Learning not to teach

The more a parent thinks that something needs to be taught,
the less faith they'll have that things can be learned.



Deschooling
photo by Karen James

A new view

Deschooling means dismantling the overlay of school. Gradually (or just all of a sudden, if you have that ability) stop speaking and thinking in terms of grades, semesters, school-days, education, scores, tests, introductions, reviews, and performance, and replace those artificial strictures and measures with ideas like morning, hungry, happy, new, learning, interesting, playing, exploring and living.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Stages, and stars

The first stage is all the fear and uncertainty and angst.

Then comes deschooling and noticing how much of one's thoughts might be school-based and how easy it is for adults to belittle and discount children. That will take a year or so.


After school starts to recede it will be like the stars showing on a clear dark night in the country. They were always there, but you couldn’t see them for the glare of the sun or the city lights. So now you'll start to see that they're not all the same, and there are patterns, and a history, and there's science, mythology, art, and then the moon comes out! And then you hear coyotes and owls and water moving somewhere… what water?

It might be like that, or it might be exactly that. But until you stop doing what you were doing before, you will not see those stars.

After a few years of reveling in natural learning and the richness of the universe, if you or your children decide to take a class it will be an entirely different experience than you would have had when school loomed so large in your vision of the world.

That's all of page 37 (or 40) of The Big Book of Unschooling,
which leads to SandraDodd.com/stages
photo by Sandra Dodd
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This is repeated from a July 2012 post, to which someone responded "Beautiful. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing on unschooling."

The path to unschooling

It's the path to unschooling—to go toward the better things and away from the worse things.

Deschooling... "Like what?!" (chat transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Change a few little things

Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly. Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Marty Dodd, of an beautifully cast and enamelled antique slot machine
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Delight with them

Karen James wrote:

Pay close attention to your children. Really see what they are doing, what they are interested in, what they are enjoying, what frustrates them, what they like and what they don't like.

Notice how they think. Notice what kinds of things bring them delight. Delight in those things with them. Find ways to add to their experiences. Be open to the things you bring being passed over. Notice what kinds of things are embraced.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/karenjames/deschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

To see learning

What we call "deschooling" is about more than school. It's de-tox and recovery from all the ideas that could come between parent and child, or between parent and peace, or that would keep the parent from being able to see learning in all of the fabric of life.

SandraDodd.com/fabric
photo by Chrissy Florence

Art Supplies

Deschooling usually involves seeing everything in a new light, or re-naming things we see all the time. If someone thinks of "art" as a school course or in "an art room," breathe that away; shake that off.

If you think of "real art" as oil paintings and marble sculpture, expand your definition.

SandraDodd.com/art
photo by Janine Davies
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The memories parents have

Deschooling is not just the child recovering from school damage. It's also the parents exploring their own school and childhood damage and proactively changing their thinking until the paradigm shift happens.

—Robyn Coburn

Robyn Coburn on Unschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Let go; relax

Leah Rose:

Sandra wrote: "They need to STOP battling, STOP fighting, STOP struggling."

This has been such an incredibly powerful, empowering concept for me. It's a total turn around from the way I grew up thinking, from the way we think and speak in Western culture. But I have made the greatest strides in my own deschooling by learning to notice when I feel myself "struggling," and to Stop! Then I can choose to let go, to relax about the disparity between what I want and what is. And what I have discovered is that that conscious mental shift releases the energy I need to step forward mindfully into the moment...and then that moment becomes, itself, a step towards what I want, away from what I don't want.

—Leah Rose

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Becoming solid

When people first come to unschooling, when they want to be unschoolers, they're basing this on something they read that resonated, or someone they met that they'd like to be more like, which is the way I came to it, but I don't think it will really stick, and be solid in that family or in that person's way of being—in their behaviors and their thoughts—until they see that in their own children. Until you're doing it not because you think it will work, or because you've heard it will work, or read it will work, but because you've seen it work.
. . . .Until people get to that point in unschooling, they could relapse. They could easily forget that they wanted their kids to be more like someone else's kids.

But once they get to the point where their confidence in unschooling is not faith in other people, but certain knowledge, direct experience of their own children learning and being at peace, and of the parents learning to see the natural learning that happens when kids just draw for hours, or just play video games for hours, or ride their bike, or play with the dog—when they start seeing those things as equal in learning value, to things that look academic, then it's hard to relapse from certain knowledge.

20:45 in the sound recording of the interview at this link
photo by Emma Marie Forde
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P.S. By the time you get to that point, you probably won't want your kids to be different, but the comparisons are normal before deschooling, and can fade as unschooling ideas permeate and pervade.

Quick Install

Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly. Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling.html, which also has a guide to
Gradual Installation (necessary in most school-trained cases)
photo by Sandra Dodd

You could be wrong

Part of deschooling is reviewing how we learned what we know, and how legitimate that knowledge is.

FACT
photo by Chelsea Thurman

Explore your neighborhood

You could think of yourselves as tourists in your own town. What museum or historical site or interesting natural feature have you not gone to see, or maybe haven't taken your children to lately? Pretend you're only in town for two weeks and do some cool things.


Or if that seems awkward to you, import a tourist. Maybe an unschooling family could be persuaded to come and visit you, and you could take them sightseeing and also discuss unschooling. Just let the kids play, though, and play with them or watch them. Look at what they're drawn to. Look at how they examine things or what they ask about. Don't be teacherly in your responses. Answer them as you would a tourist friend who was visiting town. Tell the good parts in an inspiring way. You don't need to put it in historical or political context.

Give one cool fact and if they want to know more they'll ask. That's how conversations work. Have conversations.

The quote is from page 15 of The Big Book of Unschooling,
in the Deschooling section, but here is something similar:
SandraDodd.com/video/doright (bottom of the page)
photo by Marty Dodd
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Stop

Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly. Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd, of an interesting assortment of chimneys in Linlithgow
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Enjoyment overflowing

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Rather than asking what he'd like to learn, just do things he *enjoys*, expose him to things you think he might enjoy (as opposed to things you think would be good for him!)

Rather than looking at him as a vessel you want to fill, look at him as a person who is reaching out towards what interests him. Rather than looking at what interests him through a lens of school that filters out everything that wouldn't be done in school, look at *all* that he's interested in: video games, cartoons, skateboarding, swimming, playing with friends ...

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/deschooling
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Keep learning

We don't know what our kids are thinking about what they're watching, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling in their lives. And we don't need to know. It does help for us to keep learning, too, ourselves, so we have more confidence that they're learning.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling/
photo by Janine Davies

Watch and play

Karen James wrote:

Play. A lot. Wonder. A lot. Listen. Observe. Smile. A lot. .... If they like shows, watch shows. If they like video games, play video games with them. If they like water, make ice, take them to a splash pad, to a creek, to a lake, to the ocean, to the tub, draw on the sidewalk with a wet finger and watch it disappear.

—Karen James

More, and sweet: SandraDodd.com/karenjames/deschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Time and space

Children need recovery time, and space, and peace, if they've been schooled, before their curiosity and joy can return.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling/kids
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Processes

Learning to see learning is a process. It's part of deschooling, for the parents.


When learning starts to show, in its natural state, you will see that children are processing what they do and what they think about what they've done. They'll be making connections to everything else in their history and surroundings, to other experiences and imaginings.

When unschooling begins to really flow, the process of learning is the processing of experiences and connections.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Chrissy Florence