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In a message dated 1/21/04 7:37:59 AM, sheran@... writes:

<< And some of the essays that were

supposedly about unschooling talked about doing unit study type

stuff.

>>

I don't mind some "unit study type stuff," depending how loosely that's
considered.

I DO mind units that moms decide should happen and that involve assignments
and schedules and final projects. But my main objection is to the "unit" ever
ending!

If someone here gets interested in something we sometimes stew in it, splash
in it, bask in it, wrap ourselves all up in it.

Eddie Izzard. We got someone in England to get us his book which wasn't
available in the U.S. In a fairly short while we got two DVDs, two CDs, shared
websites back and forth (me, Marty, Kirby and a few other friends outside the
house), we rented "Mystery Men" to see him in that. We gave copies of "Dress to
Kill" as gifts to a couple of friends in that heavy Eddie Izzard season.

We didn't stop doing other things. Nobody was required to study Eddie Iz
zard. Holly avoided it all, but lately she has said "I want to watch Eddie Izzard
now," and we just haven't gotten a calm space to do it. We will.

When I was in college and Brother Sun, Sister Moon came out, I LOVED that
movie. We had no opportunity for renting videos yet in those days. I went to
the Santa Fe public library and cleaned them out on St. Francis stuff. Read it
all. Bought a couple of used books. Read them, kept them. I started to
notice or remember all the northern-New Mexican St. Francis iconography I had kind
of ignored growing up. After I'd immersed myself in it for a month or so,
it became a good part of me. I still watch the movie sometimes. I still think
of some of the stories from The Little Flowers of St. Francis, a collection
of anecdotes written down by early Franciscans.

Nobody made me "study" St. Francis. I didn't report it to anyone (except you
folks, 30 years later, kind of, just now! <g>

So if someone recommends voluntary splashy immersion, I can only say I've li
ved my life that way. It's the non-voluntary unit studies that I think go
against unschooling.

My boys have done Halo weeks where they watch Red vs. Blue and play Halo a
lot.

They've done "Strongbad" marathons because someone comes over who hasn't seen
any Strongbad e-mail.

I guess my thing with "units" is they never end until a person dies or
forgets to care (Alzheimers kind of brain-shut-down). I might learn the best thing
ever about St. Francis or Eddie Izzard twenty years from now.

So maybe I just see unschooling as the unit study of everything in the whole
wide world.

Sandra

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On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:01:21 EST SandraDodd@... writes:
> So if someone recommends voluntary splashy immersion, I can only say
> I've li
> ved my life that way. It's the non-voluntary unit studies that I
> think go
> against unschooling.

When I was a kid, my parents were told that gifted children tended to
naturally learn through immersing themselves fully in a subject, so they
didn't worry when I learned all about the Greek muses at eight or so
(inspired by the movie Xanadu with Olivia Newton John, I should point
out, although that probably didn't sound very gifted so it wasn't
mentioned) or learned all about how death was viewed in different
cultures at 10 (and by that year I was in a gifted pullout program every
Thursday and actually got to spend the whole day every week learning
about whatever I wanted).

So when Rain wanted me to read The Odyssey to her at 3 and 4, in as many
different translations as I could find, it seemed like a pretty normal
thing to me. That's the kind of thing I had done, after all...

Then, of course, I started hanging around with different kids, and it
seemed like an awful lot of them were learning through immersion, be it
pokemon cards or Jay-Z or gymnastics... some kids seemed to get into
things more thoroughly than others, I suppose, but it did seem that there
must be an awful lot of "gifted" kids running around.

I think the original idea was backwards, actually. I think having the
freedom to learn about the things I wanted to learn about meant I was
more interested and enthusiastic about learning, and that translated in
the system as "gifted".

I've noticed that in the school system, the smarter the kids are supposed
to be, the more freedom they get over what they learn and how they learn
it. An awful lot of special ed is incredibly dull drill, and a lot of
gifted ed is open-ended and more free. It seems like rather a
self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.

Dar

tjreynoso

> I've noticed that in the school system, the smarter the kids are
supposed
> to be, the more freedom they get over what they learn and how they
learn
> it. An awful lot of special ed is incredibly dull drill, and a lot
of
> gifted ed is open-ended and more free. It seems like rather a
> self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.
>
> Dar

Yeah, you're right. I was actually thinking about that today. This
list will make you think! LOL! I was in a gifted program all
through elementary. I loved that class because it was the only
place where we got to do something of OUR choosing. Since there were
the same five kids in the class most years it wasn't hard to pick
what we wanted. But it only lasted 40 minutes a day. Then we'd
trudge back to regular class and I'd pull out a book and read in
secret for the rest of the day. Sad. When I talked to my husband
about unschooling the only way I could explain it to him was that I
wanted my sons' 40 minutes of enjoying what he's learning to last
his whole life!
Tanya

Dawn Adams

Dar writes:
>I've noticed that in the school system, the smarter the kids are supposed
>to be, the more freedom they get over what they learn and how they learn
>it. An awful lot of special ed is incredibly dull drill, and a lot of
>gifted ed is open-ended and more free. It seems like rather a
>self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.
>
Yes! I get family saying that my kids are very bright, curious and intelligent,. Some call them gifted. I'm sceptical. I think they simply get the freedom to cultivate those parts of themselves. They're allowed to explore so they stay curious. If they're gifted. it's because of their environment and it's something I think most kids are capable of. There was a line in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (movie) that always stuck with me. Buffy's boyfriend says something like, "You're different then all the other girls I've ever known," and Buffy replies, "No I'm not."
I always took that to mean that she didn't think she was special, but she'd simply had a chance to be more that most girls don't get. So my kids gifted? Naw, they just have the opportunity to be more.

Dawn (in NS)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

arcarpenter2003

--- In [email protected], SandraDodd@a... wrote:
>
<<When I was in college and Brother Sun, Sister Moon came out, I
LOVED that
movie.>>

Oh, wow. A friend just lent us that this summer, while I was nursing
a lot and liked to have something on to keep me company. I put it on
one afternoon and Fisher (6) came along and watched it with me. It
was so fun to talk about St. Francis with him, but I had to keep my
own laughter down at the pure gimpy innocence of the movie. Just
last week he mentioned the movie again -- I think I pointed out a St.
Francis statue to him, and he said, "I know who that is -- we watched
that movie, renember [sic]?"

Gimpiest movie ever, but we loved it.

Peace,
Amy

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In a message dated 1/21/04 5:54:47 PM, arcarpenter@... writes
about Brother Sun, Sister Moon:

<< had to keep my

own laughter down at the pure gimpy innocence of the movie >>

Yes, but it's early Zefferelli so some of it is Just Pure ART. The scene
where he does a little sermon in the rain on the bricks in the courtyard of his
parents' house is gorgeous nine ways. The brickwork. The lighting. The
building. The camera angles. The words. The rain. Gosh.

And when he gets well and goes out on the roof with the bird, in that long
white nightshirt... that's not CGI. That's real background, real buildings,
real every damned thing.

The armor was goofy on purpose. It was an anti-war movie probably as much as
it was anything else, but the images are still as good as renaissance
paintings when they're simpler and more natural. When Bernardo and Francis are
sitting by the fire talking about stones and quarries, yeah they're in some ruin
of a building, and the set isn't fancied up like it would be really if it were
his house, but the lighting is still pretty breathtaking.

Sandra

Wife2Vegman

--- SandraDodd@... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 1/21/04 5:54:47 PM,
> arcarpenter@... writes
> about Brother Sun, Sister Moon:
>
> << had to keep my
>
> own laughter down at the pure gimpy innocence of the
> movie >>
>
> Yes, but it's early Zefferelli so some of it is Just
> Pure ART.

FYI: It's being released on DVD on March 9th.




=====
--Susan in VA
WifetoVegman

What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all. John Holt

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In a message dated 1/22/04 2:13:25 PM, wifetovegman2002@... writes:

<< FYI: It's being released on DVD on March 9th. >>

I just found that out last night in a "Videoflash" catalog from Movies
Unlimited.

THANK YOU!! If I didn't know already you'd've given me a primary thrill, but
I still liked the secondary thrill.


I bought another copy of it on video *two weeks ago* but that's okay. I
think we're getting a used van next week and it has a video player. I could
stand to drive listening to that!

Sandra

arcarpenter2003

--- In [email protected], SandraDodd@a... wrote:
>Yes, but it's early Zefferelli so some of it is Just Pure ART.

Agreed, beautiful movie. I think I might buy it, because once I'd
gotten used to the St. Francis interpretation, it was totally
absorbing -- the movie conjured up a vision you could lose yourself
in, if that makes sense. The gimpy St. Francis was part of it -- you
had to cross a threshold.

Might be talkin' crazy,
Amy