Sandra Dodd

I've had website problems lately, and it's very stressful.  In looking for some things I needed, to work on this, I found a saved e-mail from 2006. Someone had complained, probably about this group.  It's likely that I wrote to her on the side and asked her to tone something down, or not to give mainstream advice.
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I quoted this much of what person had written, and responded.


-=-I believe you lose people this way, run them off, defeat the whole purpose of this list.-=-



Thanks for the advice.  I've been helping other moms a long, long time.  If it didn't work I wouldn't even have a list (or I might have one but nobody would be on it).  And the purpose of the list isn't defeated if people look somewhere else for information.   The whole idea of unschooling is that information is EVERYWHERE, and no one should depend on any curriculum, source, library, or any one thing.  If I were trying to be everything to everyone, if I were in competition with other lists to get the most members, or if I were making money for every person who joined and stayed, maybe I would start compromising my beliefs and acting like someone else to make that happen, but I'm not.   It's entirely free and voluntary.  Hundreds of people on the list is enough.  My website it there for people who don't want any direct feedback, with links to a dozen other people's unschooling websites, tons of articles, and google.


Lots of people tell me I could do better with my volunteer time, but I rarely see those advisors doing better than I am with their own volunteer time.


Sandra

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Before I figured out that it was a private e-mail I thought it was a post here, so I looked for it, and found some similar things I want to put with it.


From this group, me, in 2009:


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Because I didn't compromise my beliefs, and continued to clarify and  
strengthen them through discussions with other unschoolers, I have  
children who have never gone to school. A full set. This is better  
for me than a college degree. I've done something really special now,  
something I'm proud of. I stuck with a project for nineteen years. I  
was willing to let the kids choose not to stay home, and so I took  
that gamble knowing that if home wasn't interesting enough school  
still existed. If school was better than home, there it always was,  
walking distance from the house.
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Searching this group for "compromise my beliefs" will bring up some interesting things.  Where people DO need to compromise is when they're visiting someone else's house, or living with relatives.  The luxury of not compromising involves owing one's own discussion, or having one's own home, space, car.

I can decide how to spend my volunteer time, but it's nice when my website is stable, and Yahoogroups works well. :-)

Have beliefs and be true to yourself, but remember that you don't own other people's spaces, or groups, or cars.

Sandra