Interesting byways

Ronnie Maier wrote:

What matters is that they are bright, happy, interesting, accomplished, engaged and engaging. Unschooling doesn't only work for kids of "above-average intelligence," or kids whose parents are teachers, or kids who can recite the alphabet while twirling a baton, or any other limiting factor.

Unschooling works because the unschooled individual has the time and support to follow the interesting byways that lead to real learning.

—Ronnie Maier

SandraDodd.com/socialization
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a lost-and-found potato
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"I can do better next time."

If something goes wrong—car breaks down, electric bill isn't paid, yard flooded... What can be changed to help prevent it in the future?

One needs the ability to calmly look back and see what (if anything) they contributed to the failure.

I could say "Fords always break down; the power company SUCKS; my yard is stupid." But it's better to think "I should check the oil more often; paying the bill early is better than waiting til the last minute; I need to clear that drain so the water can flow out."


Spiritual/Existential Intelligence chat transcript
photo by Sandra Dodd

Patterns and plans

Colleen Prieto took this photo of her odomoter. I love the pattern, and the reflections. If it's too small to appreciate, click the image for an enlargement.



Seeing patterns and appreciating them will help with unschooling. It adds to wonder, and awareness. In Gardner's Intelligences, it's about spatial reasoning and nature intelligence—seeing what is like what, and seeing and predicting change and outcome.

Intelligences, or more images and some writing by Colleen Prieto
photo by Colleen Prieto

Children being themselves

Life will be better for all involved if you don't label your children's intelligence, or processing speed, or likelihood to reverse numbers, or ability to pay attention to something deadly boring. Don't drug your children into being still enough to sit on an assembly line. It has nothing on earth to do with natural learning or unschooling. Neither does "giftedness."

SandraDodd.com/giftedness

The quote is from The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Gail Higgins

Structure and transformation

Mathematics could use a better name. Seriously. School has gone and made that one all scary. In addition (she said mathematically), it's not called the same thing in all English-speaking places. "Math" in some places, and "maths" in others.

But it's about measuring and weighing and sharing. It's about making decisions in video games (buy the watering can? risk danger to collect coins?) and it's about how fast music goes and which ladder to use to get onto the roof. It's almost never about numbers themselves, and it's never about workbooks (except for workbook manufacture and purchase).

I went to look for a different word for "mathematics," and I didn't find one. One Old English word was "telling." For arithmetic: "cyphering," or sums. So I went looking for modern, philosophical definitions of mathematics that had nothing to do with school, and I have collected all these bits and pieces for you: Mathematics is a science dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement; structure, space, and change; logic, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts.

Structure and transformations? I use those things. Shape and arrangement? That covers art, and music. Flowers in vases and books on shelves.

Unschooling is simple but not easy, and it's not easy to understand, but when math is a normal part of life then people can discover it and use it in natural ways and it becomes a part of their native intelligence.

SandraDodd.com/math
photo by Holly Dodd, 2010 or earlier
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