skill subjects?
Kristie
I have heard it said that some things are "skill subjects" such as writing,
reading and math, and that they need to be practiced regularly. What are your
thoughts on this?
Also...will we transition naturally from deschooling to unschooling? Or is
there a magic day when you say..."we are done deschooling!"
:)
Thanks,
Kristie
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
reading and math, and that they need to be practiced regularly. What are your
thoughts on this?
Also...will we transition naturally from deschooling to unschooling? Or is
there a magic day when you say..."we are done deschooling!"
:)
Thanks,
Kristie
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Joyce Fetteroll
On Oct 6, 2011, at 3:43 PM, Kristie wrote:
why would they need to practice it?
In school they teach kids all sorts of things they only need in
school. So of course it fades over the summer.
Joyce
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> I have heard it said that some things are "skill subjects" such asIf someone needs something, they use it. If someone doesn't need it,
> writing,
> reading and math, and that they need to be practiced regularly. What
> are your
> thoughts on this?
why would they need to practice it?
In school they teach kids all sorts of things they only need in
school. So of course it fades over the summer.
> Also...will we transition naturally from deschooling to unschooling?It fades slowly. And sometimes left overs catch you by surprise.
> Or is
> there a magic day when you say..."we are done deschooling!"
Joyce
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Meredith
Kristie <messy_boys@...> wrote:
Human beings are Wired to learn - we're driven to learn and love learning and discovering new things. We're internally motivated to push ourselves past barriers in order to learn more about what interests us. Think about a child learning to walk and speak - those are certainly "skill subjects" and yet no-one has to push a child to learn those skills. They push on past seemingly impossible hurdles - bipedal locomotion is crazy-hard! Learning to speak new language is phenomenally difficult! and yet babies drive themselves to master these skills.
Kids don't grow out of that drive, but it can be trained out of them by being told to practice skills which don't interest them in the moment.
Is there anything you can think of that you learned "on your own?" Some skill? Gardening? Cooking? Deciding to take a class counts! Do you remember feeling inept and pushing ahead anyway? Kids Have that ability by nature. If something requires practice, they'll practice. I know a 16yo boy who's been learning to juggle - I've done a little juggling and know how much work that can be! He's spent hours and hours practicing. With his parents help, he's sought out local performers (we have a bunch of them in our area) and learned to "pass" clubs (juggle another person). That's taken not just practice juggling, but practice doing something he Dislikes, driving a car so he can go to practice - and as a result he was able to spend part of this past summer busking with his juggling partner. No one made him do any of that - but his parents did facilitate what he wanted to do, bought him balls and clubs, helped him find other jugglers, let him borrow the car, said yes to the idea of their son standing on a street corner passing clubs for cash.
The biggest barrier to kids Practicing what they love to do is parental support! So the more you say yes, the more you find ways to facilitate what your kids enjoy, the more you help them to learn those "skill subjects" - and a whole lot more besides!
For parents, I don't think you ever really stop deschooling. There are times, even after almost a decade of radical unschooling, when some old tape or fear pops up in my mind. I'm better at talking myself into some sense now, for sure, and it helps a Lot to have all this experience as a kind of rebuttal, but those old ideas lurk in the back of my mind and now and again raise their ugly heads.
The latest one for me - Mo doesn't cook. She's 10, by ten I could... whoa! At 10, I couldn't program a computer and didn't even Have legos, much less k'nex and all those motorized kits she keeps re-building into new things. I was frowned at for coloring and had nearly been kicked out of school for knitting (and so didn't color or knit for two more decades). I was a mess of self doubt and devalued all my passions. That's not Mo's life. She doesn't Have to cook or iron to please her mother but can spend her time building and creating, programming, painting and dreaming and growing into who she is without having to wait until she's been out of school for a decade to start to spread her wings.
---Meredith
>Those ideas are based on watching kids in conventional classrooms and seeing how they learn, rather than on watching kids who have the opportunity to decide what they want to learn about and when.
> I have heard it said that some things are "skill subjects" such as writing,
> reading and math, and that they need to be practiced regularly. What are your
> thoughts on this?
Human beings are Wired to learn - we're driven to learn and love learning and discovering new things. We're internally motivated to push ourselves past barriers in order to learn more about what interests us. Think about a child learning to walk and speak - those are certainly "skill subjects" and yet no-one has to push a child to learn those skills. They push on past seemingly impossible hurdles - bipedal locomotion is crazy-hard! Learning to speak new language is phenomenally difficult! and yet babies drive themselves to master these skills.
Kids don't grow out of that drive, but it can be trained out of them by being told to practice skills which don't interest them in the moment.
Is there anything you can think of that you learned "on your own?" Some skill? Gardening? Cooking? Deciding to take a class counts! Do you remember feeling inept and pushing ahead anyway? Kids Have that ability by nature. If something requires practice, they'll practice. I know a 16yo boy who's been learning to juggle - I've done a little juggling and know how much work that can be! He's spent hours and hours practicing. With his parents help, he's sought out local performers (we have a bunch of them in our area) and learned to "pass" clubs (juggle another person). That's taken not just practice juggling, but practice doing something he Dislikes, driving a car so he can go to practice - and as a result he was able to spend part of this past summer busking with his juggling partner. No one made him do any of that - but his parents did facilitate what he wanted to do, bought him balls and clubs, helped him find other jugglers, let him borrow the car, said yes to the idea of their son standing on a street corner passing clubs for cash.
The biggest barrier to kids Practicing what they love to do is parental support! So the more you say yes, the more you find ways to facilitate what your kids enjoy, the more you help them to learn those "skill subjects" - and a whole lot more besides!
>> Also...will we transition naturally from deschooling to unschooling? Or isYou may find a day where you look back and think "hey, we're real unschoolers now!" Chances are, you'll find you finish "deschooling" in some areas before others. That's normal. In terms of "academics" Ray was probably done deschooling in six months, but for other things, lifestyle sorts of things, it took as much as two years.
> there a magic day when you say..."we are done deschooling!"
For parents, I don't think you ever really stop deschooling. There are times, even after almost a decade of radical unschooling, when some old tape or fear pops up in my mind. I'm better at talking myself into some sense now, for sure, and it helps a Lot to have all this experience as a kind of rebuttal, but those old ideas lurk in the back of my mind and now and again raise their ugly heads.
The latest one for me - Mo doesn't cook. She's 10, by ten I could... whoa! At 10, I couldn't program a computer and didn't even Have legos, much less k'nex and all those motorized kits she keeps re-building into new things. I was frowned at for coloring and had nearly been kicked out of school for knitting (and so didn't color or knit for two more decades). I was a mess of self doubt and devalued all my passions. That's not Mo's life. She doesn't Have to cook or iron to please her mother but can spend her time building and creating, programming, painting and dreaming and growing into who she is without having to wait until she's been out of school for a decade to start to spread her wings.
---Meredith