Geography and everything

Geography can be about people and what they do, and believe, and wear. It can be about mountains, rocks, rivers, and where the rivers empty. The stories around a river that flows to the Hudson Bay will be different from the stories of rivers that flow into the Mediterranean. And with what you know of language and history and geography, can you look at "Mediterranean" and figure out why they called it that?

SandraDodd.com/geography
photo by Sandra Dodd
___

Natural residents of Earth

So how do unschoolers learn geography? Better than I did in school. They learn it with flexibility and a lack of awareness of having "learned geography." They learn it from games, movies, satellite photographs, globes, the history of ships and airplanes, of cloth and houses, of the Okinawan karate and of Roman bathhouses. Their model of the universe is better than mine was when I was their age. Their confidence is better than mine is now! They are learning about THEIR planet. I felt like an unwelcome guest here, when I was "just a kid." They feel like natural residents of Earth, and they do know their neighborhood.

SandraDodd.com/geography
photo by Olga Degtyareva, while visiting Stone Town

Geography without maps

As far as I know, the best way to know that deschooling has happened is that kids start asking you (or telling you) cool things, trivial things, that they might have learned in school if they had gone, or maybe that would be in books clearly marked "science" or "history," and they're no longer avoiding school subjects (if they went to school).

Or if the kids never went to school, it's when the parents can see math without numbers, and language without writing, and "writing" without handwriting, and history without kings and wars and dates, and geography without maps.

SandraDodd.com/stages
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a restaurant in a building that was once a fire station, in Albuquerque
__

Where are you?

How do unschoolers learn geography? Better than I did in school.

The world is all a-swirl with music and maps and photographs of interesting architecture, costumes and ancient weaponry and technology. Gypsy carts and camel caravans and steam locomotives have their places on the planet, and nobody has to memorize anything to sort them out into their times and cultures.

Some families travel. Some stay in one place, and come to know that place well. Consider your resources, histories, friends, relatives and where they live, and why. All those stories, images and artifacts, gradually gathered, will expand your child's view of his own personal world.

SandraDodd.com/geography
Photo of a Tapas bar I saw in Cardiff, in Wales. Click to enlarge.
__

Swirly World

Because of school, many people think of geography as maps and nothing more. There is a story in every line on every map. There's a story in the name of each nation and region, and in the difference between what they call themselves and what the neighbors call them. When a map is in a certain language, it affects the names of everything. The English word for "Germany" is not what will appear on a map in German, nor in French, nor in Icelandic. Looking at those names is a study in the history of Germany. People who speak any language in Europe have a relationship and history with what English speakers call "Germany" (which we have from the Roman "Germania").

The world is all a-swirl with music and maps and photographs of interesting architecture, costumes and ancient weaponry and technology. Gypsy carts and camel caravans and steam locomotives have their places on the planet, and nobody has to memorize anything to sort them out into their times and cultures.


The first paragraph is from page 81 (or 89) of The Big Book of Unschooling.
The second one is from SandraDodd.com/geography.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a children's maze in Windsor U.K., and tennis courts, road markings, and hedges, taken from an observation wheel. Click it to enlarge. If you click that enlargement, you might see men playing bowls to the left.
__

Step back and think

I did an odd thing, when Kirby was five. I consciously decided not to use the names of "subject areas," ever. Whether he liked something or not, I wasn't going to tell him it was "history" or "math" or "science." Each of those is made up of dozens, hundreds of interests and unrelated topics.

In school, kids decide to declare that they like or hate "science," when really geology has very little to do with psychology or surgery. Same with "geography." Would someone who "likes geography" because he's fascinated by maps and mapping necessarily care about the major production of different regions of the world, or traditional costume of Afghanistan?

But as an unschooling mom, I think it's important for the parents not to say "I don't like... (maps/science/costume/psychology), because if you have fears and prejudices left over from school, it's a good thing to do whatever internal work you need to get over that, so you can answer your children's questions without showing (and maybe passing on) an aversion.
SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Ester Siroky
__

Science

The fundamental core of science is learning, and by definition it should involve discovery! Learning directly and indirectly about what people know and how they know it and what they do with it that has been helpful and harmful to themselves and the planet is much more than just science. It's history, geography and ethics.

SandraDodd.com/science
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click to enlarge)

In a drop of water

Universe-in-a-Drop-of-Water Method:

Can one intense interest come to represent or lead to all others? A mom once complained that her son was interested in nothing but World War II. There are college professors and historians who are interested in nothing but World War II. It can become a life’s work. But even a passing interest can touch just about everything—geography, politics, the history and current events of Europe and parts of the Pacific, social history of the 20th century in the United States, military technology, tactics, recruitment and propaganda, poster art/production/distribution, advances in communications, transport of troops and food and supplies, espionage, prejudices, interment camps, segregation, patriotism, music, uniforms, insignia, religion....

from "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers"
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Less nutty now

Deb Lewis, writing in 2006, referring to 1999
(first posted here in 2011, and more true in 2022)


Spending time with Dylan made it hard for people to make an argument that he was missing something by not going to school. He was bright and articulate and lively. "But when he gets older," they started saying, "he'll need to go to school for the important subjects."

About this time some homeschooling kids were winning spelling bees and geography bees. Some public school kids were shooting up their classrooms. Suddenly, keeping a kid out of school didn't seem as nutty as it had a few years before.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/years
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Blanketing time and space

Any subjects leads to every other subject, and every other connection of any sort. Rather than sorting things out with your children, try to keep blending and mixing.

Religion leads to history, to geography, to clothing, to fashion, to business and imports to transportation to law. Law leads to ethics to medicine to religion. Any of those "leads to" points could lead to a dozen OTHER destinations, so even with a list that short, it starts to blanket time and space. Don't resist those weird tangents; jump on them and ride.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

History in your hand

By seeing the same old things in new ways, you might discover a world of riches in the same old stuff you already had. Take, for instance, a deck of playing cards. What might seem too mundane and common to you isn't so common to someone else. And maybe your parents or grandparents thought cards were sinful, but playing dominoes or something else was okay. My dad's family was that way.

Playing card games has social benefits and leads to learning and all, but playing around with the cards themselves leads to dozens of things too! Compare aces and art from different decks. Consider the manufacture of cards, the traditional colors, the etiquette of card tables, shuffling, cutting, directions of play.

Cards connect to history, art, statistics, logic, geography, religion, law, entertainment, paper manufacturing, printing technology... well they don't connect to more things than everything else does, but they're an easy way to see how things connect!

Some of this is from SandraDodd.com/game/cards
Image from a Wikipedia article.

Other images and fun trivia are here:
History found in Playing Cards, on the Thinking Sticks blog
__

Trash or treasure?

You can use antique shops or junk stores, charity shops, thrift stores, as museums to visit with your children. Many things are neither trash nor treasure, but can be interesting examples of art, technology, geography, politics, function and design.

---

In deciding which link to use with this image, I settled on the history page, and noticed a paragraph I wrote over a decade ago. Now, two deaths and a Nobel prize have entered the story:

History can be nearly current, like comparative pop/funk of the '80s— is Prince really all that much greater than Michael Jackson? Is it because he plays guitar? What about the history of the guitar? Does Minneapolis create better musicians than Gary, Indiana, or does it even matter? Is Bob Dylan evidence for Minneapolis? One thing leads to another. Thinking about Minneapolis can lead to thoughts of U.S. history, of early 19th century border fortifications, the Mississippi River, the French in Canada, and in Louisiana. You can let your mind float downstream (or up). "Hiawatha" would've been set in that area, and Longfellow wrote that and many other things of childhood, and parents, and night time.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

All these connections

Farming, vocabulary, art, colors, geography, botany, shapes, textures, joy, comfort, gifts, humor, lunch.

Most things are many things.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Roya Dedeaux
__

Knots

Knot tying can lead to all kinds of history and geography. Hunters, traps, climbing, ships (wrapped bottles, in addition to all kinds of sail rigging and tethering knots), and cowboy stuff, and...

SandraDodd.com/math/knots

The photo isn't of tied knots, but drawn and painted knots, by Keith Dodd. Keith knows lots of knots, with rope, but I don't have photos. What's there looks confusing. It's a three-legged tooled-leather-seated folding stool with a painted shield leaning on it.

The universe in a drop of water

Universe-in-a-Drop-of-Water Method:

Can one intense interest come to represent or lead to all others? A mom once complained that her son was interested in nothing but World War II. There are college professors and historians who are interested in nothing but World War II. It can become a life’s work. But even a passing interest can touch just about everything—geography, politics, the history and current events of Europe and parts of the Pacific, social history of the 20th century in the United States, military technology, tactics, recruitment and propaganda, poster art/production/distribution, advances in communications, transport of troops and food and supplies, espionage, prejudices, interment camps, segregation, patriotism, music, uniforms, insignia, religion....



from "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers"
Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Gail Higgins

Big world

Here is a peacock in India. Hema Bharadwaj took the photo:



This peacock lives wherever it wants to, in Albuquerque, and was photographed by Holly Dodd. Where it wants to live is wandering around the zoo. 🙂



Below is a picture I took of Holly and another zoo peacock last year.

click here for more peacock images
What do you know about peacocks? What do you need to know? Does what you know touch geography? Art, biology, or animal behavior? History, mythology or fashion?

You probably don't "need" to know anything about peacocks, really, but I bet you already knew several things.
__

Nuttiness is relative

Deb Lewis, writing in 2006, referring to 1999:


Spending time with Dylan made it hard for people to make an argument that he was missing something by not going to school. He was bright and articulate and lively. "But when he gets older," they started saying, "he'll need to go to school for the important subjects."

About this time some homeschooling kids were winning spelling bees and geography bees. Some public school kids were shooting up their classrooms. Suddenly, keeping a kid out of school didn't seem as nutty as it had a few years before.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/years
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Tangents and connections

How many ways can you categorize a scene or a situation? Here is a photo of a bridge.


I see geography, weather, water, engineering, technology, materials, transportation, history, finance, artistry, reflection, photography, generosity, audience, storage, reference, stored in fleeting pixels.

Play with your ability to see things more than one way. Enjoy hopping from one connection to another.

Connections
photo by Karen James

Blue Suede Shoes

1993:

Some time back there was a request for songs to be sung which would be educational. As music itself is a discipline, I think any music can be used as an educational tool. It can tie in with physical activity, mathematics, physics, history, geography, art, language, and it can be used to get kids excited and awake, or calm and asleep, or anything in between. I don't mean singing about math or history, either, but discussing the form of the music, the rhythm, the moods, the origins, the instruments on which it is traditionally played, the length and pattern of the verses (or phrases, or whatever), what its purpose is (a march, background music for a movie or for an 18th century fireworks show, a lullaby, a love song), etc.

Don't miss this fun and easy opportunity to tie different "subjects" together by using a song as a jumping off place to many different discussions. If you need ideas, name a song here and see how many suggestions you can get for it!

---

2012:

What's above was written in 1993. Someone named "Blue Suede Shoes," thinking it wouldn't net much. I just wrote and wrote that day, and luckily I printed it out and saved it. The link below leads to my response, commentary and a video of Elvis doing another song, that leads to another song, and... you know.

SandraDodd.com/dot/elvis
photo by Sandra Dodd (of some art right behind my house)
2017:

The tromp l'oeil art of full-sized cars on storage containers is still behind my house. The Elvis page has two added videos—not of Elvis, but things that one reminded me of, and then the other (added recently). I hope you have fun with all of this!

Learning from Cartoons

Each family discovers the value of choices in unique and wonderful ways. Well, not every family–only those who actually do start giving their children choices, and in which the adults work to see the choices they are making as well.

One surprise is that programs the parents had thought were "stupid" have led to discussion and research on the autobahn, the metric system, classic movies, technology, international sports, geography, segregation, famous speeches, sportsmanship and ethics, live theatre, opera, oil and mining, hygiene, reproduction, Australian food, life cycle of frogs, hurricane formation, trust, cooperation, classical music, Vikings, religion, art, how different animals survive the winter, Galileo, Japanese mythology, cooking, geology… this list could be twice as long without leaving that section of my website.

One trail went from a mummy cartoon to Egypt, to Pharaohs, to slavery, to the Civil War, to Abraham Lincoln, and to other presidents. The Simpsons' parody of Schoolhouse Rock led to a discussion on Thoreau and Walden.

text from page 141 (or 153) of The Big Book of Unschooling
and that page links to SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy and SandraDodd.com/t/learning
cartoon portrait by Gina Trujillo, my niece, based on this self-made photo