Home is where your family is
Sandra Dodd
There's a rolicking gospel hymn that goes:
This world is not my home
I'm just a-passin' through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue…
Although I don't believe the message of it anymore, the melody and energy of it can still stir me.
I would like to liken this list to a world one passes through, and one's immediate family and home to the eternal heavenly goal for a minute. Those who don't think in analogies don't need to read along.
This discussion, nor any unschooling discussion, nor any conference…. those are not what unschooling is. Those are not where unschooling lives. This is a discussion *about* unschooling. We are not "unschooling" each other or ourselves or our children here. We are minutely examining what helps and what doesn't help unschooling.
This morning in an e-mail someone unhappy with this wrote " I have to say that I am feeling attacked by you right now. I was looking for a group that I could exchange idea's with, not a group that micro manages it's posters or isn't open to others ideas. Perhaps this isn't a home for me."
This isn't a home for anyone, nor is it intended to be.
It might be someone's "spiritual home" in a way. If this is the first or main place a person has been examining ideas like morality and duty and service, it might be a comfortable place to visit frequently. And while posting here can be a service to others, the real service we're talking abut when we talk about those high ideals is service to one's children, and family, and taking these ideas and putting them into real-life action and practice.
As the founder and owner of the list, I am not open to others' ideas unless those others' ideas are supportive of unschooling. If those others' ideas are rehashed mainstream platitudes that keep children separate, and small, and that justify parental comfort at the expense of children's peace and learning and empowerment, not only am I "not open to them," I point out that they are rehashed mainstream platitudes (often not even rehashed, just recited).
Twice in the past few days I've explained what I think about ideas, theories and convictions. I'll write it down here for anyone who wasn't hanging out where I was this week.
Ideas are cheap and fleeting. There are funny, great, lame and awful ideas. They flicker up and we reject most of them.
Theories are ideas that seem right, and useful. Theories aren't rejected so quickly. If you get a theory you think will help you, carry it around and hold it up to other ideas and situations. Show it to people and see what they think. Hone it. Polish it. See if it works in all situations.
When a theory is tried out in all kinds of weather and circumstances and it doesn't fail, and if you come to *know* from certain personal knowledge that your theory is a good one, it might become a conviction.
If there's a platitude you recite sometimes, you could consider it to be your theory that the platitude is truth. Hold it up to all kinds of light and see if it holds. MANY "truths" others pass out turn out to have been awful ideas, or untested theories, or fallacies. And truths (in science, history, knowledge of human nature and biology) can change, because the basis for belief can be shaky and changeable.
The principles of unschooling and natural learning aren't ideas just hatched, and for me and some of the other long-time posters on this list, they aren't theory anymore. They're conviction. They are proven and certain facts.
The other day someone asked a question I had never heard. That used to happen with all questions about unschooling. At various times over the past 22 years I answered each one of them for the very first time. This question last week was the first new question I had heard in about a year. The answer wasn't difficult, but the question was new. It was " is radical unschooling where you NEVER sit at a desk and read and write. Is reading restricted to floor/couch/bed reading. This is new for me."
This question, as with many questions, gives us a good glimpse into the beliefs and attitude of the questioner. She used "NEVER" and "restricted." In fewer than 30 words, two of them were about strict rules and limitations.
I think it's good when we can point out to a person what they have inadvertently shown us. That gives them a solid starting point for moving toward a better understanding of unschooling.
Anyone who came here without wanting to move toward a better understanding of unschooling had to ignore several solid indicators of the purpose and intent of the list to get in here.
Even though I come here every day and have been doing more than 99% of the days since November 2001, but this is a place to discuss unschooling. My home is in Albuquerque, and when Kirby comes home from Austin, and I'm there, and Holly gets back from her travels, we'll all be in the same place again for a while. Home is with Keith and our children, even when we're temporarily scattered out.
Here's where the new question quoted above was, for those on facebook who want to read the responses there.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/303347574750/
To those who have read this far, fine ways to be happy. If Always Learning doesn't add to your happiness, don't be here. Find things that make your children's lives better and that make you and your family feel more calmly alive in the world.
Sandra
This world is not my home
I'm just a-passin' through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue…
Although I don't believe the message of it anymore, the melody and energy of it can still stir me.
I would like to liken this list to a world one passes through, and one's immediate family and home to the eternal heavenly goal for a minute. Those who don't think in analogies don't need to read along.
This discussion, nor any unschooling discussion, nor any conference…. those are not what unschooling is. Those are not where unschooling lives. This is a discussion *about* unschooling. We are not "unschooling" each other or ourselves or our children here. We are minutely examining what helps and what doesn't help unschooling.
This morning in an e-mail someone unhappy with this wrote " I have to say that I am feeling attacked by you right now. I was looking for a group that I could exchange idea's with, not a group that micro manages it's posters or isn't open to others ideas. Perhaps this isn't a home for me."
This isn't a home for anyone, nor is it intended to be.
It might be someone's "spiritual home" in a way. If this is the first or main place a person has been examining ideas like morality and duty and service, it might be a comfortable place to visit frequently. And while posting here can be a service to others, the real service we're talking abut when we talk about those high ideals is service to one's children, and family, and taking these ideas and putting them into real-life action and practice.
As the founder and owner of the list, I am not open to others' ideas unless those others' ideas are supportive of unschooling. If those others' ideas are rehashed mainstream platitudes that keep children separate, and small, and that justify parental comfort at the expense of children's peace and learning and empowerment, not only am I "not open to them," I point out that they are rehashed mainstream platitudes (often not even rehashed, just recited).
Twice in the past few days I've explained what I think about ideas, theories and convictions. I'll write it down here for anyone who wasn't hanging out where I was this week.
Ideas are cheap and fleeting. There are funny, great, lame and awful ideas. They flicker up and we reject most of them.
Theories are ideas that seem right, and useful. Theories aren't rejected so quickly. If you get a theory you think will help you, carry it around and hold it up to other ideas and situations. Show it to people and see what they think. Hone it. Polish it. See if it works in all situations.
When a theory is tried out in all kinds of weather and circumstances and it doesn't fail, and if you come to *know* from certain personal knowledge that your theory is a good one, it might become a conviction.
If there's a platitude you recite sometimes, you could consider it to be your theory that the platitude is truth. Hold it up to all kinds of light and see if it holds. MANY "truths" others pass out turn out to have been awful ideas, or untested theories, or fallacies. And truths (in science, history, knowledge of human nature and biology) can change, because the basis for belief can be shaky and changeable.
The principles of unschooling and natural learning aren't ideas just hatched, and for me and some of the other long-time posters on this list, they aren't theory anymore. They're conviction. They are proven and certain facts.
The other day someone asked a question I had never heard. That used to happen with all questions about unschooling. At various times over the past 22 years I answered each one of them for the very first time. This question last week was the first new question I had heard in about a year. The answer wasn't difficult, but the question was new. It was " is radical unschooling where you NEVER sit at a desk and read and write. Is reading restricted to floor/couch/bed reading. This is new for me."
This question, as with many questions, gives us a good glimpse into the beliefs and attitude of the questioner. She used "NEVER" and "restricted." In fewer than 30 words, two of them were about strict rules and limitations.
I think it's good when we can point out to a person what they have inadvertently shown us. That gives them a solid starting point for moving toward a better understanding of unschooling.
Anyone who came here without wanting to move toward a better understanding of unschooling had to ignore several solid indicators of the purpose and intent of the list to get in here.
Even though I come here every day and have been doing more than 99% of the days since November 2001, but this is a place to discuss unschooling. My home is in Albuquerque, and when Kirby comes home from Austin, and I'm there, and Holly gets back from her travels, we'll all be in the same place again for a while. Home is with Keith and our children, even when we're temporarily scattered out.
Here's where the new question quoted above was, for those on facebook who want to read the responses there.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/303347574750/
To those who have read this far, fine ways to be happy. If Always Learning doesn't add to your happiness, don't be here. Find things that make your children's lives better and that make you and your family feel more calmly alive in the world.
Sandra