Criss-cross trails

Do the best you can to survive the bumps and unexpected turns of the trails through the unschooling world, which will necessarily cross back over and through themselves, which is how learning works–a little now, a little more later to connect to what you've learned since, and detours that end up being short cuts.

The quote is from page 3 or 4 of The Big Book of Unschooling.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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YESTERDAY'S LINK: SandraDodd.com/socialization

Learning how to make decisions

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo

Exuberant learning

Karen James wrote:

When Ethan was around three. I left the room very briefly to answer the phone. We had been drawing. As I was talking I heard, "Circles. Circles." I came out to see what he was doing to find him drawing big circles on a freshly painted wall. His circles I could paint over at any time. I still had lots of that colour of paint. That pride at drawing big beautiful shapes I could never recapture at any cost if I had have chosen to scold him. He turned to me all smiles. He had discovered circles. I had rediscovered what exuberant learning looked like.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/art/stories
photo by Karen James
with different circle; the story of that art is also at the art/stories page

Seeing the magic and the joy

Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you.

Unschooling and other Marvels, by Sandra Dodd
photo by Cátia Maciel

Looks like playing

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Real learning looks very different from schoolish learning. Real learning looks like playing. Even when it matches something kids do in school (learning the names of the different clouds for instance) it still looks more like goofing around because it stops as soon as their interest is satisfied. They don't push on like they're "supposed" to. No, what they do is revisit it when the feel the need to build on it and they draw on it (though not necessarily making it obvious to us) to help them understand more of the world. *Everything* connects to everything else.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/jitters
photo by Cátia Maciel

Less control, more learning

Some people homeschool because they think schools teach too much and aren't controlling the kids well enough. Some people homeschool because they think schools teach too little and control too much. I don't mind my kids learning things schools fear to teach, or having choices in their lives. Practicing on small things gave them knowledge and experience when they were old enough to practice on larger things. Some families homeschool to limit their children's access and freedom. For us, it's the opposite.

from the MomLogic interview
photo by Cathy Koetsier

TV [iPad (internet)]

There's a lot to be learned on TV and from watching TV. If your trust stops short of the TV, it's not much trust yet.

Trusting your heart and trusting your kids and trusting how learning works will all enlarge the range of things you see as learning situations, until the time when you don't see things except in terms of what can be learned.

Then TV won't be a problem.

Those are my thoughts.

—Sandra Dodd, 2001

Unschooling with the TV in the house
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

Chaotic, random, effortless

"School is to unschooling as foreign language class is to learning to talk. The first is orderly, thorough, hard and hardly works. The second is chaotic, random, effortless and works like a charm."

—Joyce Fetteroll
July 2018

SandraDodd.com/definitions
photo by Rosie Moon

Describing unschooling

Rippy wrote:

If parents of school children ask, I usually say our homeschooling is pretty eclectic. I may give certain examples such as visiting interesting places, doing experiments, playing 'learning' games, reading stories, having conversations of events that happened in the past, talking about famous people, making things, hanging out with friends, etc. Sometimes I share with them a detailed description of an interesting day that we've had, especially if it has impressive signs of learning that they will recognize.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

SandraDodd.com/response
photo by Kelvin Dodd

Awareness of options

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Lots of people go through their whole lives never feeling like they had choices in many many areas of their lives in which they really did. Just like it is useful for unschoolers to drop school language (not use the terms teaching or lessons or curriculum to refer to the natural learning that happens in their families) it is useful to drop the use of "have to's" and replace it with an awareness of choices and options.

How we think—the language we use to think—about what we're doing, matters.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Look, learn, and proceed

Karen James wrote:

I think advice of any kind can get in the way of unschooling if it is taken as truth without some reflection. Unschooling is really about learning without school. Radical unschooling includes all learning, not just academic learning. What encourages and supports learning in your child(ren)?
Look at that.
     Learn from that.
          Proceed from that.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/otherideas
photo by Christine Milne

Interested in learning

"I'm more interested in learning what they think of the world than in telling them about the world."

—Linnea King

SandraDodd.com/inspiration
photo by Sandra Dodd

Helping them share

The problem I see with measured turns is that the quality of game play is compromised. If someone sees the clock and that's when they have to stop, they won't play as thoughtfully. They're less likely to look around at the art or appreciate the music. If they're starting to read, they're less likely to take a moment to look at the text and see if they can tell what it says.

The benefits of game play will not come to full fruition if kids' time is measured that way, and they're not learning to share.

If they only have an hour, they will take ALL of that hour, just as kids whose TV time is limited will.

It they can play as long as they want to, they might play for five or ten minutes and be done.

SandraDodd.com/sharing
photo by Sarah S.

Growing and learning

"Things change. Our kids get older. They outgrow stages we think they never will. They learn all they need to know, in their own time."

—Heather Booth

SandraDodd.com/anxiety
photo by Cátia Maciel

The world expands

When people are able to relax into learning without the self-consciousness of whether what they're learning will impress the neighbors or make them more money, the world expands hugely.

Quote from side commentary, but this works:
SandraDodd.com/chores/option
photo by Nina Haley

A learning environment

Our entire life created a learning environment for our children, every day, at home or out in the world.

Debating How Kids Learn
photo by Jesper Conrad

The way we live, the way we think

Lyle Perry wrote:

I know how scary it is to think about letting go of what's 'normal', and I know it seems impossible to think about your kids learning on their own, but it's all very possible. More than possible. It's waiting to happen. It's happened for us, and we were as 'normal' as anyone else.

Unschooling has had an incredibly positive impact on our lives, and not only in an educational aspect, but in everything we do. It's changed the way we live, the way we think, and the way we look at the world in general.

SandraDodd.com/lists/lyle
photo by Sandra Dodd, of artistry by Irene Adams
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A good grasp of unschooling

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

How we lived was completely unrelated to school and no longer in reaction to school, once I'd gotten a good grasp of unschooling.

—Pam Sorooshian

original
or
at Always Learning
extended Sorooshians, years after that writing;
photographer unidentified

Pathways and connections

"I learned early on that being excited with my kids about whatever they are excited about opens pathways and connections that are magical—not just for their learning but for our relationship and their relationship with the world."

—Jen Keefe

"Following their Interests": SandraDodd.com/jeninterests
photo by Ester Siroky