Sandra Dodd

Lately there have been some discussions on facebook that got fast and rough, and I think it's a shame when good writing shows up on facebook, so I'm out there picking the best parts and saving them various places. Someone asked whether unschooling could be partial or mostly, and Schuyler wrote something wonderful. I LOVE that last part of the second paragraph.

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[Schuyler Waynforth, August 19]

Can you unschool a little bit? I think there is a level where unschooling a little bit would be like being the boy in the plastic bubble on weekdays so that you were a little germ free. I don't think you have to get it right on the first try, I work on my own approach to unschooling a lot of the time. And I certainly have a much greater understanding of the process, the approach, the principles than I did when I started on this path 10 years ago.

Unschooling is at its core an understanding that learning is a part of being human. It is a recognition that school undermines that by saying that learning needs to be organised, structured and handed down. School argues that certain things are so hard to learn that they must be taught. If you unschool partway you are mixing up your messages. If you unschool math and science and reading but structure nutrition and media studies you are arguing that while a rich and engaging life may make the three "r"s obvious they won't help you to deal with the difficult studies of food and televisions and video games and computers.

Unschooling is also about supporting the interests of your child. It is about nurturing them whole and not in a parted out way. I don't know what Simon and Linnaea are learning much of the time, so much learning is under the skin, so to speak. If I were arguing that the only learning that had value was the learning that could be forced to fit into the round holed peg board of a school curriculum I don't know what they would see the world. I don't know how they would see themselves. Although I don't know those things now, but I know that each of them are more comfortable with themselves and their interests than I was at 11 or at 14.

Unschooling school is still about school and not really about life. It's not seeing how life is bigger and brighter and richer and shinier and more than school could ever hope to be and always about learning whatever tool it is you are using to explore it. Be it whipped cream and chocolate and crepes or Jackass 3D.
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fauxbee

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:


_____Lately there have been some discussions on facebook that got fast and rough, and I think it's a shame when good writing shows up on facebook, so I'm out there picking the best parts and saving them various places___________


What is the facebook page?

Sandra Dodd

-=-What is the facebook page?-=-

One is an unschooling page. I don't remember who created it, and I'm a moderator. I was drafted, I guess. I don't mind, but I really don't know who made it.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/unschooling/


This one, I made:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/303347574750/
and it's quieter than the other. My whole online weekend has been pretty quiet except for the tussle there, and someone arguing with my site announcements blog. :-)

http://aboutunschooling.blogspot.com/2011/08/sugar-spouses-law-of-attraction.html

Sandra





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