Useful, necessary, fun, or interesting

Deb Lewis wrote:

Along with the myth that a child will learn everything in school, and its companion fable that a child must go to school in order to learn, is the idea that there is some window of time for learning, and a child who learns slower or later will be behind forever. Anyone over forty who uses a smart phone knows that's not true. We didn't learn about digital assistants, mobile payments, GPS navigation, or apps in school. The truth is, a thing can only be learned after it's been discovered to be useful, necessary, fun, or interesting—and that can only be determined by the learner.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/holt/nevertoolate
photo by Cátia Maciel

The more you know...

When I was a student I often asked why something was important to learn, but my teachers rarely had good answers.

When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world.

The more we know, the more jokes we will get.

The larger paragraph above is from:
To Get More Jokes
or "Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007

photo by Heather Booth

To get more jokes

When I was a student I often asked why something was important to learn, but my teachers rarely had good answers.

When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world.

The more we know, the more jokes we will get.

The larger paragraph above is from:
To Get More Jokes
or
"Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007

photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly Dodd dressed for a costume party

Confident and independent children

Jihong Tang wrote:

I was told by being with them all the time, by saying yes most of the time, by not setting the boundary (in a traditional sense), by parenting without punishment, I would have clingy and spoiled kids. The reality is quite the opposite: they are very independent and well adjusted.

The simple truth: we just spend lots of time together and have lots of shared experience and memory. That makes big differences. It is 365x24x60x60 shared moments (31,536,000 seconds a year).

—Jihong Tang

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Sandra Dodd

Critical thinking

"Just because there's more than one truth doesn't mean there's no such thing as bullshit." —Sandra Dodd

You can quote it but don't steal it.
In the dozen years since I first wrote it,
nothing has occurred to change my mind.

Balance and
How Parents can Learn
photo of Holly and Sandra and some fictional characters, by Kelli Traaseth

Ages and stages

Yesterday I bent over and picked an inch-tall tumbleweed sprout from a crack in a sidewalk. It was a tiny bit of community service.

The wind is blowing here, and all the big tumbleweeds will pass through chain link fences, or barbed wire, and scatter themselves into thousands of seeds. It happens every year.

A tiny baby hardly resembles adult forms, or the changes that take place in old folks. Where you are now is young compared to where you'll be later. Those changed old folks are always saying you will miss having those young children, and I found it to be true. It also irritated me for someone who was sleeping in a quiet, clean home to tell the baby-sticky, frazzled younger me that these were good days I would miss.

"Truth" is irritating, when we're sprouts, sprigs, teens, new parents, but just as the winds blow, people express the wisdom they gained as they aged and discovered that they missed having children in the house, as those other older older-folks had told them that they would.

"Results" (a half-random link)
tumbleweed photo by Holly Dodd
__

"What is this GOOD for?"

When I was a student I often asked why something was important to learn, but my teachers rarely had good answers.

When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.



The larger paragraph above is from:
To Get More Jokes
or
"Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007

Not lazy

Part of my response to a 2008 question about whether unschoolers will grow up lazy:

I've done resumes for LOTS of my friends. Kirby wrote his and just needed formatting, because he doesn't have Word. He wrote this in his intro:

"I am a long-experienced mentor and coach..."
Some people put stuff in their resumes I roll my eyes at, or hesitate to type up. Kirby is telling the simple truth. He's 21. Since he was twelve or so he's been helping teach karate, helping run games at the gaming shop. They hired him as soon as he turned 14 because he was already running the Pokemon tournaments for four hours every Saturday morning and it was against the rules of Pokemon gymleadermanship (!?) for it not to be an employee of the store. For over a third of his life he's been coaching and teaching and organizing people younger and older than he is.


SandraDodd.com/hena08/lazy
photo by Sandra Dodd
at Denny's, with Holly

For learning to really flourish

"Being Ethan's mom changed me. I surprised myself in good ways. In learning to give to him, I grew to really like myself. The walls started coming down. I started to soften—to have compassion for myself.... I challenged myself to continue to do better, because I now knew I could. I had a found confidence in that new truth. Honesty and humility too. All good things for learning to really flourish."

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/issues
photo by Sandra Dodd

Glad to be wrong

When I had been unschooling for several years, I still dreaded and joked about how different it would be when I had teens. I expected what I thought was "natural" and what was probably inevitable teenaged behavior.

It turns out that much of what is considered "normal teen behavior" is a normal reaction to many years of school, and to being controlled and treated as children and school kids and students rather than as full, thoughtful human beings.

Being wrong doesn't bother me one bit when the truth is so much better than my fears and predictions!

from page 251 (or 292) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd, 2005 at a movie-character theme party
Kirby as Casey Jones from the first Ninja Turtle movie
Marty as Dr. Strangelove (←click there to see him in the chair with glasses)
and Holly as Addie Pray from Paper Moon
__

I do believe...

Here's a fairy door. That is clearly what it is.

Are fairies real? We all know that word, and there's that door.

"What aspect of some particular subject involves objective truth? What is folklore or mythology? What literature or fantasy has come about based on that subject or item? Consider dragons, or India, or snakes, or rainbows. Checklist Abe Lincoln, the discovery of fire, or the depths of Lake Superior. Plot WWII, Japan, electric guitars, or Egypt."

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Rosie Todd

Yes, but... it depends

Some statements are too definite. Sunshine melts snow.


It depends. It depends how cold it is otherwise, and how long the sun shines. The day that photo was taken, even the icicles weren't melting in sunshine. And if the ground is warm and the air is warm, snow can melt in the dark.

When you make a statement, think about whether it could easily be made more solid, more reliable.

• Sunshine can melt snow.
• Sunshine might melt snow.
  
• If it warms up today, that snow might melt.

Thoughts and words, tweaked just slightly, can keep truth safe. For clarity and trustworthiness, remember "it depends."

SandraDodd.com/depends
photo by Sandra Dodd

Can an idea be a tool?

When I was a kid, humans used tools and that made us human, but that's no longer "the truth." Chimpanzees can use a leaf as a sponge to gather water out of a hole. They will lick a stick and put it down a hole to collect insects (termites? ants? I don't know what). They will move things to climb up on to get something they can't reach.

Marty says he thinks maybe elephants will pick up a stick to knock something down that's higher than their trunks. If they haven't, they should.

So what, these days, are "tools"? My computer? Google? Wikipedia? Blogger.com? My new glasses? That electric teakettle I'm about to go and heat water with?

We talk about parenting tools, and people adding to their toolboxes, and those are all in the realm of thought (and action proceeding from thought, but without physical tools).

"Tools" (on the Thinking Sticks blog)
photo by Holly Dodd
__