Science experiment, festival, and a game

Once there was a little discussion on facebook where I said that Learn Nothing Day was like a game, and you join in by showing you know how it works. In response to a question, then, about whether it's a holiday or a game, I wrote:

Well... it's a holiday when people demonstrate what they've learned about learning by attempting not to learn, which is kind of a science experiment and kind of a festival and sort of a game. More than one thing is happening.

Learn Nothing Day is July 24
photo by Sandra Dodd, on a carousel in Austin, Texas

Two-way change

Unschooling is more than just the absence of school. As we change, our perceptions change, and the perceptions of others toward us changes.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Brie Jontry

What is choice?

Someone was writing about what she "had to" do.

My response (saved by Schuyler Waynforth; thanks!):

You are inviting powerlessness into your life and keeping it there by using that phrase.

You wrote -=-how freeing it was to realize we didn't have to KEEP UP-=-

How much more freeing to think "we can choose not to keep up." It might seem to you the same thing, or the other side of the same coin. But coins' sides are NOT the same.

Choice is not the other side of a "have to" coin. It is the antidote to a have-to poison. Choice dissolves the roof and ceiling of a have-to cell.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Happy choices

I did my time in and around school, and learned things painstakingly and grudgingly that my children later learned while laughing and playing and singing. I have guarded my children's freedom and given them happy choices that I didn't have.


SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty in the 20th century
__

A time and a place

[Riding in a car] is a great time and place for humor, news, and deep conversation.

SandraDodd.com/truck
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Roses and different directions

People need to start and go, but they don't have to race at breakneck speed or never look back. "Going" sometimes just means going one step and smelling the roses! Sometimes the most important steps are those where you're still standing in the very same place, but looking a different direction!

Sandra Dodd, July 2003 discussion
photo by Sandra Dodd

More and better

The question "What do I have to do?" is a world apart from "What can I do?" "What am I allowed to do?"
. . . .
My kids have been really good employees wherever they worked because they were not trained to just do what they had to do and to just do as little as they had to do.

---

Small bit transcribed from talk I gave in August, 2010
called Unschooling: How to Screw it Up
(you can listen to it at that link)

photo by Sandra Dodd, which is related only by theme