Hafidha

Hello Jackie, Sonia, and Linda (and whoever else asked about being a
former unschooler)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you about this. I wanted to
respond, but didn't quite know where to begin. I'll try now, but
please excuse me if this sounds scattered; it's late and it's been a
long day. This is kind of long (I'm HORRIBLY longwinded).

I didn't have the ideal home/unschooling experience. I was homeschool
from the ages of 12 to 16. At times it was extremely dull and weeks
would go by when I don't think I did anything at all. My interaction
with other people (of any age) was pretty limited. I think sometimes
my parents didn't know what to do with me and my brothers. They are
not very structured or disciplined themselves, so they were not so
good about teaching us how to be. There was not much emphasis on
developing serious hobbies or interests or even our talents. Still,
they did the best they knew how, and I have no hard feelings towards
them. I only feel like I have a lot of catching up to do as an adult
because there are a lot of things I have an interest in that I wish I
already knew (e.g. Latin & piano) - and that I could have learned back
then if I'd known how to be diligent. Since the age of 16, I've been
either in college or working. I am trying to unschool myself now as an
adult, and the hardest thing for me is just knowing how to *finish*
things. It's not easy to learn these skills when you're 20-something
... and I'm something of a dilettante by nature; *my* unschooling
experience probably reinforced that.

Despite all that, I support other people's efforts to home/unschool, I
believe in the philosophy and if I had children I would more than
likely unschool them. I enjoy learning and would love to be able to
spend time with my kid(s) everyday exploring the world and learning
with them. My main suggestion to parents (and I don't intend this to
be AT ALL accusatory) is to really fight the urge to be lazy. Make
sure your kids are really learning and engaged in life - taking
lessons, volunteering, getting outdoors, and developing skills;
whether they're playing an instrument, re-enacting history, sewing,
gardening, working on computers, fixing cars, or flying planes, they
should be experiencing things and trying things out. We don't always
have these opportunities as adults. (We should, but we don't.)

The book Grace Llewellyn edited (I believe it's called "Real Lives")
that featured essays by a dozen or so unschooling teens was excellent.
Unschooling is only an advantage, I believe, when kids are MORE
involved in life than they would be if they were in school. And when
they are more in touch with themselves. I was VERY in touch with
myself as an unschooling teen, but I wasn't immersed in life; that was
a very serious inbalance, and seven years later it's something I'm
still trying to right.

I think my parents keeping me out of school prevented me from being
overly concerned with what other people think about me because when I
first left school I was very, very easily hurt by others. I had low
self esteem. I got along with everyone, but was also easily
intimidated and fearful of being disliked. To some degree it's part of
my personality to want to get along and avoid confrontation, but I
think my parents saw that school wasn't helping me in this regard; I
do believe I'm a much stronger-willed and independent person now than
I would have been had I stayed in junior high.

Perhaps the best thing about my parents' decision to unschool is that
it exposed me to various subcultures ... different way of looking at
things. I was alerted to alternative movements and ideas at a young
age, and learned to view everything (especially mainstream lifestyle)
with some skepticism, to not believe everything I was told, and to
question convention. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that
had I gone the normal schooling route I'd be in the rat race with so
many other people, just trying to keep up with the Joneses, trying to
appear impressive and accomplished, and not asking myself "Why am I
doing this? Who am I doing this for?" There's a large part of me that
can be really uptight and conservative, so unschooling was a fantastic
counterbalance to that.

If I could go back 10 years and do things differently, I would have a
more active and fulfilling unschooling experience; I wouldn't choose
school. So that's that. I hope this answered your questions. Oh, and
I'm a pretty 'normal' adult. I work for a utility company, make decent
money, keep my own apartment, and have some friends. Still, I really
don't like this office work and plan to next year move to Spain to
study Spanish for a year, and then who knows? There are so many things
I want to do, that if one thing doesn't work out it just points me in
another direction I was interested in anyway.

Gnight,
Hafidha

Portland, OR

**********************************************************************
*********************
"The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant
people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's
been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such
an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly
breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know
existed."
~from Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Brown

Hi there,

Hafidha wrote:

> I only feel like I have a lot of catching up to do as an adult
> because there are a lot of things I have an interest in that I wish I
> already knew (e.g. Latin & piano) - and that I could have learned back
> then if I'd known how to be diligent.

So, as a matter of interest, were you interested in these things back then?
I know that some of the things I was interested in at that age myself, I
have absolutely no interest in now, and the things I am interested in now,
held no attraction for me then.

> My main suggestion to parents (and I don't intend this to
> be AT ALL accusatory) is to really fight the urge to be lazy.

What do you mean by lazy? If things are important enough to us, we will do
them. If they aren't important enough to do them willingly, then are they
really worth doing?

> Make
> sure your kids are really learning and engaged in life - taking
> lessons, volunteering, getting outdoors, and developing skills;
> whether they're playing an instrument, re-enacting history, sewing,
> gardening, working on computers, fixing cars, or flying planes, they
> should be experiencing things and trying things out. We don't always
> have these opportunities as adults. (We should, but we don't.)

No matter how many things we offer our kids, even if we have an endless
money supply and endless time and energy available, there will still be
things they don't get to experience. I think that for many children today
(adults too), who are incredibly busy, what they are really missing out on
is time to reflect, time to dream, time to simply 'be'. I'm not trying to be
critical, because I too have seen kids who have very narrow lives and who
don't get to experience a wide enough - IMO - variety in their lives, but I
do think it is important not to swing the other way and burden our kids with
so much 'opportunity' that they never get to discover the world within
themselves.

> Unschooling is only an advantage, I believe, when kids are MORE
> involved in life than they would be if they were in school. And when
> they are more in touch with themselves. I was VERY in touch with
> myself as an unschooling teen, but I wasn't immersed in life; that was
> a very serious inbalance, and seven years later it's something I'm
> still trying to right.

So I'd agree with you here, but finding that balance is hard, and it is easy
to react and swing the pendulum too far the other way.

> There are so many things
> I want to do, that if one thing doesn't work out it just points me in
> another direction I was interested in anyway.

Cool! Go for it :-)

Carol