Pam Sorooshian

<< Ok,so I'm still confused,is there supposed to be learning from doing these
normal everyday things,for example,do you make dinner a math project or what
learning is going on. >>

We don't make dinner a math project.<<

It is tempting to think of unschooling as turning everyday life into a
nonstop series of "teachable moments," but that is not unschooling.
Unschooling is much more natural than that - it is not artificially making
sure the kids learn something from things like cooking dinner or watching a
movie. It is often described as "just living life" and "trusting that kids
will learn," and that is exactly what it feels like to long-time
unschoolers. But there is more to it, I think -- an attitude and a basic
principle.

The attitude is that the impulse to learn is a built-in natural automatic
instrinsic part of human nature that teachers and schools and,
unfortunately, parents often interfere with but which can, instead, be
gently and calmly protected and nurtured by enlightened parents.

The basic principle is that kids don't have to be taught or bribed or
threatened to get them to learn, but that they need to be supported and
engaged and facilitated and helped to learn what they want to learn when
they want to learn it and how they want to learn it. A corollary is that
everything counts - you can facilitate learning in any direction they want
to go, learning anything and everything in any way, and one thing leads to
another and over years of living a life filled with that kind of support,
they will learn what they need to learn to live the life they want to live.


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In a message dated 10/30/02 10:42:17 AM, pamsoroosh@... writes:

<< A corollary is that
everything counts - you can facilitate learning in any direction they want
to go, learning anything and everything in any way, and one thing leads to
another and over years of living a life filled with that kind of support,
they will learn what they need to learn to live the life they want to live.
>>

All the learning that anyone does builds a web of information, like a big
grid, with each new idea or fact or skill attached inside that learner's head
to the things which are like it, which need to go with it, which remind him
of it, which are the opposite of it. And the more strands in that web, the
more quickly the person can access useful information to tie it to the other
new things being learned every day, all the time.

We don't know what our children will need to know in ten or twenty years.
We really do not know.

Sandra