intro; natural learning; drawing shadows
Beverley Paine
Hello all,
I'm Beverley, and I'm from South Australia. My children are aged 23, 21,
and 17.
I can relate to where Nadine is coming from as although we unschooled for
years I was forever uneasy in my mind. Getting those definitions sorted out
helped me. I prefer the term 'learning naturally' and believe that we learn
in each and every minute - it's like breathing. Sometimes what we learn
isn't what we thought we'd learn from a particular moment in time, but
we're learning all the time. Unschooling is an okay definition and serves a
useful purpose but some people believe it's akin to permissive parenting
and I don't think it's that at all. Homeschooling is too vague - it can
mean school at home, correspondence education or whatever. I've done a
little of everything with my children in a conscious way, including part
time enrolment at school. The most successful approach to date is allowing
them to learn naturally. It's way more efficient than any other method and
seems to be able to encompass all methods of 'learning'. For example,
Thomas, my youngest, is currently studying electronics by distance
education but he's learning how to make movies by mucking about with
cameras and his computer. He uses whatever learning tools/resources are
best suited to his need and interest. We helped him develop this skill over
time, mostly by example, but also by actively encouraging him to think
about his needs and wants and who he is as a person.
Being a homeschooling mum is an anxious business because we're going
against societal 'norms'. It's hard to be different and stay up beat about
it all the time. I keenly felt the social isolation from homeschooling in
the early years - suddenly I couldn't visit my friends because their kids
were at school and they didn't want to be surrounded by other people's
kids... I think the social isolation hit me harder than my kids. Then I had
to deal with the insecurities that came with finding homeschooling families
that 'did it better' than us! It took years to shut up the inner critic -
the one that whispered in my ear every day that I wasn't good enough, that
I would naturally fail my children, that other people could do it because
they were smarter, university educated, better mothers, had more money, had
gifted children, etc etc etc... Meanwhile people began to come to ME for
homeschooling advice!
The only thing I could do was offer what my heart felt to be true to the
inner child in me.
So, Nadine, what do YOU need to feel okay right NOW? Forget about your son,
forget about the critics, forget about the future even. Unless we look
after our own emotional well being we can't totally available to help
others, and sometimes we need to be, especially as mothers.
Sometimes I would ask my children to work from text books because it calmed
me down. I told them that there was a good chance they'd learn something
useful from doing the exercises required of them in the books, and that
there was a good chance they wouldn't. But what WOULD happen is that my
momentary paranoia ("my children aren't learning anything! I'm not a good
homeschooling mum!") would disappear as I watched my children work. More
often than not they'd breeze through the pages... somehow, without
practising writing they'd be spelling words they hadn't been able to six
months before, or understood maths concepts without having learned them...
Life is a fantastic teacher and children are programmed to learn! And learn
they do, very efficiently, without our interference. A couple of weeks of
structured actitivies, which I meticulously recorded so that I could prove
to myself that my children were capapble learners the next time I lapsed
into a bout of depression or gave into insecurities. The kids knew that
they were doing bookwork to help me, not to learn anything in particular.
THis made it easy for all us - the motivation was REAL, even if the
activity itself wasn't...
My children grew up confident that they could learn anything they wanted to
at any time in their lives and that self-motivation is the key. As young
adults my children are now learning that knowing oneself is the key to
self-motivation. A lot of the things they think they want aren't happening
- and they are discovering that it's because other people expect them to
want those things, or they thought that other people wanted them to. As
they discover more about who they are as individuals they are finding that
achieving what they really want is very easy. When you are doing what you
love life comes easy. I found that untangling myself from the expectations
of others, both in my mind and in theirs, one of the hardest things to do
in my life. And it took 45 years. I watch my 17 year old and see that he's
almost conquered that goal already... thanks to learning naturally! He is
our only child not tainted by school experience and who has had the least
amount of homeschooling.
Thomas refused to do anything that didn't make sense to him. Often I would
need to explain why we do things the way we do, why it might be useful for
him to consider doing things. He'd consider them and then, more often than
not, say they still didn't make sense and continue to refuse to do them.
That made me bend my ways to find solutions that made sense in every which
way, not just for him or me, but for most people and situations. One of my
surprising discoveries is that life is actually very simple - the simplest
solution is often the most effective.
If a child doesn't want to draw right now, then teaching him how to draw
shadows right now doesn't make sense. When he wants to know how to draw
shadows he will find the right tools, and one of them may be to access a
tutor (book or person) that will show him. Or he might use observation and
experimentation. Schools suck because 99% of what they ask children to do
is contrived. That makes it pretty meaningless to most children. Some
children don't have access to a range of tools when they want to learn -
that's a sad fact related to how little we value children in our society.
Having made the decision to educate our children outside of schools we're
in a position to offer our children whatever tools for learning they need,
WHEN they need them, not before!
We wrote our own curriculum and educational program based on where our
children were at, what we wanted for them, and what they needed. I read the
national and state curriculum guidelines but most of it wasn't relevant to
one child learning outside of a classroom. And most of it was unrealistic -
particularly in the classroom setting. There is no accountability within
the school system - when the curriculum fails to deliver what it promises
for all children, the children and their families are blamed, not the
curriculum.
Sorry I've rambled on so much. I've been lurking for a few weeks and
haven't had the time to post before. Thanks for listening.
wishing you peace, health and prosperity,
Beverley
www.beverleypaine.com
PO Box 371 Yankalilla SA 5203
for homeschooling news, calendar, contacts for SA
http://sahome-ed.beverleypaine.com
To receive Beverley's free 10 page booklet Homeschool Today! with
information on how to get started, reply to this email with "Please send
Homeschool Today!" in the subject line.
You are invited to subscribe to Homeschool Australia, a free monthly
e-zine. To subscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
"Intelligence is the measure of how we behave when we don't know what to
do. It has to do with our ability to think up important questions then find
ways to get useful answers." John Holt
I'm Beverley, and I'm from South Australia. My children are aged 23, 21,
and 17.
I can relate to where Nadine is coming from as although we unschooled for
years I was forever uneasy in my mind. Getting those definitions sorted out
helped me. I prefer the term 'learning naturally' and believe that we learn
in each and every minute - it's like breathing. Sometimes what we learn
isn't what we thought we'd learn from a particular moment in time, but
we're learning all the time. Unschooling is an okay definition and serves a
useful purpose but some people believe it's akin to permissive parenting
and I don't think it's that at all. Homeschooling is too vague - it can
mean school at home, correspondence education or whatever. I've done a
little of everything with my children in a conscious way, including part
time enrolment at school. The most successful approach to date is allowing
them to learn naturally. It's way more efficient than any other method and
seems to be able to encompass all methods of 'learning'. For example,
Thomas, my youngest, is currently studying electronics by distance
education but he's learning how to make movies by mucking about with
cameras and his computer. He uses whatever learning tools/resources are
best suited to his need and interest. We helped him develop this skill over
time, mostly by example, but also by actively encouraging him to think
about his needs and wants and who he is as a person.
Being a homeschooling mum is an anxious business because we're going
against societal 'norms'. It's hard to be different and stay up beat about
it all the time. I keenly felt the social isolation from homeschooling in
the early years - suddenly I couldn't visit my friends because their kids
were at school and they didn't want to be surrounded by other people's
kids... I think the social isolation hit me harder than my kids. Then I had
to deal with the insecurities that came with finding homeschooling families
that 'did it better' than us! It took years to shut up the inner critic -
the one that whispered in my ear every day that I wasn't good enough, that
I would naturally fail my children, that other people could do it because
they were smarter, university educated, better mothers, had more money, had
gifted children, etc etc etc... Meanwhile people began to come to ME for
homeschooling advice!
The only thing I could do was offer what my heart felt to be true to the
inner child in me.
So, Nadine, what do YOU need to feel okay right NOW? Forget about your son,
forget about the critics, forget about the future even. Unless we look
after our own emotional well being we can't totally available to help
others, and sometimes we need to be, especially as mothers.
Sometimes I would ask my children to work from text books because it calmed
me down. I told them that there was a good chance they'd learn something
useful from doing the exercises required of them in the books, and that
there was a good chance they wouldn't. But what WOULD happen is that my
momentary paranoia ("my children aren't learning anything! I'm not a good
homeschooling mum!") would disappear as I watched my children work. More
often than not they'd breeze through the pages... somehow, without
practising writing they'd be spelling words they hadn't been able to six
months before, or understood maths concepts without having learned them...
Life is a fantastic teacher and children are programmed to learn! And learn
they do, very efficiently, without our interference. A couple of weeks of
structured actitivies, which I meticulously recorded so that I could prove
to myself that my children were capapble learners the next time I lapsed
into a bout of depression or gave into insecurities. The kids knew that
they were doing bookwork to help me, not to learn anything in particular.
THis made it easy for all us - the motivation was REAL, even if the
activity itself wasn't...
My children grew up confident that they could learn anything they wanted to
at any time in their lives and that self-motivation is the key. As young
adults my children are now learning that knowing oneself is the key to
self-motivation. A lot of the things they think they want aren't happening
- and they are discovering that it's because other people expect them to
want those things, or they thought that other people wanted them to. As
they discover more about who they are as individuals they are finding that
achieving what they really want is very easy. When you are doing what you
love life comes easy. I found that untangling myself from the expectations
of others, both in my mind and in theirs, one of the hardest things to do
in my life. And it took 45 years. I watch my 17 year old and see that he's
almost conquered that goal already... thanks to learning naturally! He is
our only child not tainted by school experience and who has had the least
amount of homeschooling.
Thomas refused to do anything that didn't make sense to him. Often I would
need to explain why we do things the way we do, why it might be useful for
him to consider doing things. He'd consider them and then, more often than
not, say they still didn't make sense and continue to refuse to do them.
That made me bend my ways to find solutions that made sense in every which
way, not just for him or me, but for most people and situations. One of my
surprising discoveries is that life is actually very simple - the simplest
solution is often the most effective.
If a child doesn't want to draw right now, then teaching him how to draw
shadows right now doesn't make sense. When he wants to know how to draw
shadows he will find the right tools, and one of them may be to access a
tutor (book or person) that will show him. Or he might use observation and
experimentation. Schools suck because 99% of what they ask children to do
is contrived. That makes it pretty meaningless to most children. Some
children don't have access to a range of tools when they want to learn -
that's a sad fact related to how little we value children in our society.
Having made the decision to educate our children outside of schools we're
in a position to offer our children whatever tools for learning they need,
WHEN they need them, not before!
We wrote our own curriculum and educational program based on where our
children were at, what we wanted for them, and what they needed. I read the
national and state curriculum guidelines but most of it wasn't relevant to
one child learning outside of a classroom. And most of it was unrealistic -
particularly in the classroom setting. There is no accountability within
the school system - when the curriculum fails to deliver what it promises
for all children, the children and their families are blamed, not the
curriculum.
Sorry I've rambled on so much. I've been lurking for a few weeks and
haven't had the time to post before. Thanks for listening.
wishing you peace, health and prosperity,
Beverley
www.beverleypaine.com
PO Box 371 Yankalilla SA 5203
for homeschooling news, calendar, contacts for SA
http://sahome-ed.beverleypaine.com
To receive Beverley's free 10 page booklet Homeschool Today! with
information on how to get started, reply to this email with "Please send
Homeschool Today!" in the subject line.
You are invited to subscribe to Homeschool Australia, a free monthly
e-zine. To subscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
"Intelligence is the measure of how we behave when we don't know what to
do. It has to do with our ability to think up important questions then find
ways to get useful answers." John Holt
Angela
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post Beverly. Thanks for sharing it.
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Kay Alina
Thank you Beverley.
Kay
Kay
----- Original Message -----
From: Beverley Paine
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 7:07 PM
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] intro; natural learning; drawing shadows
Hello all,
I'm Beverley, and I'm from South Australia. My children are aged 23, 21,
and 17.
I can relate to where Nadine is coming from as although we unschooled for
years I was forever uneasy in my mind. Getting those definitions sorted out
helped me. I prefer the term 'learning naturally' and believe that we learn
in each and every minute - it's like breathing. Sometimes what we learn
isn't what we thought we'd learn from a particular moment in time, but
we're learning all the time. Unschooling is an okay definition and serves a
useful purpose but some people believe it's akin to permissive parenting
and I don't think it's that at all. Homeschooling is too vague - it can
mean school at home, correspondence education or whatever. I've done a
little of everything with my children in a conscious way, including part
time enrolment at school. The most successful approach to date is allowing
them to learn naturally. It's way more efficient than any other method and
seems to be able to encompass all methods of 'learning'. For example,
Thomas, my youngest, is currently studying electronics by distance
education but he's learning how to make movies by mucking about with
cameras and his computer. He uses whatever learning tools/resources are
best suited to his need and interest. We helped him develop this skill over
time, mostly by example, but also by actively encouraging him to think
about his needs and wants and who he is as a person.
Being a homeschooling mum is an anxious business because we're going
against societal 'norms'. It's hard to be different and stay up beat about
it all the time. I keenly felt the social isolation from homeschooling in
the early years - suddenly I couldn't visit my friends because their kids
were at school and they didn't want to be surrounded by other people's
kids... I think the social isolation hit me harder than my kids. Then I had
to deal with the insecurities that came with finding homeschooling families
that 'did it better' than us! It took years to shut up the inner critic -
the one that whispered in my ear every day that I wasn't good enough, that
I would naturally fail my children, that other people could do it because
they were smarter, university educated, better mothers, had more money, had
gifted children, etc etc etc... Meanwhile people began to come to ME for
homeschooling advice!
The only thing I could do was offer what my heart felt to be true to the
inner child in me.
So, Nadine, what do YOU need to feel okay right NOW? Forget about your son,
forget about the critics, forget about the future even. Unless we look
after our own emotional well being we can't totally available to help
others, and sometimes we need to be, especially as mothers.
Sometimes I would ask my children to work from text books because it calmed
me down. I told them that there was a good chance they'd learn something
useful from doing the exercises required of them in the books, and that
there was a good chance they wouldn't. But what WOULD happen is that my
momentary paranoia ("my children aren't learning anything! I'm not a good
homeschooling mum!") would disappear as I watched my children work. More
often than not they'd breeze through the pages... somehow, without
practising writing they'd be spelling words they hadn't been able to six
months before, or understood maths concepts without having learned them...
Life is a fantastic teacher and children are programmed to learn! And learn
they do, very efficiently, without our interference. A couple of weeks of
structured actitivies, which I meticulously recorded so that I could prove
to myself that my children were capapble learners the next time I lapsed
into a bout of depression or gave into insecurities. The kids knew that
they were doing bookwork to help me, not to learn anything in particular.
THis made it easy for all us - the motivation was REAL, even if the
activity itself wasn't...
My children grew up confident that they could learn anything they wanted to
at any time in their lives and that self-motivation is the key. As young
adults my children are now learning that knowing oneself is the key to
self-motivation. A lot of the things they think they want aren't happening
- and they are discovering that it's because other people expect them to
want those things, or they thought that other people wanted them to. As
they discover more about who they are as individuals they are finding that
achieving what they really want is very easy. When you are doing what you
love life comes easy. I found that untangling myself from the expectations
of others, both in my mind and in theirs, one of the hardest things to do
in my life. And it took 45 years. I watch my 17 year old and see that he's
almost conquered that goal already... thanks to learning naturally! He is
our only child not tainted by school experience and who has had the least
amount of homeschooling.
Thomas refused to do anything that didn't make sense to him. Often I would
need to explain why we do things the way we do, why it might be useful for
him to consider doing things. He'd consider them and then, more often than
not, say they still didn't make sense and continue to refuse to do them.
That made me bend my ways to find solutions that made sense in every which
way, not just for him or me, but for most people and situations. One of my
surprising discoveries is that life is actually very simple - the simplest
solution is often the most effective.
If a child doesn't want to draw right now, then teaching him how to draw
shadows right now doesn't make sense. When he wants to know how to draw
shadows he will find the right tools, and one of them may be to access a
tutor (book or person) that will show him. Or he might use observation and
experimentation. Schools suck because 99% of what they ask children to do
is contrived. That makes it pretty meaningless to most children. Some
children don't have access to a range of tools when they want to learn -
that's a sad fact related to how little we value children in our society.
Having made the decision to educate our children outside of schools we're
in a position to offer our children whatever tools for learning they need,
WHEN they need them, not before!
We wrote our own curriculum and educational program based on where our
children were at, what we wanted for them, and what they needed. I read the
national and state curriculum guidelines but most of it wasn't relevant to
one child learning outside of a classroom. And most of it was unrealistic -
particularly in the classroom setting. There is no accountability within
the school system - when the curriculum fails to deliver what it promises
for all children, the children and their families are blamed, not the
curriculum.
Sorry I've rambled on so much. I've been lurking for a few weeks and
haven't had the time to post before. Thanks for listening.
wishing you peace, health and prosperity,
Beverley
www.beverleypaine.com
PO Box 371 Yankalilla SA 5203
for homeschooling news, calendar, contacts for SA
http://sahome-ed.beverleypaine.com
To receive Beverley's free 10 page booklet Homeschool Today! with
information on how to get started, reply to this email with "Please send
Homeschool Today!" in the subject line.
You are invited to subscribe to Homeschool Australia, a free monthly
e-zine. To subscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
"Intelligence is the measure of how we behave when we don't know what to
do. It has to do with our ability to think up important questions then find
ways to get useful answers." John Holt
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