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In a message dated 1/12/03 7:51:11 AM, bunsofaluminum60@... writes:

<< I've had to defend our decision not to start Katie
until she was eight, many times. >>

I bet you started her nine months before she was born!!

You 'started her' at eight!?

(I know, the paragraph continued... <g>....

"It matters not one whit to me that
she's "behind grade level." She wasn't ready for formal
learning...but now this unschooling thing is telling me formal
learning isn't the way kids learn best, anyway. sheesh. see how ya
are? ;)")


First we try to get you to see how YOU are and then you won't be so grumpy
seeing how we are.

<<Ah! and herein lies the rub! *If* Robby pursues only what interests
him, he will be going from video to computer game, and back again to
the TV. Maybe I'm not getting it, but surely an hour doing division
at the kitchen table is stretching his brain better than shooting
down asteroids on the computer for an hour? >>

AHA!!
NO! An hour shooting down asteroids will lead to doing division if you leave
him alone for long enough. And that will be way past when he's eight.

<<*If* Robby pursues only what interests him, he will be going from video to
computer game, and back again to the TV. >>

Two things:

#1: Maybe so.
#2: You're wrong.

If he only pursues what interests him, first take out the "only."
If he pursues what interests him from now to the day he dies, he will learn
everything he needs to know. And he will go from being a happy boy to being
a happy man, a happy father, a happy employee...

And IF you let him to what interests him, it WILL be more than "just" video
to computer to TV.

If you will let him do what he likes to do freely and without snorting or
clucking that there are better things (about which you might be entirely
wrong anyway), and IF after six months of that he is doing NOTHING but "just"
video, computer and TV, I will send you $20 and a fancy apology.

<<Okay. Does that description sound like unschooling? >>

This was asked of the following description. I hope you didn't make that
girl stop doing what she was interested in to "do math," I don't care how
much sun was shining.

<<Now that I've said that, I'm thinking about my 15 year old daughter.
She is a voracious and very good reader. Better at reading than I am,
and I'm a GOOD reader. Because I am a Tolkien fan, I introduced The
Hobbit to her when she was seven. She ate it up. At age 10, she read
Lord of the Rings. She read it again. She immersed herself in Middle
Earth, checking out books of artwork by various artists, writing
about the strengths and weaknesses in the different characters of the
book, and of course, spent lots of time online chatting with other
Tolkien people, and looking forward mightily to the release of the
movie. I let her "pursue her interest"...and she followed it into
Medieval Europe, and British History. She knows who William the
Conqueror was, who was King in Britain when he landed. She knows what
the people were called who lived in England before the Saxons came.
She knows all about Arthur and Gueneviere and Camelot. She has read
all of Shakespeare's comedies, and is right now reading through
Canterbury Tales...again. She walks around speaking in different
English accents: Scottish, Irish, Australian, Cockney, Liverpool. A
true Anglophile, and it started at age 7, with The Hobbit.>>

Yes. That's how unschooling works.
And math can work that way too unless parents prevent it from doing so.

<<My younger ones aren't proving to
be so verbally oriented. They do love their "screen time" though!
Movies, computer games, movies again. Seems mindless to me. >>

So they know more about those things than you do!
If you hang out with them and see what they're actually doing and thinking
and sharing, you will not think "mindless" anymore.

When they see you reading this, does it look to them like you're just staring
mindlessly at a computer?

<<This has turned out way long. Sorry. I'm more thinking aloud than
anything.>>

Another excellent unschooling tactic!

<<Isn't unschooling about NOT "providing
an education" but simply allowing kids their head, letting them go
where they will? Where does guidance and provision come into play?>>

Since you and your husband met have you guided and provided for one another
in any way? Or did you just make your vows and each allow the other to go
where you will, separately, alone? If you have a friend with a similar
interest or hobby, do you share information or help?

<<What I meant by illiteracy is an overall inability to do basic skills
needed to have a life.>>

We know. <g> Often the answers here are given in a plain and literal way for
the purpose of showing you what you said in the stark plain vanilla way it's
hard to see when you're the one doing the agitated thinking.

<<Robby's not telling time, for instance. I really want him to know analog
time...and he gets the general idea of it, but has to rely on digital clocks
to know what time it is. I hate
that. >>

How old is Robby?

One of the sweetest things among my kids was that the boys could only read
digital even up to the time when their younger sister could tell time, but
she could only read analog. So when they were somewhere and needed to know
the time, she might be the one to read it to the boys, or they might read it
to her, if it was digital. That taught them a LOT about learning and
knowledge and the futility of depending on age for knowledge.

Now, for various reasons, they can all tell time on all KINDS of clocks.
They understand military time without effort. I didn't teach them. Had I
not just told you there was a time when they were "behind" (not behind
themselves, behind the imaginary "them") and limited, and if you met them and
asked them the time, you would never EVER know they weren't born telling
time (unless you thought about it and realized that everyone learns it in the
instant that they learn it, and no sooner and no later).

<<Katie isn't there yet, though we have been doing phonics
this year, and she's 8 and a half. I'm confident it will come in
time, but it really is like holding my breath,>>

Phonics has been done to death. <g>
Phonics was "done" before any of us were born.
Phonics, like mathematical notation, is an analysis of some everyday
information, written out in secret-style notation.
English has sounds, but Katie knows English. She just needs to figure out
how to read that clock, and whether she reads analog first or digital, she
WILL learn to read English just like reading a clock.

Do you want her to do it merrily and with no trauma whatsoever?
Any book he misses reading while she's nine, she can read when she's ten or
twelve, but she probably won't want to by then, or others will have read it
to her, or she'll be beyond the ideas.

<<ike the one article
where a son didn't read until age 14! ack! ...>>

That was Liam, right? Wasn't he 16? He's 18 now. He was over here last
week and he'll be here Tuesday. You wouldn't know he was a later reader if
you met him.

His mom, Carol, got her first critical response to that article last week.
(I won't send her your "ack!") The teacher who wrote to her said her
children must have missed some classic literature, and she named Clifford
books. Are Clifford books classic literature now? Are there messages in
there that a warm and loving homelife could totally leave out!? Or are they
just better than other books at a similar "reading level"?

<<The goal for my teachers in fourth and fifth grades was to have students
who knew their times
tables. >>

But few of them and many adults have know idea what the "table" means in
"times table," or what it all really MEANS. It's something people
regurgitate without thought or real learning.

Sandra