthy all by itself.

But John Holt didn’t have any children. He didn’t actually do what he was writing about people doing. I respect him, I love his books, I am glad he did what he did. But then people come along, after that, and they do it. And then they shared that with each other, and then people did it better than they saw their families do it. Other families say, “Well, I wish I hadn’t done this; it was all right, but oh, I wish we had done this." And so entire lives of young people have been lived now since John Holt died, who didn’t go to school. And what those families discovered, that John Holt could not have known, is that if you live your life receptive to the learning around you, accepting of input, appreciative of the other people around you who know things, and of the resources around you, and trying not to be prejudiced against input like television and videogame and comic book, then what happens is, the parents' learning kicks back in. The parents, who probably had sort of calcified because of school, they soften back up, and they start to want to learn. And so they are learning along with their children, or in a parallel-play kind of way. They might all be in the same place all learning different things, sharing the good parts.

Family Bonding (recorded interview and transcript)
SandraDodd.com/familybonding
photo by Sandra Dodd
of Keith and Holly, 2015

Live, see and think

Unschooling isn't another version of a curriculum, that will take four hours a day. Unschooling is a different way to live and to see and to think.

SandraDodd.com/seeingitcomments
photo by Julie T

Don't stop too soon

Some people define unschooling as a relationship (or lack of one) with school. Others define it as a relationship (or potential damage to a relationship) with their children.

It seems our detractors say "If my kids aren't in school and I'm not using a curriculum, I'm unschooling."

It seems to me that stopping there will lead to frustration and failure and the continuous little additions of rules and lessons and requirements.

It's enough if one is looking toward school and wants to declare the kids are out AND they're not going to use a curriculum. So at that point in the sort (if we were writing a computer program), they've passed through two gates:
     School? if no, then homeschooling
     Curriculum? if no, then unschooling

But will that last years? It's the label of a moment. "Now what?"

It's not a computer program. For me it's about natural human learning, not about not-school and not-curriculum.

SandraDodd.com/lists/help
photo by Jo Isaac
in Australia

"It's fun."

Sandra, in 2003:

I don't use the word "unschooling" except when I'm talking to homeschoolers.

When I'm talking to relatives or people at the grocery store or whatever, I say "We homeschool." Or more often, "Our kids don't go to school."

IF they seem interested, or if they make one of those canned-conversation responses like "Oh, that must be a lot of work," or "Oh, I could never to that," I just smile and say "It's fun. We mostly just have a lot of fun." or "We don't use a curriculum, we just learn from everything around us."

So within the inside of the inside of discussions with homeschoolers, I'm definitely an unschooler, but there's no advantage I've found in using that term with people who only want a one-minute "hi, how are ya? cute kid" conversation.

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Not so extreme, please

If the old rules were that school is vital and "an education" (defined as the curriculum of an ideal school) is necessary, will the new rules be that school is not important and an education is not necessary? We don't make school disappear by turning the other way. It's still there. Our kids might want to go to school someday, in some form. We don't deny that knowledge is important by becoming unschoolers, but many come to prefer the idea of "learning" with its vast possibilities over the narrower "education."

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Happy to see the day

When people insist that "all unschooling is" is just homeschooling without a curriculum or without lessons, I don't disagree. They should take it out and put it on billboards. Lobby to get it into the dictionary. Whatever. But when families come to ask how they can make unschooling work, it does no good to say "Just don't have a curriculum. See ya!" It takes layers of understanding, it takes recovery from school, and a desire to have a relationship with a child in which learning is flowing and easy. It takes working to create an atmosphere in which children and parents wake up happy to see the day.

—Sandra Dodd, in 2004
fourth post on this legacy page

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SORRY the link above didn't work in e-mail; I've restored it, I hope!

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SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Awareness of options

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Lots of people go through their whole lives never feeling like they had choices in many many areas of their lives in which they really did. Just like it is useful for unschoolers to drop school language (not use the terms teaching or lessons or curriculum to refer to the natural learning that happens in their families) it is useful to drop the use of "have to's" and replace it with an awareness of choices and options.

How we think—the language we use to think—about what we're doing, matters.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd

Still on your path

Lots of the photos I have these days are of paths. I love them. They're taken by people who were there, about to walk that very path, seeing things to the sides, hearing birds, or the wind, or other people. But we only see one view of one path.

The symbolism and the idea of a person being on his own path can be confusing and restricting, if others are trying to manage who walks where, and how. Path, trail, course, curriculum—they all can be about a pre-determined, inflexible way to go.

We only see our own paths by looking backwards. Find joy, today, in options and twisty turns. You're still on your path.

Hard paths and soft ones
photo by Amy Milstein

Swirly world

If you want unschooling to work just because you stick the curriculum under the couch, it won't! Get the world swirling around you (first) and your children (second) so there are sounds, sights, smells, tastes and textures for them to process and build their internal model of the universe from. GET MOVING, mentally and physically.

SandraDodd.com/addlightandstir
photo by Sandra Dodd

Steam-power, restored

The first time I went to Hollycombe Steam Fair was in 2011. I have been twice since, always with other unschoolers. Part of what I love about the whole collection of steam-powered machinery is that it has been found, gathered up and moved, restored, and maintained by volunteers who learned how to repair machinery from before they were born. Curiosity, a love of technology and of engineering, and a sense of wonder at how people lived at the turn of the century before this one have proven again that learning doesn't require school, or a curriculum, tests, or degrees. If the engine runs and if the gears are all set up so that the ride moves smoothly and safely, there is success.

There are also calliopes, and if you click below, you can see and hear more.

Steamfair Sights and Sounds
photos by Sandra Dodd

This "thing"

A mom in 1995:

Do you use books at all, Sandra?

SandraDodd:

What do you mean "use books"?

That mom:

As in curriculum, textbooks, etc.

SandraDodd:

I use books like crazy—we need to look at what you mean by "use."

. . . .
SandraDodd:

A lot of the problem with discussing all this is philosophical—the definitions of "learn" and "know" and things like that.

If we talk about what we "do" and "use" and "are" instead of what's happening in and with our children we dance around the "thing" without seeing the "thing" (and the next philosophical problem is: what is this "thing"?)

SandraDodd.com/chats/definitions
photo by Colleen Prieto

P.S. In the days of text chats, there would be ten or twenty people in the chat, rolling over each other. I wasn't saying I used a lot of texbooks; I was still responding to her first question. Reading chats is a bit different, but for those who didn't get to be in any, there was overlap and lag and confusion, and they were fun, too.

How Learning Works

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Unschoolers do not preplan a curriculum and we don't have predetermined lesson plans. What we have instead is an extremely rich environment for learning in which, for example, the globe sits on the living room coffee table and is regularly handled and part of our everyday life (not pulled out for a specific lesson). Learning is valued and constant. Connections are looked for everywhere and the whole family is involved and loves to explore ideas and gain new information and knowledge. Learning happens inside the learner's own head and is not always apparent to outside observers, but the proof, for me, is in the pudding. My kids think learning is what life is for. And I agree with them.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/learningworld
photo by Sandra Dodd

Successful unschooling

Unschooling might not look like a big deal when people are thinking "School? Curriculum? Unschooling?"

School or a curriculum can be picked up or put down. Unschooling, to succeed, needs to be lived, as a family.

SandraDodd.com/yacht
photo by Holly Dodd (it's called "Reach")

Building an epic nest

If you want to unschool, there's no curriculum to buy and you and your children will be discovering the secret passages and magical destinations without a schedule or a map.

To help you prepare for or strengthen your own heroic adventure, there are three tools you need, and a checklist of seven nest-building items for you to collect and protect.

Equip yourself with: confidence experience good examples Build your nest with food shelter love patience enthusiasm curiosity joy

Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Ever-changing opportunities

Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.

Unschooled children can organize their knowledge in free and better ways. They never need to feel they are through learning, or past the point that they can begin something new. Each thing they discover can be useful eventually. If we help provide them with ever-changing opportunities to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, move and discuss, what they know will exceed in breadth and depth what any school's curriculum would have covered. It won't be the same set of materials—it will be clearer and larger but different.
Seeing It
photo by Catherine Hassall

Life, living and being

I've said before that people shouldn't live with one foot in the school (with a curriculum, or trying to keep up with school), nor even in the shadow of the school.

It means to live as though school didn't exist. It means live outside of, far from, without thought of school.

Learn in ways that work naturally and holistically, where the learning has to do with life, and is living, and being.

—Sandra Dodd
2011

Step away from school
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Helping casually

No one needs an assembly line to make a single item, nor to educate a single child. Rather than seeing the curriculum and then trying to wrap that around your child, or insert all the parts, it works better to see your child and help him learn as part of a busy life, considering occasionally whether maybe you should introduce other topics into his life, or introduce him to other people, places and things. This can be done casually, though, and doesn't need to be scheduled or methodical.

page 121 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 110 in first edition)
photo by Chelsea Thurman
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Ideas might start to grow

There's a fun fallacy in people who sort of hear about unschooling and then condemn it. They often seem to have taken the position that they know all about school, and we aren't sure what or where it is. 😊

I don't know why I've survived all these years, still helping people. It's really tiring, because school defenders think we're clueless about school, and structured homeschoolers seem to assume that we have no idea what "a curriculum" might be. The same arguments and defenses and attacks, over and over.

But then some of them stick around to see what they're mad about, and discover that there's actually something to it, and even if they think it's crazy and irresponsible, the seeds have fallen, and someday when they're frustrated, and their child is sad, the ideas start to grow in them.

I guess that's why I stick around, too.


The learning and the beauty
photo by Niki Lambrianidou