The first step is finding something that's better than what you have.
The second step is wanting to change.
The third step is figuring out how to change.
So, as you read along, you may wonder why I suggest that parents
basically make life more difficult for themselves. The reason is
because I believe it leads to a much better place. And that better
place is a more joyful life for our children and our families.
If someone knew almost nothing in the world but trivia relating to
popular music for the past 100 years, that would make a HELL of a good
grid over which to lay other things. And I don't think a thorough
knowledge of pop music (in any culture or language) over this
particular past hundred years, which saw the proliferation of recorded
music available in homes, the advent of radio broadcasts, movies with
music, television variety shows, transistor radios, cassette players
in cars, CDs, iPods and cell phones that store a ton of music could
help but create a timeline of the culture. Wouldn't songs from Marx
Brothers or Fred Astaire movies remind people of The Great
Depression? Can anyone hear big-band swing music and not also think
of the hairdos and costumes? Does "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" not remind
anyone of WWII? Knowing some of the context of Gene Autrey and Roy
Rogers brings up LOTS of stories about where those songs were first
heard.
The lyrics of some of the songs make specific mention of historical
events, and that could help dating things, too, if a person were
trying to figure out what came first.
Any hobby delved into deeply becomes another portal to the whole
world—real and imagined; past, present and future.
"Trivial" connections are real
video from Young Frankenstein, 1974
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written (in part) by, and starring, Gene Wilder
What does a tree need for its leaves and twigs to develop more?
What does a cat need for its brain to develop more?
They need a lack of abuse. They need water and food, sunshine. The
cats can use things or people to play with, and people or other cats
to groom them, pet them, lie down next to them sometimes. The tree
might need to be less in the shade of other trees for optimal growth,
or might need not to be where the wind is banging their branches
against a cliff or building or fence or something.
If you think of people as the natural, biological beings they are,
rather than as school kids who either are or are not in school, things
become much clearer.
Schooling works by pouring expertly selected bits of the world into a child. (Or trying to, anyway!)
Unschooling works by the child pulling in what he wants and needs. It works best by noticing what the child is asking for and helping him get it. It works best by running the world through their lives so they know what it's possible to be interested in.
. . . .
Real learning travels the child's path of interest, from one bit of information that interests them to the next. Real learning is self testing by how well it works in the situation the child needs it for. Real learning is about understanding enough to make something work.
A person can only "refuse" what is demanded, maybe, the same way a child can only rebel against something that is required arbitrarily. Because if the mom can explain persuasively why she thinks something should be a certain way, the others might understand, and choose that for the reasons stated, not because the mom said so.
If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.
Some unschoolers become confused on that, and they begin to frolic in the "freedom" that they are pretty sure some stranger online granted them, and that unschoolers have inalienably from God, bypassing all forms of government and the limitations of wallboard. And so if an unschooling family is up at 3:00 a.m. playing Guitar Hero, they seem mystified that the neighbors have called the landlord.
If he had a bedtime, we would have missed our 2:00 am chat about My Little Pony, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Shakespeare, cellular peptide cake with mint icing, the two Queen Elizabeths, the nature of cats in general and ours in specific, word play, fan fiction, Lord of the Flies, specism (like racism and ageism), Harry Potter, and Heinlein.
It's something I would never have known I was missing out on, and I love these conversations and insights, and how they change as he grows.
