Who can Unschool? —Amy Childs' brief podcast, with transcript
Who can Unschool? —on my page; several people's thoughts
How much does unschooling cost?
Unschooling, Time and Energy
Building an Unschooling Nest
Kelly Dunlap Lovejoy to Sandra Dodd (in public) September 22, 2010
New Poster:
-=-Who said that is easy to have principles when you're wealthy? Not necessarily to imply that this "unschooling" culture started within a certain priviligiated <sic> class. But am I too far off? -=-Sandra:
Math problem:Figure out how many hours there are in a week. Subtract the number your child sleeps. Subtract the number of hours the parent is away from the child (for whatever reason--working, playing polo, going childless to Europe or skydiving as all we millionaire unschoolers like to do).
How many hours are left?" ~unschooling.com
| That link is still live on facebook but the website has been reassigned twice, and is NOT a good place to send people nowadays. |
Sandra Dodd
I'm not sure what to say about being considered priviligiated.
Kelly Dunlap Lovejoy
Well, since we are all so priviligiated, we get to play polo, vacation childless in Europe, and skydive. 🙂
Frank Maier
I love belonging to the priviligiated class but it takes a lot of time and money to maintain a string of polo ponies and transport those guys to matches around the world. And skydiving is just silly. Who'd want to jump out of a perfectly good Gulfstream?As a wealthy person, I have principles and interests. (Financial pun alert!)
Sandra Dodd
Did I really write all that "playing polo" stuff, Kelly? I've written it about subtracting work hours and sleep and figuring out how many hours are left.
Kelly Dunlap Lovejoy
Lifted straight from the archives. Word for word!
Sandra Dodd
I just can't believe I was once a smart-ass.
Kelly Dunlap Lovejoy
Hard to believe!
Jen Lynch
ROFL! I have to go find my goggles and feed the ponies! We'll see what kind of time I have left!
Lori Gontarz Pajor
Oh my gosh. I love that word! I think I'm going to start using it. In fact, maybe I'll make it my status today. I may not be quite at the level of priviligiation as some of you folks, but I sure do feel priviligiated to associate with you!!
Sandra Dodd
I need to be careful what I write. OH WAIT! Too late. 🙂Without the skydiving polo, I'm going childless to India next month, and then childless to Europe next summer, but that is because I'm out the other end of childfullness. My kids are all fulltime grown. Two are still home, but one's in school and one is working 50 hours a week. I offered to take one of them (either of them) with me, but both would rather stay with school, job, and social life.
What I love about my life is that I'm as happy to be at home as not. I didn't expect so much contentment. And my kids are not staying home because they have to. And they're not going to school or working because they have to. We're all reaping what we sowed, without knowing it would turn into such an abundance of comfortable choices.
For those who remember that exchange or might find it, I have pulled Lori's second comment out here:
Lori Gontarz PajorWait... I just typed "priviligiated" into Google, and it comes up a lot. I tried to look it up by cut and paste, and there is no such word, but by typing it in, as Lori says she did, after "priviligiate" things came up. It's a bad spelling of an Italian (and Catalan) word. "Privilegiate"—means "privileged," in one particular way—if you're telling multiple females at once that they are privileged, it seems: [privilegiate. inflection of privilegiare: second-person plural present indicative/subjunctive ... privilegiate f pl. feminine plural of privilegiato] |
Over the years people have claimed that if unschooling wasn't available to EVERYONE, then no one should do it, or would accuse unschoolers of being elitist, or of abandoning the good of the greater population. As I come across those discussions, I will try to link them here. Some are water under the several former bridges (messages boards, sites, groups that have ceased to be), but others survive, here and there, and I've always enjoyed the responses.
During the days of AOL discussions, in the 1990s, I was in a group that stayed in touch by e-mail, between scheduled online discussions. The family that seemed the poorest had two army-officer parents, one active and one reserves. Another family didn't admit in public, but the mom once let me know that they had a housekeeper, and nanny, and raised and trained race horses. We were still sharing ideas enthusiastically and helpfully with each other in that group, and the available funds made no difference to the learning we saw and the changes happening in the parents from the process of discovering how much could be learned, and so sweetly, without school.