saturnfire16

I've heard:

Life Learning
Organic Learning
Delight-driven learning
Whole Life Learning

What else is there?

I'll be honest- I don't like the term unschooling and especially
radical unschooling. I use them, for lack of anything better.
Unschooling sounds like it's all about what we *don't* do, which is
exactly what everyone thinks- that we *don't do.* I'd like to find
something more positive that speaks to what we *do.* Radical is
loaded. Obviously, in this society, what we are doing is radical.
It's way off the beaten path. But I don't think it's really that
radical in the context of the whole world and other cultures. It
feels quite natural, and it's not because people were suddenly
enlightened in the 1980's. It's because a small part of our culture
recently rediscovered some ancient truths about human learning that
other cultures have known this whole time.

The problem I'm having in my search for a new term is that the other
terms I listed seem to have more of a relaxed homeschooler
connotation than a radical unschooler connotation. So, no
curriculum, but still chores kind of thinking behind them.

Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 25, 2008, at 3:33 AM, saturnfire16 wrote:

> I've heard:
>
> Life Learning
> Organic Learning
> Delight-driven learning
> Whole Life Learning

Natural learning
Learning from life
Autodidacticism, Autodidactism
Child led learning
Real world learning
Interest led learning

Joyce

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

Living Life Now

~Katherine




On 12/25/08, Joyce Fetteroll <jfetteroll@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Dec 25, 2008, at 3:33 AM, saturnfire16 wrote:
>
> > I've heard:
> >
> > Life Learning
> > Organic Learning
> > Delight-driven learning
> > Whole Life Learning
>
> Natural learning
> Learning from life
> Autodidacticism, Autodidactism
> Child led learning
> Real world learning
> Interest led learning
>
> Joyce
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Living Life Now-=-

Have you heard someone call unschooling this, or are we brainstorming
now?

The objection to unschooling comes up within most unschoolers, and
although you can certainly call it anything you want to, the term
won't go away.

There are a couple of things that might make you feel better about
it. One is the background on the origin of the term:
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/theterm

The other is something Suzanne Carter wrote on AOL's unschooling
forum years ago:



"Lots of people make this point, but I never see the negation as
negative in a value-judgment sense when I use the word--to me
unschooling is as positive as unchaining, unbinding, unleashing,
unfolding, unfurling, unlimiting....

"All mean freedom and growth and vast possibilities to me."



Suzanne Carter
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/definition.html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

-=-Living Life Now-=-

>>>>>Have you heard someone call unschooling this, or are we brainstorming
now?<<<<<


I'm not necessarily brainstorming. Not intentionally. Nevermind. Not a
good example.

The reason I put it is I have read posts saying they don't talk about
unschooling but just living life or being with their kids. "Now" refers to
the common often spoken theme of being with your kids "right now" as opposed
to setting up to operate on automatic.

~Katherine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-The reason I put it is I have read posts saying they don't talk about
unschooling but just living life or being with their kids. -=

But you read the posts on unschooling lists, or homeschooling lists,
right? They didn't go to a just living life list. If people don't
use terminology, they can't talk about anything. Without words, how
can there be thoughts and ideas?

There are people just living lives without joy or learning
opportunities or good relationships between people. There are maybe
a badillion people (okay, millions) who just live life but have
nothing to do with any sort of home education/school-option/kids-
learning connection in their lives at all.

Is "unschooling" closer to learning without school or to just living
life? (Honest question, not rhetorical.)

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

>>>>>The objection to unschooling comes up within most unschoolers, and
although you can certainly call it anything you want to, the term won't go
away.<<<<<

Losing the term unschooling would be like losing the backstory and the
juiciest parts of the idea, and for those who want to know or want to
preserve the knowledge, it makes sense to preserve the word. I like it. It
describes what it is fairly well in English. The term autodidactic is
interesting. It trips me up though when talking about a concept that is
usually unfamiliar or totally unknown to others. Autodidactic and other
words like that might not trip anybody else up like it does me... :)
Unschooling has some of the same flavor yet it's simpler and I've been using
it rather a long while now. I do add more words to expound on it but first
the word introduces, encapsulates, and --for those who want to-- it
categorizes much of the idea.

The UnCola commercial still does a lot to dispell hesitancy for calling what
I'm doing an "un" sort of thing. That ain't all bad. :} Un.

~Katherine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

k

>>>>Is "unschooling" closer to learning without school or to just living
life? (Honest question, not rhetorical.)<<<<

Depends on one's goals and which person you ask and how that question hits a
person at a certain time of the day.

As to an online list, I think the term unschooling is pretty much
indispensible.

~Katherine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 12/26/2008 8:29:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
katherand@... writes:

<<<It
describes what it is fairly well in English. >>>



Only slightly related:

I try to introduce myself and tell a bit about my family when we have a new
member join our local *homeschool* group. Sometimes I do like to answer "how
do you guys deal with _?" (math, handwriting, reading, etc.) kind of
questions from a curriculum-free viewpoint. The other day we had someone new joined
and I introduced myself and that we unschooled and a bit about my family. The
next person to introduce themselves said, "My name is B_... ...we are not
unschoolers, I have a strict curriculum that I follow. ". I thought it was kind
of funny that unschooling was bandied about "so often" that she felt she
needed a "curriculum homeschooler" qualifier. Kind of neat, too.

I don't know if that makes the word unschooling more widely understood, but
I think it is at least getting heard more.

Peace,
De
**************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail,
Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now.
(http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000025)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

saturnfire16

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> There are people just living lives without joy or learning
> opportunities or good relationships between people. There are maybe
> a badillion people (okay, millions) who just live life but have
> nothing to do with any sort of home education/school-option/kids-
> learning connection in their lives at all.

This made me think of some homeless people who choose to be homeless so
they can just live life. Thier time is taken up with survival- finding
food, shelter, staying warm. Not much time or resources for learning
or expanding their ideas. Although, probably some time for reflection,
meditation, and appreciating the small things.

>
> Is "unschooling" closer to learning without school or to just living
> life? (Honest question, not rhetorical.)
>


To me "learning without school" sounds like school is the foundation or
basis or constant. Like breathing without air or walking without
feet. It sounds like there is something essential about school that we
are managing to do without.

I think unscholing is closer to "living life," but there are a lot of
different ways to live life. Unschoolers are living life with joy,
excitment, discovery, and learning. Some people live life just passing
the days until they die.

saturnfire16

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
>
> There are a couple of things that might make you feel better about
> it. One is the background on the origin of the term:
> http://sandradodd.com/unschool/theterm

That was helpful, thanks!


>
> The other is something Suzanne Carter wrote on AOL's unschooling
> forum years ago:
>
>
>
> "Lots of people make this point, but I never see the negation as
> negative in a value-judgment sense when I use the word--to me
> unschooling is as positive as unchaining, unbinding, unleashing,
> unfolding, unfurling, unlimiting....
>
> "All mean freedom and growth and vast possibilities to me."
>
>
>
> Suzanne Carter
> http://sandradodd.com/unschool/definition.html
>


Unchaining, unbinding- maybe I can get used to using unschooling
after all! :)

Sandra Dodd

-=-To me "learning without school" sounds like school is the
foundation or
basis or constant. Like breathing without air or walking without
feet. It sounds like there is something essential about school that we
are managing to do without. -=-

Because of compulsory attendance laws, school is the default. School
IS "the constant." School is the measure. We must do (in some ways,
whichever ways a judge or social worker might look at it) as well as
school.

I know all the arguments (or have heard most of them; no doubt there
are a few still to be sprung), so we don't need to talk about them
here, and yada-yada, school shootings and sexual abuse and blah
blah. Yes. Sure.

Still, school is indeed a constant and the legal default. Although
it's a good tool to tell people in the newest deschooling phases to
live as though school didn't exist, and it can be a helpful stepping
stone, ultimately unschooling ONLY exists because of school.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Jenny C

> This made me think of some homeless people who choose to be homeless
so
> they can just live life. Thier time is taken up with survival- finding
> food, shelter, staying warm. Not much time or resources for learning
> or expanding their ideas. Although, probably some time for reflection,
> meditation, and appreciating the small things.



The only people that I've met that choose to be homeless, are vietnam
vets or street kids and a small handfull of exceptions. Both of those
population segments choose homelessness as the lesser of two evils. I
don't think that is living life, really, it's a half life in reaction to
something terrible in their lives that they have no control over.

I've met maybe 2 or 3 young men that went out and did the hobo thing for
the thrill of it, but they never intended to stay there or do it
forever. There is a very very small segment of the homeless population
that try to live off the waste of others for ethical reasons. I wonder
how long that lasts though.

I don't think any of those scenarios are hotbeds for learning. When
your daily life is trying to stay alive and the other part is in
reactionary mode, it doesn't seem like it would create a whole bunch of
fabulous learning opportunities.


> > Is "unschooling" closer to learning without school or to just living
> > life? (Honest question, not rhetorical.)


I think it's closer to learning without school. It becomes fabulous
learning opportunities when you are really living life fully.

Jenny C

> Still, school is indeed a constant and the legal default. Although
> it's a good tool to tell people in the newest deschooling phases to
> live as though school didn't exist, and it can be a helpful stepping
> stone, ultimately unschooling ONLY exists because of school.


That little bit used to trip me up in the beginning stages of
unschooling. Trying to live as if school didn't exist, and yet at the
same time living in such a way that was in a direct reaction to the very
existence of school! Purely on the theoretical of course.

In my daily life with my kids, I can really live as if school doesn't
exist. Largely because we don't bring school or school related thought
into our dialy lives.

However, we can't ignore the fact that we live a half block away from an
elementary school, 3 blocks away from the middle school, and 2 blocks
away from the high school. Nor can we ignore the fact that getting out
of our house when one of those lets out for the day, is slow going and
flooded with kids and buses and cars. And the big big one, is that all
the neighbor kids are gone and not available to play for a large segment
of the day. Oh, and the fact that at least one of our neighbors thinks
homeschooling is bad because of "socialization" reasons, but the
neighbor that is a social worker likes us, so we're good. (we socialized
quite nicely with their cats when they went out of town!)

Sandra Dodd

-=-I don't think any of those scenarios are hotbeds for learning. When
your daily life is trying to stay alive and the other part is in
reactionary mode, it doesn't seem like it would create a whole bunch of
fabulous learning opportunities.-=-

Some of the people I've met who have lived marginally and learned a
lot were people with a lot of interpersonal skills. They learned
about other people's life stories and some of them had a lot of
really good observations about what made people happy and healthy.
When I was a kid, the adults I liked to meet the most were those who
had worked tons of random odd jobs, because they had the best
stories. Those who moved directly to a career seemed to have staid
and boring lives, and not much to impart, socially and
conversationally. Some of them seemed not to have met many people,
or maybe hadn't thought much about the people they had met.

I always liked people-stories.



Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Jenny C

> Some of the people I've met who have lived marginally and learned a
> lot were people with a lot of interpersonal skills. They learned
> about other people's life stories and some of them had a lot of
> really good observations about what made people happy and healthy.
> When I was a kid, the adults I liked to meet the most were those who
> had worked tons of random odd jobs, because they had the best
> stories. Those who moved directly to a career seemed to have staid
> and boring lives, and not much to impart, socially and
> conversationally. Some of them seemed not to have met many people,
> or maybe hadn't thought much about the people they had met.


There is something to be said about colorful lifestyles for sure! I was
thinking about one particular homeless guy that I used to talk to when
I'd wait for my bus at midnight, in the middle of the city. He was a
very very smart man, who had a lot of insight about lots of things. He
was a Vietnam vet, who couldn't get past the fact that he had killed
innocent people, even under extraordinary circumstances. He was haunted
daily by their faces, which he remembered in detail. He honestly felt
that he didn't deserve to live in comfort and happiness because of
having killed people. However, he did help form a homeless Vietnam vet
co-op of sorts.

A lot of the street kids that I've met over the years, though, it was a
different story. All the learning they did was for survival, not really
a hotbed of learning like the joyful happy kind that my own kids have.
Even though the school of hard knocks can create smart and observant
people, it's not really ideal.

People who jump through the hoops and do what they are "supposed" to do,
really don't have a lot to talk about do they? I had a hard time
connecting with those types of folks when I was in school myself, and
again when I taught dance classes and had to deal with parents like
that.

Robyn L. Coburn

I think the huge number of different words and phrases that people have come
up with that are encompassed in one word speaks to the wonderful utility of
that one word, unschooling.

Robyn L. Coburn
www.Iggyjingles.etsy.com
www.iggyjingles.blogspot.com

Melissa Dietrick

--- In [email protected], "Robyn L. Coburn" <dezigna@...>
wrote:
>
> I think the huge number of different words and phrases that people
have come
> up with that are encompassed in one word speaks to the wonderful
utility of
> that one word, unschooling.
>

Do you think that the term "unschooling" would be best kept in foreign
languages, as well?

Im asking because I've finally chosen "natural learning"(apprendimento
naturale in italian) as a title for a yahoo list and website--My
feeling being that because homeschooling is basically unknown of in
italy, and english is rather unknown as well, a term that focusses on
how children (well all ages really) learn best would be easiest to
explain at first...

melissa in italy
mamma of 7

Bob Collier

--- In [email protected], "saturnfire16"
<saturnfire16@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'll be honest- I don't like the term unschooling and especially
> radical unschooling.


I sympathise entirely. I never use either term.

I have a 13 year old son who's self-educated.

Having said that, I'm a member of the Radical Unschoolers Network on
Ning (although not active at the moment). In fact, I will be
adding a badge to that effect to my website with my next update.

Even though I don't refer to myself as a radical unschooler, I do seem
to fit the profile, more or less, so I'm happy to identify myself with
the term as a useful shorthand or code word for connecting with like
minds. I think it's very useful for that.

Bob

Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 28, 2008, at 5:05 AM, Melissa Dietrick wrote:

> Im asking because I've finally chosen "natural learning"(apprendimento
> naturale in italian) as a title for a yahoo list and website--My
> feeling being that because homeschooling is basically unknown of in
> italy, and english is rather unknown as well, a term that focusses on
> how children (well all ages really) learn best would be easiest to
> explain at first...

I think it will cause a lot fewer future problems and
misunderstanding to use natural learning. Then schools can become
"unnatural learning" ;-)

Joyce

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-Do you think that the term "unschooling" would be best kept in
foreign
languages, as well?-=-



NO. Noooo....

English has it but nobody else needs it!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bob Collier

--- In [email protected], Joyce Fetteroll
<jfetteroll@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Dec 28, 2008, at 5:05 AM, Melissa Dietrick wrote:
>
> > Im asking because I've finally chosen "natural learning"(apprendimento
> > naturale in italian) as a title for a yahoo list and website--My
> > feeling being that because homeschooling is basically unknown of in
> > italy, and english is rather unknown as well, a term that focusses on
> > how children (well all ages really) learn best would be easiest to
> > explain at first...
>
> I think it will cause a lot fewer future problems and
> misunderstanding to use natural learning. Then schools can become
> "unnatural learning" ;-)
>
> Joyce
>



That would work for me. I already do use the term 'natural parenting'
to describe parenting based on human needs rather than social
expectations and how children learn best would come into that. As I
think I've mentioned before, removing my son from school was a
parenting decision not an educational one.

Though, in any event, what Pat seemed to be learning most at school
was to wait to be taught, which is certainly unnatural, in my view.

Bob