Learning however and whenever

Learn however and whenever you can, and remember no one person has everything you need.

That's what I wrote about what I took from the film "Searching for Bobby Fischer," from 1993. If you haven't seen it, consider watching it with unschooling in mind. The image is a still from that movie.



It's based on a true story, and the actor (Max Pomeranc) was a highly-ranked chess player for his age. They cast a chess player so he wouldn't need to pretend to be playing chess in the film.

If you want to know more about the person he was playing, and what happened in later years, the real Josh Waitzkin wrote this: The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. He tells some chess stories, but the book is largely how he became a martial arts champion in his twenties. He reads his own audiobook. I've heard it. His ideas about formal learning are not as unschooling-friendly as the story in the movie is, but hearing it (or reading it) from an unschooling point of view won't change your satisfaction about what you and your children are learning.

Just in case films and audiobooks make you feel guilty, there's a new page on my site:
What about Audiobooks?

One peaceful moment

There is a song from the 1950's that is sometimes sung in churches and meetings, and the first line is "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." Every bit of peace makes the world more peaceful. If you can engineer one peaceful moment, you can have two or ten.


from "Comforts," page 12 of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Gail Higgins
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Words and thoughts

Words and thoughts are what you will use to change your beliefs and behaviors.

Mindful of Words

Live well

Don't "model" and "teach." Live. You will be a giant step nearer to radical unschooling if you can see that difference.

SandraDodd.com/being/
photo by Samuel Siroky

Inevitable needs

"Reading is inevitable in a nuturing atmosphere where the person sees a need to read. . . . . Teachers, even specialists in a particular field of learning, are experts *only* on schooled kids who have school goals to meet by a specific age. They don't realize that those kids aren't natural kids. They don't realize that school is a huge contributing factor in the children's behavior because school, like oxygen, is apparently universal. They have no idea what a natural child is like. —Joyce Fetteroll

Some Thoughts about Learning to Read
photo by Brie Jontry

Willing to learn

One of the best things about radical unschooling is how much parents can learn, if they are willing.

Sometimes, a little examination
photo by Joyce Fetteroll

Impermanent beauty

The peaceful beauty of a sleeping child, a young woman, beautiful food, a flower, a building—nothing lasts forever. Beauty might only last a moment, a day, a year, and will change.

See what is lovely.

Love what is loveable, and remember to expect it to slip away.

photo by Karen James, of found art
and another, found by Lisa Jonick
(backup)

Now that I think of it, though, most photos are of found and fleeting art.
I'm grateful to all those who have let me share their photos here.