[email protected]

In a message dated 9/15/01 8:07:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, sheran@...
writes:

<< I'm struggling right now with fine-tuning my philosophy of
education. It would be tremendously helpful if anyone is willing to
share why they believe unschooling is the best way to go. Why not
the Charlotte Mason approach? Or the Moore Formula? Why do you
believe what you believe? >>

The short answer? For me? It feels right. It's following my instincts,
and this is where they have led me and following instincts is how
I live my life. Its really that simple for me. Just like I knew that
homebirth
was the way my children would be born, long before I have even researched
it and found out how safe it was and wonderful and natural. Had there been
no books to read, I would have still known in my heart it was the right
thing for us to do.

The long answer? I don't know much about the other methods, but that
is what they are, to me, is methods, whereas unschooling is a lifestyle.
I almost wish we could come up with another name for what we do,
because its not just about school or un or education, but about living
and lives and being curious human beings.

The Moore's from what I
understand have done intensive research which has shown
children are better left to play and not ready to learn academics until
8-10-12 yrs old. This fits in well with unschooling, at least in the early
years and from what I know it is solid research supporting this.

A friend just loaned me her Charlotte Mason book. She is putting together
a once a month CM night to discuss the book by chapters and she is
really hoping I will attend to give the unschooling view of CM. I have yet
to crack the book so I don't know if its something I'll even be able to do.
Will it "offend" my pure unschooling sensibilities, or will I say hey that
sounds like a great idea, I might offer this to my children? <shrugging
shoulders>

The only thing I have heard about CM is the nature notebook idea.
I thought that sounded cool as we camp alot and it seemed like
something they would like to do. I got the kids (and myself cos its
something I thought would be fun too) nice notebooks and colored
pencils for drawing plants etc. But what I dont' do is insist
that this book is "only" for our nature notebooks. If I had done that then
the self portraits that my children drew wouldn't have been included,
including the one done by a friend they met on one trip. It wouldn't include
the couple of pages used at park day for my dd and her friend to play
writing games or math games (they each wrote a line of numbers and
had the mommys add them up to see who "won" <g>). I could have
ruined some great moments/ideas had I said no you can't use your
nature notebooks for that. And no, I
don't go home looking up the trees and flowers we find. I have good
intentions but they are not real interested in that right now. I am
thinking though that I might become more interested myself soon
as I am purchasing a book on plant allergies and since I have recently
developed allergies in the past few years, it is of more concern to
me now. Anyhow, this has sort of rambled off onto a how we
unschool or how it relates to our life and I suppose its all connected
to why we believe in the philosophy of unschooling, somehow in
my disjointed writing style this evening!

I know this has been said several times before, but go to the
unschooling.com website. There are some wonderful essays on
peoples thoughts and feelings about unschooling. I have read them
and each time I sit and nod my head in agreement and I just want
to say ditto!

Hope I have helped you some!
Kathy

[email protected]

In a message dated 09/16/2001 3:07:59 AM !!!First Boot!!!, sheran@...
writes:


> Why do you
> believe what you believe?
> Thanks!
> Sheila
>



Because sitting down with a "plan" and a set of books and telling my kids
that they are going to learn X now (truly learn, absorb, understand -- not
just pass the quiz) just isn't right for us. I tried -- I got the state
standards and checked them off (I was not one of the lucky ones who knew
about this at the beginning) -- they were ridiculous.

Some of the other methods you mention may have bits and pieces that are
helpful if something comes up. I don't know.

I just feel like the answers are pretty easy -- if my son asks me about the
time it takes for light to travel from a star and as he is standing in the
backyard with a flashlight how long it would be before that light reaches the
star -- that's whatever subject you want to call it but it's also looking
stuff up -- I don't know all that off the top of my head -- and it's him
learning how to look stuff up -- and it's him thinking beyond our backyard.
That last bit is very important to me.

Don't know if they would be covering that in his 3rd grade class if he were
in school. It might not "fit." It might not fit in any set plan or
curriculum. But we like it. And it fits him.

That's why. Not clear probably but that's why.

Nance


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

<< I'm struggling right now with fine-tuning my philosophy of
education. It would be tremendously helpful if anyone is willing to
share why they believe unschooling is the best way to go. Why not
the Charlotte Mason approach? Or the Moore Formula? Why do you
believe what you believe? >>

I didn't know about Charlotte Mason or the Moores when I started
homeschooling.

Lots of aspects of my life came together to make me a confident advocate of
unschooling. Part of it was the things I learned on my own because I wanted
to, when I was a kid.

I learned to sew without home-ec, starting at 13. A friend of mine loaned me
an A-line skirt pattern, unfolded it, told me what the notches and lines
were, and I went home and made a skirt. My grandmother, who had been a
professional tailor for a while (doing Western suits with those little
arrow-point slit pockets and all fancy stuff) helped me with a harder skirt
later, and it was a terrible experience--she was super picky and I cried.
Then I started sewing without patterns, and have designed stuff and done lots
of costumes. That, though, was done because I wanted to, and I've seen lots,
dozens, of friends start as adults knowing zip about sewing and get to the
point that they could do Elizabethan costuming (which I don't do) without
having taken any formal lessons, workshops, zip--jut watching other people,
reading, experimenting, and having the desire.

I learned to play guitar between my first lesson (I was barely 15, the age
Kirby my oldest is now) and waiting for another one (which was never needed.
I really liked English and Scottish ballads (and American version of them),
and wanted to play guitar while I sang, so I worked on that for a few years.
I still make use of that most months at folksinging parties at a friend's
house.

For recorder, free classes were advertised when I was 17. I called the
instructor (John Truitt, who became a good friend of mine) that morning and
asked what the difference between beginning and intermediate was. He said
beginning class they didn't know how to read music, and didn't know the
fingerings. I learned the fingerings, went to both classes, stayed in the
intermediate, and was in a Renaissance performance group with John within a
year. I used to tell people he taught me to play recorder, and he would say
he did not. Because I liked it, I learned it. Because there was a real
reason to get better and it was fascinating, I learned it quickly.

By the time most of that was in process, I was in college and taking
education courses to get a teaching certificate. It was the early 70's and
the University of New Mexico was a hippie hotbed of school reform and the
open classroom theories and practices. They had us read John Holt and other
radicals of the day. They told me (I still have the notebooks I wrote it in)
that teaching didn't exist; only learning really existed. The best we could
do was to be the facilitators of other people's learning, and that kids in
school would learn willingly if they were respected, encouraged and given
interesting experiences. There were studies at the time they were having us
read (many from library sources or bad old photocopies I don't have anymore;
I wish I did!) about the successes of open classroom situation in schools in
alternative schools and at lab schools at universities. They advocated
mixed-age classes and multi-level flexibility (ungraded classrooms--one could
be doing advanced math while being a beginning reader, or vice versa, in
different combinations). I had no reason not to believe them and much reason
TO believe them.

In practice it wasn't working as well as it was supposed to have worked, and
over the years I had much opportunity to figure out some of the reasons why.

By the time I quit teaching I was hugely involved in the Society for Creative
Anachronism, where people learn freely, quickly or slowly, joyfully and
effectively all kinds of things from soap making to calligraphy, armoring to
woodwork, because they have a real reason to want to. They learn from each
other and from historical sources and modern instructions based on historical
armor, costume, jewelry, recipes--whatever. There I had thousands of real
life examples, having been a corporate officer several times, twice the top
officer, and having been surrounded by that HUGE learning lab for 24 years
now.

When I had children I went to La Leche League for years, from which I got the
attachment parenting model. I came again upon John Holt's writings, through
Chop Wood, Carry Water (in which he's quoted and footnoted), The Continuum
Concept (which he wrote the attestation for), which are two books he didn't
write but were written by people who had read his stuff. I bought some of
his newer books, written since I'd been out of school, which now said that
school reform didn't work and the best thing people really interested in how
people learn could do would be to take their kids out of school (or never
send them). I subscribed to Growing Without Schooling, and bought a bunch of
back issues, and read every single word.

I was in a La Leche League-based (all the families met in LLL) babysitting
co-op with four homeschooling families, two structured and two unschooling.
The unschooling families were much warmer and happier with each other than
the structured families were. One structured family, the mom spanked the
toddler. That was sad. The other one had homework, grounding, punishments,
shaming. The two unschooling families (Carol Rice and Lori Odhner's
families) were also the families of my first two LLL leaders, and I was
altogether impressed with their patience and the kids' sweetness and the
obvious love between parents and children.

That was enough to sell me on it already, but since then I've had three
children not go to school, learn to read, learn math, ask wonderful questions
about history and science, make wonderful observations on interpersonal
relations and music and art, and have had no cause for doubt.

I've never been afraid to share the details of the interactions between me
and my kids even when I was frustrated and yucky with them sometimes, even
when I was afraid something wasn't going to happen. I had two and a half
reading lessons with Kirby when he was seven, and the half was because I
realized what a horrible thing I was doing and stopped halfway throught he
third one because he was crying and I was crying and there has never been
another lesson since, but he reads as well as anyone his age and better than
many, which I know because I've taught kids his age before and I remember how
some of them struggled.

I know firsthand what teachers go through when they really want to help
reform a system that is bigger than all the reformers put together will ever
be. I have vivid memories of being a kid. I remember where I sat, every
year since first grade (I didn't go to kindergarten). I remember the books
we used. I remember the songs we sang. I taught in the same buildings I had
gone to school in, 7th grade in the school where I had gone from 2nd to 9th,
and 9th grade in the building in which I had gone to high school. that was
another bigtime lab, teaching alongside many of the people who had been my
teachers. I've spent lots of time with kids who wanted school to be
different, kids who had given up, kids who managed to make the most of it,
kids who learned more from the books they were hiding under their texbooks
than from all of school (and I had been one of them myself, so I never got
grumpy if they were reading another book during lessons). I've talked to
their parents, to their other teachers, I know some of their children now
(mostly in school, but one homeschooling family I know, the mom was in my
class, and her sister-in-law was too; not her husband though).

I've been active in online homeschooling stuff since *Prodigy's homeschooling
forum in 1991 or so, through AOL's glory days, and the beginnings of
unschooling.com to now, so I've gotten to read and become acquainted with
(sometimes in person, once from my husband driving me and the whole family to
Indiana) lots of unschooling families I've stayed in touch with, so I've seen
their kids growing and grown (in some cases).

There are other stories, but that's lots, and that's probably enough.

I have no doubts.


Sandra

LisaBugg

> << I'm struggling right now with fine-tuning my philosophy of
> education. It would be tremendously helpful if anyone is willing to
> share why they believe unschooling is the best way to go. Why not
> the Charlotte Mason approach? Or the Moore Formula? Why do you
> believe what you believe? >>


The Moore's "forumla" is basically unschooling until the age of 12 or so
and then a move toward academics for high school. Most children will do
this on their own. It's sort of a natural progression, since those 12 year
olds really do want to join the adults in making a living and being
independent. The Moore's just move into *bookwork* mode, but acknowledge
that not every child will want or need the same thing. A hands on learner
will stil lbe a hands on learner, so things should be geared to the child.
If you can read between the language used, you'll find that it's not a lack
of trust in the children, but rather an expectation that *education* means
standard school fare for the Moore's.

Charlotte Mason sort of confuses me. Narration of a story? Why make that
some formal exercise, don't you talk about the books you read anyway? Same
thing with a nature journal.... why make it so formal? We draw and talk
about the world around us all the time. Read real books instead of twaddle,
why of course! I've used the material on Charlotte Mason's ideas just like
I have used Holt's and The Moore's, I've gleaned ideas, used what worked
and left the rest behind.

I believe what I believe about education simply because it rings that truth
bell inside of me. I know how my own educaiton has progressed during my
life and I've watched my four children over the last decade. Trusting them
to grow and learn has been a joy.