How will their learning be used?

Pam Sorooshian wrote this:

The time spent mothering and playing is not time away from real learning—not to be rushed through to get to "the good stuff" as some may think of it. It is essential to real learning and, really, to allowing the child to grow up as a whole, integrated human being.

Homeschoolers think a lot about learning—but they often focus on learning to read, write, do math, or learning science or history, etc. Unschoolers tend to take that kind of learning for granted, it happens along the way. Instead, as we get more and more into unschooling, we tend to focus on things like kindness and creativity and honesty—all those character traits that will determine "how" their learning will be used in their lives.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Unnecessary talking

When I was in elementary school the lowest grades I got were in "conduct" or "deportment." Turns out my greatest gift was interpersonal, and I was able to help other kids with their problems. School didn't encourage that in those days in any way, and so once I had to write "Unnecessary talking in class disturbs others" 2400 times or so, and other times I just got a C in conduct for being too social.

"You're not here to socialize," I was told. All the more ironic for me that most people's first question about homeschooling is "What about socialization?"

SandraDodd.com/intelligences
photo by Holly Dodd
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Waking or sleeping

When the kids were babies they would go to sleep with us, nursing, or in dad's lap, and we'd put them in bed. That evolved into them going to sleep where they wanted to, or in a carseat, or a backpack (hiking/frame-pack) or beside us on the couch or on a blanket on the floor where one of us was doing something, and we'd put them in bed.

Getting up used to be "get up by noon," when they got old enough to want to stay up late on the computer or watching movies or playing games. Then it became "Sleep as long as you want to, but at noon others are free to make noise." We still try to keep it quiet until noon or until everyone's awake, whichever comes first.
. . . .
When Marty worked at a grocery store, he woke himself up at 5:30 to get there at 6:00. He had a very timed and regular routine for himself. The first few weeks I got up too to make sure he'd be up, but he worked there full time for over a year and was only late once.

The lack of a "regular schedule" has never kept our kids from getting where they needed or wanted to be on time without trouble. When Kirby was very young, eight or so, he used to wake up at 6:25 a.m. to record Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at 6:30. He would pause for the commercials so they wouldn't be on the tape, and then when the show was over he would go back to bed. He has them all on tape, marked in his little-kid writing.

The account above is from 2007, and is similar to some things here: SandraDodd.com/sleep
photo by Sandra Dodd, of stained-glass light falling on a young friend's lovey.

As happy as dancing

Learning about music can be as happy as dancing in the back yard, singing in the car, or going to watch a bluegrass band at a street festival. Listen to different oldies stations. Play with online song sites. Rent videos of concerts or operas and musical theatre. Don't "make" anyone watch them. Watch them yourself, and others might come to join.

page 83 (or 92) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Holly Dodd

"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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