DH's letter to a friend about Unschooling--LONG
Lisa M. Cottrell Bentley
Hello, Unschooling List- I'm not a frequent contributor to this list, but I've read every single e-mail that has gone through here for over a year. My family has officially been an Unschooling family since we first heard of the term "Unschooling", but we'd already been living the lifestyle for quite a while. What I have chosen to send to the list today is a personal e-mail that my DH, Greg, sent to one of our close (single male) friends yesterday in regards to some of the questions that he has posed to both of us (via e-mail since we live far away from each other now) about Unschooling. I have sent many e-mails to the friend in response. However since we don't have a lot of male perspective on this list, I thought that this e-mail might be enjoyed as it shows DH's personal journey toward the Unschooling lifestyle that we now enjoy with our children.
-Lisa in AZ
---------------------------------------------------
I've been meaning to put down my thoughts on unschooling for some time
now. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to
writing.
First a bit of background about my own education. It probably won't
surprise you to hear I was a straight A student clear through high
school. I got all the right answers and did well on all the
standardized tests. I was led to believe that to succeed in life you
needed to do well in grade school so you would be placed in the advanced
classes in junior high and the college prep classes in high school. You
had to get good grades and score high on the SATs/ACTs to get into a
good college. You had to get good marks there so you could get a good
(i.e. high-paying) job. You'd then have loads of money so you could buy
the nice house, cars, assorted other toys to live happily.
So I followed the rules and got the good grades. I did the reports,
exercises, and projects. In actuality, this consumed only a portion of
my time. I generally did the assignments from one class during the next
class while the teacher lectured. (They weren't saying much
interesting, and they said it all multiple times to assure everyone got
it.) After I'd fulfilled the requirements, I then "played". This
mostly consisted of solving puzzles, reading books, writing computer
programs, and experimenting with electronics kits.
In college, I always took at least 18 credit hours per semester (the
most allowed at ISU) in order to stay "at the top". I worked frenziedly
to keep up with all the readings, papers, and projects, but I would
still sneak in some time for more "play". Now this consisted of
exploring the VAX system, BITnet, the Internet, the campus network,
network programming, configuring and using a Linux system (version 0.99
in those days), and some occasional late night DOOM sessions.
When I graduated and it came time to look for a job, I was a bit
surprised to find that employers weren't exactly beating down my door.
The job market was a bit tighter than it had been a few years before,
and employers seemed more impressed with coop'ing experience and
interviewing skills than GPAs. While I did get a fine job (and I very
much enjoyed working at Microware), it was a bit of a disappointment
that I still had to watch money (had debt in fact) and couldn't buy the
nice house, cars, etc. that I had felt I was promised by following the
prescribed education paths.
What I'm getting at with all of this is that schooling didn't work for
me. The pot of gold wasn't at the end of the rainbow. Even if I had
landed a $100k job straight out of college, I don't think I would have
been happy. I still would have felt the need for the bigger house, the
newer computer, etc. And I still would have been looking to others
(coworkers and managers now) to give me the good grades to assure my
worth. While I still can't say I have the secrets to eternal happiness,
I have at least come to realize that bigger isn't necessarily better and
that I should be the one to judge how well I'm doing.
The other thing I've realized is that all those homework problems,
reports, and projects didn't really do much for me. I no longer have
any of them. None of them had any actual use. What's more - I don't
even remember most of what I "learned".
But how can that be? I got 100% on the test - that proves I learned it
right? The parts of it I do remember I had already learned on my own
before it was "taught" to me, or I had an interest in already and would
have learned about it on my own. The things that didn't interest me
(and my bored, boring, uninspired teachers did nothing to make it
interesting), I memorized for the test and forgot quickly thereafter.
It's not that I conscientiously consigned the information to short-term
memory, it just never formed any connections with the long-term stuff
rattling around in my brain. What does the year of the French and
Indian War have to do with anything? Or the characters and themes of
Death of a Salesman? Or the rules of badminton? Or the capitol of
Czechoslovakia? None of them meant anything to me beyond checking the
right answer on the test.
Besides having no significance to me, the subjects were always strictly
delineated. You didn't learn about the scientific discoveries (in any
depth) that Archimedes, Newton, or Franklin made in your history class.
(BTW, I saw a fascinating show on PBS recently about how Archimedes may
have been developing integral calculus centuries before the rest of the
world knew about it.) You didn't learn about math in science class (and
thus weren't allowed to do too complicated of experiments). You didn't
learn about the historical events taking place when novels were written
in English class. Everything is chopped into categories and furthermore
your time is chopped into periods. You can't spend any more or less
time studying a topic than one hour.
In retrospect, the things that I truly learned (and still know to this
day) are the things that I had a great interest in and learned inside
out. These were mostly the things I learned while "playing around". It
went something like this: computers are fun - how do I program them
What's this stuff about binary and hexadecimal? (math and logic) How
do I make pictures on the screen? (art) What's this Turing machine
thing I've heard about in some of these books? (computer science,
biography, World War II history, sociology (discrimination)) My
program's too slow. Why and how do I make it faster? (more computer
science, possibly getting down to the hardware which mean computer
engineering, electrical engineering, and depending how far you want to
take it, Maxwell's electromagnetic equations and particle physics)
I think you can see where I'm heading with all of this. Regimented
schooling with its "you'll learn this facts about this confined topic
area for the next 60 minutes and then switch to a different confined
topic" mentality doesn't have much lingering benefit. It's like trying
to fill a water bottle with a firehouse. It's blasting all over the
place. Sure some of it's going to go in, but most of it's going to wash
right over you. To make matters worse, you've got a different firehouse
for each topic. If you follow your interests, it's more like a wet/dry
vac that you stick into a barrel of water. You're going to suck it all
in and keep searching for more.
On the other side of the coin, schooling did leave some lasting ill
impressions. Such as: others know better than you what's important;
competition is all-important - you have to be the best; work isn't
meant to be fun - if it's fun, it's frivolous; always be conscious of
what others think of you - don't make yourself stand out; learn your
place in the hierarchy and don't be too "insubordinate" - best to parrot
back what the authority figure says. I'd much rather teach my children
(or rather allow them to discover) that they are wonderful, intelligent
people capable of making their own decisions and not dependent upon
other's approval for their self-worth.
I've been addressing the whole topic of home-schooling rather generally
so far. Let me address some of your specific concerns. First, you
mentioned a concern that an unschooled child would have to "catch up"
later on an area they were never exposed to earlier. This is, of
course, a possibility. But think about when you're interviewing a
potential new employee. I think you're probably like me. You'll want
to know that they have the basic required knowledge (which nearly all
the applicants will), but you'll be more interested in if they can think
through new problems and learn on their own. You want someone who
doesn't get stymied by a new situation and doesn't need to run to others
for help all the time. You want someone who can dig into the problem
and _make_ himself/herself an expert. That's the essence of
unschooling. Take an interest and examine the hell out of it. Learn
every facet, then move on to the next thing.
You also mentioned having a sufficient breadth of knowledge. There are
basically two parts to the answer of this. First, is the digging around
in all directions already mentioned. This can lead to all sorts of
things that at first glance are completely unrelated. Think about the
last time you looked something up in an encyclopedia. You probably read
three or four other articles along the way to looking up what you were
first looking for. The other half of the answer is the parents. This
is the difference between real unschoolers and parents who just say
they're unschooling but are really just too lazy to follow a
curriculum. An unschooling parent is continually (though not constantly
and distractingly) exposing their children to new topics. We buy them
books (not text books) on a variety of topics - both fiction and
non-fiction, watch movies and TV shows with them, get them computer
programs, do arts and crafts with them, do experiments with them, and
most importantly talk with them. Zoe is at an age now where she's
really fun to talk with. She might want to make paper airplanes which
could lead to a discussion of the Wright brothers or DaVinci. We were
driving in the car the other day and she asked about the lights on a
truck, and I explained about the various signals used when driving. I
took her to work one day and told her a bit about what I was doing and
showed her how to cut-and-paste. The conversations work both ways,
too. She showed Lisa and I how to pause the DVD player on Lisa's laptop
using the spacebar (so you don't have to waste time pulling up the menu
and mousing to the right spot). She told me the other day that turtles
live in water and tortoises live on land (which I didn't know). Often
I'll think of something interesting related to what we're doing and
mention it to her only to have her tell me that yeah she knows and did I
know this other thing too?
We take our kids with us and involve them in nearly everything we do.
They learn not only from us, but also from the people we interact with
and the situations we're in. (Zoe helped the pool guy draw the arcs
on the ground to mark where our pool would go.) If they don't discover
some topic through their interests or through their interactions with
the world, chances are the topic can wait. Public school may expose
children to a laundry list of topics that get thrown at them like darts
at a dartboard, but how valuable is it to just know the name of a
topic? If it is important, the bookstores carry "What you 1st/2nd/Nth
grader should know" which contains the laundry list.
This might have been more than you wanted to know, and I hope it didn't
take too much time out of your day to read it. I think this is the
longest e-mail I've ever sent to you. :-)
-gdb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
-Lisa in AZ
---------------------------------------------------
I've been meaning to put down my thoughts on unschooling for some time
now. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to
writing.
First a bit of background about my own education. It probably won't
surprise you to hear I was a straight A student clear through high
school. I got all the right answers and did well on all the
standardized tests. I was led to believe that to succeed in life you
needed to do well in grade school so you would be placed in the advanced
classes in junior high and the college prep classes in high school. You
had to get good grades and score high on the SATs/ACTs to get into a
good college. You had to get good marks there so you could get a good
(i.e. high-paying) job. You'd then have loads of money so you could buy
the nice house, cars, assorted other toys to live happily.
So I followed the rules and got the good grades. I did the reports,
exercises, and projects. In actuality, this consumed only a portion of
my time. I generally did the assignments from one class during the next
class while the teacher lectured. (They weren't saying much
interesting, and they said it all multiple times to assure everyone got
it.) After I'd fulfilled the requirements, I then "played". This
mostly consisted of solving puzzles, reading books, writing computer
programs, and experimenting with electronics kits.
In college, I always took at least 18 credit hours per semester (the
most allowed at ISU) in order to stay "at the top". I worked frenziedly
to keep up with all the readings, papers, and projects, but I would
still sneak in some time for more "play". Now this consisted of
exploring the VAX system, BITnet, the Internet, the campus network,
network programming, configuring and using a Linux system (version 0.99
in those days), and some occasional late night DOOM sessions.
When I graduated and it came time to look for a job, I was a bit
surprised to find that employers weren't exactly beating down my door.
The job market was a bit tighter than it had been a few years before,
and employers seemed more impressed with coop'ing experience and
interviewing skills than GPAs. While I did get a fine job (and I very
much enjoyed working at Microware), it was a bit of a disappointment
that I still had to watch money (had debt in fact) and couldn't buy the
nice house, cars, etc. that I had felt I was promised by following the
prescribed education paths.
What I'm getting at with all of this is that schooling didn't work for
me. The pot of gold wasn't at the end of the rainbow. Even if I had
landed a $100k job straight out of college, I don't think I would have
been happy. I still would have felt the need for the bigger house, the
newer computer, etc. And I still would have been looking to others
(coworkers and managers now) to give me the good grades to assure my
worth. While I still can't say I have the secrets to eternal happiness,
I have at least come to realize that bigger isn't necessarily better and
that I should be the one to judge how well I'm doing.
The other thing I've realized is that all those homework problems,
reports, and projects didn't really do much for me. I no longer have
any of them. None of them had any actual use. What's more - I don't
even remember most of what I "learned".
But how can that be? I got 100% on the test - that proves I learned it
right? The parts of it I do remember I had already learned on my own
before it was "taught" to me, or I had an interest in already and would
have learned about it on my own. The things that didn't interest me
(and my bored, boring, uninspired teachers did nothing to make it
interesting), I memorized for the test and forgot quickly thereafter.
It's not that I conscientiously consigned the information to short-term
memory, it just never formed any connections with the long-term stuff
rattling around in my brain. What does the year of the French and
Indian War have to do with anything? Or the characters and themes of
Death of a Salesman? Or the rules of badminton? Or the capitol of
Czechoslovakia? None of them meant anything to me beyond checking the
right answer on the test.
Besides having no significance to me, the subjects were always strictly
delineated. You didn't learn about the scientific discoveries (in any
depth) that Archimedes, Newton, or Franklin made in your history class.
(BTW, I saw a fascinating show on PBS recently about how Archimedes may
have been developing integral calculus centuries before the rest of the
world knew about it.) You didn't learn about math in science class (and
thus weren't allowed to do too complicated of experiments). You didn't
learn about the historical events taking place when novels were written
in English class. Everything is chopped into categories and furthermore
your time is chopped into periods. You can't spend any more or less
time studying a topic than one hour.
In retrospect, the things that I truly learned (and still know to this
day) are the things that I had a great interest in and learned inside
out. These were mostly the things I learned while "playing around". It
went something like this: computers are fun - how do I program them
What's this stuff about binary and hexadecimal? (math and logic) How
do I make pictures on the screen? (art) What's this Turing machine
thing I've heard about in some of these books? (computer science,
biography, World War II history, sociology (discrimination)) My
program's too slow. Why and how do I make it faster? (more computer
science, possibly getting down to the hardware which mean computer
engineering, electrical engineering, and depending how far you want to
take it, Maxwell's electromagnetic equations and particle physics)
I think you can see where I'm heading with all of this. Regimented
schooling with its "you'll learn this facts about this confined topic
area for the next 60 minutes and then switch to a different confined
topic" mentality doesn't have much lingering benefit. It's like trying
to fill a water bottle with a firehouse. It's blasting all over the
place. Sure some of it's going to go in, but most of it's going to wash
right over you. To make matters worse, you've got a different firehouse
for each topic. If you follow your interests, it's more like a wet/dry
vac that you stick into a barrel of water. You're going to suck it all
in and keep searching for more.
On the other side of the coin, schooling did leave some lasting ill
impressions. Such as: others know better than you what's important;
competition is all-important - you have to be the best; work isn't
meant to be fun - if it's fun, it's frivolous; always be conscious of
what others think of you - don't make yourself stand out; learn your
place in the hierarchy and don't be too "insubordinate" - best to parrot
back what the authority figure says. I'd much rather teach my children
(or rather allow them to discover) that they are wonderful, intelligent
people capable of making their own decisions and not dependent upon
other's approval for their self-worth.
I've been addressing the whole topic of home-schooling rather generally
so far. Let me address some of your specific concerns. First, you
mentioned a concern that an unschooled child would have to "catch up"
later on an area they were never exposed to earlier. This is, of
course, a possibility. But think about when you're interviewing a
potential new employee. I think you're probably like me. You'll want
to know that they have the basic required knowledge (which nearly all
the applicants will), but you'll be more interested in if they can think
through new problems and learn on their own. You want someone who
doesn't get stymied by a new situation and doesn't need to run to others
for help all the time. You want someone who can dig into the problem
and _make_ himself/herself an expert. That's the essence of
unschooling. Take an interest and examine the hell out of it. Learn
every facet, then move on to the next thing.
You also mentioned having a sufficient breadth of knowledge. There are
basically two parts to the answer of this. First, is the digging around
in all directions already mentioned. This can lead to all sorts of
things that at first glance are completely unrelated. Think about the
last time you looked something up in an encyclopedia. You probably read
three or four other articles along the way to looking up what you were
first looking for. The other half of the answer is the parents. This
is the difference between real unschoolers and parents who just say
they're unschooling but are really just too lazy to follow a
curriculum. An unschooling parent is continually (though not constantly
and distractingly) exposing their children to new topics. We buy them
books (not text books) on a variety of topics - both fiction and
non-fiction, watch movies and TV shows with them, get them computer
programs, do arts and crafts with them, do experiments with them, and
most importantly talk with them. Zoe is at an age now where she's
really fun to talk with. She might want to make paper airplanes which
could lead to a discussion of the Wright brothers or DaVinci. We were
driving in the car the other day and she asked about the lights on a
truck, and I explained about the various signals used when driving. I
took her to work one day and told her a bit about what I was doing and
showed her how to cut-and-paste. The conversations work both ways,
too. She showed Lisa and I how to pause the DVD player on Lisa's laptop
using the spacebar (so you don't have to waste time pulling up the menu
and mousing to the right spot). She told me the other day that turtles
live in water and tortoises live on land (which I didn't know). Often
I'll think of something interesting related to what we're doing and
mention it to her only to have her tell me that yeah she knows and did I
know this other thing too?
We take our kids with us and involve them in nearly everything we do.
They learn not only from us, but also from the people we interact with
and the situations we're in. (Zoe helped the pool guy draw the arcs
on the ground to mark where our pool would go.) If they don't discover
some topic through their interests or through their interactions with
the world, chances are the topic can wait. Public school may expose
children to a laundry list of topics that get thrown at them like darts
at a dartboard, but how valuable is it to just know the name of a
topic? If it is important, the bookstores carry "What you 1st/2nd/Nth
grader should know" which contains the laundry list.
This might have been more than you wanted to know, and I hope it didn't
take too much time out of your day to read it. I think this is the
longest e-mail I've ever sent to you. :-)
-gdb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
catherine aceto
thanks! that was great!
-cat
-cat
----- Original Message -----
From: Lisa M. Cottrell Bentley
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:24 PM
Subject: [UnschoolingDiscussion] DH's letter to a friend about Unschooling--LONG
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sandra Dodd
That was really fun to read.
I've been realizing more and more lately how much I learned after
school, in the library on my own for fun, from looking things up I'd
read about in novels, from stuff I read under the desk during class,
from conversations with friends who knew things I didn't--and I got
great grades, and the teachers kind of stretched and preened, like my
good grades proved they were good teachers.
Your husband's letter was stirring some of that back up, but in a
good way.
I hope your friend reacts well and gets it!
Sandra
-----------------------------------
I've been realizing more and more lately how much I learned after
school, in the library on my own for fun, from looking things up I'd
read about in novels, from stuff I read under the desk during class,
from conversations with friends who knew things I didn't--and I got
great grades, and the teachers kind of stretched and preened, like my
good grades proved they were good teachers.
Your husband's letter was stirring some of that back up, but in a
good way.
I hope your friend reacts well and gets it!
Sandra
-----------------------------------
Betsy
**What I'm getting at with all of this is that schooling didn't work for
me. The pot of gold wasn't at the end of the rainbow. Even if I had
landed a $100k job straight out of college, I don't think I would have
been happy. I still would have felt the need for the bigger house, the
newer computer, etc. And I still would have been looking to others
(coworkers and managers now) to give me the good grades to assure my
worth. **
Hi, Lisa --
Thanks for sharing your husband's post.
I think this part is really key.
I've just been reading Po Bronsons's book, What Should I Do With My
Life, about people who are looking for fulfilling work. I think one of
the things that makes career decisions so hard, is that for many years
we were all running on an educational treadmill with very few choices.
**What's more - I don't
even remember most of what I "learned".**
In many subject areas, that's true for me as well.
**But how can that be? I got 100% on the test - that proves I learned it
right? The parts of it I do remember I had already learned on my own
before it was "taught" to me, or I had an interest in already and would
have learned about it on my own.**
Yep. The Emperor's Clothes are looking pretty transparent.
**Or the characters and themes of
Death of a Salesman? **
I don't think that particular play is relevant until you are middle aged.
**What's this Turing machine
thing I've heard about in some of these books? (computer science,
biography, World War II history, sociology (discrimination))**
I've seen a cool drama about Alan Turing on PBS, starring Derek Jacobi,
I just don't remember the title. Sounds like maybe your husband watched
it or read the same (true) story.
Betsy
me. The pot of gold wasn't at the end of the rainbow. Even if I had
landed a $100k job straight out of college, I don't think I would have
been happy. I still would have felt the need for the bigger house, the
newer computer, etc. And I still would have been looking to others
(coworkers and managers now) to give me the good grades to assure my
worth. **
Hi, Lisa --
Thanks for sharing your husband's post.
I think this part is really key.
I've just been reading Po Bronsons's book, What Should I Do With My
Life, about people who are looking for fulfilling work. I think one of
the things that makes career decisions so hard, is that for many years
we were all running on an educational treadmill with very few choices.
**What's more - I don't
even remember most of what I "learned".**
In many subject areas, that's true for me as well.
**But how can that be? I got 100% on the test - that proves I learned it
right? The parts of it I do remember I had already learned on my own
before it was "taught" to me, or I had an interest in already and would
have learned about it on my own.**
Yep. The Emperor's Clothes are looking pretty transparent.
**Or the characters and themes of
Death of a Salesman? **
I don't think that particular play is relevant until you are middle aged.
**What's this Turing machine
thing I've heard about in some of these books? (computer science,
biography, World War II history, sociology (discrimination))**
I've seen a cool drama about Alan Turing on PBS, starring Derek Jacobi,
I just don't remember the title. Sounds like maybe your husband watched
it or read the same (true) story.
Betsy
Stepheny Cappel
I sent this letter to my daughter who is also homeschooling her daughters. I hoped you didn't mind. It will stir up discussion about how she hates to make them sit down and do things she has torn out of a workbook or whatever so she can say she did "school". She doesn't do it to them everyday because it's such a hassle. Big surprise. My mom often mentions my "intelligence" lol, which I know is from learning on my own the things I needed, wanted to know. I quit high school, but did the ged thing and some college, I suppose she is surprised. Thanks for sending this. It's very good. Stepheny
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Odrade
Thanks so much for sharing that!
TreeGoddess
__________________________________
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TreeGoddess
__________________________________
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Christine Ralston
Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this letter. It was very insightful. You are lucky to
have a husband who is so understanding and supportive.
Christine
Thanks for sharing this letter. It was very insightful. You are lucky to
have a husband who is so understanding and supportive.
Christine