Principles instead of rules

The idea of living by principles has come up before and will come up again. When I first started playing with the idea, in preparation for a conference presentation, I was having a hard time getting even my husband and best friends to understand it. Really bright people local to me, parents, looked at me blankly and said "principles are just another word for rules."

I was determined to figure out how to explain it, but it's still not simple to describe or to accept, and I think it's because our culture is filled with rules, and has little respect for the idea of "principles." It seems moralistic or spiritual to talk about a person's principles, or sometimes people who don't see it that way will still fear it's about to get philosophical and beyond their interest or ability.

Rules are things like "Never hit the dog," and "Don't talk to strangers."

Principles are more like "Being gentle to the dog is good for the dog and good for you too," or "People you don't know could be dangerous." They are not "what to do." They are "how do you decide?" and "why?" in the realm of thought and decision making.

The answer to most questions is "it depends."

What it depends on often has to do with principles.

from page 42 (or 46) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Go easy, but have fun!

Some people overstate their cases and say “Our children will never go to school.” We didn’t. First of all, it’s not something any parent can insure. But we didn’t burn our bridges or commit to an unseen future. What we said was “Kirby’s staying home this year.” And then “Kirby’s going to stay at home again.” When people asked the inevitable questions, we said things like “It’s working for now,” or “If it stops working we’ll try something else,” or “If he stops having fun, he can go to school.” Then we were careful to make sure he had lots of fun!

From an interview at "Do Life Right"
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The value of trivia

So what IS trivia? For school kids, trivia is (by definition) a waste of time. It’s something that will not be on the test. It’s “extra” stuff. For unschoolers, though, in the wide new world in which EVERYTHING counts, there can be no trivia in that sense. If news of the existence of sachets ties in with what one learned of medieval plagues in Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody, there are two pointers that tie microbiology to European cities in the Middle Ages, and lead to paradise-guaranteed pilgrimages to Rome. Nowadays sanitation and antibiotics keep the plague from “spreading like the plague.”


Image (a link!) borrowed from The World of Playing Cards
SandraDodd.com/triviality

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Take it home and cut it open

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

I've heard of unschoolers who say they never bring home anything for their kids—because they feel that puts subtle pressure on them to learn what the parents are promoting.

I say hogwash to that. I pick up stuff ALL the time. . . . If I see an unusual fruit in the grocery store, I buy it and take it home and put it on the table for others to notice. If a kid is in the store with me I might say, "Oooh look at this. Let's take it home and cut it open."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Holly Dodd

A danger to your children

If you don’t have any peace in yourself, how are you going to allow your kids to have some? Because if you don’t have any peace and you’re angry and you’re not sure why and you’re just waiting to see what made you angry, then your kids are not safe, they won’t have peace.

From a new transcript of part of an old talk at SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully, bottom of the page.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Odd combos

The connection between humor and learning is well known. Unexpected juxtaposition is the basis of a lot of humor, and even more learning.

It can be physical, musical, verbal, mathematical, but basically what it means is that unexpected combinations or outcomes can be funny. There are funny chemistry experiments, plays on words, math tricks, embarrassingly amusing stories from history, and there are parodies of famous pieces or styles of art and music.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd, one day at Goodwill
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Sharing

About kids sharing a computer:

The problem I see with measured turns is that the quality of game play is compromised. If someone sees the clock and that's when they have to stop, they won't play as thoughtfully. They're less likely to look around at the art or appreciate the music. If they're starting to read, they're less likely to take a moment to look at the text and see if they can tell what it says.

The benefits of game play will not come to full fruition if kids' time is measured that way, and they're not learning to share.

If they only have an hour, they will take ALL of that hour, just as kids whose TV time is limited will.

It they can play as long as they want to, they might play for five or ten minutes and be done. I've seen it in Holly, I saw it for half an hour in Marty.

Yes, Kirby wanted it more. He was older and it was his game system and he could play better. And so in exchange for me keeping the other kids away while Kirby was playing as long as he wanted to, he let them play as long as they wanted to, which was never as long as he did.

from "Helping Kids Share," SandraDodd.com/sharing
photo by Will Geusz, of his pets sharing