"Permissive"?

Someone asked, once:

How do you feel about the word "permissive" to describe unschooling and the lifestyle surrounding it? (I'm hearing this word a lot when trying to explain unschooling to family and friends...)

My response was:

"Permissive" is a term of insult used by and among people who feel the right and duty to control.

It was used by aristocrats of other aristocrats who were not reigning in their servants to the point that was recommended to keep them in line.

It's used by strict teachers who demand silence and obedience in the classroom, of other teachers who actually engage in dialog with their students, and unscripted dialog at that, which could lead anywhere, instead of just leading to the correct answers in the book, and preparing people for the test.

Don't look as "permissiveness" as though it exists in nature. See it as the pejorative term it is, and see the beliefs of the only people who can use it: controlling people trying to make others be as controlling as they are.

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There are some other ideas, too, at the link below, but I think the most valuable idea is to see choices rather than rules you're "permitting" people to ignore.

The original is here.
photo by Janine Davies

There was an improper word choice I've kept. A typo, more like. "Reigning" should've been "reining," but in the context in which I wrote it, long ago, I see why the error came and it makes some sense there. 🙂

Finding and using tools

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The basic idea of unschooling is that we learn what we need by using it. And that's exactly how kids learn to speak English. Toddlers aren't trying to learn English. They're using a tool (English) to get what they want: which might be juice or a hug or picked up to see better. The English tool is more efficient than other tools they've been using: pointing or crying or wishing. And because English is more efficient, they use it more. And because they use it more, the get better at it. Kids learn English (and everything else) as a *side effect* of living and pursuing what they enjoy.

The theory of school is that someone can't be an engineer until they know everything an engineer needs to know.

But that's not now people learn best. Someone who loves to build things learns how to build things by doing what they love: building things! And since they love to build, they'll be fascinated by things that connect to building. They may be fascinated by history of building or artistic design in building or how structures built with different materials behave or the physics of balance and load distribution and so on and so on.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/products
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Beyond compare

Unschooling is the ultimate individualized learning situation, and comparisons are unnecessary.

SandraDodd.com/pam/reasons
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

The joys of unschooling

My goal isn't to help parents feel better about their parenting. I want to help their kids experience the joys of unschooling. That is misunderstood by some parents who think I want to treat them gently as though they were my children. I want to help them (adults that they are) to treat their children as gently as they can.

SandraDodd.com/notyourmom
photo by Cátia Maciel

Illuminating the world

I remember being in school and asking "Why do we need to know this?" I asked it, other kids asked it, and one answer I remember was when I asked my Algebra II teacher, when I was 15, why we needed to know how to figure out square roots. He said it was in case we wanted to figure out how far away stars were. I said, "Don't we have people to do that?"

I didn't care how far away stars were. I thought it should be left to those who really are curious or have a need to know. That need to know the distance of stars has never been good for anything at all yet, as far as I know.

It wasn't long after that (six years) that I myself was a teacher in that same school. Luckily for me and for all the world, I wasn't teaching algebra or astronomy. But still I would be asked "Why do we have to learn this?" Sometimes I gave a serious answer, and sometimes a philosophical answer. Sometimes I made light of it. Sometimes the honest answer was "You don't have to learn this, but I have to try to teach it so I can get paid." Or "Only some of you will need to know it, but they don't know which ones yet, so I have to say it to everybody."

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.

To Get More Jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click the photo if you don't know what it is)

Wonderful, easier, more peaceful

Alex Polikowsky wrote (following an artsy rant, linked below):

It takes time to get it. I have been reading and applying unschooling in my home for almost 8 years and I am still getting it.

It takes time to deschool. Most of us have a minimum of 13 years of schooling and some way more. Ask questions and just sit on the answers, re-read them, think about them, read them again, try them, wait a while and watch!

So all this to say that if someone comes to unschooling thinking that it will be just sitting there while the kids fend for themselves and that it is a piece of cake think again!

That is not to say it is not wonderful and, yes, easier and more peaceful, but not in the way many think it is.

—Alex Polikosky, 2012
(her kids are at university now)

https://sandradodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Brie Jontry

Natural feelings

Unschoolers have sometimes found that their children know whether they're hungry, and what they're hungry for, in the absence of scheduled, pre-prepared meals that they're pressed to eat. Unschoolers have discovered that in the absence of an enforced bedtime, kids can feel when they're tired, and will lie down.

One interesting side benefit of unschooling can be that the parents can begin, themselves, to feel those natural feelings. It can help if they are biological parents and experienced the change that can naturally happen when seeing (touching, smelling, hearing) one's own newborn. Not every parent changes, but most do. Some adoptive parents can get a wave of instinct (whatever that biochemically-triggered parenting effect is) that can change them, too.

SandraDodd.com/instinct
photo by Kinsey Norris