Roadblock

"It's much better to be their partner than their roadblock. If you become an obstacle they'll find a way around you. Is that what you want for your relationship with your kids?"

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Subjects

Kirby was five and not going to go to school that year when I decided to keep the whole idea of a structured curriculum divided into subjects secret from him for a while. So we carefully and purposefully avoided using these terms: science, history, math.

He was too young for us to need to avoid terms such as "social studies" (which doesn't come up outside of school anyway) or "grammar," but I was prepared to rethink my list of terms to avoid as he got older, if he continued to stay home.

By the time his brother and sister were unschooling, some of those "names of subjects" (in school parlance) had been discovered on TV shows about school, or in jokes or songs. Don't know much about history; don't know much biology… By then, though, I was ready with confident answers, and we were all sure natural learning could work.

If you can avoid using school terminology, it will be helpful in many different ways that you will figure out if you don't already see them.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Sandra Dodd, at The High Country, in Chama, 2011
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Unguided Discovery

Deb Lewis, on the idea of Unguided Discovery, wrote:

"My son has experienced a lot of wonderful learning through discovery and knows how to find instruction if that's what he wants. I have a wild idea that doing what he wants to do is more important than doing what science educators would like him to do. I don't think all innovators and leaders have to come from the molded and stamped process that produced a previous innovator. I think new understanding often comes from fresh and fearless approaches to discovery. So, while some people are working to prove Piaget wrong, I think he had a good idea when he said, 'If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.'"

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/discovery
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a steam calliope

Life-in-progress

The structured homeschooling that involves buying a curriculum and teaching at the kitchen table on a schedule is not the control group the school system needed. Those who practice “school at home” serve to reinforce the school’s claims that they could do better if they had more teachers and better equipment. When a structured family has high test scores, the schools say “SEE? We could do that too if we had one teacher per three or four students.”. . . .
Scientifically speaking, my children are not a control group. They’re not isolated and kept purely away from school methods and messages. But what is unquestionable is that there are now thousands of children who are learning without formal teaching. They are learning from the world around them, from being with interesting and interested adults doing real work and real play. Instead of being put away with other children to prepare for life, they are joining life-in-progress right at birth, and never leaving “the real world.”

SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo of Holly Dodd and Adam Daniel, by Adam's mom
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Know what you don't want!

The way to know the right direction is to identify the wrong direction.



SandraDodd.com/screwitup
photo by Sandra Dodd

Where art lives

Robyn Coburn wrote:

Maybe thriving at [the University of Wollongong] gave me an enhanced appreciation of blurred edges. I find the concept of interconnectedness of all knowledge, one of the tent poles of Unschooling philosophy, to be a no-brainer. Art as science as history as math as language studies as economics; skills acquisition as a function of activity rather than a separated prerequisite. I believe creativity is the foundation of all activity.

—Robyn Coburn

"Encouraging Creativity": SandraDodd.com/robyn/creativity
photo by Sandra Dodd, of medieval floor tile at Winchester Cathedral

Testing some things

I'm trying to get my little-tree favicon to show in the browser windows, and need to mess with a post to do that.

ALSO, some people were having a hard time commenting on posts at the blog. Some people are responding to the e-mails (those who read by subscription), and that's fine with me; I get a direct e-mail. If you would like to leave a comment at the blog, though, please click on the title of the post (at the top of the e-mail message), and leave a comment there.

I think it's fixed. If any of you who have had a problem before or who haven't posted but have a minute to test it could at least leave a "ping" on this one, that would be appreciated. It should take anonymous comments. It will say "anonymous," but you can sign your post in the body of it, if you want to.

There are 772 subscribers today, just for a bit of update.

Sorry for the boring post. Maybe there will be another one, later. :-)

Thanks for reading!

gratuitous photo by Sandra