Learning in all directions

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Some kind of learning is happening all the time — but not all learning is good. Learning how to sneak food, learning that parents can't be trusted and counted on, learning to think of oneself in negative ways, all sad. Learning that life is boring, hard work, sucks, hurts, is unfair, also sad. Not what unschoolers are trying for.

Human brains are voracious and will feed on whatever is available. Unschoolers should be offering interesting experiences, ideas, stimulation, music, logic, conversation, images, movement, discovery, beauty, etc. Brain food in abundance. It requires effort. It requires attention to qualitative and quantitative aspects of learning. Depth and breadth — creating a lifestyle in which kids are offered the opportunity to learn a lot about some things and a little about a lot of things.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Colleen Prieto

Doing enough?

Are you doing enough? Are your kids looking at you expectantly, or are they busy off doing something fun? Have they seen the cool touristy stuff in your town already? "Field trip" kind of stuff? Do you let them do it at their own pace, and "quit early" if they want to? Do they have things to play with and build with and draw on and mess with? Do they have opportunities (if they want) to ride bikes, skateboards, climb something, jump on things? Are you looking for opportunities for them to hear live music or see theatre? If you feel like you're not doing enough, do more.

SandraDodd.com/mha (an obscure page)
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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Purely learning

Facebook Memories showed me that someone on another continent had quoted me, years ago:

Learning does not teach us, but from learning we learn.

I still haven't found her source, but in looking I found its "wordier" cousin posted here in 2011:

Mastering ideas about learning

As some of my articles are being translated (now into Japanese, French and Italian) I see how much of my writing and thinking is about language itself, and so some of these ideas won't translate. But sometimes, that fact is very good. Some of our confusion about teaching and students and study and learning, in English, has to do with the words we use, and if the problems don't exist in other languages, that's wonderful for them.

In Romance language (Italian, French, Spanish and so on) our "teacher" translates to something along the lines of "maestro," a word we have too in regards to music direction. And we have the English cognate "master" which is more currently left in "master of arts" and other college-degree titles. Once that meant a person was qualified to teach at the university level. That meaning is gone in the U.S., pretty much.

Considering the word family from which "maestro" comes (and not knowing all its connotations in other languages), the English verb "to master" means to learn. It means to become accomplished in the doing of something. Whether mastering horseback riding or blacksmithing or knowing and controlling one's own emotions, it's not something someone else does to you or for you.

So for any translators or bilinguals reading here, have sympathy for English speakers who can't get to natural learning without disentangling all the graspy words and ideas about teaching and education and their implications that learning is passive and teaching must be done to a person.

SandraDodd.com/wordswordsother
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Dance around; save the world

by Deb Lewis, once upon a time:

I wrote once before about how dish washing has come to be my mental health moment. I light a candle, I make some tea or pour a glass of wine, turn on some music, take off my shoes, and do just the dishes I want to do. I use dish soap that smells great—LOVE that hot water...sigh. I never start out feeling like I *have to* do *all* the dishes. I think how I want to have clean dishes and do however many I feel like doing. I dance around a little. I plan my garden. I save the world. It's never just about doing dishes.

—Deb Lewis

Feeling "taken advantage of"
mostly-unrelated photo by Deb Lewis
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Sounding off

Patti Schmidt wrote:

It seems to me that "phonics" essentially serves the purpose of "teaching" a child to read before he's ready and fully grasps context and meaning. I know that I can read Spanish, which is a much more consistently phonetic language than English, complete with accent and everything, and literally not understand one bit of what I'm saying.

I remember being tested separately for "reading" and reading comprehension. If one can't understand the words and phrases, then isn't it just decoding with an internalized phonics decoder ring?

Turning script to sound is one trick, but the reading that people want will turn marks to meaning. The same way that musical notation (and a musician who can decipher and play or sing it) can bring music into the air, so can the written word becoming lively language again.

Patti discovered, as many unschooling parents have, that while some children appreciate phonics hints, or figure phonics out on their own, others learn to read in their own other ways.

More of Patti's story of children learning differently:
SandraDodd.com/r/patti
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo was taken of the insde of a church door in Durham, in England. "The draught is dreadful" cannot be read easily with American phonics (or sight reading, or look-say). But it's cute, and it's alliterative, which is an ancient tradition in the English language, and in the naming of the alter-egos of comic-book super heroes.

Learning with and from kids

from a set of questions going around in 2009:

Question:

What ways have you found to continue your own learning? What kinds of things have you gotten interested in since having kids?

Sandra Dodd's response:

My kids have introduced me to music, movies, games and humor I wouldn't have known otherwise. It's been wonderful. Kirby moved nearly two years ago, but he still sends me recommendations for things to see and hear. I've met lots of unschoolers and their children, and corresponded with 20 times as many; from them I've learned more and more about unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Janine Davies
(or a camera in a theatre lobby)

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I tagged it "costumes, but it was a board with cutouts for them to stick their faces in, so... not sure how to tag it. I first learned about the musical "Cats" from Roxana Sorooshian, and then Holly Dodd, different aspects.

False positives

Cynicism feels like intelligence.
Pessimism can feel like energy conservation. Eeyore never jumps up and runs. Eeyore never bothers to plan ahead.

When people are very cynical, they seem to think that if all the things they think are stupid are eliminated, what's left will be non-stupid. Smartness. Cleverness. Art. Good music. But once so many things are eliminated, what's left is a cynical person who has rejected half the world, and has the memories of all the details of that negativity.

SandraDodd.com/cynicism
photo by Brie Jontry

History, music and enthusiasm

This was written about the Dodd kids and their questions about U.S. Presidents, in 2003. Click the link at the bottom for what came before and after this passage:

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Holly (11) got the book to see if it could be a simple truth that some presidents had only been half-page presidents.

"FDR. Is he the guy in Annie?"

"Yes." (Holly's favorite historical period is the Great Depression. She likes the music, the clothes, and the stories of hardship and social change.)

"This guy looks like he's from Texas."

"Lyndon Johnson was the only one really from Texas," I said, and then muttered a bit about George Bush Sr. and trailed off saying I guess maybe George W. might be an actual Texan. Holly wasn't listening anymore. She was looking at a cartoon illustration of Theodore Roosevelt. He's the one she had thought looked like a Texan, from the picture. I checked the fine print for her.

"Oh! Born in New York City, but he was into horses and such."

... and it continues at SandraDodd.com/day/presidents
(standard publicity still from 1982 "Annie")

A grid over which to lay other things

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

Mixtures, swirls and solutions

"Yesterday" in 2004:

I still see "subject areas" everywhere, but I haven't taught those categories and prejudices to my children. Science has much more to do with history than geology has to do with microbiology, but in school geology, biology, astronomy and physics are all "the same thing," and history is different altogether. Yet the best parts of history involve the knowledge cultures had and how they put it to use, whether in shipbuilding or iron tool use, medicine or communications.

Holly asked yesterday about when people discovered the world wasn't flat. I told her there was no one date or century because people discovered different things at different times, and some were shushed up when they said the world was round, or that the sun didn't orbit around the earth. I also told her, "Ask your dad, because he's really interested in the history of science."

I noticed when I said it that I had "named subject areas," but I didn't feel too bad. She's twelve, and reading, and after all "the history of science" was never part of my schooling. A science teacher wasn't certified to teach me history, and vice versa. Only outside of school did I figure out that scientific discoveries were history, and that music was science, and that art was history.

SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Kelly Halldorson

Unschooling and other marvels

My Favorite things about Unschooling

• You can do it at home!
• Your kids are there!
• It makes all of life a peaceful learning lab.

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. Unschooling is the radical, philosophical end of homeschooling. Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you. If your children don't go to school, why should you bring school home? Be free! There is nothing in school that isn't also in the real world. (And if there IS, why would you be needing to know it if it doesn't exist outside?) Use primary sources, not textbooks. Look at real nature, not photos of nature in a book.

SandraDodd.com/marvel
"Unschooling and other Marvels"
photo by Laurie Wolfrum

King of the Monsters

Sandra Dodd to Deb Lewis:

If I could describe all your writing in just a few words, it might be "Peace, humor and scary monsters." Dylan's life has involved a lot of Godzilla and that ilk. Scooby Doo and Godzilla.

Deb Lewis:

Yes, a lot of Godzilla, beginning when he was very little. And then any movie with a monster, or any book about monsters. And then all kinds of horror and science fiction. Godzilla was the gateway monster, though, and it started with a movie marathon on television. I couldn’t have guessed then, when he was three years old, that he would find a lifetime of happiness in horror! And I didn’t know then that his love of monster movies would lead to learning to read and write, finding authors, making connections to other cultures, (and more movies and authors) and connections to music, theater, poetry, folklore, art, history... It turned out to be this rich and wonderful experience he might have missed, and I might never have understood if I’d said no to TV, or to Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Before Dylan was reading or writing really well, he’d meticulously copy the titles and dates of movies he wanted, and request them from interlibrary loan. All that writing, and all the time spent watching movies with subtitles helped him read and write better. I remember the feeling of joy and wonder, mixed with some sadness and loss when he didn’t need me to read movie subtitles to him anymore. I learned so much about learning.

There's Even MORE at
Montana to Italy via Godzilla
(an interview with Deb Lewis)
photo by Deb Lewis

Conversations and interactions

The middle of a longer article:

They grew up with exposure, context, experiences and knowledge of those things mathematics is designed to describe. Our oldest son, Kirby, worked in a games store from the time he was fourteen, and was running tournaments for Pokemon, Magic the Gathering and other such structured strategy games, in the store and at hotels in town for several years. The knowledge required to play those games and even more to organize, judge and score tournaments, is huge.

When Kirby was 18 he took his first math class, at the community college. Like a musician who can't read music, he was baffled at first, but once he understood the notation, he soared, and had the highest test score in the class.

To some people reading this, it might seem there was no "higher math," but what we have done is create a home in which algebraic thinking is a standard part of conversations. Our interactions are analytical and involve factors and projections. They see the concepts and they use them.

SandraDodd.com/math/unerzogen
(There's a link there to the published German version.)
photo by Belinda Dutch

The world in movies

Movies touch and show just about everything in the world. There are movies about history and movies that are history. There are movies about art and movies that are art. There are movies about music and movies that would be nearly nothing in the absence of their soundtracks. Movies show us different places and lifestyles, real and imagined.

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(Think "film" if you live outside the "movie" zone; think "streaming video" if you want, though that includes TV series, shorts and documentaries which will dilute the idea of a film designed to last a couple of hours, with a beginning and end. Artistically speaking, "movie" refers to one of those. Many of the advantages do apply to other audio-visual media.)

MOVIES AS A PLAYGROUND, as tools, as portals
The image is from "Searching for Bobby Fischer," 1993, about learning, parenting, mentors, talent, and a child seeing life. It's called "Innocent Moves" in the U.K.
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Ordinary moments

Karen James wrote:

Look for moments in the day that are good—especially the ordinary moments. Pause and appreciate them when you see them. Let them set the mood for how you move forward. Listen for pleasing sounds. A giggle. A child's breath. Your own heartbeat. Some music. Close your eyes, notice and appreciate those sounds. Find the ones that make you smile. Let your smile soften your mood.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/badmoment

longer version at Always Learning, November 26, 2015
photo by Alex Polikowsky

Odd combos

The connection between humor and learning is well known. Unexpected juxtaposition is the basis of a lot of humor, and even more learning.

It can be physical, musical, verbal, mathematical, but basically what it means is that unexpected combinations or outcomes can be funny. There are funny chemistry experiments, plays on words, math tricks, embarrassingly amusing stories from history, and there are parodies of famous pieces or styles of art and music.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd, one day at Goodwill
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"Knowing nothing" is impossible

Q: What if your child (like mine) has an interest in one area (Civil War), yet hardly reads about it and never shows an interest in other historical periods (mine does, luckily)?

A: Videos. Novels. Ignore the periods he doesn't care about. He'll care later, or he won't, and the world will still turn, and he can learn what he wants WHEN he wants. History is NEVER all learned. It's all relative. "Knowing nothing" is impossible in this culture.

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I answered that question when the internet was new. Now, period photos, recordings of music, maps, and videos of battleground tours are available without leaving home. Web searches will bring explanations of gatling guns and cannons, medical advancements (nursing, sanitation), pensions for veterans and other innovations of those days.

SandraDodd.com/reassurance
photo by Holly Dodd

Artifacts

I have seen toys, in museums, just like things I played with as a child in the 1950s and 60s, and that my children played with in the 1980s and 90s.

History is happening all around and through us.


Seeing things from the past can trigger stories that might never have been told without the presence of those artifacts. I missed the days of radio dramas and serials. By the time I was listening to radio, it was all music. The stories had moved to the TV. All of my older relatives had radio stories—of war news, comedy routines, inspiring speeches and of mystery stories presented in several voices, and with sound effects.

We still want stories, news, humor and inspiration, but the sources change, and will change some more.

Antiques elsewhere here
photo by Sandra Dodd

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I wrote this four days ago (what's above). Three days ago, I started listening to So, Anyway...: A Memoir by John Cleese (read by the author, who is best known as a member of Monty Python). He has talked about radio shows four times in eight chapters, telling stories of his childhood memories, and of radio producers who seemed to think, when television was new, that TV would not supplant radio programs.

Knowing this post was ready to go made those stories seem like magical coincidence to me. Jung called those coincidences "synchronicity."

Really very peaceful

Sandra, March 2008:

All my kids have TVs in their rooms. No... Holly took hers out when the VHS player broke, and it's in a corner in the front room now, unused. She has a computer. So do the other two kids, just since last year for the younger two.

Hours, whole days go by with those rooms quiet, with one of the kids in there drawing or listening to music at the most, or playing with lego while a familiar movie is on, and they'll look up at their favorite parts, maybe.

Our house is really very peaceful. A house full of "no" can't begin to be this peaceful.


Principles of Unschooling?
photo by Holly Dodd, with a timer and then photoshop
(sitting at my computer, not hers, that day)

Seeing the magic and the joy

Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you.

Unschooling and other Marvels, by Sandra Dodd
photo by Cátia Maciel