Heather Woodward

> > ***What exactly do your kids do? Any kids learning Algebra simply
> > because they want to? Foreign Language?****

My daughter loves to read - and often on a trip to the library, she will
browse the "classics" section and has read Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe
and Louisa May Alcott with me. We are currently listening to A Tale of Two
Cities on Audiobook. She also has been known to get Captain Underpants. I
think what is funny is that she doesn't have that differentiation of this is
a "classic" and this Captain Underpants is not. To her they are all just
books. Some are older and have more difficult language. Often she will ask
what a word means and I don't know so we'll look it up.

I was supposed to read a lot of these books throughout high school - but I
was busy reading Stephen King. I did the cliff notes - and read the least
bit possible until I could be done. Now I am enjoying them. Even my husband
, who hated school and still barely reads for fun, will listen to something
that we have left in the car and really enjoy it.

I am so glad that my daughter doesn't have the issues from school with
regard to literature. She reads them because she has heard them alluded to
in movies, or another book. Some she doesn't like and takes back without
reading them and some she really likes. She also likes to cook and will
often come home with a pile of cookbooks. She made homeade pasta the other
night for dinner.

What is funny is that the library has a Homeschooling Book Discussion Group
and last year, she went and enjoyed it. This year she hasn't seemed to like
the book choices and so has not attended. If I had made her read certain
books because the curriculum said she needed to read them NOW, she would
probably hate them - and learn to avoid anything labeled a "classic" as
boring and schoolish.

Anyway - the joys of Unschooling!

Sandra Dodd

On Feb 6, 2006, at 6:13 PM, Heather Woodward wrote:

> She also has been known to get Captain Underpants. I
> think what is funny is that she doesn't have that differentiation
> of this is
> a "classic" and this Captain Underpants is not. To her they are all
> just
> books. Some are older and have more difficult language. Often she
> will ask
> what a word means and I don't know so we'll look it up.

When I was a kid I used to do that, but my friends and teachers would
question it, or make fun of me. Not Captain Underpants, though I
really like those and they're well done. It would be picture books,
or the time I remember best was when I checked out The Complete Works
of Edgar Allen Poe and On Beyond Zebra, by Dr. Seuss, at the same
time, when I was 13 / 8th grade.

I wasn't brave enough to go into a long defense, so I told my
detractors I was going to be a teacher so I needed to be up on
children's literature. They settled for that, and it was true, but
what I didn't know how to tell them was that I got it for ME, because
I liked the art, because I liked the way he would make up words to
get a rhyme or rhythm in the poetry, and that I had a "collect the
whole set" mentality and once I'd read half his stuff I felt
compelled to read the other half.

Part of the reason I remember this is that the Poe book disappeared,
and I couldn't find it, and had to pay for it.

Then my friend Charles Montoya shot himself. Much trauma in all my
social groups; his dad was our art teacher; much trauma.

A few weeks later, his dad brought me the Edgar Allen Poe book, which
had been in Charles' stuff, but had some of my papers in it. I took
it to the library and instead of getting a refund, wrote a dedication
to Charles inside it.

For me, as a kid, nearly every book had a big story. I used to buy
Doc Savage books with my allowance. Those I didn't take to school,
because not only would they have probably been confiscated, people
would have teased me because they were "boys' books." I remember
them not for the stories, but because the books cost 50 cents, and my
allowance was 35 cents, so my range to spend in the first week was
only five or ten cents, if I wanted to be able to afford my book for
sure the next week. That was shortly before the crazy inflation of
the 70's. We could still get candy bars for a nickel (5 cents: note
for Brits) or a dime (Almond Joy and Mounds were the only ten cent
candy bars). Bubble Gum was honestly a penny. But I bought books
instead.

There just weren't books at my house, and that's why, for me, school
and the library seemed like fairy land. I've often looked back and
thought I liked school, so school must've been good, but it was good
in comparison to home, in several ways.

Yesterday Marty came home for lunch and was watching the Tony Danza
show. They showed a school in Los Angeles they called "the homeless
school," and were talking to some of the kids and teachers. They
said for some of those kids, school was the only safe part of their
lives, the only fun part, and I knew that feeling. (My house was
safe enough, but not as safe as my own children's house is. My
younger cousin was unpredictable and hit us sometimes, and molested
my sister, though I didn't know until a few years later, and we were
spanked and yelled at, but we had the possibility of privacy, at
least, which the homeless kids seemed to lack.)

Sometimes when people are considering whether they want to unschool
they're going on and on with questions about whether it will be
perfect, whether it will be utopia. They forget to ask whether it
will be better than school, and whether it will be better than buying
and trying to enforce a school in a box. And this isn't to say I
think they should settle for "just better," but that IS the initial
question: What are your options, and what do you want out of this?

My kids don't have to worry about watching The Borrowers or Follow
that Bird and Pulp Fiction (Doc Savage reminded me of that <g>) or a
Jet Li movie or Tombstone on the same day. Marty's reading American
Gods and Batman comics. The book goes with him when he has to wait
in a reception area. He's not in a hurry to finish it, because he
wasn't deadline trained. His mind is devoid of "semester" or "unit"
or "book report."

Sandra

Pamela Sorooshian

On Feb 7, 2006, at 7:03 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> I used to buy
> Doc Savage books with my allowance. Those I didn't take to school,
> because not only would they have probably been confiscated, people
> would have teased me because they were "boys' books."

I loved westerns - especially stories from a series that was CALLED,
"Western Stories for Boys." I had only sisters and we didn't own
those books, but the across-the-street neighbor had a son one year
old than me and HE had all kinds of books for boys. We had the same
wonderful babysitter, Mrs. Curl, and SHE would borrow books from
their house and bring them to me to read when she babysat. I can't
remember how she knew I liked them, but she was probably the only
person who knew that.

My dad had some books from when he was a boy and I devoured those,
too - the Horatio Hornblower books, for example.

But I was expected to read Nancy Drew and NOT The Hardy Boys.

My mom collected picture books, though, and so we had a LOT of them
and they were very respected and it was normal in our house to ooh
and ahh over the wonderful art and great stories. I remember when I
was in 6th grade we were all supposed to bring a favorite book to
donate to our school library - I took "Millions of Cats," which was
beloved by my sisters and myself, and the teacher (Mrs. Gillellan)
acted like I'd made some huge faux-paux by repeatedly saying, "It's
all right that you brought a little kids' book."

Ah - the things grown-ups, even those TRYING to be nice, can do to
the children in their care, huh?

-pam





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