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Pam writes:

> I worry about parents who want to radically unschool and, at the SAME time,
> satisfy spouses or friends or relatives that their kids really are
learning
> just fine. It might not really seem "just fine" to them if the child
doesn't
> learn long division until she's 13 instead of when it is taught in schools
> at about 9 years old. So - you sort of need to be clear in your own heads
about
> whether or not that kind of delay is okay with you and whether you feel
> confident about the benefits of letting things "wait" like that. I sort of
> see that as the purpose of this list, really, to help each other
understand
> the benefits of it, especially for people who get the "disadvantages"
flung
> at them by concerned spouses and others. They need to know that there are
> real reasons why some of us think that it is better to not teach something
> just because it is "time" according to schools.

Yeah, I really hear this. When Phil was around 10 - 12 and history was
emerging as his passion, it was easy to smile and think it fine, and other
people thought it was way cool, and let the other stuff wait. At around 13,
though, I was thinking, hmm, no math or science -- and I was wondering if I
could really trust the process and let it "wait" like that. At 16, I saw
that I needed to re-examine my own values and expectations. Some people
thought we were just crazy -- "What, he hasn't done a-l-g-e-b-r-a yet??" At
18 he decided he needed to *get it out of the way* and took it at community
college -- science, too -- and did fine.

He took lots of classes at community college. One semester was quite
something: he took lots of classes -- several he really wanted to take and
several that were *requirements* -- things that it was "time" to take. He
got good grades, but he said he found it sort of hollow, because he found
that he was meeting requirements and chasing grades, and as a result he
actually learned *less* than when he took classes he wanted to or studied
things on his own.

For example, that semester one of his classes was the History of England,
which normally would have absolutely consumed him -- history was his passion.
Well, he found himself, maybe because of all the other things he had to do,
doing only the things the professor required. No extra reading, research,
museum exhibits, films, all the ancillary things he would normally have done
which expanded his learning so. He got a good grade, but he didn't "learn"
nearly enough for him to be happy.

Anyway, he said he had found it damaging, actually. The next semester he
didn't take any classes at all -- he deschooled the whole time.

Dd Cecily, at 14, seems as *into* dance as Phil was into history. I know that
she knows how to learn (boy, is she ever learning -- she didn' start dance
until 13 so is really working hard at it) and, although her passion is so
different from what mine were (I'm more left-brained) I find that she is
teaching me a lot, too, and I am much more trusting of the whole process with
her.

Marge