Ren Allen

" But, in my own experience, online groups are NOT the best source
for REAL LIFE support, resources, and guidance. Your quest
becomes cluttered and takes on inconsequential tangets that have
little significance in your actual day to day life.. Things like
defining unschooling and trying to place how one unschools in
varying degrees of "right" and "wrong" hinder from actually learning
anything about the lifestyle. Personal conflicts only deter your
path to unschooling, they do NOT enable it. "

Yes, but your personal experience is not relevant to all other
people of course.
Because the very thing you found a hindrance, I found the be THE
single most useful tool in helping me get to an unschooling mindset
and let go of the school baggage I'd carried around for so long.
Eventually, finding real life unschoolers became important to me,
but not for defining unschooling, simply for friendship that didn't
come with a bunch of explanations.

I do think meeting real life unschoolers is hugely valuable to a lot
of folks, but not everyone.
I have a solid support group, with 8 unschooling families and a host
of other homeschooling styles, that get together weekly...sometimes
more. So I do think your advice on finding real live unschoolers is
good.

But just because some people get bogged down in discussion and
debate, doesn't mean it isn't extremely helpful for others. I think
it was the absolute BEST thing for my personal journey.

The advice I give, that I think applies to us all, is I encourage
people to research a LOT of different resources. Read many different
books, check out lots of online lists and sites and speak to many
different people. No one should be trusting one source of
information for all of their knowledge.
I trust that we all are capable of finding the methods and styles of
learning that work best for US personally (whoa, an unschooling
concept) and the most helpful sources and people are going to be
different for every journey.

Ren