Get the world swirling

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 (from 2002; pretty old)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thought and belief

Terminology reflects thought and belief.

Sometimes just a slight shift in terminology will release the mental block that keeps people from understanding unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/parentalauthority
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Joy and optimism!

If joy and optimism seem stupid, don't even try to unschool until after you've gotten some therapy or made direct strides toward recovering from the sooty veil of negativity. Children won't benefit from a life guide who is sure he or she is smarter than all the rest of the world. Arrogant certitude prevents learning.

From the notes for a talk given in 2012 in Sacramento
SandraDodd.com/hsc/unschoolingwell
photo by Sandra Dodd
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See the light

In 1999, I addressed the note below to unschoolers about something I had written in 1993 to a general homeschooling discussion. As I link this, it's 2013. Twenty years since the first writing! So when I mentioned "40-year-old houses" (in the link, if you go there) those houses (and I) are twenty years older now.

Part of what this sort of exploration takes is the willingness to let go of an "outline" or of a hope that you will find something, and an ability to go with what you do find. It's the big airplane hangar door to unschooling, through which, if you can leave the schoolish building your own mind has built, that has "academics" sorted and stacked against old walls with bad memories, you can see the light of the real world outside. Just move out toward those cliffs and flowers and see what kind of birds are out there.


SandraDodd.com/dot/elvis
photo by Sandra Dodd

Kotex, The Mummy and the talk

Lyle Perry, who unschooled two boys, wrote:

While watching a movie, a Kotex commercial came on and spawned a lengthy discussion on menstruation, and how all the different methods of protection work, or don't work, the reasons why women pick one method over another, and what did women do back before companies like Kotex existed. Then the discussion moved to the different methods of birth control, then to birth itself, and C-sections, natural childbirth, etc. All from one little Kotex commercial.

While watching The Mummy (cartoon), we talked about Egypt and the pharoahs, and then slavery, which eventually led to the civil war and Abe Lincoln, and then on to other presidents that had done "great" things.

That's just a few off the top of my head, but the main thing to remember is that none of these discussions were planned, and it's always the kids that initiate the talks, and when they stop asking "why, when, how, who and where" the talk is over. They may come back at a later date and want more information to add to what they know, or they may be satisfied and leave it at that.

TV is not a "bad" thing. TV can be very, very cool.

—Lyle Perry

SandraDodd.com/t/learning
or (bonus link):
SandraDodd.com/presidents
photo by Dylan Lewis
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Living in the world

If unschooling is living in the world, then creating a sub-world defeats the purpose. I don't object to conferences, but I think people should go to a conference or two a year, maybe visit some unschooling friends, and also do other things, and have other friends. Mostly they should live in the town or city where they live, and not in an overlaid fantasy world.

SandraDodd.com/unschoolworld
photo by Sandra Dodd

Many options

Video games became one of the many options to chose from once I was able to remain calm and look at the child in front of me and see the passion, the connections, the light in his eyes, and excitement in his voice when he is playing a game he really loves.

—Heather Booth

Video Games Are Just One Of The Many Options To Chose From
photo by Joannah Smith