odiniella

Since learning about unschooling, finding this group and a few other
unschooling resources a number of months ago, we've been incorporating
unschooling ideals into our home. We're still deschooling, I guess. We
put our curriculum away last Christmas and although my dd was grateful
for the break, she would occasionally mention that she feels anxious
about "not doing enough." I can't remember the last time she's made
this comment so I'm hoping that means progress (anxiety being one reason
I put the curriculum away). She tells me she'd like to go to a 4 year
college and study art (although sometimes its biology). She enjoys
anime specifically, and spends lots of time drawing or watching Japanese
tv shows through netflix. She likes history and literature as well, and
dabbled in playing music but has lost interest in that.
I'm wondering how to help her prepare considering she's not interested
in taking schooly classes. She just turned 14 and is still shy so
taking classes here and there like at the art center or community
college is an intimidating idea to her. My understanding is that it's
helpful to find out from the school the student is interested in what
kinds of information they'll require. At this point, however, she has
no idea what school she would want to go to or even what to do with her
adult life. I really can't blame her as those are pretty big ideas, but
at the same time my dh and I are not familiar with alternatives and
would like to avoid her having to spending a couple years furiously
playing catch-up.
I'd appreciate any advice.
Thanks,
Helen


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Sandra Dodd

-=- I really can't blame her as those are pretty big ideas, but
at the same time my dh and I are not familiar with alternatives and
would like to avoid her having to spending a couple years furiously
playing catch-up.-=-

"Furiously" is a telling word.

What is your deadline for her finishing college? Why?

Why "a four-year college"?

If she's interested in art or biology, find things now that are related. Trivia. Museums. Or maybe hold off on museums for a while, if she associates them with school or "field trips." Don't go to books until after deschooling. Save books.

http://sandradodd.com/stages might help. It's an article by Kelly Lovejoy about the stages unschoolers go through.

People do not need a college degree to learn about art. And someone who isn't actually interested in biology in an everyday way (plants? animals? biochemistry? "biology" is a huge range of 'interests'--what is she actually interested in?) might only be picking biology as a pre-med degree. If there's pressure from relatives to study this or that, or to graduate at 22, or 21 or something, those are very expensive and harmful pressures you might want to avoid or prevent.

Unschooling cannot work furiously, nor to prevent "furiously catching up."
Unschooling needs happiness and peace, humor, and relaxation.

-=- She likes history and literature as well, and
dabbled in playing music but has lost interest in that.-=-

Just because she's not doing music right now doesn't mean she has "lost interest" forever. Does she still listen to music? Don't categorize or judge what you think she likes or doesn't like, if you can help it. Pay attention to what she's interested in this evening, or tomorrow, in the moment. Someone might get really excited about horses one day--something they had never known before. Some cool competition, training method, or a breed of horse that was designed and created within the last couple of hundred years. It doesn't mean they want to abandon other interests, or to learn all about horses. It might last ten minutes, or an hour, or a day, or a week. Let it wax or wane on its own without pressing for more, or discouraging it.

-=-I'm wondering how to help her prepare considering she's not interested
in taking schooly classes.-=-

Don't help her prepare. Help her learn to live without school. School will always be there. Find ways to live and learn without it.

-=- She just turned 14... So she was just lately 13. A year ago, 12. She's very young.
...and is still shy so... She might always be "shy." Don't see her as defective or "not yet." See her as whole and capable.
-=-college is an intimidating idea to her.-=- Stop talking about college. You can look at it again in three years or five.

-=-My understanding is that it's
helpful to find out from the school the student is interested in what
kinds of information they'll require. -=-

Every moment you're thinking about that, though, you're not moving toward unschooling.

Sandra



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BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

My best friend, my mom and I are very artistic. Well I am talented drawing people and animals but I am not as creative as those two. They are pretty amazing.
Every time they wanted to learn a new technique for doing something different they found someone  to learn from.
My best friend went to some Art School and only did two semesters of it  the most.
She said it was just not worth  all the money.
Sure she said she learned some techniques but she thought she learned so much more outside school.
My mom and her are pretty amazing artists.
There are so many different media you can work with  !
I would explore it with your daughter! Try new things. Go see artists work and art shows, craft shows, videos, websites.
Go buy art supplies and play with them.
Spend hours inside an Art Supply store looking at materials.
Go on hikes and find materials in leafs, rocks, wood ( and much more) to work with for fun!
No agenda.
That is what art is.
I just sat with my 5 year old today and drew a portrait while she drew little cows. I have not done that in a long time and I have to say I am
happy that I can still do it !  She is now gluing her drawings in the sliding door!



Alex Polikowsky

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kelly_sturman

--- In [email protected], "odiniella" <hgaimari@...> wrote:

==We put our curriculum away last Christmas==

That's not a very long time ago.

==and although my dd was grateful for the break==

Are you taking a break from schooling, with the intention of going back to it?

Or are you making a break with schoolish ideas?

=my dh and I are not familiar with alternatives=

The alternative to having someone else tell you what to do to achieve a goal that
someone else set for you is to do things that matter to you for reasons that are
important to you. At the moment, drawing and watching anime are your daughter's
preferred alternatives. Have you tried reading it, too, and watching along with her? Let
her current interests become more important to you, so that your fears can become
less important.

= would like to avoid her having to spending a couple years furiously playing catch-up=

Catch up to whom? Life isn't a race.

Maybe think of people you know who've gone to college in mid-life. I know lots of people like that, and none of them were furiously catching up. They were pursuing their interests,
joyfully. They were doing what they really wanted to do.

> I'd appreciate any advice.

For me, letting go of the idea that my job as a parent of a teenager is to prepare that
teen for admission at age 18 to an Ivy-league university allowed me to finally relax into
unschooling (after three bouts of attempted deschooling followed by returns to school
at home). I wish I had been able to really "get" unschooling sooner. My family could
have had more happy, peaceful years.

It helped me a lot to remind myself that I truly believe that other goals are more important,
like nurturing a respectful, non-controlling relationship with my children, like seeing
them and loving them just as they are, right now, rather than as who I hope they could be, or fear they might become.

Kelly Sturman

plaidpanties666

Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>>
> People do not need a college degree to learn about art.

I'm a fiber artist and I've never so much taken a college level art class. I've taught workshops and won awards, though, and nowadays I have the same issues and challenges as many of the artists I know who have degrees.

> Just because she's not doing music right now doesn't mean she has "lost interest" forever.
***************

I'm coming off an 18 month hiatus from doing any fiber arts. I spent much of that time writing, and enjoyed that, but didn't have much interest in any of my usual work for a surprisingly (to me) long time. And now I'm back to having a bunch of projects going at once. Living and learning aren't clear, logical progressions from one thing to the next. They swirl around with eddies and backwaters, people go back to things they haven't done for years or set aside projects only to pick them up years later. My partner took several years off from making guitars and now does that almost full time. He took a year off from playing music and then suddenly started composing again.

> -=- She likes history and literature as well

History and literature are important to art. Chances are, if she's watching shows and movies, reading books, listening to music and looking at visual arts she's seeing all sorts of connections, there. That's a better preparation for art school than taking classes of any kind. Its a good preparation for anything in the sciences, too - learning to see connections, I mean, but also having a sense of history and progress in a general sense. Any serious scientific endeavor includes a review of the history and related studies.

If she likes art and biology and history and literature, has she seen the animated series "Mushi-shi"? It's all those things.

---Meredith

Sandra Dodd

-=-nowadays I have the same issues and challenges as many of the artists I know who have degrees. -=-

I bet you don't have student loans.

I liked college, and I paid off my student loans, but I wanted to be there. I was surrounded by people who did NOT want to, but their parents had given them no choice. What a massive waste of time, energy, emotion, peace. Some of the families had enough money to send their kids fully paid to out-of-state universities, or had sent them from foreign countries. Some dropped out. Some flunked out. They either still had student loans, or indebtedness to now-very-unhappy parents.

I'm guessing that if a child just lately came out of school and has parents who don't get unschooling, and she says she wants to go to college, that she is doing something she learned at school, which is "give the right answer." I would stop talking about college for a few years, definitely.

Sandra

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Pam Sorooshian

On 8/19/2011 2:10 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
> I'm guessing that if a child just lately came out of school and has
> parents who don't get unschooling, and she says she wants to go to
> college, that she is doing something she learned at school, which is
> "give the right answer."

Very possibly it is the only thing she can even think of to say. That's
how I was - I didn't know what else I could possibly do after high
school. College was good for me because I was drifting - it gave me some
structure while giving me much more freedom than I'd had up to then. I
think that's how it is for most kids right out of high school. But it
still didn't give me any information or ideas about things that I could
have done outside of academia. And I spent a lot of time trying to
figure out what I was "supposed to do" rather than what I wanted to do -
I wasn't asking the right questions at all. I really felt lost - really
floating along with some current, and not in control of my own life. (Of
course, some of that was the times - late 60's/early 70's were kind of a
floaty period, anyway!)

-pam

Sandra Dodd

When my kids were younger, I assumed they would go to college, but we were still full-on unschooling, and not "preparing for college"--not in the ways high school and college *say* are "required." I knew from way back that it wasn't true. I graduated from high school a year early, and had been shown "back stage" at school quite a bit, because they knew I was interested in teaching someday, and because of other factors.... I knew what was actually required by the state as opposed to what students were told. When I was 18 and my sister was fifteen, she was on her way to the office to drop out of high school when the principle met her in the hallway and threw her out. I figured out how to get her into a state university (not the one I was going to; another one). She went a couple of quarters, met lots of boys from foreign countries, smoked a lot of dope, played music... Cooler than most drop-outs were doing, I suppose. But the point is that I (at 18) figured out how to get her (at 15/16), a dropout, into college. And that was the 1970's. Things are more lax now, because lots (and lots) of people have gone into college from all kinds of non-standard situations. Older students are extremely common now.

In many ways, the best way to be great at college is NOT to "be prepared," school-style, but to be interesting and interested.

Interesting and interested doesn't come from a curriculum.

My kids are grown. Kirby has a really good job and is in a position to train and coach a team of others. He has co-workers with college degrees, but they're not at an advantage over him at work. They don't make more, and clearly they're in a job that didn't require that degree. Some of them have an unschooled supervisor. :-)

Marty takes a couple or three classes at a time, and is about to start working at a new gaming/comic-book shop.

Holly, we don't know yet. She talks about business-things. Her interests (not "studies," but fascinations and leanings) are lately involving the management and merchandising concerns of small bands and venues. She'll mess with that a while and either stay with it or move on, but she's learning things every day that aren't even taught in college, and making good friends of all sorts--artists and musicians. She was talking yesterday about how cool it would be to have a shop someday to sell imports and art and gifts. She was describing a kind of antiques/gallery shop. I was having fun imagining the things she was describing. She might take business classes and she might not. She's learning, either way.

Sandra

Joanna

--- In [email protected], Pam Sorooshian <pamsoroosh@...> wrote:
>
And I spent a lot of time trying to
> figure out what I was "supposed to do" rather than what I wanted to do -
> I wasn't asking the right questions at all. I really felt lost - really
> floating along with some current, and not in control of my own life. (Of
> course, some of that was the times - late 60's/early 70's were kind of a
> floaty period, anyway!)
>
That was my story too, but in the late 80's, so it wasn't "just" the times--lol. In fact, this was what I first connected with about unschooling, the potential to actually never have to find out who you are. That maybe you could just "be" who you are!

I've been thinking about this 14 yo girl today who likes art and says she wants to go to art school, and how sad that that is the focus and that she would even say that at this point. The focus is just in the wrong place, imo. It's taking something so personal, fragile and powerful as an individual creative impulse and reframing it into something that's no longer hers, if that makes sense. Now it's something that needs to be taught to her outside of herself, rather than allowing the burning ember to burst into a flame of passion, if that's what it is going to do. And if it's not going to do that, then where is the space to let it go and move on. This may not be "the" thing for this girl, but by grabbing onto it and figuring out how to steer her toward art school, it becomes co-opted, corrupted.

She just needs more space. Much, much more space.

Joanna

Jenny Cyphers

***I would explore it with your daughter! Try new things. Go see artists work and art shows, craft shows, videos, websites.***


Along that theme, one of my favorite things to do as a child was to sit and peruse art books for hours.  If you don't have art books, find some.  They are expensive, but libraries are good for that.  My family, when I was growing up, would buy art books for my dad for gifts, so we had a LOT of them.  Just looking and studying the pictures and watching art change and noticing details and materials was a big big deal for me as a child.  Even now, I will relate historical time lines to art.  It's like an epicenter of my thought process, how I connect the dots.

I used to sit with Maxfield Parrish up on my roof, for hours.

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Jenny Cyphers

***History and literature are important to art. Chances are, if she's watching shows and movies, reading books, listening to music and looking at visual arts she's seeing all sorts of connections, there. That's a better preparation for art school than taking classes of any kind.***


I started college seeking a degree in art.  The conclusion I came to, was that I didn't like people that I didn't know or care about, or respect, critiquing and grading my art, in the hopes that it would make me a better artist.  I learned far more at home doing my own thing.  There are some things that are learned through others sharing, but that doesn't need to be done formally.  

The last formal art class I took was a water color class.  I had been doing water colors for years and knew how to do water colors, but I wanted to get to know another perspective.  I took the class and was bored out of my mind.  We were made to focus on still lives.  I decided to put the only object that I found interesting, a tea pot, right in the middle of my paper, violating the golden mean.  The instructor told me that I needed to take basic design classes before taking her class and questioned how I was able to attend her class without it.  I dropped her class and never went back.  I've never taken  another art class since.  I still do water colors.  I payed a lot of money for that last class and learned nothing new.  It had been a complete waste of time for me.  I found that tea pot recently and remembered the whole incident!

I've learned more from watching art shows on public broadcasting than I did from half the art classes I've taken in my life, and I've taken a LOT of art classes!


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plaidpanties666

Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...> wrote:
>one of my favorite things to do as a child was to sit and peruse art books for hours.  If you don't have art books, find some.  They are expensive, but libraries are good for that.
*******************

Post-card books are good for that, too. You can find those at museums, but Dover books has an assortment of them as well as a variety of art books:

http://store.doverpublications.com/index.html

Browsing around that site, just now, I'm reminded that they have some excellent coloring books, too. A lot of adults overlook those especially for older kids, but I still enjoy coloring, even now. That website has some good ones for older kids and adults - really lovely nature coloring books, geometric designs, mandalas, optical illusions. I recommend them to anyone who likes to play with color - as someone who likes to color, myself, and also as an artist. Despite alllllll my parents insistence that coloring was a waste of time, in retrospect I learned a lot of color theory and a whole lot about how value, shade and tone can suggest depth and movement in a two-dimensional work.

---Meredith

plaidpanties666

Books on drawing can be fun, too - anything from simple "how to draw animals" books using simple geometric forms as starting points to sophisticated books on anatomical drawing or drawing perspective. We have some of those on hand that I've picked up at library sales over the years and lately Mo's been fascinated by them. She loves to draw - by hand and on the computer - and she loves animals, so "how to draw animals" really tickles her fancy.

Those simple "how to draw X" books were another category my parents poo-pood, even more so than coloring books - they flat out refused to buy "how to draw" books at all. The first time I bought Mo a "how to draw" book was a startling healing moment for me.

---Meredith

sheeboo2

------ Books on drawing can be fun, too - -----

And if she likes anime, she may enjoy the Manga Univeristy which has great online 'how to" tutorials:
http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/howtodraw/tutorials.html

They also publish a series of drawing books, but they can be hard to find, and expensive in the US. Our library has had good luck ordering them for us.

Brie

odiniella

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
> My kids are grown. Kirby has a really good job and is in a position
to train and coach a team of others. He has co-workers with college
degrees, but they're not at an advantage over him at work. They don't
make more, and clearly they're in a job that didn't require that degree.
Some of them have an unschooled supervisor. :-)

One of the reasons I went back to college after taking some time off was
being in a job that I thought was a dead-end simply because my boss had
a degree and I didn't. He didn't know the work like I did, being in the
trenches, but because of his degree, I would never have been considered
for the kinds of promotions he would be.
Granted, this was 20 years ago and I recognize the work environment has
changed, but is this really an unrealistic expectation? Ftr, this was
not a job I created but one I applied for, maybe that makes all the
difference?
Helen


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odiniella

--- In [email protected], "Joanna" <ridingmom@...> wrote:
>
> I've been thinking about this 14 yo girl today who likes art and says
she wants to go to art school, and how sad that that is the focus and
that she would even say that at this point. The focus is just in the
wrong place, imo. It's taking something so personal, fragile and
powerful as an individual creative impulse and reframing it into
something that's no longer hers, if that makes sense. Now it's something
that needs to be taught to her outside of herself, rather than allowing
the burning ember to burst into a flame of passion, if that's what it is
going to do. And if it's not going to do that, then where is the space
to let it go and move on. This may not be "the" thing for this girl, but
by grabbing onto it and figuring out how to steer her toward art school,
it becomes co-opted, corrupted.
>
> She just needs more space. Much, much more space.
>
> Joanna


I haven't thought of it this way (obviously), but I think I see your
point. In my experience, school is a resource to be used - an
environment where creative people bounce ideas off each other and
inspire each other and share information that would otherwise be hidden
from some. I also think of school as a place where different
opportunities are presented. For example, my childhood friend became an
art therapist because in art school she took some classes that intrigued
her and introduced her to a new field she didn't know existed
previously. I don't mean to suggest this is the only or even best way
to go about pursuing her interest, but to explain where I'm coming from.
In other words, I'm not trying to be stubborn, I'm just limited in my
knowledge.
Helen


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odiniella

--- In [email protected], Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...>
wrote:
> I started college seeking a degree in art. The conclusion I came to,
was that I didn't like people that I didn't know or care about, or
respect, critiquing and grading my art, in the hopes that it would make
me a better artist. I learned far more at home doing my own thing.
There are some things that are learned through others sharing, but that
doesn't need to be done formally.


You reminded me of why I took some time off college. I found it to be a
waste of time and money but eventually after doing what I enjoyed
(traveled and spent my time with a volunteer organization), I needed to
make more money and got odd jobs that showed me that my bosses, as
ignorant as they were about the real working conditions, would always
get promotions and higher pay checks because of their degrees. So I
went back and graduated. I can't say I've made money from my degree,
I'm a stay at home mom now but I did fight for services for my special
needs son, so clearly the skills I'd learned came in handy. Hmmm, is
this how unschooling works? Allowing the child to make these
discoveries before wasting years in school?
Helen


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plaidpanties666

"odiniella" <hgaimari@...> wrote:
>> One of the reasons I went back to college after taking some time off was
> being in a job that I thought was a dead-end simply because my boss had
> a degree and I didn't. He didn't know the work like I did, being in the
> trenches, but because of his degree, I would never have been considered
> for the kinds of promotions he would be.

You had a reason to go (back) to college, though. That's a very different thing than going "just because" in hopes of getting a better job than otherwise.

In retrospect, I can say I got the "wrong" degree. I went from high school to college, doing what I thought I was supposed to do, and discovered only in my senior year of college, finally doing a semester of the work I was studying for, that I didn't like the work. Talk about a waste of time! But you went to school knowing you liked the work, knowing the actual value of the degree before you got it. That's much better than getting a degree to maybe, possibly set you up for some potential job down the road someday. Nowadays, almost twenty years later, my degree doesn't get me better jobs because its in the wrong field. I do better mentioning my experience - lately, moving to a new company in my current field, what got me a better rate of pay was that I was self-taught.

---Meredith

Sandra Dodd

-=-One of the reasons I went back to college after taking some time off was
being in a job that I thought was a dead-end simply because my boss had
a degree and I didn't. -=-

There are many people in the world with degrees who are working for people without degrees.

-=-He didn't know the work like I did, being in the
trenches, but because of his degree, I would never have been considered
for the kinds of promotions he would be.-=-

That still exists for jobs like government positions, where they need something to sort people by. ANY degree, in anything, no matter the grades, can get someone a job or promotion with the state of New Mexico, I think, for example. City, county, probably the same. Teachers, getting a master's degree, get a raise.

-=-Granted, this was 20 years ago and I recognize the work environment has
changed, but is this really an unrealistic expectation? Ftr, this was
not a job I created but one I applied for, maybe that makes all the
difference?-=-

No one here knows the answer to that. If we all voted and it was 100%, we could be wrong today for many jobs, and wrong in the future for most jobs.

Preparing a child for college is not one of the best uses of unschooling, but the unschoolers I know of who have gone to college have found it easy.
College prep will most likely NOT make it easier for anyone--not you, not your child.

Sandra

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Sandra Dodd

-=- I also think of school as a place where different
opportunities are presented. For example, my childhood friend became an
art therapist because in art school she took some classes that intrigued
her and introduced her to a new field she didn't know existed
previously. I don't mean to suggest this is the only or even best way
to go about pursuing her interest, but to explain where I'm coming from.
In other words, I'm not trying to be stubborn, I'm just limited in my
knowledge.-=-

http://sandradodd.com/deschooling

You will need to change for unschooling to work.
We can help you change.
There's no advantage to your explaining to us what school-bound, conservative thoughts look like. We already know. The purpose of this list is for us to help you see what school-free, natural-learning thoughts look like.

Sandra

Sandra Dodd

-=- Hmmm, is
this how unschooling works? Allowing the child to make these
discoveries before wasting years in school?-=-

1) too simple
and
2) are you assuming they will waste time in school at some point, either before or after other discoveries?

Please try to stop writing about, thinking about school, school, school!!!!!!!

Try writing about and thinking about learning.
Not learning years from now, but learning today.
Little things. Happy things.

http://sandradodd.com/learning

Those pictures are links. Be brave.

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Pam Sorooshian

On 8/25/2011 4:09 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
> I'm not trying to be stubborn, I'm just limited in my knowledge.-=-

Kids in school very often discover their interests in school - because
that is where they are. If someone discovers an interest in art by
taking art classes because that's what they do - they take classes.

Unschooling parents help their kids discover the world - art IS in the
world, there to be discovered, along with everything else. WAY more
stuff is in the world (available to be discovered) than what might be
found in a class.

Do a lot of different things, little things, mostly, to start out, with
your kids. Watch their eyes and their body language - if their eyes
light up and their body gets excited, do a bit more of those things.
Keep exposing them to new and different while helping them delve deeper
into the things that light them up.

-pam