Sandra Dodd

Deb Lewis wrote:

I believe it's good
for people to think really carefully about anything that might be life
changing and I wonder whether basing a potentially life changing
decisions on a brief exchange with strangers on a discussion lists
constitutes careful thought.

Sandra Dodd goes on about it:

We can't check to see if people have really thought about what
they've read. We can't say "Wait! Don't change anything at your
house until we're sure you really know what you're doing!" There
have been some dismal reports of what happened when the mom read her
a while, turned around and said "No more bedtimes! No more chores!
Eat TWINKIES!" And when her kids passed out midmorning on a pile of
dirty laundry with ants eating twinkie-cream off their fingers, she
seemed angry with some of us, because we'd written here and there
that we didn't have bedtimes, didn't require chores, and our kids
could eat what they wanted.

Some years back there were two or three moms who were "accusing" me
of telling people they couldn't unschool. That would only work if I
had the power to declare that a person COULD unschool.

People come and tell us all the time that they can or can't
unschool. Sometimes they say "I am unschooling but...."

And they're unschooling because they say they are, or they think they
are, but then they tell US they can't unschool by going into detail
about how they can't trust their kids to learn to read or do math, or
they are unschooling but their husband doesn't agree to it, but they
are unschooling after school and on weekends, or they're unschooling
in the summers, before school starts again, or they're unschooling
but the kids need to do workbooks.

That says clear as day "I am not and cannot do what you're all
talking about, but I want to go around chirping 'We're UNschoolers!'
regardless of the fact that I don't get and and am indicating as
clear as day that I don't want to get it or don't really think
there's anything TO get."

I say people like that can't unschool. When I say that, I'm just
agreeing with them, basically. They're in one huge exhale of chatter
and justification and wall-of-sound, without any inhale expected.
They can't take info in because they're blowing so much out.

Some go the other way. They say "I can't unschool because my kids
would never open a book, they would watch TV all day if I let them,
they would never get out of bed, they would never learn to make
change or wipe their own asses if they didn't go to school" Why
people come and tell us things like that, I'm not sure. I think they
want us to say "That's okay. Your kids will be just as happy as ours
are." They want some kind of absolution.

They come to tell us they can't do what we do, but they want something.

Sandra



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Sandra Dodd

-=-I believe it's good
for people to think really carefully about anything that might be life
changing and I wonder whether basing a potentially life changing
decisions on a brief exchange with strangers on a discussion lists
constitutes careful thought.-=-

I was wondering if there could be a checklist to help people with
"careful thought."

Maybe some of the items could be:

What are the alternatives?
What might keep it from working at our house?
What confuses me about this idea?
What are my priorities?
How important is it?
Is this worth changing my life for?

Questions like that could easily persuade people that unschooling
isn't for them or their families, but without the option of deciding
"no," then there was no option at all.

If people don't decide between two or more things, they didn't really
make a decision.

Sandra

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