Joyce Fetteroll

The talk I'm giving at Sandra's symposium is partly about how the words we use to describe unschooling ideas sometimes get misinterpreted and then people end up with ideas that create problems.

I have several collected -- and added trust :-) -- but if anyone can remember words, phrases, ideas that painted different pictures than intended, that had you picturing or doing things that weren't quite right, I'd like to add some more. :-)

You can send them to the list or to me @

jfetterol @ verizon.net

Thanks!

Joyce

Sandra Dodd

"Authentic."

This came up in the chat Wednesday. I wasn't glad it did at first, but later I was, I guess. :-)


Sandra

Meredith

"Free child" - oh boy is That one a can of worms! It kept me away from reading about unschooling for a few years, having met a few "free children". Yikes.

Child-led learning.

Natural learning - that one comes up a whole lot when parents have issues with... well all the usual things but the issues stem from a concern over natural-vs-artificial/technological.

The Continuum Concept - similar issues to natural learning, but with lots of comparisons to isolated, primitive cultures as part of the argument.

Non-judgmental - kind of goes with the "free child" stuff, parents thinking they shouldn't ever say no or imply a child's behavior is inappropriate.

Ooooooh: respect. And ideas about modelling tie into that. "I respect my child but she doesn't respect me - what am I doing wrong?"

---Meredith

Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 17, 2011, at 1:28 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> "Authentic."

Oh, my, yes. There are so many positive connections to the word. Genuine. Real. True. I don't see a single negative word in my thesaurus. And the antonyms are fake and unreliable.

It's amazing how wrong such a positive word can steer someone!

Joyce

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Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 17, 2011, at 4:05 PM, Meredith wrote:

> "Free child" - oh boy is That one a can of worms! It kept me away
> from reading about unschooling for a few years, having met a few "free children". Yikes.

And I was going to say you don't know how many people list some form of freedom in their descriptions of what radical unschooling is at the Unschooling Network, but realized that yes you do see them as you approve people ;-)

It's veeery interesting.

I was actually thinking more in terms of sound bites like No bedtimes and No restrictions on food (TV, sugar). So the words and phrases from you both helped fill in a gap I hadn't realized I had :-)

Joyce

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Meredith

Joyce Fetteroll <jfetteroll@...> wrote:
>> I was actually thinking more in terms of sound bites like No bedtimes and No restrictions on food
***************

Oh, you mean like "always say yes, or some form of yes"?
(wicked grin)
---Meredith

Sandra Dodd

-=-Oh, you mean like "always say yes, or some form of yes"?
(wicked grin)-=-

Should I just take that page down?

SERIOUSLY, some people seem to only read the titles. :-)

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Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 19, 2011, at 6:10 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> -=-Oh, you mean like "always say yes, or some form of yes"?
> (wicked grin)-=-
>
> Should I just take that page down?

The good that it does may not be outweighing the bad, unfortunately.

Or rename it to Say Yes More. Or Look for the Yes.

Joyce




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Joyce Fetteroll

On Dec 19, 2011, at 5:58 PM, Meredith wrote:

> Oh, you mean like "always say yes, or some form of yes"?
> (wicked grin)

Yes, like that ;-) It's one of my sound bite phrases in the talk.

Joyce

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Renee McGraw

On Dec 19, 2011 4:49 PM, "Joyce Fetteroll" <jfetteroll@...> wrote:
>
>
> > "Authentic."

> It's amazing how wrong such a positive word can steer someone!

***********************
I get how the terms trust and free child can lead someone into a rocky road.
Would you guys give me an example for "authentic"?

Renee


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dkjsv05

-=-"Oh, you mean like "always say yes, or some form of yes"?
> (wicked grin)-=-
>
> Should I just take that page down?"~


Though I am not the one who always answers all the questions that seem to arise from that page :), it was that page that helped me begin my journey into Radical unschooling :). That page helped me start a better relationship with my family.

I never saw it as needing to say "Yes Timmy let's play in the streets" and really I question those people and their parenting abilities that think that *is* what it says.

Anyway my two cents from someone who is very thankful that page wasn't taken down.
Kim

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

Even if you do take it down there will be people that will read one thing or another and what they take out 
of it is not what someone else will take. It maybe there is a learning curve.|People will read and hear things from their personal
experiences/where they are/how they WANT to hear them/ or just how they process thoughts and words.

I know I have become more clear and in my thinking and seeing things that before I did not.
Thanks for the discussions in this group.

 
Alex Polikowsky

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Sandra Dodd

-=-I get how the terms trust and free child can lead someone into a rocky road.
Would you guys give me an example for "authentic"?-=-

What would make a person "become authentic"? And what does that imply that they were before?

Sandra

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Sandra Dodd

-=
I never saw it as needing to say "Yes Timmy let's play in the streets" and really I question those people and their parenting abilities that think that *is* what it says.-=-

You're right.

People who are going to live a lame life of misinterpretation will do it no matter what precautions other people take. :-)

Sandra

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Joyce Fetteroll

> I get how the terms trust and free child can lead someone into a rocky road.
> Would you guys give me an example for "authentic"?

It's a word that's part of some current self-help beliefs. It means to not disguise what you're feeling. Which sounds good on the surface. But it gives people license not to think about who they might hurt before they speak. Especially to kids. Kids really don't need to know mom's feelings about Barney or Barbies or rap music.

But that doesn't mean lying. It means being aware and sensitive that mom's words can carry a lot of emotion weight. Saying he's not my favorite is much gentler and no less true than "authentic" thoughts on how creepy she thinks he is.

Joyce

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Sandra Dodd

This is disturbing, and too serious for your talk, perhaps but it shows where confusion in concepts and terminology is going horribly wrong.

Facebook stuff. Sad things.
========================

I objected to a "community" page being named "Death of an Unschooler," because there was no death. In a divorce decree, a child was ordered to go to school. I wrote:

I don't like the title of this page at all. There have been unschooled children who have died--were alive and then were never to breathe again. Going to school is not death. No one has the right to be unschooled. It's something parents decide together and when parents divorce, it can be gone in that instant.
------------------
"Death of an Unschooler" responded:
Unschooling is freedom. [Child's name] is being forced to do something she does not want. I have always told her she does not have to do anything she does not want to do. It IS her right. It feels like death to her. The word death is used because it is how it feels to her. I appreciate you taking the time to contribute. Thanks, Sandra.
------------
I/Sandra Dodd responded:

Unschooling is a form of homeschooling. Homeschooling is an alternative to compulsory attendance laws. Unschooling is not "freedom.: If you told her she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do, you did her a great disservice.

To anyone who is reading here, PLEASE, please, do not put unschooling ahead of your marriage. Divorce almost always ends unschooling.http://sandradodd.com/divorce

http://sandradodd.com/spouses

Sandra Dodd Assuming this might be deleted from this topic, I'm going to repeat it on my wall. If anyone here is thinking that unschooling is ANYone's "right," that is incorrect.

Jenny Cyphers

***I have always told her she does not have to do anything she does not want to do. It IS her right. It feels like death to her. The word death is used because it is how it feels to her.***

That sense of entitlement could have been the cause of a divorce!  That's just me reading into it, maybe more than I need to.  Divorce creates all kinds of sadness.  I'm sorry that girl is sad.  It seems that mom could be focusing more on how to make her daughter's life happier and better within the limits they have been given.  Instead, she's taken time out of their lives to create a community page on facebook devoted to sadness.  

School could be way more fun than attending a "funeral" of unschooling, or any funeral really!  

I WISH kids had rights to decide things about their own education!  The law is very clear, at least in the US, that it is only the parents who can exempt a child from school.  This particular child was given a wrong interpretation of the laws.  Even so, the focus could still be on happily ever after, rather than sadness.

I try to be careful about my negative feelings, which have become more neutral with time, about school just in case one of mine needs or wants to go.  I'd like the focus to be on being happy no matter what educational situation we have! 

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Bob Collier

--- In [email protected], Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...> wrote:
>
> ***I have always told her she does not have to do anything she does not want to do. It IS her right. It feels like death to her. The word death is used because it is how it feels to her.***
>
> That sense of entitlement could have been the cause of a divorce!  That's just me reading into it, maybe more than I need to.  Divorce creates all kinds of sadness.  I'm sorry that girl is sad.  It seems that mom could be focusing more on how to make her daughter's life happier and better within the limits they have been given.  Instead, she's taken time out of their lives to create a community page on facebook devoted to sadness.  
>
> School could be way more fun than attending a "funeral" of unschooling, or any funeral really!  
>
> I WISH kids had rights to decide things about their own education!  The law is very clear, at least in the US, that it is only the parents who can exempt a child from school.  This particular child was given a wrong interpretation of the laws.  Even so, the focus could still be on happily ever after, rather than sadness.
>
> I try to be careful about my negative feelings, which have become more neutral with time, about school just in case one of mine needs or wants to go.  I'd like the focus to be on being happy no matter what educational situation we have! 
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>


I'd like to make a few observations on that if I may concerning my own circumstances.

For anybody here who doesn't know what they are, I have a daughter now in her mid 20s who was a "top student" throughout 13 years in school in the UK and Australia, who graduated from high school in the "99th percentile" and went on to acquire three university degrees, and is currently studying for her Master of Laws. I also have a now 16 year old son who started at our local vocational college in August this year after nine years out of school during which time he mostly played videogames (incidentally, he's doing well at college and enjoying the experience).

I am occasionally asked how it is that I changed my mind about my children's education so radically, and the fact is I didn't. "Education" and "school" are not the same thing and never have been. I've been aware of the negative aspects of school since I was at school myself in the 1950s and 60s. In those days, you were generally expected to tolerate the negatives for a higher purpose, even if it was one that was imposed on us rather than actually chosen (but at the same time we probably did understand why). My mother, who grew up in rural England in the 1920s, walked three miles to school and three miles home again in all weathers for the privilege of being taught what she wouldn't otherwise have learned and that helped her to escape life on the farm for something better. Even in the 1990s, when my daughter was progressing through the school system, accommodating its less than appealing characteristics in return for a 'good education' was still a viable option and that's the one my wife and I chose, though it required a huge amount of attention and energy to be involved in and to watch over our daughter's school experience, and true enough it was frequently necessary to counteract some effects of 'What Schools Want' with what we preferred when our daughter was outside her school's jurisdiction.

I've also been aware that very little of what I learned myself at school has been of genuine use to me in my adult life, and that nearly all of what has been genuinely useful to me has been acquired since I decided to take responsibility for my own education when I was in my late 20s.

I read John Holt's "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail" a long time ago, a few years after I left school, but the person who persuaded me to accept my son's request to be removed from school was not John Holt but Tim Berners-Lee. We'd had the internet at home for two years by then and I could plainly see that my son was learning more in half an hour on the internet than he was being taught in a whole day at school.

My wife and I value our children's happiness above other considerations and the fact is, our daughter was happy at school (so I know it's possible) and our son was unhappy at school and that was the difference that has resulted in them growing to adulthood along such contrasting paths.

Underlying the desire for our children to be happy is what I think of as "maximum" freedom to choose for themselves how they live their lives. Before our daughter started school, maximum freedom meant a great deal of freedom for her to follow her preferences and of course it does tend to make people happy when they can do that; when our daughter was in school, however, the "maximum" shrank somewhat (that was the deal, so to speak, in return for a 'good education' and overall that worked out okay), whenever she was outside of her school's jurisdiction during that time her maximum freedom expanded again, often to previous dimensions. Before our son started school, there was an early phase when both my wife and I were in full-time paid employment, there was a phase when we moved home several times, and our son's maximum freedom varied a lot; in the nine years he was out of school, it was possibly as close to total freedom as we could ever get when he was at home, but when we were out and about it was less, and he had virtually no freedom in the earlier years in particular to be out and about on his own during "school hours". So "maximum freedom" has always meant different things at different times and in different places. But whatever it was, maximum freedom was what my wife and I were constantly trying to create for our children within the reality of living in society and living our own lives.

Maybe this is the point I'm trying to make: I'm still working on my understanding of the concept of "unschooling", and maybe I'll get there one day, but I get the impression sometimes now when I read what some people have to say about it that they think of it as a kind of alternative reality where anything associated with school is an unwelcome intrusion, and I really feel that's a mistake. My nine years sharing the adventure with my son were wonderful and it's true that we liked being homebodies and we were very discerning about who we did or didn't engage with, but at no time was it ever like living in a cabin in the woods ignoring the world at large. I do think there is a Big Picture to step back and look at so that my thinking is at a higher level than simply seeing the experience as "going to school vs. not going to school", but at the same time the everyday reality was that the desire for happiness and freedom (and success, however that might be defined) needed to function in a context of how society operates with regard to that issue and I don't think that's going to change for me. I've been a non-mainstream parent from the beginning and yes that's a narrow path at times but it's still a path that runs through normal everyday society.

One of my abiding memories, by the way, from when my son was first out of school was of him sitting on the sofa in front of the TV playing his latest videogame while his sister was sitting next to him working on her latest university assignment, and there was no indication from either of them that they thought this was anything other than perfectly natural. I remember watching and wondering at that and it really did get me thinking about what's important and what isn't.

Okay, that's turned out to be a bit of a ramble. Just thoughts sparked off in my head by what Jenny wrote. :-)

Bob

Sandra Dodd

-=- I get the impression sometimes now when I read what some people have to say about it that they think of it as a kind of alternative reality where anything associated with school is an unwelcome intrusion, and I really feel that's a mistake.-=-

I agree with Bob.
Holly calls it "unschool-world," when people think the laws of the world don't apply to unschoolers, or think that all their social needs, friendships, and car repairs are somehow owed to them by other unschoolers.

I cringe when people talk about tribes or "the unschooling community." I want to help people live in the real, normal world, and not a rarified fantasyland.

That said, though, I'm looking forward to spending a few days with a group of people dedicated to really looking at unschooling in a serious way, next week.

Sandra

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Pam Sorooshian

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Bob Collier <
bobcollier@...> wrote:

they think of it as a kind of alternative reality where anything associated
> with school is an unwelcome intrusion,


Lots of people taking kids out of school have reason to feel this way. For
them, part of deschooling is getting over it.

-pam


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Sandra Dodd

-=-they think of it as a kind of alternative reality where anything associated
> with school is an unwelcome intrusion,

-=-Lots of people taking kids out of school have reason to feel this way. For
them, part of deschooling is getting over it.-=-

Getting over which part of it? This seems ambiguous.

Once in an online discussion someone came quoting something she had read about natural learning, or something, and I asked her question intended to lead her toward considering whether that source was as good as other sources. I didn't think it was. I used the phrase "critical thinking," and she just went OFF on me, saying that critical thinking sounded like something they taught in school and she wanted NOTHING to do with anything schoolish ever again.

Schools have maps; will unschoolers have no maps?
Schools have a periodic chart of the elements on the wall; should unschoolers avert their eyes from such things?

I think not.


Sandra

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Pam Sorooshian

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:

> -=-they think of it as a kind of alternative reality where anything
> associated
> > with school is an unwelcome intrusion,
>
> -=-Lots of people taking kids out of school have reason to feel this way.
> For
> them, part of deschooling is getting over it.-=-
>
> Getting over which part of it? This seems ambiguous.
>

They may have reason to want to eliminate everything remotely related to
school from their lives if they've had a horrendous school experience. But
part of deschooling is getting over that antipathy, otherwise they throw
the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting anything that has any
connection to school, including lots of really cool stuff that would
contribute to a great unschooling/learning life.

-pam


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Sandra Dodd

-=-Natural learning - that one comes up a whole lot when parents have issues with... well all the usual things but the issues stem from a concern over natural-vs-artificial/technological.-=-

I use "natural learning" pretty often. I hadn't heard it used in an anti-technological way. I've used it of kids figuring things out in the course of doing what's interesting to them, regardless of what it is they're interested in.

Sandra

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Melissa Dietrick

> -=-Natural learning - that one comes up a whole lot when parents have
> issues with... well all the usual things but the issues stem from a concern
> over natural-vs-artificial/technological.-=-
>
<<I use "natural learning" pretty often. I hadn't heard it used in an
> anti-technological way. I've used it of kids figuring things out in the
> course of doing what's interesting to them, regardless of what it is
> they're interested in.<<
>
i use "natural learning" too (in italian) and I come across this all the
time. Not anti-technological per se, but an idea that children have to
live in nature to learn naturally, to play with "natural" toys
(waldorf/ecological style Im guessing). Its frustrating always, but then,
it makes one define, and then refine the definition of the terms one is
choosing to use.


I am really enjoying this list for the constant quest to define terms
important for understanding unschooling, always aiming for clear and
simple. Thankyou, and happy holidays!

"There is a Place beyond Rightness and Wrongness -- let us meet There."
§Rumi

http://apprendimentonaturale.blogspot.com/
www.nontogliermiilsorriso.org
http://www.indianbambooflute.blogspot.com/
http://www.etsy.com/shop/larimeloom
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/apprendimentonaturale/


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Sandra Dodd

-=-i use "natural learning" too (in italian) and I come across this all the
time. Not anti-technological per se, but an idea that children have to
live in nature to learn naturally, to play with "natural" toys
(waldorf/ecological style Im guessing). Its frustrating always, but then,
it makes one define, and then refine the definition of the terms one is
choosing to use.-=-

Ah...

Well in the 1960's (the good old days, for those who lived then and weren't wholly traumatized) the idea of "natural" was big. The idea that there even *was* a "natural" state of humans was a shocking idea, and went against culture and religion.

The most obvious and photographable expression of doing what was natural was hair. I was stylin' in those days because I have very straight hair that grows a little past my waist, and that was cool. But whatever kind of hair people had, they let it grow and let it be--curly, kinky, wavy, fluffy--and women stopped shaving so much and plucking so much, to see what hair did naturally grow on them, and where. And men stopped (or tried to stop) posturing so much, and thought about what they would actually like to do, or wear, or listen to, or live around, if they weren't constrained by "manliness."

That was in response to buzz cuts for men, and curlers worn all night every single night by women.

When people argued that things people had made were not natural, though, I would ask them if they thought honey was natural; bees' nests; beaver dams. We didn't know yet then about chimps' tools.

I had nothing against human artifact. Firing pottery doesn't bother me a bit. I sure didn't want to give up my guitar, which was likely to have at any one moment treated wood from at least two continents, steel, brass, plastic, and mother-of-pearl. I had no interest in abandoning the 1958 VW Bug I was using to get the 90 miles from the university to where my parents and sister were, on weekends; they had just divorced and my sister was going back and forth, and not happy in either place. "Natural" wasn't going to cut a 90 mile commute.

And as time has moved on, I don't consider a MacBook Pro with internet to be unnatural, any more than a bird's nest in my yard containing hair from dogs that were originally bred in Australia. The birds certainly don't give a damn where those bits and strings and strands of what come from, when they build a nest.

When I talk about natural learning, I'm thinking of the way the human mind works--any human mind. And I don't know much about that, technically speaking, but I don't have to. If we let it go and don't try to constrain or control it, and provide the fodder and input for it to work, then it works. That, for me, is natural learning.

Sandra

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Meredith

Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
> I use "natural learning" pretty often. I hadn't heard it used in an anti-technological way.
*****************

A statement I usually come across a few times a year, about food or tv, usually, is "it's not possible for children to learn naturally about things which are not natural". Or sometimes it will be about toys - plastic isn't natural so kids can't learn about its evils without being taught. Didn't someone write that in the most recent thread on vegetarianism? "Organic learning" runs into the same difficulty.

Ironically, another confusing term is "radical unschooling" itself. It tends to attract people who consider themselves "radical" in some way or another and want to use unschooling as a kinder, gentler way to create perfectly radical children. They're the sort who will write "I'm using "radical" My way" or words to that effect.

---Meredith

Pam Sorooshian

I have heard it used to mean parents as interfering in "natural" learning
if they offer ideas or experiences or suggestions. In other words, it is
only "natural" if the child conceives of, initiates, and carries out the
learning activity entirely on their own. Anything else is unnatural or
artificial. The adult role in natural learning would be to "stand by" to
provide what the child directly requests.

But I don't think we can prevent people from taking ideas to extremes. It
seems that will happen quite naturally <G>.

I also use "natural learning" the way Sandra uses it - it is what I think
of as "incidental" learning as opposed to "intentional" learning.
Incidental learning happes as a side-effect of someone pursuing something
else and the learner may very likely not even be aware of what they are
learning. A child folding origami animals learns about relationships
between triangle sides and angles, for example (trigonometry). When my
young friend Matthew was attending meetings of a Robotics Society, he
decided that it would help him understand more if he knew some formal
trigonometry, so he got a workbook and a video to use. That was still as a
direct result of him wanting to pursue his interest, but it was far more
intentional, not something he picked up "naturally" along the way.

-pam





On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 8:25 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:

> I use "natural learning" pretty often. I hadn't heard it used in an
> anti-technological way. I've used it of kids figuring things out in the
> course of doing what's interesting to them, regardless of what it is
> they're interested in.
>


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Sandra Dodd

-=-They're the sort who will write "I'm using "radical" My way" or words to that effect. -=-

Well they can do that, but I don't seem to notice them doing it here. :-)

One reason I'd like to stick to dictionary definitions and to avoid politics is all of that stuff. They can "use radical" any way they want to, but when the term was first in use, it was discussed that very day, that very week, as meaning from the source, from the root, and at the core. Radiating from that belief.

-=-Ironically, another confusing term is "radical unschooling" itself. It tends to attract people who consider themselves "radical" in some way or another and want to use unschooling as a kinder, gentler way to create perfectly radical children.-=-

Well that's as much a bummer at parents who fought WWII wanting to come home and create perfectly conservative children. What they got was the psychedelic '60's and a lot of their kids "going natural". :-)

Sandra

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Pam Sorooshian

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:

> When I talk about natural learning, I'm thinking of the way the human mind
> works--any human mind. And I don't know much about that, technically
> speaking, but I don't have to. If we let it go and don't try to constrain
> or control it, and provide the fodder and input for it to work, then it
> works. That, for me, is natural learning.



It amazes me over and over how scientists keep discovering
brain-biology-based reasons why unschooling works. They don't make that
connection, of course, but how many of them have even heard of unschooling
or can imagine that we're out here in the wild actually raising kids based
on what turns out to be scientific evidence about how brains work.

-pam


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Jenny Cyphers

***I also use "natural learning" the way Sandra uses it - it is what I think
of as "incidental" learning as opposed to "intentional" learning.
Incidental learning happes as a side-effect of someone pursuing something
else and the learner may very likely not even be aware of what they are
learning.***

That was a very important idea for me when I was beginning unschooling!  It's what kept me on my toes, looking for interesting things to add to our lives to create a rich learning environment.  It's how I started thinking about natural learning and how much a child could learn just by existing in the world that they live in.  A BIG part of a child's world is their parents and what their parents bring to them, what their parents create as a place to grow up.

To me, that seemed like a very very important aspect of unschooling.  Parents can create wonderful environments for their kids, environments above and beyond what a school could create.  Kids in school learn too, but not always what they are supposed to be learning.  Kids at home are learning.  They are learning all the time within the confines of their world.  For a school kid that involves specific parameters.  For an unschooled kid, the world is there and their parents play a big part in bringing it to them and them to it.  It's like taking the walls down and peering over and out and beyond.  But it takes effort put in by the parents to create that world.  Like building a nest. http://sandradodd.com/nest

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