[email protected]

Carol,
Your post on unschooling is excellent! It's hard to believe a parent
would not help a child learn to do things! I can't imagine telling my
child,"no" when asked to help him read a word!! You put "unschooling" into
words so easy for others to understand. I felt a sense of confirmation that
what we are doing is right, as every once in a while, I need to hear it.
Thanks! Karen

[email protected]

In a message dated 4/4/00 3:14:27 PM Central Daylight Time,
mjcmbrwn@... writes:

<< Unschooling is to do with the environment the kids live in. You can't
unschool successfully as a method. You need to provide an environment
rich in opportunity, experiences and, most essentially, trust. >>

Carol,
I loved your response. Your description of your son who thrives on structure
was really encouraging to me. I have one like that too, and everytime I
assign workbook pages for him, I feel like I'm "selling out". LOL
You're right about our children being able to sense when we're waffling about
unschooling. They know when they are being watched and even evaluated (even
if we're only doing it subconsciously). If we don't trust them it just won't
work. It seems to be the hardest thing for us to do. Isn't it sad that the
biggest, most long-lasting lesson so many of us learned in school is that
"Children Are Not To Be Trusted". That one goes along with "Give Them An
Inch And They'll Take A Mile". It is engrained in us. Our culture says it's
okay for adults to have choices, but not kids. Why is that? I admit to some
guilt in this - it's okay if I choose to have more cookies than are good for
me with my morning coffee, but I don't let the kids make the same choice. I
guess we have some responsibility to shelter them by guiding their choices.
I KNOW how many cookies it takes to give me a stomachache ( a LOT! LOL) but
the kids don't. Where do we draw the line between completely trusting them
and protecting them because we're the parents? It's a tough call.


*** KiM ***
runs with scissors

Tracy Oldfield

Carol, wow, you just told it exactly how I feel it.  I need to print this up and pin it somewhere to remind myself why I'm off-message soemtimes :-)
 
Thanks
Tracy
 
From: Brown
 
Hi Kristen

On a more subtle level, and this is the level I'm still at :-(   if you don't believe in unschooling in your gut and in your head and in your whole being you will run into some problems. The kids will sense that you don't totally trust them, that you have things you believe are more important than what they want to do, that you have expectations.

The more you can trust them, the more successful unschooling will be. If you can't trust totally, then I think that the next best thing is to be honest with your kids about what is happening - at the same time as striving towards fixing up your own head! That's where I'm at: I keep trying, but I'm open with the kids about why I appear contradictory - it's because of my past, not because of their present and future.

Have a Nice Day

Thanks for your response.  That does help some.  I'm finding that the one thing that seems consistant with unschoolers is that they provide an enriched environement...and then they let the child lead.  The amount of direct parental involvement seems to stem from what individual children need or want. 
 
I can see how this would work.  I worry about gaps though, even though I know we all have gaps. Unschooling fits our way of life well, but I tend to use it to "supplement" a more eclectic approach, hmmmm, or do I supplement unschooling with the eclectic approach??  (sigh).
 
Kristen
-----Original Message-----
From: Brown <mjcmbrwn@...>
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 1:01 PM
Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] New to the list

Hi Kristen

You will always hear stories about unschooling not working. I have one that I know from personal experience, where the 3 kids have turned out variously illiterate, totally lacking in self esteem, a bully and a thief. Their mother was into John Holt and unschooling from the time the eldest was a baby.

But you see it's all a matter of definition, and IMO she didn't understand what unschooling was all about. For example, when her daughter wanted to attend a gym class instead of just the play-around-with-the-equipment session, because she wanted to learn how to do things properly, she was told no. When one wanted to learn to read it was told no. And so on. This woman thought unschooling was taking your kids to lots of places, having lots of toys, books, etc - offering an enriched environment - but NEVER teaching them anything, because teaching is the root of all evil. And to her, responding to a child asking 'what does this word say?', was teaching, so she wouldn't do it. IMO this was neglect, not unschooling.

In my experience, some kids thrive on structure - I have one like that. I am trying to help him find his own ways of structuring his life. He loves workbooks - discovered them through another homeschooler and begged for them for his birthday! He likes to have a schedule printed up of all our commitments, so he can work out times to do his maths, music practise etc. My husband taught him to use MS Projects or some such thing so he could timetable his day! But this isn't forcing anything on him, it's enabling him to live how he likes, within a disorganised family <g> Others thrive on serendipity, and going with the flow.

On a more subtle level, and this is the level I'm still at :-(   if you don't believe in unschooling in your gut and in your head and in your whole being you will run into some problems. The kids will sense that you don't totally trust them, that you have things you believe are more important than what they want to do, that you have expectations.

The more you can trust them, the more successful unschooling will be. If you can't trust totally, then I think that the next best thing is to be honest with your kids about what is happening - at the same time as striving towards fixing up your own head! That's where I'm at: I keep trying, but I'm open with the kids about why I appear contradictory - it's because of my past, not because of their present and future.

Unschooling is to do with the environment the kids live in. You can't unschool successfully as a method. You need to provide an environment rich in opportunity, experiences and, most essentially, trust.

Carol
in New Zealand
 

I'm just wondering, have you ever known anyone whom unschooling did not work for??  Are there any tales of tradgedy?  I'm sure there are tales like that no matter what educational method you choose, I'm just wondering how one prevents such a tragedy with unschooling.

Message boards, timely articles, a free newsletter and more!
Check it all out at: http://www.unschooling.com

To Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]

libbygirl

Hi Carol,
ROFLMAO!! Just read your post about unschooling vs neglect and thought how
concise and articulate you were then realised I "know" you - Same Carol as I
admire on the RUA list!!!

Still chuckling
Brooke
Regards,
Brooke

Joshua Heath

Carol, I loved your response... I seem to be getting the importance of TRUSTING our children to become interested in the things which are uniquely meningful for THEM, and at the same time providing all the opportunities and support possible to facilitate this.  For me too it seems that the challenge is letting this occur on thier timetable, not mine. 
Joshua
check out www.alladvantage.com to get paid to surf the net.
MY user ID# is LUZ-400
----- Original Message -----
From: Brown
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 1:00 PM
Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] New to the list

Hi Kristen

You will always hear stories about unschooling not working. I have one that I know from personal experience, where the 3 kids have turned out variously illiterate, totally lacking in self esteem, a bully and a thief. Their mother was into John Holt and unschooling from the time the eldest was a baby.

But you see it's all a matter of definition, and IMO she didn't understand what unschooling was all about. For example, when her daughter wanted to attend a gym class instead of just the play-around-with-the-equipment session, because she wanted to learn how to do things properly, she was told no. When one wanted to learn to read it was told no. And so on. This woman thought unschooling was taking your kids to lots of places, having lots of toys, books, etc - offering an enriched environment - but NEVER teaching them anything, because teaching is the root of all evil. And to her, responding to a child asking 'what does this word say?', was teaching, so she wouldn't do it. IMO this was neglect, not unschooling.

In my experience, some kids thrive on structure - I have one like that. I am trying to help him find his own ways of structuring his life. He loves workbooks - discovered them through another homeschooler and begged for them for his birthday! He likes to have a schedule printed up of all our commitments, so he can work out times to do his maths, music practise etc. My husband taught him to use MS Projects or some such thing so he could timetable his day! But this isn't forcing anything on him, it's enabling him to live how he likes, within a disorganised family <g> Others thrive on serendipity, and going with the flow.

On a more subtle level, and this is the level I'm still at :-(   if you don't believe in unschooling in your gut and in your head and in your whole being you will run into some problems. The kids will sense that you don't totally trust them, that you have things you believe are more important than what they want to do, that you have expectations.

The more you can trust them, the more successful unschooling will be. If you can't trust totally, then I think that the next best thing is to be honest with your kids about what is happening - at the same time as striving towards fixing up your own head! That's where I'm at: I keep trying, but I'm open with the kids about why I appear contradictory - it's because of my past, not because of their present and future.

Unschooling is to do with the environment the kids live in. You can't unschool successfully as a method. You need to provide an environment rich in opportunity, experiences and, most essentially, trust.

Carol
in New Zealand
 

I'm just wondering, have you ever known anyone whom unschooling did not work for??  Are there any tales of tradgedy?  I'm sure there are tales like that no matter what educational method you choose, I'm just wondering how one prevents such a tragedy with unschooling.

Message boards, timely articles, a free newsletter and more!
Check it all out at: http://www.unschooling.com

To Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]

[email protected]

In a message dated 04/04/2000 8:37:27 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
litlrooh@... writes:

<<
I'm just wondering, have you ever known anyone whom unschooling did not work
for?? Are there any tales of tradgedy? I'm sure there are tales like that
no matter what educational method you choose, I'm just wondering how one
prevents such a tragedy with unschooling. >>

Sure I think your going to hear stories, I "know" of a few myself. But you
have
to ask yourself, would this child have had "gaps" if they had been schooled?
We have all read the statistics of children graduating that don't know basic
math or how to read. I would think we could do at least that much for our
children. A child who does not know what he needs to know to function in life
because he was unschooled, could very likely have the same problems if he
were sent to public school or worse. Other times that unschooling might not
work would be when someone says "oh we tried that" but didn't really
understand what unschooling is or maybe only tried it for a short period of
time and didn't really trust enough to give it a chance. Again I recommend
doing some reading at Unschooling.com ---
Kathy

Lisa Bugg

 
 
I'm not totally new, I was on this list before, but after a year of homeschooling, I'm taking a nother look at unschooling.
 
I'm just wondering, have you ever known anyone whom unschooling did not work for??  Are there any tales of tradgedy?  I'm sure there are tales like that no matter what educational method you choose, I'm just wondering how one prevents such a tragedy with unschooling.
 
Thanks for enlightening me.
Kristen
 
Kristen,    I think you have to first define tragedy.  What would failure look like to you?  I have a teen that has very few *math* skills, yet she's self -supporting at 17 1/2.  Is she a sucess or a failure?
 
How you prevent a tragedy is by parenting.... and it has almost nothing to do with academics.
 
LisaKK
Message boards, timely articles, a free newsletter and more!
Check it all out at: http://www.unschooling.com

To Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]