What kind of peace?

How can peace help learning? Is peace always a subset of "peace and quiet"? Is quiet always peaceful? What is the value of a peaceful environment to unschooling and how can parents help to create and maintain that? What kind of peace are we after and how can we get some?

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Sometimes just asking the questions can be helpful, but if you want to hear a free sound file of me talking about that sort of thing, here:
SandraDodd.com/bignoisypeace
photo by Caroline Lieber
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Best and highest good

Everything is turned to its best use and highest good insofar as we’re able.

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Sandra Dodd

Science experiment, festival, and a game

Once there was a little discussion on facebook where I said that Learn Nothing Day was like a game, and you join in by showing you know how it works. In response to a question, then, about whether it's a holiday or a game, I wrote:

Well... it's a holiday when people demonstrate what they've learned about learning by attempting not to learn, which is kind of a science experiment and kind of a festival and sort of a game. More than one thing is happening.

Learn Nothing Day is July 24
photo by Sandra Dodd, on a carousel in Austin, Texas

Two-way change

Unschooling is more than just the absence of school. As we change, our perceptions change, and the perceptions of others toward us changes.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Brie Jontry

What is choice?

Someone was writing about what she "had to" do.

My response (saved by Schuyler Waynforth; thanks!):

You are inviting powerlessness into your life and keeping it there by using that phrase.

You wrote -=-how freeing it was to realize we didn't have to KEEP UP-=-

How much more freeing to think "we can choose not to keep up." It might seem to you the same thing, or the other side of the same coin. But coins' sides are NOT the same.

Choice is not the other side of a "have to" coin. It is the antidote to a have-to poison. Choice dissolves the roof and ceiling of a have-to cell.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Happy choices

I did my time in and around school, and learned things painstakingly and grudgingly that my children later learned while laughing and playing and singing. I have guarded my children's freedom and given them happy choices that I didn't have.


SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty in the 20th century
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A time and a place

[Riding in a car] is a great time and place for humor, news, and deep conversation.

SandraDodd.com/truck
photo by Sandra Dodd
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