Re: unschooling is hard work
[email protected]
In a message dated 2/12/2002 9:15:55 AM Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
One thing I've found is that there are often OTHER adults who are more eager
to listen to my kids when they're off and running on something that I'm not
nearly as interested in as they are.... Sandra sat and watched the musical
CATS with Roxana and let her stop and start it and talk about it all
throughout when the rest of our family was really tired of it. This probably
gets easier as the kids get a little older, but you can often introduce a
topic of discussion between even a young child and another adult who will
find it interesting to get to know a young person.
--pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected] writes:
> I have to pretend to be interested and I know sometimes my kids can tell.I bet we've all been there, Pat.
> Virginia has actually told me to just pretend I'm interested when she can
> tell I'm not and she needs me to be.
>
One thing I've found is that there are often OTHER adults who are more eager
to listen to my kids when they're off and running on something that I'm not
nearly as interested in as they are.... Sandra sat and watched the musical
CATS with Roxana and let her stop and start it and talk about it all
throughout when the rest of our family was really tired of it. This probably
gets easier as the kids get a little older, but you can often introduce a
topic of discussion between even a young child and another adult who will
find it interesting to get to know a young person.
--pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected]
In a message dated 2/12/2002 11:41:54 AM Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
You're IN that groove I was talking about - you are the kind of person who
forges ahead and CREATES grooves for herself and then things seem easy and
fun and "right."
I started doing ceramics about 6 months ago. And I'm sitting here with sore
wrists and arms right now because throwing pots is HARD work. But getting it
right is just so WONDErFUL -- it feels so good and things happen so easily
and beautifully.
Hard work - it gives a lot of satisfaction and it isn't a negative thing at
all.
Maybe another less loaded word could be found? But - I think my mom's point
was that it WOULD seem like hard work to anybody watching us and that we
could be misleading people when we say it isn't. They sometimes seem to
expect that they can throw the curriculum out the window and then they get to
focus only on their OWN interests and let the children fend for themselves.
And certainly our detractors act like that is what they think we're doing.
--pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected] writes:
> Maybe it's a personality thing? Maybe I'm just good at arranging my universePam, you sock sorter you -- who said anything about "tedious?" <G>
> so that I don't have to do much that I find tedious.
You're IN that groove I was talking about - you are the kind of person who
forges ahead and CREATES grooves for herself and then things seem easy and
fun and "right."
I started doing ceramics about 6 months ago. And I'm sitting here with sore
wrists and arms right now because throwing pots is HARD work. But getting it
right is just so WONDErFUL -- it feels so good and things happen so easily
and beautifully.
Hard work - it gives a lot of satisfaction and it isn't a negative thing at
all.
Maybe another less loaded word could be found? But - I think my mom's point
was that it WOULD seem like hard work to anybody watching us and that we
could be misleading people when we say it isn't. They sometimes seem to
expect that they can throw the curriculum out the window and then they get to
focus only on their OWN interests and let the children fend for themselves.
And certainly our detractors act like that is what they think we're doing.
--pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Pam Hartley
----------
From: PSoroosh@...
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] Re: unschooling is hard work
Date: Tue, Feb 12, 2002, 5:17 PM
Maybe another less loaded word could be found? But - I think my mom's point
was that it WOULD seem like hard work to anybody watching us and that we
could be misleading people when we say it isn't. They sometimes seem to
expect that they can throw the curriculum out the window and then they get
to
focus only on their OWN interests and let the children fend for themselves.
And certainly our detractors act like that is what they think we're doing.
----------
Maybe another item on Sandra's list should be: Yes, follow your own
interests, as long as your children are an interest.
Only sorta kidding, and thanks for clarifying. ;)
Pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
From: PSoroosh@...
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] Re: unschooling is hard work
Date: Tue, Feb 12, 2002, 5:17 PM
Maybe another less loaded word could be found? But - I think my mom's point
was that it WOULD seem like hard work to anybody watching us and that we
could be misleading people when we say it isn't. They sometimes seem to
expect that they can throw the curriculum out the window and then they get
to
focus only on their OWN interests and let the children fend for themselves.
And certainly our detractors act like that is what they think we're doing.
----------
Maybe another item on Sandra's list should be: Yes, follow your own
interests, as long as your children are an interest.
Only sorta kidding, and thanks for clarifying. ;)
Pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected]
In a message dated 2/13/2002 3:47:48 AM Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
one of their projects. They DO fit their children into their schedule. But I
don't mean that in the nicest way.
I mean people who compartmentalize their lives and "the children" are in one
of the compartments. I think maybe you can't really do that and unschool,
that for unschooling to "work," the children have to be a total integrated
PART of the adults lives and the adults have to make the children a high
priority "interest."
--pamS
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected] writes:
> Maybe another item on Sandra's list should be: Yes, follow your ownWell - THAT made me think about parents I've known whose children are sort of
> interests, as long as your children are an interest.
>
> Only sorta kidding, and thanks for clarifying. ;)
one of their projects. They DO fit their children into their schedule. But I
don't mean that in the nicest way.
I mean people who compartmentalize their lives and "the children" are in one
of the compartments. I think maybe you can't really do that and unschool,
that for unschooling to "work," the children have to be a total integrated
PART of the adults lives and the adults have to make the children a high
priority "interest."
--pamS
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
duckfordu
My son has integrated himself into my life in the worst way. He's
online at his friend's house and says it wouldn't really be convenient
to switch screennames (we have two accounts,and he's on my main one)
right now, so having been jones'n for his list I had to come do it on
the web, which is a mystery to me and I don't like to learn, y'know.
I could have said "I'm the mom, SCOOT," but I didn't.
I *could* go make those thinking sticks I need to make, but I have to
pick Holly and four other kids up at 3:30 and deliver them all home
from theatre class.
So having the house all to myself, I'm in here squinting around the
website when I'm used to doing it by mail. ***POOR ME***
-=-For example, I tried to get "Strewing their paths" to match up with
my idea of learning as leading kids to a specific point. So strewing
was like dropping a trail of bread crumbs to lead an animal into a
cage.
-=-But now I see strewing as each strewn bit creating a little path
into the world that my daughter can travel or not, explore thoroughly
or just a little. The strewing expands her world rather than leading
her any place in particular.-=-
Joyce wrote that. I hadn't ever thought of "strewing paths" as bread
crumbs leading to one place. See how crumbly and scattered my
thoughts are?
I've had a vision/thought in my head since I was little. It's about
painting a surface by just dabbing here and there randomly, for a
while, and then kinda filling in between, and then connecting dots,
and eventually having most of it covered and then just filling in the
few holes. I've goofed with it really, on paper, and played with it
on computers, and never put words to it or discussed it with other
people til now. Because it seemed stupid, and inefficient, and
disorganized. I wasn't interested in the covering of the page, but in
the process, in how "wrong" it was do to it wrong (or whether it was
not wrong, just different).
So maybe that's the strewing for me. If the paper was a black screen
and on the other side was light, and each new piece of knowledge was a
pinprick, it would be better to scatter the holes around and make
patterns that COULD be connected dot-to-dot than to just start tearing
the screen off from one corner until enough light came through that I
thought I could stop. Or until the screen lost integrity and wasn't
there anymore.
Depends if the goal is to get light or get patterns and have fun, I
suppose.
If, as seems true, each person has a model of the universe inside his
head, then every single point of information, light or thought
enlarges or clarifies or better organizes that internal model. It
doesn't help, in my mind, to think of it in so organized a fashion as
I must have the whole outline and blueprint before adding details.
If I did model trains and was going to work on one big scenario for
the rest of my life, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to get a
same-scale miniature truck and sheep because my tracks weren't
finished. Every little bit helps. And if I just FELT like making a
store with little barrels out front, so what if the train switch is
broken? Eventually it will all come together, or it never will. But
if I deprive myself of painting the mountainside just because it's not
the trainstation, who benefits?
So perhaps my kind of unschooling works because I have scattershot
thinking. I have LOTS of dots to connect to other dots, and I have
dot-to-dot between me and kids, and between me and friends, and the
information matrix we have among us is pretty big. If I don't know
the answer to something (and google doesn't either), I probably know
someone I can ask.
Some principles I live by:
I will die without knowing everything.
I will die with unfinished projects.
Organizing myself with the idea of "finishing everything" will cause
me to fail.
Either I have a lot of time left, or I don't.
online at his friend's house and says it wouldn't really be convenient
to switch screennames (we have two accounts,and he's on my main one)
right now, so having been jones'n for his list I had to come do it on
the web, which is a mystery to me and I don't like to learn, y'know.
I could have said "I'm the mom, SCOOT," but I didn't.
I *could* go make those thinking sticks I need to make, but I have to
pick Holly and four other kids up at 3:30 and deliver them all home
from theatre class.
So having the house all to myself, I'm in here squinting around the
website when I'm used to doing it by mail. ***POOR ME***
-=-For example, I tried to get "Strewing their paths" to match up with
my idea of learning as leading kids to a specific point. So strewing
was like dropping a trail of bread crumbs to lead an animal into a
cage.
-=-But now I see strewing as each strewn bit creating a little path
into the world that my daughter can travel or not, explore thoroughly
or just a little. The strewing expands her world rather than leading
her any place in particular.-=-
Joyce wrote that. I hadn't ever thought of "strewing paths" as bread
crumbs leading to one place. See how crumbly and scattered my
thoughts are?
I've had a vision/thought in my head since I was little. It's about
painting a surface by just dabbing here and there randomly, for a
while, and then kinda filling in between, and then connecting dots,
and eventually having most of it covered and then just filling in the
few holes. I've goofed with it really, on paper, and played with it
on computers, and never put words to it or discussed it with other
people til now. Because it seemed stupid, and inefficient, and
disorganized. I wasn't interested in the covering of the page, but in
the process, in how "wrong" it was do to it wrong (or whether it was
not wrong, just different).
So maybe that's the strewing for me. If the paper was a black screen
and on the other side was light, and each new piece of knowledge was a
pinprick, it would be better to scatter the holes around and make
patterns that COULD be connected dot-to-dot than to just start tearing
the screen off from one corner until enough light came through that I
thought I could stop. Or until the screen lost integrity and wasn't
there anymore.
Depends if the goal is to get light or get patterns and have fun, I
suppose.
If, as seems true, each person has a model of the universe inside his
head, then every single point of information, light or thought
enlarges or clarifies or better organizes that internal model. It
doesn't help, in my mind, to think of it in so organized a fashion as
I must have the whole outline and blueprint before adding details.
If I did model trains and was going to work on one big scenario for
the rest of my life, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to get a
same-scale miniature truck and sheep because my tracks weren't
finished. Every little bit helps. And if I just FELT like making a
store with little barrels out front, so what if the train switch is
broken? Eventually it will all come together, or it never will. But
if I deprive myself of painting the mountainside just because it's not
the trainstation, who benefits?
So perhaps my kind of unschooling works because I have scattershot
thinking. I have LOTS of dots to connect to other dots, and I have
dot-to-dot between me and kids, and between me and friends, and the
information matrix we have among us is pretty big. If I don't know
the answer to something (and google doesn't either), I probably know
someone I can ask.
Some principles I live by:
I will die without knowing everything.
I will die with unfinished projects.
Organizing myself with the idea of "finishing everything" will cause
me to fail.
Either I have a lot of time left, or I don't.