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

The open flow of real-world sharing

from 2004, Sandra Dodd:

The best thing unschoolers can do is to unschool well. The best thing those who are interested in helping others come along the same path can do is explain what helped it work well.

Reading other families' personal stories, hearing about paths that didn't work well and others that did is what helped me when I was new to this, and that's what I've been involved in helping happen ever since—real unschoolers sharing their real experiences.

Some people don't want to share in public and that's fine. Some people share things in public that turn out not to be true, and that's not cool. But over the years, many hundreds of unschoolers who first found one another through AOL's message boards, or at conferences, or through e-mail correspondence have met other unschoolers in person, and each person must ultimately gauge for herself who to emulate or trust or to go to for inspiration or whatever. There is no central board certifying unschoolers or conference organizers or listowners. It's the open flow of real-world sharing.

In 2024 I'm still offering a hand.
SandraDodd.com/help
photo by Linda Wyatt

Visions of input

There was a time when the only way for a kid to get information from outside his home and neighborhood was books. (Think Abraham Lincoln, log cabin in the woods far from centers of learning.) Now books tend to be outdated, and google.com is better for information. If Abraham Lincoln had had full-color DVDs of the sights of other countries, of people speaking in their native accents and languages, and of history, he would have shoved those books aside and watched those videos.

When someone thinks books are the one crucial step to any further learning, then books and school have crippled that person's ability to think expansively, and to see what's unfolding in front of them in the real world.

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That was written in 2010. I would like to upgrade my imagined young-Abe-Lincoln to streaming services.

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SandraDodd.com/bookworship
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Texas, when DVDs were abundant

Happy and safe

With my kids, it was a posture I took, partly physical, partly mental, in which I accepted and recognized that I had the power to make them unhappy, and the easy ability to allow them to be in danger (from me, in part) if I wasn't really mindful and careful to focus on their safety, comfort and joy.

Some of the same relatives and friends who were greatly in favor of my partnership with Keith seemed critical of our kindness to our children. There is a wide stripe of anti-child tradition in the world. I didn't treat my child as a real person. I acknowledged from the beginning that he WAS a real person. I recognized and nurtured his wholeness and tried not to screw him up. I became his partner, rather than acting like his partner or "treating him" as a partner. It's not just semantics, though it is semantics. It's about the power of words to show, affect and clarify thought and belief.

An idea, expressed in words, changed my life. "Be your child's partner, not his adversary."

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Julie D

Real vs. acting, or practicing

Writing done in school is practice writing, mostly. That "math" done in school is the calculations of other people's math. It's all at least two steps from "real world," while saying "this is the real world."

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That is from a discussion about the depth of being, rather than of acting like a child's partner. Examples were used, and tangents were taken. The longer collection is at:
"Partners," examined

photo by Holly Dodd

Another step; another

Those who divide the world into academic and non-academic will maintain rules, bedtimes, chores even though they might not be "having lessons" in history, science, math or language arts.

So the history of "radical unschooling" came from someone saying "Well we're not that radical," and me saying "well I am."

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers.

I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved.

And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

It has to do with philosophy and priority.

What do you believe is the nature of man, and the duty of a parent?

What do you believe hinders a child, or harms the relationship between a parent and a child?

Real actual unschooling
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Looking, being, knowing

Karen James wrote:

Living in the world peacefully and respectfully are good places to begin to focus when new to unschooing. The best advice I was given was to look at my son. Not at ideals. Not at freedom. Not at school or no school. Not at labels. Not at big ideas. Look at my son. Be with him. Get to know him deeply. And, then to read a bit about unschooling. Give something new a try. See how it goes in the context of our real day to day life.

I still do that. I'm still learning.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/freedom
photo by Karen James

Small part of a big deal

Your own dwelling place is a small part of the whole universe. The things you have collected, and that you use, are all part of the universe.

From the point of view of your family (especially the younger members), where you live is HUGE, and detailed, and familiar, but the outside world starts off vague and hardly real.

All these perspectives make sense, depending on the moment and the context. Go with what is sweet and peaceful and feels safe and good.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Monica Molinar

Lovable and respectable

(Warning people away from "unconditional love," I wrote:)

Probably the idea started, in the 1950’s, with Carl Rogers’ phrase "unconditional positive regard."

If you’re a big fan of "unconditional love," consider backing it back to "unconditional positive regard" to help clarify and ground you for the real world.

Unconditional Positive Regard (at wikipedia)

Also, try to respect your male partner if you have one. He’s probably doing some good for you even if it seems like he’s not giving you unconditional love. And the difference between "love" and "respect" is about language anyway. Try to be lovable AND respectable, whether or not you have a partner or an audience, because it makes you a better person. Try to be trustworthy and dependable.

Being a better person will make you a better parent.

“Deserve” is a problem.

The SandraDodd.com/deserve link followed that, but the quote is from a longer post, "Love and Respect," in the archives
photo by Janine Davies

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Note to clarify, years later: I think that in a long-established relationship with any other adult, raising children, that love and respect are intertwined. Biochemically, in more youthful people who are "in love," that has a reality beyond and apart from respect. In the context of the topic from which that was taken, it's clearer.

The Wikipedia article has been amended, in the past few years, to credit Stanley Standal with the concept, and the phrase "positive regard" (for therapists).

Learning social skills

Jihong Tang wrote (as part of a longer list):

Socialization and social skills. I think it should be one of the top reasons to homeschool. I see with my own eyes how my children develop their social skills by watching how I talk on the phone, interact with people and explain to them what to expect and how to behave under different circumstances. It has been a subtle and slow process until one day I noticed they used the same language I used and mimicked how I conducted myself at special occasions. I would say having an adult modeling in the real world makes a big difference.

—Jihong Tang

SandraDodd.com/whyunschool
photo by Cátia Maciel

With and for, not against

Parents who say anything is stupid (laws, art, music) are working against their child's peace and learning, not with and for it.

Living in the Real World
photo by Brie Jontry

Real world

The thing I think I've seen more than anything else in some of the older unschoolers, the people who are teens who haven't been to school much or at all, is they are so whole. Their place in the world is real. They're not preparing for the possibility of applying to have a place in the world after they're grown. They are in the world. And there's something so different about that.

Unschooling and Real Learning
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Adult decisions

When a young adult has been making real decisions for years, and what their parents want is to help them think clearly and to make careful decisions based on the preferences and beliefs of the young person himself, the same old world looks very different.

Young Adults: Partners
photo by Janine

Stepping outside

If you can leave the schoolish building your own mind has built, that has "academics" sorted and stacked against old walls with bad memories, you can see the light of the real world outside.

How Elvis Appears to Unschoolers
photo by Ester Siroky

Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

See, hear, smell, touch and taste!

When babies are carried they see more, they hear and smell more. If they are given things to touch and taste besides just a few baby toys left in the corner of a crib or playpen, they will learn by leaps and bounds. They will spend less time crying and more time being in the real world.

The parents will know the child better, and the child will know the parents better. They will be building a partnership based on trust.

SandraDodd.com/infants
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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The world is a wonder

Jihong Tang wrote:

Relevancy is very important in learning. I knew wax's melting point by heart but freaked out when it melted so fast while I was doing project with my [four-year-old son]. I never played with wax before. I knew physics on paper very well but played with pulleys in real life just recently. I knew areodynamics from school but had real appreciation of it through flying kite with my son.

Unschooling my children sparkles my curiosity and burning desire to learn. The world is a wonder!

—Jihong Tang, 2010

SandraDodd.com/learning (the quote isn't there, but the ideas are)
photo by Megan Valnes

In the world

The thing I think I've seen more than anything else in some of the older unschoolers, the people who are teens who haven't been to school much or at all, is they are so whole. Their place in the world is real. They're not preparing for the possibility of applying to have a place in the world after they're grown. They are in the world. And there's something so different about that.

Unschooling and Real Learning
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Finding a social spot

Humans are social animals, and learn in mixed-age groups, when they learn naturally. A family can create that natural learning environment, or can fail to create it. :-/ Being around other people, though, IF AND WHEN a child wants to learn and is encouraged by parents to learn how to be considerate and sociable, can be a good place to learn "manners"—ways to behave politely.

In school, children are still social animals with the need to identify who might help them, and what their role is within the social structure. The social structure being unnaturally 20+ kids the same age, they figure out who are the leaders and the "young" and they act in accordance with their instincts in an unnatural setting. More adults to—teens, and young adults, and middle-aged, and elderly, behaving in natural real-world ways. TV is better for that than school is. Ideally, a rich unschooled life *IN* the real world is better than either.



photo by Julie D

I can't find where I wrote that, up there, but three people shared it in 2012,
and I still think it's true. —Sandra

Nearly natural limits

Kelly Lovejoy wrote:

The world is FULL of natural limits. Our lives are FULL of natural limits. It's the way we deal with those limits that matters. Finding solutions and dealing with obstacles and knowing what limits are real.

—Kelly Lovejoy

From a discussion of Boundaries, at Unschooling Basics
photo by Ester Siroky