Unschooling and Yoga Philosophy – An Interview with Sandra Dodd
Cate Stillman interview of Sandra Dodd, January 3, 2013
The interviewer wrote in her introduction: "I was repeatedly struck by how similar the ramblings on unschooling were to the cutting-edge teachings of Craig Hamilton’s Integral Enlightenment Academy for Evolutionaries course I was a year-two student in."
Some of it is a little glitchy, and some is Very Clear. 🙂
There's an intermission ("station identification"). 🙂
I said "alive" once when I meant "awake," but I think the gist of the intent of the idea will still come through.
You can correct it for me in your mind as you listen. 🙂
Also I didn't think of the word "bursar" (about a college job I had) and said "treasurer."
I said I finished my university degree at 21. Correction: I graduated at 20 that May (1974), then my birthday was in July, and I started teaching in August when I was 21 years old.
Yoga and Unschooling, Cate Stillman interview of Sandra Dodd, 2013
In 2025 I brought the recording onto my site, just in case. I will deposit a machine-done transcript below, and if I ever get to edit it, I might make the corrections mentioned above. 🙂
Transcript (rough first; I hope I will get to edit it clean so it can be searched and quoted.
Welcome to the yoga healer podcast where it's all about your vibrant Health Evolution. We yolk we meditate scrape, our tongues and eat our weeds and now with your host who isn't afraid to drink? Fissile from her blender. It's me. Kate Stillman.
Hello and welcome. Its Kate Stillman with yoga healer.com, and I'm thrilled to have on the line today. Sandra Dada Sandra.com. That's sanders50
DOD, d.com. So, welcome Sandra. I'm so glad to have you here and talk about unschooling today. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. So, I first ran into you via your blog. I was, I was Googling around to find more information on unschooling as my daughter was, You know, it's people were asking me what I was going to do about schooling. Once we decided that we were going to be by local and live partly in Mexico and partly in Idaho in the schools and Idaho or anything to write home about. And I started looking for more and more information about what people are doing, in terms of the wild world of, you know, just awake maybe more enlightened child-rearing and I found your blog and I instantly felt a resonance with the teachings of yoga. Really the teachings of being a free person of being a liberated individual and and having a having a different way of looking at how we spend our time from, you know, from from being a young person to being, you know, to being a like a middle-aged adult. And what I found on your blog and when I found immediate resonance with was the sense of that, like there doesn't have to be all these rules that there doesn't have to be like this one way of doing it. That there's that there's actually a lot of Traversée around, you know, traditional schooling and and that there's a lot of different ways to look at at how we, how we spend time with, with children and what what our time is like, as children as young adults. So, I'd love for you to comment on any of that and to just talk a little bit about your path with unschooling.
Well, I have been interested in education for a long, long time. And when I went to college, I was studying, John, Holt, and other things because the professors at the University of New Mexico, excuse me. Um were involved in alternative education and just assumed that that was going to be the future of the American school system and there was More of it in New Mexico than some other places, but it didn't ultimately come too much overall. But I was trained to work with the open classroom which is the idea that children learn better by touching and seeing and hearing real things than to read about them in a book. And so, the open classroom model and set up should be that. Every school has real animals and real plants. And for history kids get to touch real things. And go to historical places and explore, what they're interested in and form a therapy manipulatives. So physically schools came to have more of those things but still in a in the separate classrooms and an open classroom model, there would be different teachers, the teachers who really liked the science Sciences would take care of the sides lab, although all the teachers would know everything and kids wouldn't be required to sit and read in a desk. They could read lying down or sitting in a little private. Beast and that didn't really work in public schools because the teachers didn't understand it. They hadn't signed up to do that, they hadn't trained to do that. So the teachers who are already in place already hired really resented. These new weird ideas
and the parents of the kids who are in school, didn't understand it. If they don't understand it they can't support it. Kids who have been told for even one year Even kindergartner first graders who have been told. Here's how school is, you sit down and Rose. You don't do anything unless other people tell you to do it and you raised your hand to go the bathroom if there are suddenly told okay. Ignore all that, here's this big place you can explore and you can climb these little dark cubby holes to read. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to. They just go crazy. Yeah. Because they and rightly so figured that it was temporary.
Yeah, yeah, see something so different. They and that's been made, valuable free time and choices have been made golden because they didn't have them there. When they said here, have all the choices you want, they ran around and through things and you know got crazy and
didn't didn't didn't do the work, you know for the term for bit want of a better term. The Assumption was if they have a lot of really interesting things to do over the course of a year, they'll explore everything. In the building. They'll be curious about what's in that of the room. What's in that box? What's in this drawer? And eventually, they'll all have discovered at all or the other kids will tell them and it didn't work. But it didn't work because the kids had no choice but to be there because in some other schools it has been made to work. There are a few open classrooms schools scattered around still but the important thing is the parents opted in and the kids are able to not be there if they don't want to be. And when it worked in the lab schools in the 60s and early 70s, the reason it worked is that the kids in the lab schools
Most of the lab schools were connected with universities. So the children in there, where the children of people who are studying education or other professors, and the researchers were people getting master's degrees or phds who wanted to prove that this would work and they found they would set up experiments to show that the kids really did learn, but everyone was into it. Everyone is enthusiastic and it was voluntary thing.
So it's not really too surprising to see that. One of the big problems of regular school is that the kids feel trapped and and Powerless. If you like they have to be there and that's your parents tell them. You have to be there. So the same thing can happen with the open classroom. If the children are told well, this is It's kind of stupid but you just have to do it.
So all of the things that I had learned and and known, and believed, and seen proven did work when it was just my kids.
Because it's like "let's let's do something really cool and interesting." For one thing, I wasn't limited to one little classroom's worth of stuff. I had the whole world and so the open classroom methods and theories are what unschooling pretty much is. That's what John Holt was trying to do when he was teaching, was to open up communications, open up experiences to the kids.
and when I didn't make my kid, stay home, each one of them had an option. I really thought Kirby might be the only one. My oldest might be the only one who stayed home and as each of the other one's got to be school age. I said you want to go to. You want to stay home with us and they said, oh and stay, but we didn't know. Until Holly the third one didn't go that that's how it would be their families who say my child will never see the inside of a classroom by God school
and then they're doing the same damage school is doing which is saying yeah there's something else but you don't get to know about it. Wait
Yeah, no. I really like that. You're bringing that out that it's really about about giving the power of choice and how you want to spend your time and opening up the Curiosity and the ability to try and experiment and see what's working and let the sort of the biochemistry of the family adapt and grow with the experience.
Instead of placing that sort of external structure limitation, whether it's this is the wit. This is way, we're going to do it, it's going to be this way, or it's going to be that way. Right.
So with your path with on schooling and you know what I mean, one of the questions that I think you know, most people will ask is like how is it different than homeschooling? And I'd love to hear about. I'd love to hear about that. And I'd love to also, you know, one of the things that I noticed as I talked to more people about really not, you know, not having a plan just saying, you know, we're just taking it as it comes and going more towards a Life Learning approach that It a lot of people, you know? And now when I people ask me about it personally and they say, you know, what are you going to do with? What are you going to do, with Andy's, education? You know, and I'm getting now that she's on this five, we're getting us that like, all the time. And, you know, and it's interesting when we say, like things like, oh, we don't know. Or, you know, we're taking a Life Learning approach
brings up people, you know, people then defend their way, is what I find a lot of times. And so what I've what I've come to say now is that, you know, we're doing something that's Really alternative and we don't really know what it is and it's not for everybody. Kind of in a way. I found gives me a little bit more space and it lets them know that I'm not trying to convert anyone, so I'd love to hear any of that. Just the differences between, you know, unschooling and homeschooling and then dealing with, you know what other people's reaction.
I learned early on to say, this is what we're doing for now, or it's working now, if it stops working. Well, do something else?
Yeah. It seems to some people, it scares them so much that it feels almost like they're moving to another planet and can never come back.
And I used to someone published my phone number without asking me. And so for several years, I would get phone calls because the book was in a bunch of libraries, people would call me and say I'm in New Mexico, and I need help right now and they would start to tell me a long, long story about how their kid was in trouble. Because this happened in the principal said and the assistant, principal 7 teacher said, and as soon as they took a breath, and I could get in there, I'd say stop. Don't tell that story anymore. Don't tell me you've already told it probably 5 or 10 times. Yeah. And they would start to relax. And I would say you don't have to send them to school. You get, if he's if it was morning I would say go get him, go get him taken to lunch. You can think about it for a few days. But if it was afternoon or weekend, I would say you don't have to send him tomorrow. You can keep him home while you think about this. And it's not like moving to another planet, you'll have the same house, same car, same phone number, you'll still be sitting in the same chair. It'll just be different.
And every time I've ever said that anyone, they seemed somewhere between totally relieved and shocked sort of like the glass of cold water in the face because they were flipping out, they were really spinning out off the planet. Like where will we be? What will happen? How will we ever get back? It's like back to where you're in your own house. People are so conditioned, I think by school day even parents if their Called to the principal's office, you know? Like the principal wants to talk to you about your kid. They get the same visceral, horrible reaction. They would have if they were a bad eighth grader and we're called to the principal's office, huh? And that's hard to overcome.
I think some people.
Will.
When they first hear it, they think it's insane. Their first thought is this is crazy, you can't do that. But I think part of the reason that they are so quick to be defensive, is that their whole life, their whole childhood, or more has been predicated on the idea that their parents had no choice but to send them to school. So if for those children and there are quite a few of them who are really miserable to go who cry, and what home and and are crushed by that separation from their mother at a young age. The only thing that's made them grow up without feeling that their parents are. Horrible, is the idea that their parents had no choice whatsoever. And that it was normal and healthy and it just had to be done and there were no options. So, if a person like you,
Takes an option that other people didn't know existed.
You've just made their lives, very difficult, not meaning to me, you're not doing it on purpose. You're trying to make your own child's life better, but what happens is they have either told or just moved along the assembly belt on the assumption that they have no choice that when their child is for five or six. Whatever that state requires that, they will put him in school and it won't matter if he's ready wants to go, doesn't want to go cries doesn't cry. None of that matters. All That matters is his age and that's cool.
When you don't do that. You pulled the rug out from under them.
Especially if their child knows your child. And if you're, if their child knows that your child is not in school, then when, when that child asked the parents, why do I have to go to school?
It's not true anymore. It's not, you know, the parent say, everyone has to go to school. There's no option. So it's a little bit like the fruit of the tree of knowledge
Once they know that there actually is an option, they may not be as happy with their parents. That's one of the hardest things about unschooling. I think, is that makes it hard for friends and neighbors to remain calm with you. And that's, that can't be avoided when we can't sacrifice our children's happiness and wholeness to the opinion of temporary Neighbors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Reality, is there that happened with the women's movement in the early 70s? When women started saying, you know, men really should be nicer. They shouldn't be violent. They shouldn't be lying and fooling around. That's not okay. And there was there was an unfortunate but necessary, maybe huge Spate of divorce.
And the women who were happy with the status quo, who just wanted things to stay the way, they were got pretty angry at those women who are saying, you know, you could leave right felt like couldn't leave. They were happier than if somebody said you can leave, if you stay now, all of this is your fault. Same thing is happening now, with homeschooling with unschooling, especially because now even the other homeschoolers, look at the unschoolers and say use a curriculum and we're going Lala. I know you don't
so talk about that. Talk about the difference between curriculum and and non non. I don't know if I want to say non curriculum but really just the Life Learning approach.
If we were at a restaurant, I have a good way to do a demonstration, but this is just going to He heard so people who are listening picture plight in front of, you big plate, and on one side, a fork. And on one side a spoon or whatever water, glass wine glass, I don't care to smaller things. That can't see all the way around the plate. And so on the on the right hand side, I'll say these are the homeschoolers. These are the strict fundamentalist Christian Home schoolers you know the The Stereotype that everybody's afraid of isolation and dishonesty and bad science. You say okay here they are. The reason they took Their kids out of school is that they think school does not control kids enough and it gives them too much information.
So why on the other side of the plate? Where they can't even see them, as this other group of more liberal homeschoolers and unschoolers, the reason they took their kids out of school is that school controls? Their kids too much and give them enough information.
This is there, they are homeschooling for opposite reasons so you can't lump them all together and say I understand homeschooling.
Because they're closer to school than we are as the use of curriculum and rules and structure and limitations and we are closer to school than they are as regards actually trying to give kids options and a lot of information about different kinds of people and to try to help kids figure things out on their own.
Right.
That's great. That's a really simple. I love that. It's really, it's really clear and it really names. I think what
is coming? I mean, it's really a, it's really, it's really a shift in culture. And I mean, there's this larger shift happening in culture at a very liberal Leading Edge. As far as the, the unschooling movement or the Life Learning movement. Being really interested in like what makes human beings Thrive and then how do we apply that? You know, from the get-go. And not, not really doing this like age discrimination of like, well, we're not going to worry about that till we have a young adult on our hands, right? But like it's white it's way more gradual curve than saying, this is what this is what you do with preschoolers. This is what you do with elementary school kids. This is what you do with Junior High kids. If they're just whole people from the beginning, a lot of those problems and stages don't even exist. They're artificial. They have to do a school. Oh talk more about that are Give an example. I think that would be great from here. Experience sometimes people say well how will your kids know how to live in the real world and I say what do you mean by the real world? And that's a trap but they well well they won't know how to do and then they start fishing for what they're talking about. And it's usually deal with different kinds of people or get a job or they won't know how to accept failure or be competitive and start fishing for all these things that that are that they think you get from school. Learn to get along with other people. People learned a lineup, that's a great ones. Like, well, they go to the movies, that's where they line up. Right,
the post office. You don't need to practice every day for 12 years to learn to line up. You just see people do it and you do it. So within I say after they wound down their upward little defense because it's never smooth the answer to that. How will they learn to live in the real world? It's a memorized phrase. It's a, it's an idiom. It's so slap. It's like, I know you are but what am I? You know, it's no more thought thoughtful than that. So how will they let you live in the real world?
And I said, well guess what? My kids have always been in the real world. We never took them out of the real world.
Yeah, but say, this is your job. This is real life. This is how it is. This is how it has to be, but it's not the real world. They lock, 18 year old boys up and make them sit in rows and little desks in any culture on Earth. Those boys are old enough to reproduce and go to war and they're making them sit in a desk until a bell rings as though they were 8.
Yep.
Yeah, it's it's really I can see how this it really does bring up so much emotion. It just a conversation, right? Because there's a sense of wanting defend to defend our what our parents chose for us or what is the Paradigm of modern culture and what works for the masses. And and yet yet, you know, really coming out this for more of like a yogic freedom perspective. Then there's the reality of of how Do we teach people to spend their time? How do we teach our, you know, how do we enable our Offspring to thrive and really embrace it? Like every day. There's there's a lot of choice, there's a lot of freedom and in that we can skillfully, you know, we can skillfully navigate what we do with our time and we can we can really have an impact. That's maybe doesn't have as much to do with.
Degrees and stature and status from, you know, from a traditional education perspective. I mean, I went to, I went to undergraduate college, I went to had the highest was one of these small liberal arts schools and they prided themselves. I mean and and to some degree for good reason but they prided themselves on having the highest number of like phds teaching students like PhD to student level interaction. And then the also really in the top, I don't know. Was like top maybe five schools in the country to have the highest number of graduates go on to higher level education whether that's, you know, Masters and phds. And so a lot of my, a lot of my mind, a lot of my friends, a lot of people I went to school with have advanced degrees, but then there was also the sense that we got indoctrinated.
And the situation where we really didn't have freedom over our time. Because by the time you graduate with an advanced degree, you have quite a bit of debt usually and it's an I mean it's a really interesting cycle and it's and I see it's still being, I still see it still being perpetuated by, you know, like well your child you going to want to have her have the same kind of education, you had to some degree. It's like there was benefits to and I understand that but at the same time there is so much about having the freedom Mmm, having, you know, not have not have debt. Having a life where you can, you know, from from the get-go. Not necessarily need these more externalization of value for what and who you are.
I know the medical field in the United States is extremely that way. By the time, your doctor, they want you to stay a doctor.
We know someone whose sister was a doctor and she tried to commit suicide and they put her in a very special counseling for doctors, you know, they just don't want to lose any of them because they have training that can make them dangerous for one thing and and they're all so much in debt. They need to work that debt off mean, isn't that part of the problem with the coal mining towns where you all owed the store, you couldn't quit your job because you're so much in debt for your rent and your groceries and
I was about to say, who someone in my life used to used to be a cocaine addict. And she said, it's hard to get out of it. Because when when the dealer comes and you pay them, they give you one more free, you know, dose, whatever it is, you know, not some more free that you owe them for, you know, so you always owe them. So you can never get away from them. I think school is has become that way where even if you even if you're working on a PhD, well, I No, they're starting to put people out of undergrad to undergrad degrees. Now, they press you to get a degree, they'll from some degree up. So you have to start paying grad school rates.
And then there are loans and people get into a field. Sometimes for the super lame reason that when they were eight or nine people are going, what do you want to be? When you grow up, what you want to be, when you grow up and they pick something, and I feel lovely gated because their grandmothers so proud, or whatever, it's a little kids are deciding what they're going to be paying loans off about 20 years later. It's just not healthy. Yeah. It's not getting better. It seems to be getting worse in a way but then there's. So there's some other things happening. If I've missed something and you want to go back to it, that I don't mind, but
you asked about, you said, things are changing like the Paradigm is changing. I think something is changing that's enabling us to consider unschooling. It's not the other way around, it's not that. The idea of unschooling is changing the world so much, although it can in some ways. But what's making this possible is the internet.
When my grandparents, my grandparents were all born in 1898. My one grandfather in the rest of them were born within 10, you know 10 years after that they were all born right around the turn of the century. 120 years ago 100 however long ago and they went to little schools, little rural schools in Texas. And the reason Smith,
I know there's a lot of noise about the Industrial Revolution and then all of the schools, United States being created two factors. But that's nonsense. True in Pennsylvania where there were factories, but in Texas, there in a factory factory workers at all. People went to school, to learn to read, and to, and to do sums. They said
reason. They need they went there to do it. Is that a lot of people who are living in poverty, had nothing at home. Maybe a Bible, maybe nothing. They had printed their homes
Globe. They probably didn't own a map,
well, books for fun. And so the only place those kids are going to get to see a map. Is it school only place? They're going to get to see a globe or to read. Shakespeare is in a book at school. The only place they're going to get to look something up in a dictionary is at school or in a public library.
A hundred years later. None of that is true anymore. There are maps and globes. Everywhere you can get books, at any thrift store, you can get books. At any garage sale, you can get a set of encyclopedias in any garage sale because nobody wants those anymore, because they have iPads or smartphones where they can get the answers to things right away. If you want to know, if you want to transfer something from Fahrenheit to Celsius, you don't need to memorize a formula. You can type it into a Google search bar. Right. Well, the information is right there, right? In our hands all the time. We don't need to send our children to school 180 days a year for 12 years. It doesn't make sense.
Are outdated.
Even your old anymore, things made it up there a week old sometimes.
Yes. Now, as far as the, you know, one of the things that I've seen, you know, happening at especially at some of the more cutting-edge institutions is like, really, you know, doing more active learning when together and then doing more of the actual, you know, like lecture time for stuff, you know, at home or on the Internet, even in, you know, in more formal institutions. And one of the things that I'm asked a lot about, you know, About social interaction. And what about, you know, just being being in a group learning together and how what have you seen with that from your experience as far as how, you know, whether that just happens naturally with on schooling or just? Yeah, I just would love to hear Parents can prevent it from happening by not getting their kids out and about by not inviting other kids over by not letting their kids on the internet
kids. Anybody under the age of 25 is way familiar with learning about games or new appliances or how to build things or how to repair things by asking other people. A lot of times those people are on other continents because if you need to know at three in the morning, that's okay. Somebody's awake. Somebody's going to be able to answer a question that you put out there, right? Then and there R, they'll send you links to YouTube video. This will people showing how to do that thing that you want to do and when kids play a game, a lot of them don't even want to look at the player's guide, they want to figure it out and they're really good at that. They're good at that in ways that no one my age can be. You know, maybe a few Engineers prefer to get something out of the box and put it together without the directions, these kids depend on the knowledge of other people, whereas, when I was in school that would be considered cheating or lazy or wrong.
Then you go to work and they expect you to depend on your co-workers, right? Nobody at work is ever told you stay in your own cubicle. Don't talk to those boys. Leave him alone. You're sick. Working teams, right? Know, who knows more than you do about any particular part of your job. So school isn't even Preparing People for the workforce, they're preparing them to take tests.
And the only people who make a living taking tests or breaking law and I used to think that'd be kind of a cool deal. If I could find out how to do that. Take other people's standardized tests, it's not fair,
but that's what
that's funny. Sandra circles, like nobody's business, I can pick the right answer even if I don't know what they're talking about.
So, what do you see in the future of conscious child-rearing? I mean, I would say, you know, from a more from like The Cutting Edge perspective, or from people that are really, you know, that are, you know, d.school door that don't have a fixed idea about about what it looks like to raise a human being that thrives.
Well, I have to admit it's kind of a splotchy mess in the world. 50 years ago, there was a lot of religious pressure for people to conform and now in that time and in my lifetime,
people have a huge range of options and mix-and-match philosophy and religion. That's become pretty normal after the 60s. It's Not Unusual for someone to be Christian but teach karate, you know, do yoga, but be more money. There's all kinds of combinations. It's not just a straight cultural.
Sameness as there once was. So with that, I mean, if you're going to, if you're starting to mix and match anyway, then then it all goes out the window as to a default set of behavior and diet and all of that, which is not to say that there aren't still conservative religious groups. There are, but it's possible to live outside that, and to live, a mindful healthy lifestyle. It's not just the people who go to church or synagogue Gore mosque. And the people who are wild Godless heathens, so that has become more complicated. It's possible for someone to focus on raising their children, in such a way that they have tons of options and at their respected and that the parents really help them do the things that they want to do.
Without Social Services coming and saying, what are you doing?
But then again there are some very conservatives that towns and counties or whatever. States parts of the country where Social Services would be quicker to come and say
we don't know what you're doing. Explain it to us then there are some more liberal places where Social Services will come. If you're acting in such a way that was be normal in another place. So there's not even legally.
One smooth set of expectations.
So it's kind of kind of depend on who and what and how and how you can explain it and how wild kids are. I've seen some on school kids. The parents weren't very philosophical and the kids are wild and obnoxious in. The parents have no idea that they might have coached their kids to get along better with other people. I've seen some people who have no idea about the difference between their property in someone else's property.
It's kind of stunning. It's like, well, we let our kids do what they want to do. Well, not at my house, you do. Don't write. I don't know how else you don't. If you want to let your kids do whatever you want to, you better buy enough property to let them do it on and don't let them out of the fence because other people are not going to appreciate this. Not. Okay. So some people get confused about what? What Freedom that I'm not putting that in quotation marks with my fingers. Now Freedom, they can give their children. Because this there are still realities of laws and property and courtesy and etiquette and no one is immune to that there's not a religion or philosophy or political party or a method of parenting that can change that reality
rate, the yoga healer podcast in iTunes, when you do, we can give you more of what you want. If you listen right the show and leave a customer comment. Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, and that's what it seems to me. Whether it's, I mean it whether it's on schooling schooling homeschooling is it so much of? It depends on the level of development of the, of the, you know, who you're surrounded by.
And if you're you know, if you're if you're on schooling and you're surrounded, you know, and you're in the child surrounded by parents that are at a lower level of development and haven't, you know, haven't figured out things like personal property or hygiene or whatnot. Then it's going to be very difficult for the child to learn. And same thing with going to a school that has perhaps less,
you know, just less developed teachers, less awake aware, develop teachers.
That it really seems to be like, who you surround yourself with has a huge, has a huge impact on what your able to do, how you end up, you know, forming ideas, and thoughts. And and I you know, beliefs about about your life and about the world and is the parents make it possible for the kids to be in contact with other kids through the internet gaming or whatever it is, that gives the kids a lot of options to without ever leaving the house. The symposium That I just ran last week, there were kids there who knew each other from World of Warcraft or Minecraft. And the they had played, you know, speaking to each other with Skype and play games for hours and hours. And so they knew each other already. They just had met in person. I'm doing something in Minneapolis first weekend of May and the first three families, who signed up had 14 year, olds or so. Who knew each other that way from three different parts of the country. So they chose those two place to meet
and there and, and that is as real as anything. I know when the internet was first round. People were saying with those aren't real friendships really. Well, go into your neighbor's house for coffee isn't necessarily real friendship either. Thank you. Cousin isn't about physical. Proximity of people are afraid of what they don't know. Yeah. And again, the object and they say they sputter and they said, well don't yeah, but not real, not real world, not right? Not good. Instead of calming down, looking at it, letting it seep in considering it from different angles. And seeing, if maybe They're wrong for example, texting a lot of parents get really angry and they don't want their kids texting because their grammar won't develop, or they're wasting time or the things are talking about are important. Then they say, why don't you have friends? Who aren't you socializing? Well, we just work. Right. I'm terrible at texting but my kids are good. So sometimes if I really need to communicate with one of my kids quickly, I'll ask one of the other ones who is around, you know, could you text Kirby and ask him this? They can get information in seconds.
Yes, even if someone's busy doing something else, someone's in a meeting or a class or something, they can still communicate, they can communicate twice as twice, you know, with two things at once, like, doing two things at once. And I have a lot of respect for that when we were in school, we would write notes and get in a lot of trouble. Right? Right. We were we were communicating. We were riding. We were you know, socializing. Yeah. So what she was homeschoolers unschoolers. I do I think people should encourage that sort of thing, any communication they have with any other person.
If the parents don't think it's important. That's a problem on the parents part, they just don't know. Be like my parents saying that certain music wasn't. Well, my parents weren't that way but you know some parents would say that's not music. That's crap, right? But it's just it wasn't music. That was familiar to them, right? Well and what I keep hearing and what you're saying and it to me, it really goes back to just some of the fundamental teachings of yoga is that there's
You know, there's there's a way of living that's like by the rules and in the box and there's a way to do things and way not to do things. And, and then there's this whole other way of being where you understand the rules of society and, and, you know, you live by them because they're the rules of society. Like, to, to the degree that it keeps, you know, a greater Harmony. But then, it doesn't really influence how you think, or how you are, how how you're being, or what you're doing. And with your life and then and from that greater Freedom, you're allowed, you know, your enabled to be totally curious about what is happening on a larger level. And from this curiosity, we can see technology in a different light. And we can see this connectivity. That's happening that kids are like totally aware and awake to, and, and we can start, we can as adults learn from that. And tap into that and say, oh, why? That's how how can I get more connected or interconnected or have more deep meaningful relationship? Relationships with people that I, you know, that I might actually have a deeper bond with than my next door neighbor or nothing against the next door. Neighbor, because, as again, in the sort of like societal construct, but when we go to depth of relationship like who can I really connect with? Maybe that is someone on the other side of the world and just through maintaining this more
Large-scale. Open my like, large-scale, like, we don't, we're not done learning when we're 22 and we get a job or when we're 30 and get a job or whatever. You know, whenever you're out of school, how having a life of learning where the learning has the priority over, other things, makes a huge difference to
Yes, I couldn't have you know I mean it's funny because I am I, so get this whole life learning mode of being because I'm always signing up for courses in educating myself and learning from other people. And you know, and so many different ways learning from other people all the time like just finding out what can I learn from you and and I my experience of that is that it's
It enables such a level of awakeness and interconnectivity and, and, and Just Energy raw. There's so much rot energy in that compared to the irony know what I'm doing. I just got to get up and go to work and get it done. People can stumble along like in a crowded Mall, you just walk because the crowd is walking and you or drive, then your regular Trail, you know the from your house to work. You don't think about it, but if they can become Are aware of what they're doing and why and be in that moment it it's the difference between being in a coma and being alive.
Yes, yes. So I would love to hear from your experience in, raising your children, what, you know, just some of the, you know, what you've seen, what are some of the biggest sort of aha's and just being an observer of this whole greater process and being part of the experiment?
Well, for one thing, you said a little bit ago, you said, how do we teach people how to spend their time? And I bristled up at that like I don't teach anybody how to spend their time. I don't teach anybody anything. I want to help them. See what is obvious in their lives. And if a child is doing something, the parent doesn't understand, parent makes them stop likely the parents wrong. Because if the child is doing something and was fascinated by something, and engrossed in something the parent to be in a successful in school or needs to learn to, to accept that they can't see learning happening once in a while you get to see the secondary evidence or the kid might just run and say, I just learned the coolest thing. Let me tell you what. I just saw a red tasted did and that's very cool, but a lot of learning happens that in ways No one else can see.
And it may just look like a kid, bouncing, a ball 55 times, it may look like a kid playing Solitaire, or watching a movie. He's already seen before reading a book. He's already read before because the parents can't tell what he's thinking and to assume that they know what he's thinking is hubris and it's rude. So it's hard for parents who really like the idea that they will teach their children, they will mold our children, they will guide them and form them to think that maybe
The parents don't know where the child needs to go.
a lot of the jobs that exist, now, no one could have prepared our kids for
It's not possible. No one could have prepared anyone my age to work with a lot of a lot of people, my age are starting to retire and 59, but a lot of the people, the people who worked with computers in the 60s, no one taught them, what they needed to know. They had to be interested in curious enough to figure that out on their own. And a lot of people didn't have computer science degrees because it didn't exist. The people who were first building and working with computers and there are things like that. Now, developing All around us that we can't prepare our kids for because whatever it is. They're going to work with and on isn't even invented yet. And so for parents to think that they know what their kids need to know, is incorrect.
I've seen my kids, learn amazingly difficult things on their own. And number one was how to read
a lot of parents have said, well, I will teach my child to read and after he can read, you can learn anything or I don't I'm sure that he can figure out science and math on there are signs in history because that's just fine. You'll social studies music, I'll just let them explore and they'll discover things about those, but I'm not going to risk. Math or reading.
And the problem that happens in that case, is that the parents believe that they taught their child to read, and the parents passed on to their children that yeah, maybe the kids pretty bright, but he would have never figured out math.
And pretty much they've hobbled. The child, mentally and emotionally. They've also done damage to their relationship with a child. They also haven't done themselves, any favors in the area of understanding how learning works, because I've seen lots of children learn to read And no child can can learn to read without it. Being done his own way, some kids, some number of kids, I did learn to read while the teacher was talking to them about how reading works. Some kids have already learned it before they go to school, some kids don't learn it. They don't learn it, they don't learn it. They're not getting it, they're not understanding what the teachers talking about. And so by the time they're eight or nine, they're branded non-readers and by the time they're 12 they're put in remedial reading. And it's highly likely that if they had been left to play and goof around. If they had been read to, if they had been able to watch movies instead of every day being marched into a reading class and then told they couldn't read and given maybe being forced to take papers home to their parents and say, can't read DF. Not reading that they might have just picked up a book one day when they were 12 and gone. Oh, I get it. Now I see Woods.
There's can do that at home schools, do it to a lot of kids mostly boys, but parents can do that too. When parents say oh well, the problem with schools is that there's so many kids per teacher, but if it's just one teacher to one child, then it should work really well. And so they take themselves into that position as the one teacher to their one child or their two, or three children and they start doing school at home. They bring out a curriculum. And they say, here it is. It's Monday. So, you're going to do school work. And if you don't do, Work. You don't get to watch TV or play games or I will spank you or I won't give you lunch or whatever all this nonsense punishment that doesn't help kids learn, it doesn't help them love their parents, it doesn't make them feel better about themselves. It damages them, it's not school, that doesn't work, it's schools methods. It's the idea that that children are blank slates and that all seven year olds are ready to read and that all nine year olds are ready to do division. It doesn't make sense. And if you You have one child. Why build an assembly line for one child.
But people are doing it all around us and I have no interested in that. There have been a lot of people said, well Sandra, you have a big following. You have a lot of people who listen to what you say, and so you have an obligation to support all homeschoolers.
I have no more interest in supporting homeschoolers than I do in raising money for my local elementary school. I'm doing some
important.
Time.
And I'm only interested in helping people live more peacefully and to see what learning looks like and to see how they could be their child's partner, in learning and learning academic subjects, only in learning all kinds of things, social things, emotional things, spiritual things, things about food, and sleeping, and entertainment, and friendship. All those things can be learned one little bit at a time by helping your child, learn to make decisions. Thoughtfully from the time, they're little there are families who don't give their children, any options about what to do until they're old enough to drive a car and have a job and go off to college. And then they make some big life damaging horrible decisions because I've never had any practice because the parents always said just do what I tell you to do. Uh-huh. And then some of them say that even when they go to school, okay? Just do what I tell you to do but the parents are far away and for the first time the kids can stay up all night and eat nothing but potato chips and and take drugs and get drunk until they puke and have wild sex with strangers. All those things wouldn't probably be a big draw to them. If when they were six or seven their parents said sure you can have a couple of more cupcakes.
If they had experienced on their own the thrill or the, you know, lack of thrill of making choices about how late to stay up, or what to eat or who to hang out with when you ability to say. No. I really don't want to do that. I really don't like this game. I really don't like this book. Let's don't finish it, then they're making real-life decisions as children in safe situations in an expensive.
Ways
that don't drunk, one's life is risk, no one's future is wrist. And so by the time they're teenagers, they're really good at considering a lot of factors who might it hurt? Is it worth doing? And with winding them up and those little rubber band airplanes that you crank and crank and crank the propeller. Yeah, that goes, yeah, crank and crank up their kids and they crank them up until they're teenagers. And they crank, and they crank and they're insulting them and they're saying, you're just really, not very bright, are you? You're kind of lazy, aren't you? And I don't think you're going to succeed at this and they keep cranking that up and when they let go they launched that child so far, so fast wildly without control. And some of those kids can't wait to get all the way across the country to go to college, far far away.
Yeah, / happen, my kids they're they've all had jobs from. They were all offered jobs at respected from the oldest 14, 15, 16 years old people who knew them because they knew people of all ages. They knew they had younger friends and older friends, people would offer them jobs, maybe a little job, maybe a big job and from that they were able to get other jobs and other experience and they learned a lot from working in with materials and whatever. A retail food, different places, they worked. They've always learned from what they were doing
and because they were in the real world, they had the option, the option, and the opportunity, to gain these experiences or to turn them down. You know, we didn't say you have to get a job as like, if you want to. Yeah, you know, he's offering to show me how to make boots or whatever it might have been and we're like, what do you want to do it? We didn't say yes. And now that you've committed to it, you have to do. It is always do it. If you want to when you don't want to do it, don't do it. And all of them have kept a job for, you know, long long term. My oldest son has worked. He's 26. And he's worked where he works for five and a half years. When he had only worked there for a while he wanted to apply for a promotion within the company. And I helped him do a resume and he already had seven years of experience at the age of 21 had never thought of it till we started writing it down.
And when I graduated from college, the only jobs I've ever had, were student jobs working in the treasurer's office and working in the dining hall.
Those are extreme you know not not everyone school or has that much work experience. Not every person who graduates from college has that little work experience, but I was considered a big success, graduated from college at 21 and I had not really ever worked a real job.
Yeah, I can I hear so much of, you know, just a lot of the different threads of what you're saying and, you know, and particularly with it intergenerational relationships, I mean, that that's one of the things that freaks me out so much. I think about school system especially seeing with being, and being in Mexico and being where we are and in the US. And just my child has so many different kinds of relationships with people of all different, ages. All different economic classes in. Speaking different languages and
in a way it's like it's enabling this sort of like this fullness. And this this richness of reality that it's very hard to replicate that in a classroom and then how that can if I mean one of the things that I noticed with her, comparatively to how I remember my own childhood and a lot of the stuff that I struggled with, as a young adult was just intergenerational stuff. Like I was more or less locked into my peers. And I had, I was sandwiched into two siblings that were all very close in age and so I always was with a peer group and I never actually had to speak to adults because my sister would do it for me. And yet, with my daughter I don't see any of those issues. Like she just talks to people, she's just with the person that she's talking to and there's not this, I don't talk to old people, right? And I can see just in terms of jobs, I mean, one of the big things about like, you know, the future where we're going as a, you know, just humanity and and In the planet. It's like we're going to need the skill of interconnectivity unlike we've ever seen in the past.
In a context, completely separate from from home schooling, I stayed with a family. One time I was in another state to do something. Absolutely unrelated. And when I showed up a boy who was about, twelve came out and helped me with my bags and introduced himself to me and started talking to me about, you know, what's going on the next day. He had high water pants and was a little geeky, but he didn't have that shielded. I cringed that geeky kids, get in school. Cool. Hell, he was home school.
Because he talked to me, like I was a person.
And because he wasn't ashamed. He didn't have any shame in him, he had enthusiasm and he had strength of character. I mean, just from from the time, he got my bags, and we went in the house. I could see thing. I could see that he wasn't beat down by school and sometimes my kids will bring somebody over. Who is a school kid? And, I mean, they're grown now but you know mostly, when they were younger and if that kid didn't look at me, didn't at would say to the kid right? When I was there? Ask your mom if we can have a past. Yeah, I know that language. Remember being like that with some other kids where you don't address an adult who hasn't addressed you first? That's not real world, that's cool world that's taking School world into people's houses.
Because you don't bug teachers, if you don't really have something to talk to them about because they're not on duty, you know, if you're outside of class and they're just walking by that, leave them alone, they're on their break and that's and that was the relationship. We have as teachers either, hide from them lie to him or leave him alone.
So my children didn't have that. You asked about what I thought about the future of an enlightened parenting. And I wanted to say this about the everything that I'm talking about, it's a luxury of peacetime and of prosperity.
Yes. Absolutely. I mean and development, even even with the internet,
if that goes down, we're in some kind of trouble. But even when my mom grew up and was World War 2 and there were black out drills, that's not something parents could have said. Yeah. Let's just ignore that blackout drill. That was not an option and there were and and they couldn't say our. Yeah. If you don't like this dinner just don't worry about it. We'll give you something later but never fridge, eration. There was not that much food. Food kids really needed to eat what the parents cooked and gave them because it all had to be cooked. There was no refrigerator. There is no microwave and when the mom made something, the kids needed to eat it.
Because if the, my mom's parents were cotton pickers, they couldn't afford to have a sick kid, they needed to feed those kids. And if they had to smack a kid to get him to eat, it was better than him being sick all day and then losing the money that they would have made to feed the other kids, you know, there were realities that we don't even think about anymore in the lifetimes of people who are still alive. My father-in-law just died last month or so. And he was, he had been in a parade the Saturday before. He was the oldest World War 2 veteran in Alamogordo and within a week died but he lived through the depression and through the war and if he looked at what we were doing and thought that it was frivolous and and Reckless, he would think that for really good reasons.
And so I try to remind people who are younger, you know, some mom, who's 30, whose parents are 50, who were born after the war.
And, and, and when the moms expressed their frustration and discussed, that older people not understanding, what they're doing, I really try to stop them long enough to say, listen, There are people still alive whose lives were destroyed by things that happen in World War 2. So don't be so Cavalier about what you do and I'll be so Cavalier about the rights you have and the progress in modern culture because it didn't grow like a tree. It came from the works of people And so, for them to absolutely, disregard the opinion of older people is that's, that's reckless, that's why more Reckless than unschooling. Because it as my children live in the real world, the real world contains all those people in all those problems. I don't recommend getting all depressed about it. You know, we could, there are some people who said we won't have peace till everyone has peace, but that's like saying we won't have healthy sexual relationships as long as there's prostitution and pornography You know, you can look away from it. We don't all have to wallow in it. When I was in third grade, I kid puked on the floor and we all ran over and looked at it and another kid puked on it and the teacher saying, back up back up, get away. But I think there's a human instinct to go. Look at something horrible to go. Look at a train wreck and then to get angry and everybody to start saying the train-wrecked, they should have done this, they shouldn't have done that, the people who built a track. So people go to trainings. Like, how about just the people who know how to clean up a train wreck? Stay here and everybody else goes. Elsa breathe.
We don't need a million people to be angry about something.
it just creates a million angry people and so I think when a parent decides to partner with a child,
Part of that partnership, ought to be providing a safe and peaceful nest for that child.
It's really easy for people to justify indignant and indignation, just and dignity and diggnation where they get. They want to be really angry about the way paying farmers are taking care of their pigs and they want to be furious about it. It's like, what is your kid doing? Do you have pigs?
I think they're probably enough childless people or retired people, or never got married, don't want kids people to be fully indignant about the treatment of pigs, but people who have children should be trying to give them as much peace as they can, if they're in a war zone that might be finding them a safe quiet. Place to sleep and some food. If they're in in a modern country that is not currently at War. They have the luxury to help their child, learn all Kinds of things and do all kinds of sweet, happy, wonderful things. But under no circumstances, do I think that they should collect a bunch of negativity and be angry parents and be angry and try to get their kids angry. So I might seem like I change the subject a little bit but I think that's back to the luxury of peace and prosperity. Yeah, I know and I yeah, I got that. I really get that connection that you're making there and and in the sense to that Ami of the and there's development. I mean, there's there's a past and we need to fully oh no. Our past and why certain, you know, rules regulations or what? I wear a huge step forward in the traditional structure of society. And that now we're just, you know what I see so much in the unschooling movement is, is that yes, it absolutely
is enabled by the history. And and this, and this really this Freedom that some people have and it's and it's a luxury in terms of the access of might not be Financial is much as just access access to information. Nation access to a safe home access to a peaceful environment, access to parents who can provide, you know, a situation of learning and they're in that that all of that rides on this level of development. That some people are at and culture that are able to sort of move, this this Edge forward and ask these bigger questions around. You know, what, what is it? What is it? Kind of look like to create a space or to enable a child to thrive? Like what, what does that That look like and to not know until leading into that in a way of not knowing and and I really sense that that's what, that's what you've done with your life. And I just want to, I want to point people to your blog, I get it daily. The just add light and stir and anyone can find that at Sandra Dodd with DODD.com.
And what I, one of the things I just want to say
thank you. And and that I really enjoy getting that sort of like that daily blast of a just a very much. Liberal Liberal approach to life learning and, and to the the piece fulness that you're bringing into families around the world.
Thank you. And I usually have a link to something else, so people can either just read that little thing or they can go on exploring on that topic.
Yeah, great. And then would you also mention your book and then also other resources on unschooling that people might find helpful to learn more. My favorite book right now is by Pamela rikiya and it's called free to learn and she's coming out with another book in February called free to live. I have A book called Sandra dad's. Big book of unschooling mine's good. If you already know you want to unschool and you want more information, but Pam's book is really good for friends. Neighbors, parents, in-laws grandparents, who were saying what? What explain it to me. It's hard to explain. It's hard to understand even for people who really want to understand it, it can take them a couple of years to feel like they're past the first layer of beginner questions and confusion. So, For someone who isn't willing to invest a couple of years, it could be out, impossible to understand. But Pamela Ricky has written a really good book and that's linked on my page. To, if you poke around my page, you can find it this call free to learn and it's only $10 and fewer than 100 Pages. It's really So clear and and short, my book is over 300 Pages, lots of detail and lots of examples and that's also available on my side or through Amazon, both them through Amazon, both of them can be ebooks. I have another book that's a little older. It was all of the published articles before, nineteen before 2005. All the articles that I had in various homeschooling magazines and newsletters, and that's called moving a puddle A lot of photos of my children when they were younger, that might be the most fun part of that especially for people who know them and they were younger. So I know the families in India that I know all they all really like moving a puddle better than the big book of unschooling. I think because so many of their children are young and it's about younger children.
What a great title.
Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm sure this will open a lot of people sort of eyes and ears to, you know, what's possible and Also what's emergent? So, thank you so much for your time.
I would like to say, you know, it's crazy. You know what? I know. It sounds crazy. So no one has the right to me and say, this sounds crazy. I know
it sounds crazy to everyone. At first
older people, who were, who grew up this way, you grew up unschooled and, and I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Such a pleasure.
Thanks for listening to the yoga healer podcast at www.wcco.com.
