"Serious learning"

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.

School served to prevent connections for me, but I overcame that, with difficulty. It is a problem my children never had. If Animaniacs completed a circuit for them between Magellan and WWII, well it's a circuit school would never have completed for me under any circumstances. If learning for fun creates more connections than "serious learning" did, I can no longer look at "serious learning" seriously.

The School in my Head, 2004
photo by Sandra Dodd
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the JOY of discovery

Some people have expressed surprise at their own newfound love of learning. At first they learn along with their children, and then they move on to discovering things they think their children will love, and then they come to a phase in which they're more excited about learning and might not even think to share it with the kids, because the kids are making their own discoveries. Sometimes an adult who had learned not to learn, or had grown up to be self-conscious about enthusiasm and curiosity, rediscovers the joy of discovery.

Mindful Parenting
photo by Sandra Dodd
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"Finish what you start." NO, wait...

Once someone wrote in an unschooling discussion:

"I just have one concern. I want my children to finish what they start."

I responded:

If you start a book and decide you don't like it, will you finish it?
If you start eating a dozen donuts, and after you're not in the mood for donuts anymore, will you finish the dozen?
If you start an evening out with a guy and he irritates or frightens you, will you stay for five more hours to finish what you started?
If you put a DVD in and it turns out to be Kevin Costner and you don't like Kevin Costner, will you finish it anyway?
The only things that should be finished
are those things that seem worthwhile to do.
When I'm reading a book, I decide by the moment whether to keep reading or to stop.

Even writing this post, I could easily click out of it and not finish, or I could finish it and decide not to post it. Choices, choices, choices.

Wanting your children to learn to ignore their own judgment in favor of following a rule is not beneficial to them or to you. It will not help them learn.


SandraDodd.com/finishwhatyoustart
photo by Sandra Dodd
of a fat black widow in the back yard (and its shadow)
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A better environment for learning

(About online discussions of unschooling:)

Pointing out the words people use is never a waste of time.

Showing people that they have expressed their thoughts in writing in words of their own choosing and posted them is often THE BEST, the most effective way, of moving them from the plateau of *thinking* they get it, because they can recite back the answers, and really, truly, honestly getting it in a way that creates a better environment for learning and being.

Mindful of Words
photo by Sandra Dodd

Kids can get excited

I keep them happy. I keep them fed. I let them sleep when they want to sleep, I let them say, "I don't want to do that right now," when they don't want to do that right now. And it makes a big difference because then the level of arousal when they are excited about something is real. They don't have to fake being excited; they really can get excited. Because they know they can really say no. That level of freedom and choice is unusual in our society.

Living Unschooling with Sandra Dodd
(transcript of a radio interview)
photo by Sandra Dodd

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Sound file and text, same interview

Be gentle

For all the "be gentle" that parents give their babies about how to touch cats and dogs, the parents themselves aren't always so gentle. Over the years of having children grow up around our dogs and cats I became more compassionate toward the pets. Having learned to communicate with and to understand non-verbal babies, I was better at understanding "non-human-speaking" animal companions.

SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Sandra Dodd

Don't repeat history at home

"The media" is a broad topic, and usually refers to the frontier edge of "the media." Newness is often reviled. If you look back at what was "objectionable" and forbidden, it's video games and internet now, but was TV, and comic books, and paperback novels, and radio serials, and ANY novels or secular books, and writings by authors unapproved by the church. People have been arrested and punished and had their materials confiscated for centuries. If a teacher ever took a comic book or a Gameboy away from you, you probably remember the anger and frustration.

Much of the damage schools do to kids can be reproduced by parents at home, but it's not a good idea.

SandraDodd.com/panel
photo by Sandra Dodd