Language first

Whole language involves language as communication, rather than as separate parts (writing / reading / spelling). First language; details later.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 93 or 102, "Phonics and Whole Language"
webpage connections: Phonics or Spelling
photo by Kirby Dodd
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The whole language

Because phonics treats written English as a simple code when it is not, many children are frustrated very early on.

Whole language involves language as communication, rather than separate parts (writing/reading/spelling). First language; details later.

With unschooling, children will learn from the language you use and they use, from the words they see around them, from using games and computers, from signing greeting cards or playing with words. There's no need for any school-style structure at all. For those who have worried about phonics and reading and spelling, please don't press that on your children.



Play with words
photo by Caroline Lieber

Sounding off

Patti Schmidt wrote:

It seems to me that "phonics" essentially serves the purpose of "teaching" a child to read before he's ready and fully grasps context and meaning. I know that I can read Spanish, which is a much more consistently phonetic language than English, complete with accent and everything, and literally not understand one bit of what I'm saying.

I remember being tested separately for "reading" and reading comprehension. If one can't understand the words and phrases, then isn't it just decoding with an internalized phonics decoder ring?

Turning script to sound is one trick, but the reading that people want will turn marks to meaning. The same way that musical notation (and a musician who can decipher and play or sing it) can bring music into the air, so can the written word becoming lively language again.

Patti discovered, as many unschooling parents have, that while some children appreciate phonics hints, or figure phonics out on their own, others learn to read in their own other ways.

More of Patti's story of children learning differently:
SandraDodd.com/r/patti
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo was taken of the insde of a church door in Durham, in England. "The draught is dreadful" cannot be read easily with American phonics (or sight reading, or look-say). But it's cute, and it's alliterative, which is an ancient tradition in the English language, and in the naming of the alter-egos of comic-book super heroes.

Will they "catch up"?

Q: If they decide to go to school, will they be able to catch up?

Some are already ahead. Maybe their handwriting won't have as much use, or they might need to learn mathematical notation and practice writing numbers by hand if they've been using computers and calculators and phones to to do calculations and to communicate.

So in a way they can be way ahead, but give the appearance of "being behind," because kids at school are using paper and pencil, rather than computers.

Another way to think about school is that when someone moves from a very different culture—Kenya, Japan—where the writing system or culture or language are extremely different, they catch up in a year or two. Someone from the same culture and language shouldn't have much problem.

SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Stephanie Cone-Early
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Deciphering written language

Only the reader can decipher it.
. . . .
Cipher is from the Arabic word for zero, and has been in English for a long, long time. "To cipher," meaning to do arithmetic, is a word even my grandfather used, who was born in 1898 and lived in Texas. But why a "ph" and not an "f"? Because it came through Greek. Some Greek mathematician discovered the idea from Arabic, wrote it down in Greek, and it came to other European languages from that. "Ph" words in English are always from Greek.

To decipher something (like reading) means to figure out the patterns.

A parent cannot decipher words for a child. Only the child can decipher written language. You can help! You can help LOTS of ways. One way would be to gain an interest in the words you use yourself, and stop once in a while to examine one, its history, why it means what it means.

SandraDodd.com/etymology
photo by Sandra Dodd
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See, touch, hear

Let [babies] hear you speak, and find opportunities for them to hear others speak. Although there are justifications and theories about what babies like and respond to (high voices and sing-songy voices seem to appeal to babies), don't revert to a whole babytalk language with them. Some is fine, but talk to them about real things, too. Tell them what you're doing with them, and what they're seeing, when they're out and about. Don't quiz them, just talk. It's fine if they can't understand you for months and months. They'll be learning your tone and your moods and the speech patterns of the language even before they have vocabulary. You will be building a relationship that is not based on the meaning of the words, but on the sharing of the time and attention. You're paying attention to what the baby sees and touches and hears. The baby is paying attention to you.

If you can keep that up for eighteen years, you've got unschooling!

SandraDodd.com/babies
photo by Sandra Dodd, up into a little tree I sat under, in a gully;
a banana blossom, in Maui!
(touch/click to enlarge)
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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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Mindset and language

A reader named Eleanor wrote:

I was very grateful to discover your writings on ‘struggle’ and the compilation on your website relating to ‘struggle‘ a few years ago.

I still read it regularly and get so much more from it with each read. It sparked a change in mindset and language which improved our unschooling lives massively.

Lax and relax
photo by Sandra Dodd

Find your 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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Language and thoughts

Watch your language, because then you wlll see thought processes you might not have seen otherwise.

Watch your thoughts, because without doing that you can't really learn to choose better reactions.

Sandra, in a discussion, 2007
photo by Brie Jontry

Lively ideas; living language

Without becoming too critical or cynical, maybe consider, with your children sometimes, changes in knowledge (the platypus, Mars, Pluto, leeches, volcanic activity and virgin sacrifice compared to global warming's medicine men; anything smaller than an atom?), or geography ("Four Corners" has been in the wrong place all these years; the U.S.S.R. is still on maps in some public places) or spellings ("plough" or "plow"? wooly or woolly?).

Play lightly with these ideas. There's no advantage to getting huffy or angry about it. Just see it as the reality it is. People learn. People change their minds. Knowledge grows. Evidence is reclassified. Language is alive. People who are alive are changing and learning. You can resist that or you can ride it with gusto.

Fact/Fallacy/Opinion
photo by Sarah S.

The language they hear and see

With unschooling, children will learn from the language you use and they use, from the words they see around them, from using games and computers, from signing greeting cards or playing with words. There's no need for any school-style structure at all. For those who have wondered about phonics and reading and spelling, please don't press that on your children.

SandraDodd.com/phonics
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a ghost sign in Texas
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Why thought matters

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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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.
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Learning about natural learning

Let [babies] hear you speak, and find opportunities for them to hear others speak. Although there are justifications and theories about what babies like and respond to (high voices and sing-songy voices seem to appeal to babies), don't revert to a whole babytalk language with them. Some is fine, but talk to them about real things, too. Tell them what you're doing with them, and what they're seeing, when they're out and about. Don't quiz them, just talk. It's fine if they can't understand you for months and months. They'll be learning your tone and your moods and the speech patterns of the language even before they have vocabulary. You will be building a relationship that is not based on the meaning of the words, but on the sharing of the time and attention. You're paying attention to what the baby sees and touches and hears. The baby is paying attention to you.

If you can keep that up for eighteen years, you've got unschooling!

SandraDodd.com/babies
photo by Sandra Dodd, up into a little tree I sat under, in a gully;
not in New Mexico
(touch/click to enlarge)
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Mastering ideas about learning

As some of my articles are being translated (now into Japanese, French and Italian) I see how much of my writing and thinking is about language itself, and so some of these ideas won't translate. But sometimes, that fact is very good. Some of our confusion about teaching and students and study and learning, in English, has to do with the words we use, and if the problems don't exist in other languages, that's wonderful for them.

In Romance language (Italian, French, Spanish and so on) our "teacher" translates to something along the lines of "maestro," a word we have too in regards to music direction. And we have the English cognate "master" which is more currently left in "master of arts" and other college-degree titles. Once that meant a person was qualified to teach at the university level. That meaning is gone in the U.S., pretty much.

Considering the word family from which "maestro" comes (and not knowing all its connotations in other languages), the English verb "to master" means to learn. It means to become accomplished in the doing of something. Whether mastering horseback riding or blacksmithing or knowing and controlling one's own emotions, it's not someone else does to you or for you.

So for any translators or bilinguals reading here, have sympathy for English speakers who can't get to natural learning without disentangling all the graspy words and ideas about teaching and education and their implications that learning is passive and teaching must be done to a person.

SandraDodd.com/wordswordsother
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Mindset and language

A reader named Eleanor wrote:

I was very grateful to discover your writings on ‘struggle’ and the compilation on your website relating to ‘struggle‘ a few years ago.

I still read it regularly and get so much more from it with each read. It sparked a change in mindset and language which improved our unschooling lives massively.

Lax and relax
photo by Sandra Dodd

More than one thing

I always like the idea that most things are many things. Language is both too big and too small, sometimes.

If a chart is made of food or food can by played with; if a house is a home and a brownstone and a townhouse; if music is noise, and a pet is a dog and a stray and a mutt, it's even more impressive that kids can learn English (or whatever native language they find themselves born or brought into).

A sweet shortcut to more peace at your house is to allow things, and people, to have many facets and designations. I'm a mom, a wife, a sister, a writer, a mender, a joker, and sometimes I sing. Not so long ago, I became a grandmother. I maintain a webpage, and this blog. You, too, and each person you know, is more than one thing. Let your imagination and calmness extend that to chairs, tables, and blankets.

This post might be soothing or irritating, helpful or long. Same with lunch, or the next story someone tells me.

Find ways to be happy through all those words and thoughts.

Peace
photo by Cátia Maciel
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So logically...

Deb Lewis wrote:

Does TV create violence, really? Maybe guns create violence. Knives. Baseball bats. Hammers. Axes, shovels, saws? Rope? Dynamite? Sharp sticks, rocks? Maybe it's language causes violence because most killers spoke. Maybe it's books. Clothing? Day time night time wind rain snow trees birds frogs.



For lots of kids, even the bad guys on TV are nicer than the real life crazy people they live and go to school with.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/t/violence
photo by Tara Joe Farrell
The page also has this quote:

"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?"

—Dick Cavett

The Museum of Everything

When you're talking to young children who are figuring out their new language and their new world, avoid saying "always" or "never." Instead of making rules for him or dire predictions, explain your concerns and thoughts.  Give him some "why" to go with his "what" and "where" and "when." Even give him some "why" to go with his "who." Don't forget that he won't know what "aunt" and "cousin" mean. He won't automatically figure out "neighbor" or "co-worker."

You're like a docent in The Museum of Everything.


The quote is from page 63 (or 68) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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