Transformations

Choices have transformed our lives. Limitations do not transform lives. They limit lives.

SandraDodd.com/limits
photo by Sandra Dodd
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If you want to listen to me talking about transformations, here. "Something big starts to change."

Mathematics

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.

Unschoolers and Mathematics
the image is a Holly photo
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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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Being transformed

[There is something interesting] at the crux of the difference between being an unschooler and being however we all used to be before. We had this expectation of how we might be with our children, or how we might be with our spouses, our friends, or neighbors, or roommates. And then something big starts to change. And our attitudes change. And our "being ourselves" changes.

SandraDodd.com/listen/transformations
snow angel photo by Janine Davies
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Being transformed

[There is something interesting] at the crux of the difference between being an unschooler and being however we all used to be before. We had this expectation of how we might be with our children, or how we might be with our spouses, our friends, or neighbors, or roommates. And then something big starts to change. And our attitudes change. And our "being ourselves" changes.

SandraDodd.com/listen/transformations
snow angel photo by Janine Davies
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Surprising changes

When my firstborn son was four and we decided not to enroll him in kindergarten that fall, I thought I could foresee the future. I knew unschoolers. I knew alternative education. I knew it could be really fun, and good. What happened over the next nineteen years surprised me. Because of unschooling, I changed. My husband changed. The way we interacted with the world and other people changed, all for the better. Our relationships with all three of our children surpassed any of our imaginings.

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The text was the written introduction to a talk I gave in 2009. There is no recording of that day, but this one, later the same same year, is similar: Transformations (sound file, photo, and notes there).

The photo is by David Jio, of a light too bright to see directly, and the more-detailed shadow/projection of what it really looks like. That light is has been in our front room for years. Sometimes a very intense thing can hardly be perceived directly, but the effects and afterimages can be examined.
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Getting there

You get to a place by physically getting there, by emotionally getting there, by mentally getting there.

SandraDodd.com/listen/transformations
photo by Rodrigo Mattioli