lizzylynn27@...

My partner is not on board with unschooling. We have always homeschooled but he is insisting on using curriculum and having the kids be "at grade level". I heard the recent podcast where Sandra was being interviewed and she talk about public schooling and still supporting your child in an unschooling fashion but what of homeschooling with a cirriculum for the sake of a spouse and supporting our kids in an otherwise unschooling manner?

Thanks! 

Sarah Thompson

One thought I have is to make sure that play is not a bargaining chip in school. So, if your husband is insisting on curricular instruction, allot a certain segment of time for that, and let it be what it is, but don't use rewards or punishments. Let their leisure time be truly theirs, plan and strew and play as intentionally as you can, and leave school in the school box when you aren't doing it. It's still not unschooling, but maybe it helps keep them from being hostages to the school in their lives.

Sarah

Nada

Before tossing my curriculum mind and focusing solely on deschopling myself and unschooling my kids, I intended to focus on a Charlotte Mason style of curriculum, which is very rich and delightful.  Sandra may be able to speak more about that as she has a page about CM on her site (http://sandradodd.com/people/kathyward/charlottemason).  Take a look at that and see if you can adapt one of the many (free) CM curriculums to fit everyone's needs.  

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 18, 2016, at 11:51 AM, "lizzylynn27@... [AlwaysLearning]" <[email protected]> wrote:

 

My partner is not on board with unschooling. We have always homeschooled but he is insisting on using curriculum and having the kids be "at grade level". I heard the recent podcast where Sandra was being interviewed and she talk about public schooling and still supporting your child in an unschooling fashion but what of homeschooling with a cirriculum for the sake of a spouse and supporting our kids in an otherwise unschooling manner?

Thanks! 

Jo Isaac

You can support your children to make doing school-at-home as painless as possible. You can support them by bringing them choices in other areas of life - by that I mean incorporating radical unschooling principles into areas such as food, gaming, sleep, TV, etc. You can partner with them as much as possible to get their 'work' done and give them more down time.

I think, though, it's going to look different to incorporating unschooling principles when kids are in school, because to a certain degree - if you need to push them to do 'lessons' they don't like, then you are going to be the 'bad guy'. Either that, or you blame your husband in front of your kids, and that isn't good either. When a child is at school, for whatever reason, as far as forced lessons are concerned, school can be the 'bad guy'...that dynamic will be different with school-at-home.

But that doesn't mean you can't support them and be on their team as much as possible. And maybe you could start to log all their learning out of 'school time' to show your husband?

Jo



Sandra Dodd

-=-My partner is not on board with unschooling. We have always homeschooled but he is insisting on using curriculum and having the kids be "at grade level". I heard the recent podcast where Sandra was being interviewed and she talk about public schooling and still supporting your child in an unschooling fashion but what of homeschooling with a cirriculum for the sake of a spouse and supporting our kids in an otherwise unschooling manner?-=-

There have been couple of stories (not recently) where the mom said she didn’t agree with teaching by a curriculum, and asked the dad to do that instead of her. It didn’t last long, when the dad saw the resistence. (It was just one or two subjects, too, in those stories, as I remember.)

“Insisting on using curriculum” means insisting on demanding that YOU teach school-style?

The real question, though, is why he thinks (whether he thinks) that kids in school are “at grade level.” Maybe ask him what that means, to him, and what percentage of [whatever example grade he’s thinking about] a group of kids of the same age are “at grade level.”

If neither of you has ever been a teacher, maybe ask friends or relatives who are what would happen if they gave all the kids A’s and B’s.

School is a competition. Not a very friendly one, usually. A disguised one, usually. but it’s a competition. How many people win a race? How many lose?

Sandra

lizzylynn27@...

I would say we are radical unschoolers  in everything, except of course on this issue of curriculum. That is mostly because I am the one with them the majority of the time. But exactly as you say, when using curriculum I am the bad guy or my husband is and I suppose I have been pointing to the state as the bad guy as well ( for having these educational requirements). So I am trying to keep all the other aspects of our lives the same (radical unschooling as far as food, computers, sleep etc) and ask myself why we are doing X activity/lesson. Sometimes there are alternative ways of covering the same material that is more appealing than the planned lesson. 
As far as the log, I've shared some of the things they have learned without school time with my husband and he thinks that's great but that they should (and will) learn more with instruction. The rest is supplemental and things they would learn anyhow.

lizzylynn27@...

Well he is at work the majority of the day, which I do appreciate as it allows me to stay home with the kids. He does see homeschooling through a"school at home" lens and has even suggested they should be "doing school" for the same hours as kids are in public school. Obviously he doesn't do any of the homeschooling! It just doesn't take that long even with curriculum.  I think part of it is that he was a teacher and has all those years of schooling saying "this is the way it's done".  Grade level means mastering material common core and the state standards says a child should be doing. Also what he remembers doing at that grade. So for example 3rd graders should be learning the multiplication tables. We both were raised going to "good schools" and with an upbringing that expected us to amongst the top of our class. I'm not even sure it has occurred to him that if our kids went to public school they might not be at the top of the class. I do know he thinks he benefited from the academic rigors and wouldn't be as intelligent without having gone through it.  
so I suppose if I found a way to ensure the kids maintained grade level mastery I wouldn't have to use curriculum but I don't see how that is possible with unschooling. 

belinda.dutch@...

My children are 12 and 14 now.  I have never been able to say to my husband that we 'unschool'.  The words 'radical unschooling' have definitely not been uttered!  He would immediately react against them.
However we have been home schooling for four years and more or less unschooling for about three of those years now,  and the last one of them has been almost completely peaceful and positive for everyone - including my husband.  I think it's because I eventually decided to take an unschooling approach to my husband as well as my children!

Your post, about wanting to unschool but your husband not agreeing to it, rang a chord with me.  

My husband works very hard to earn enough to allow me to stay at home with the children and still have a comfortable life - hard in the South of England as it's a really expensive place to live - and we all really appreciate it. It means he isn't involved in their day to day lives so much, and certainly not their 'education'.  He used to get very upset that when he was at home (he works from home two days a week), that they didn't seem to be 'doing' anything.  They weren't 'productive'.  He blamed me for being 'too soft', and we argued - for the first time in our 25 year relationship things were really strained whenever we got onto that topic. Which seemed often.  Why didn't i make them do exercise? Why was it OK for them to watch cartoons all day?

When we first started home educating I would wake each day with a slight feeling of dread - would they do their maths today?  Would I be able to have a good discussion about cells with them?  What about cello practise?  Would it end up in  fun or a tantrum?  Would the guinea pigs get cleaned? The dogs walked?  I would never know, I was always slightly nervous that the day would just 'go bad'.   They would always find an excuse to argue and storm off!  I remember a day when they were both sitting quietly at the dining table doing something booky.  I was so chuffed - it was so rare - I took a photo!  I still have that photo but it reminds me of how things have changed rather than how great I was on that day :-)

The interesting thing is, of course, is that if their dad had been doing home school for a day, they would have done everything asked, in double time.  Some dads really do have a different effect on their kids and affect their energy in totally different ways. I'm not sure they would have enjoyed themselves but they wouldn't have put up much resistance.  I don't know if it's a dad thing or a 'you doing this is a novelty' thing.  But I am adamant that 'if I asked them it would be different' when he wonders why I don't make more demands.  I don't think he realises how totally exhausting it would be day in, day out, for me to put up the fight, and to go against my nature so totally.  I used to be a high school teacher, and I put up a pretty decent fight in the classroom!  But it's so different when your first priority is being mum.

Anyway, when he criticises, I would feel that I was putting so much into nourishing the children's passions and interests and loving them, and making home a great place to be,  I felt upset that he was accusing me of doing a bad job.  He also got upset because he really loves and respects me and it was purely worry for the children that was bringing this out in him.  He didn't like arguing any more than I did.

I finally said to him that he either got involved and we worked as a team or he trusted me do it my way!  Good management skills surely?  He agreed. We initially decided he should be more involved... I said that when he had read certain chapters carefully picked out for him from trusted books by me we could talk about them, and he might understand better, or we would at least have a starting point for discussion.  Those books then stayed untouched in the bottom of his commuting/train reading bag for 6 months!!!  At which point I realised that fundamentally, he wasn't interested in educational theory, or the principles behind any of this, that his fears and concerns were to do with deep conditioning coming from outside. (His father was a very controlling headmaster!).  I think there was also jealousy - that they were having such an 'easy life' while he was working so hard at an ungroovy job.

I decided that even though we both thought he 'should' be interested in their learning journeys, and the fact that we do things so differently to our peers, he clearly WASNT interested in the theory - the evidence was there in the unread books.  My idea of unschooling being a shared philosophical dream was clearly unrealistic in my actual partnership, the precious one that I actually had.  So I turned my attention to him in the way i do to the children, and asked myself what he WAS interested in, what his strengths were and what he got excited about.  I let those conversations about their/my potential failings in life gently slide away, recognising them as coming from his conditioned fears that I could assuage simply by evidence of what was in front of him, not by arguments and theory.   I gently focused more on those things he loved and as a family we naturally got excited with him about those things.  We don't begrudge his weekends away doing his sport, we support him, cheer him on.  We give him space and respect his time when he wants to play his guitar, we listen to his compositions and make contributions when asked.  We eat together and generally make each other laugh - something we all really enjoy.  He is starting to really enjoy his children again and see how engaged they are in their - totally different - interests.
 
Somehow the worry has simply lessened over time.  He is seeing the children as human beings not learning outcomes.  I wonder if it's also to do with them getting older?  Whether he feels less 'responsible'.  That some of the responsibility for their lives now rests with them? We now enjoy lots of philosophical discussions about how ridiculous the education system is etc.... how our kids are better off where they are.... etc.!  

I do think that sometimes we have had to compromise more than I would have liked.  I think it's taken us longer to deschool than it would have done had I not been protecting him, and he had not been critical, and wonder if we have actually left it a tiny bit too late to be completely free of those schoolish parameters.  But at each point I feel frustrated or compromised I take a breath and ask myself what is the better, more joyful choice at this point.  Sometimes it is keeping dad sweet, to be honest. He is sometimes tired and vulnerable like all of us, in fact more so, as he has to deal with lots of stress that we don't and he is at heart a sensitive soul.  We joke that we should have t-shirts printed saying 'dad's coming, look busy'.  I have been known to ask them to 'get dressed out of solidarity to your father who has been working since 8am' and I know this is a compromise but it seems to work OK, and maybe help them understand how their lives might look through another lens.  My kids have been to mainstream school, they understand how differently we do things and that it might be hard for someone - even their dad - to 'get it'.  We talk about it sometimes, but not a lot.  Mostly we just get on with our lives, enjoy each other and avoid labelling our path to avoid having to explain and justify our choices.  

I've been very grateful for this discussion, of course, so that whilst things seem unfocused, messy and purely pragmatic to the outsider, I have a core of clarity and intention within me to make me smile, keep me calm  and make me feel accompanied in my philosophical journey.  My husband is my best and most fantastic friend but cannot be all things to me all the time, and this group has in many ways relieved him of that burden :-)

Sandra Dodd

Belinda, that was beautiful.

-=-Somehow the worry has simply lessened over time. He is seeing the children as human beings not learning outcomes. I wonder if it's also to do with them getting older? -=-

He’s getting older himself, and wiser. And calmer. As they get older, his fears dissipate, no doubt.

When the dad is happy and at peace with the mom, it’s easier for him to trust her with the chidren, too—to support what she’s doing.

-=-I've been very grateful for this discussion, of course, so that whilst things seem unfocused, messy and purely pragmatic to the outsider, I have a core of clarity and intention within me to make me smile, keep me calm and make me feel accompanied in my philosophical journey. My husband is my best and most fantastic friend but cannot be all things to me all the time, and this group has in many ways relieved him of that burden :-)-=-

Pragmatism isn’t a crime—you figured out a way to keep them out of school, and also away from “school at home.” AND your family is laughing together at dinner. Sounds good. :-)


Sandra

lizzylynn27@...

Thank you for your response Belinda! With the exception of a few minor details so much of what you said about your husband sounds 99.8% like mine! It sounds like taking an Unschooling approach with your husband as helped the most. This gives me some hope as I have been trying to do the same and he is just beginning to get back into some oldinterests and not being so hard on himself to always be working or feeling guilty when doing something he enjoys but isn't productive. I think you're on to something with feelings of resentment that everyone else is enjoying themselves and not going through what he had to when his current day to day life is not one he enjoys. He is at the start (about to start?) his deschooling journey and I realize I can't push him further than where he is ready to be. I do feel a bit trapped into compromising and doing things more his way just because he isn't at the same place as I am,and isn't actually interested in reading or discussing it so progress is slow. And our parenting styles differ, much like you I am often perceived as being too soft and not demanding enough but it is just not my way and too stressful! I suppose somethings just take time. If you do have any in the life day to day advice tho I'd love to hear it! Thank You!

Sandra Dodd

Maybe there will be some helpful ideas in here. Please don’t skim. Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch.
Even if you can’t ever fully unschool, there should be ways to soften and strengthen the relationships.

http://sandradodd.com/response
http://sandradodd.com/reluctance

If those links are a repeat, sorry.
If those links are new to anyone, an excellent thing to do with or about ANY question is to go here and look:

http://sandradodd.com/search

If you forget the URL, just put SandraDodd.com/typegarbagehere
SandraDodd.com/anything at all will get you to a search page (or to a real page, if it’s not garbagy enough. :-) )

Sandra