[stylist] question

Wed Mar 25 13:33:09 UTC 2009

This reminds me of a paper I wrote in college.  The prof was an old hippy 
who was teaching a course in criminology.  He looked at everything in the 
traditional world as criminal.  Wasn't what I wanted to learn, but I was 
stuck with him.  I wrote a paper on the criminality of education and wrote 
some of the very things John is lauding.  However, as a parent I quickly 
learned that children need parameters.  They have which line to go up to and 
not cross.  Civilization also needs parameters.  Otherwise you have 
situations where people go through their adulthood acting out anything they 
want.  A lot of these kids, raised by free thinkers to do what they want, 
have found it necessary to hire some very good lawyers.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 2:30 AM
Subject: Re: [stylist] question


> 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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