[stylist] question

Wed Mar 25 06:30:22 UTC 2009

Angela:

There are many different types of homeschooling.  Many have their classroom
equivalents.  Unschooling's closest classroom counterpart is the democratic
approach or the sundusky model.  But it has strong roots in a parenting
approach, too, called mindful parenting.

It is a whole paradigm shift, so it's hard to encapsulate in a few words.
But some of the things we do . . .  We avoid controlling our kids in any
way--no rules, no expectations, no rewards, no punishments.  This is so that
we let the kids learn directly from natural consequences.  That is, we don't
try to replicate real life into artifical stuff, into little neat boxes so
the kids rearn the rules of the game, and hopefully, of life itself by
extension.  If you think about it, schools take stuff from life, turn it
into all those subjects, categories, and so on.  But it's not real life.

Naturally, we as parents play an important role, but mainly because we've
been on earth longer and know lots of stuff.  What we do is offer ourselves
as reliable resources to our kids and develop great relationships with them
so they can trust us enough to turn to us for guidance and information.
Since a lot of our advice would turn out to be good, they'll naturally value
this resource.  "Well, you'd be well-advised to put on shoes if you want to
go out in the snow."  The toddler ignores this and goes out.  then you can
see a light bulb turning on in his head and he comes back in to put on
shoes.  But we never force him to put on the shoes.  It's always his choice.

Well, as they grow up, they will encounter all sorts of situations and
experiences that will naturally teach them a great deal and inform their
choices.  If you want to get ahead, here in America, you'll have to know how
to read, for example.  Without our ever pressuring our boys to read, theyy
all have wanted to learn to read and are reading very well.  Last test shows
all of them grades ahead of their peers.  They just encountered situations,
needs, stuff in life that all encouraged them to read, because reading is a
real benefit to them and gives them the gains they desire.

One principle is that we believe you can't really teach children.  Rather,
they are learners.  They're learning machines.  They will just learn stuff
and not learn some stuff.  You could try to force stuff, but they'd be
trained, not really taught.  There's a difference.  They swallow up tons of
information at all times, and we just support them in their natural drive to
learn.  If there is a real, actual reason they need to know something or do
something, they will.  

On one unschooling list, there is this young man who never learned much
about numbers.  No reason to.  Just money, simple math so he could buy
stuff.  Nothing advanced.  But then he got interested in auto mechanics and
wanted to work in the field.  He goes to school for the first time, a
technical college, and theyy require algebra and such.  He just started
learning advanced math and it was no problem.  He wanted to learn it because
it's related to his goal.  He experienced no inhibitions.  He didn't have
any other experience in the past related to advanced math.

The reason this impressed me is because I have serious issues with math.
The very thought of math makes me sick in my stomach, let me tell you.  I
struggled and struggled with it in school, and failed many times, no matter
the tears I put into it.  It bored me out of my mind, and I could not
reconcile myself with the purpose of learning all the stupid pointless
things in those math classes, but I "had to" do it.  I felt very bad when I
failed.  In college, I tried again, but it was no good, and I never got my
BA because I couldn't ever do math.

But you know what?  I have a mind well suited for numbers, and when Ii owned
my own publishing business, my math for running the business was first-rate.
No problems at all.  I have quite a snappy and deep calculator right in my
brain.  So the problem was never that I didn't have the ability.  The
problem was always that math was forced on me against my will, and contrary
to my interests and needs at that time.  It was not until there was a real
life reason to use advanced math that I was perfectly fine with it.

So this guy who never went to school all his life, who was always
unschooled, he just up and learned what he wanted to and needed to, and it
all was fine.  I wish I never had any of those traumatic and completely
needless bouts with math in school while growing up.  

In daily life, I cannot tell you how wonderful it is for us here.  The boys
all go to bed pretty early at night without our ever having a bedtime rule,
no struggles or anything.  They go to bed early because they have their own
reasons.  They like daylight and don't want to miss too much of it.  They
don't eat a lot of candy.  I've observed some of my friends controlling
their kids' foods, and it totally screws up the kids.  They crave candy, and
if you let them loose, they'll eat a ton of candy.  So their parents are
stuck in the cycle of control--they "have to" regulate their food because
they started the control thing in the first place.  But our boys, we never
regulated anything.  They naturally learned, by trial and error and also by
taking our wise advice, to regulate themselves.  They say eating too much
candy doesn't feel good.  We just trust them to make their own choices, and
if we let natural consequences happen because of their choices, why, they're
GOING to make sensible choices.  It is human nature to look after your own
interests.  We believe unschooling lets them do this in a honest way.  You
mess with it, you're going to screw up what they consider to be in their
best interests--such as holding back candy, forcing veggies, causing them to
long for candy and candy becomes a wildly desirable thing for them, it
becomes overrated.  But you leave the menu totally open, they may at first
binge, but they'll gradually start to feel the consequences of this, start
to feel not so good, and they will naturally seek to remedy this, and you
can be there as a good resource to support them.

I realize this is long and messy, but in doing so I hope you are able to
glimpse and understand a little what unschooling is all about.  The reason I
included stuff about bedtime, food, etc. is that unschooling goes hand in
hand with mindful parenting, and it's a whole approach, not separate or
segmented.

If you want to know more, just Goggle it.  Lots of cool Web sites and
networks.

John  

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Angela fowler
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 8:57 PM
To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] question

What is unschooling? Now you've really got me curious. (smile) 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of John Lee Clark
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 7:49 PM
To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] question

Angela:

When people talk about the left and the right, what they have in mind is a
quite narrow spectrum.  At least, on one level.  Take the ideological level.
All the pot-banging on this or that issue that makes the headlines.  But if
you go father right, as you go along farther and farther right, you're not
going right, but you're spiraling, but this is spiraling deeper.  As you go
deeper the more seriously right you go, you'll probably find that you
actually disagree with some of the silly pot-banging that's on the right and
that you agree, or at least are on the same side of an issue, with the
pot-banging leftists.  

Or if you start on the left, but you want to probe deeper, you'll likely
find yourself intersecting in agreement, or on the same side, with the
right.  

Why does this happen?  Because neither side is consistent from the shilly
ideology all the way down to core principles.  Either side's core principles
have merit, I believe, but the way they're applied goes all over the place.
Correct me if I am mistaken on this point.

But let me give you one example.  Homeschooling is a popular conservative
pot-banging issue.  Some support homeschooling because they want the family
to be responsible for it, and to instill the family's religious values in
their children, and to have the children stay away from the wickedness that
goes on in public schools.  That reasoning is on a certain level.  And a
core conservative principle would support this.  "We don't want big
government messing with how we raise our own children."  

And I love you all conservatives for protecting our right to homeschool our
children!  But my reasons for supporting homeschooling come from a totally
different place, well left of the left who supports public education, wants
to tax and spend more on education, and come up with an endless stream of
fixes to problems caused by its half-baked attempts to apply core principles
that I happen to agree with to some degree but the problem for me is that
the left in power in education isn't left enough.  

My wife and I homeschool our three sons, only the approach we use is
actually called unschooling.  Conservatives actually hate unschooling; to
them it's too far left, it's crazy, and it runs counter to their beliefs
about how best to homeschool kids.  But unschooling is made possible by the
right to homeschooling, which the conservatives protect.

I don't know if this makes any sense.  But this is one good example of how
you could go left and so deep or far in that direction that you find
yourself perfectly aligned with the right on a general issue.

I hope this helps?

John

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