You are here: Home / Archives for Articles / Carnivals

Favour

April 2, 2006 By

This week would be the week for another unschooling carnival. For this carnival I’m asking you to consider writing a post (and leaving a comment on this one) about one of two subjects:

  1. Unschooling feels, sounds or appears like a good philosophy to follow, but ________ prevent me (or make me hesitant to) follow through with it.
  2. Unschooling my child(ren) has enabled me to see ________

If you can spare the time to write a post on one of those 2 subjects, it would be great. Both subjects would allow us to share the 2 sides of the coin and perhaps we can help one another see our way through one difficulty or another.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy, Unschooling Adventures

12 Keys to homeschooling

February 12, 2006 By

Witin the next month or so, we’ll be celebrating our 12th anniversary of homeschooling. Last week Andrea and I discussed the possibility of doing he said/she said posts in recognition of Valentine’s Day. We wanted to reflect back on things we learned over the years. I thought to myself, ‘Surely I can come up with one significant thing that I’ve learned for each year of homeschooling.’ I’m not going to present these in the order in which they were learned. I’d rather present them in what I consider to be the order of importance.

There are an abundance of ‘keys to’ books out there. So, I’m expecting that everyone in familiar with the ‘keys to’ concept. In a way, you can look at my list as a set of morals. In presenting these, I recognize that I won’t be telling you anything that has not been told before.

  1. When you wake up each day, before you get out of bed, forgive your children, in advance, for anything that they might do during the day. Don’t be discouraged if in the course of your day you fail to keep your original intent. Tomorrow is a new day in which a fresh start can be made.
  2. Love unconditionally.
  3. Be humble. Be gentle. Be patient. You were a child once.
  4. Listen to your children.
  5. Trust your children.
  6. Don’t underrate your children.
  7. Don’t control. Set an example instead.
  8. Don’t be afraid to tell your children you were wrong.
  9. It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know.’
  10. Reinvent the wheel. You may get a new wheel.
  11. Look forward to experiencing new things.
  12. Every invention is the result of someone going where no one has gone before.

Like all moralists, I am not really telling you anything new. I’m just reminding you of things that other moralists have said for thousands of years. When I initially jotted down this list, I started to come up with explanations for each. But, as I write this, I don’t see that any explanation is necessary. And so, I offer none.

Filed Under: Articles, Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy

Carnival of Unschooling #3

February 9, 2006 By

A very small carnival this month, but some excellent reading therein.

First up, we have David, making the case for unschooling, which he does quite well, I might add. Loads of good stuff in the many comments as well.

This, and the events going on in our own lives, lead me to thinking about how wonderfully adaptive unschooling is. Just looking at a typical day from Joanne at A Day in our Lives you can see how unschooling doesn’t necessarily mean a day full of disorganized chaos. Even for a family of younger children, like at Patch of Puddles, you can see how their typical day (in pictures even) is at once similar but distinctly different, geared just for them.

Topic can be grabbed on the fly, as they occur, delved into with the child’s interests, with life. See specifically how Homeschooling Mami explores Black history month with her child, and how it is just a part of their lives, appreciating all their friends year round.

I admit, though, there is often a steep learning curve for the parents, as we navigate the uncharted waters. Over at Tricotomania, she talks about our need to plan for things and how sometimes we need to just let go.

The hard parts that go along with that are noted by Janine, on a day where she’s had to wear too many hats.

This gives me pause for reflection, and an urge to dig out an older post of mine from two whole years ago, Homeschooling and the ADD Mom, where I bemoan my sorry state and declare we just can’t unschool. But just look at how far we can come, what our children can do, if only we adapt our thinking and get out of their way.

Note: The Carnival of Unschooling has move to Unschooling Voices.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy, Unschooling Adventures

Understanding children

February 8, 2006 By

A few days, I told you about our upcoming adjustments. In a way, I had to tell you that news before I wrote this. And, to further introduce this post, if the title were separated from the post, the word understanding could be either a verb or an adjective. If it’s a verb, the title might suggest I’m setting out to offer insight into the nature of children. If it’s an adjective, I’m stating a quality or characteristic of children.

Occasionally, after the job interview was scheduled, and more frequently after I’d had the job interview, Andrea and I had many conversations trying to sort out some of the issues (perhaps plan ahead). And the older kids ask questions as well. Once I had the offer on Friday, the discussions became more concrete. On Monday night, Emma asked, ‘When we moved, would that be an event?’. Andrea asked her to explain,

Emma: Some of us will live in this house and some of us will live in another house.
Andrea: Really? Who’s going to live where?
Emma: Addison is going to live here. Emma & Sarah & Meaghan & Mommy & Daddy are going to live in our new house. And we are going to come back and visit Addison…

She went on to describe in a significant amount of detail the current plan insofar as it had been planned out. And then,

Andrea: How do you know all that?
Emma: I just listened.

You might think that while sitting beside Andrea and listening to this, I was stunned, surprised or amazed. Really, what I was thinking was how much our society, in general, underrates its children. I was a bit surprised because we hadn’t talked to her about any of it yet. And I hadn’t noticed that she was around very often when we were talking about it.

Emma is special to us, of course, as she ought to be. But, we do not believe that she is significantly more intelligent than most children her age. This sort of conversation is not unusual for her. I have 2 or 3 conversations a week with her like that one. Sometimes she talks about planets and outerspace, other times about human biology. In the last week or so, she has been trying to sort out a meaning for the word event. The question she asked before the move one was, “When I was born, was that an event?”

In addition to children’s programming, Emma enjoys watching home renovation shows and shows which show the process of making things (like ‘How’s that made?’ and ‘Unwrapped’). Almost on a daily basis she wants to look at, be read to and discuss adult books on history, biology, nature, picture this books (pictures made from small objects), and exploded diagrams.

With the background of the many conversations I’ve had with her, the conversation I described above prompted me to remember something from my own childhood that has nagged away in the background while always managing to elude me. The readers we had at school intended to teach us to read were boring. And if it weren’t for teaching my own children, I would never have figured out why.

School readers are written within the confines of a vocabulary that children are expected to be able to learn and read and write on a test. And my 5 year old’s conversational vocabulary far exceeds anything I would expect any 5 year old to be able to recognize and remember in print. Nor would I expect that all children have a vocabulary which includes uterus, crankshaft, pendulum, archeology or many other words which have occupied the interests of my children at age 5.

I took a break in writing this to read Emma her bedtime stories for the night. I realized that in my head this was turning into a rant. I didn’t want to do that tonight.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy, Unschooling Adventures

Carnival of Homeschooling

January 31, 2006 By

This week, the carnival is hosted by PalmTree Pundit.

We are featured in the keiki (That’s “children” for you tourists. ;) ) section. Anyway, jump on over and take a look. There’s lots to read :)

Filed Under: Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy

Unschooling Hypothesis

January 29, 2006 By

As a preamble to explaining the title of this post, I feel obligated to describe the history of the hypothesis I am going to pose here. A couple weeks ago, I wrote the following:

What I believe is the main philosophy of unschooling is to refrain from teaching a child that it needs to be taught. In the last 5 years, my youngest has learned to feed herself, to walk, to talk, to compose sentences, to communicate complex ideas, to draw, to paint and many other skills. She has a substantial understanding of the world in which she lives and of the functioning of the human body. For many of the things I have listed, she learned them because she saw us doing them and knew that they could be done. For the remainder, our role in her learning has been to provide her with access to resources, to answer her questions and to respond to her needs and wants such as reading to her.

When I wrote that, I sent my mind off brewing an idea for an experiment, however unlikely to be tried, that would demonstrate that the philosophy I described above is valid. While you are reading this, I’d ask you to remember that scientists embarking on an experiment set parameters for the experiment and do their best to observe the parameters. Otherwise, the experiment does not produce useful results. The reason I wanted to point this out is that as you read the parameters you may feel that some of the parameters would be difficult to keep. Those difficulties are one of the reasons this has sat on the back burner for a couple weeks.

Let’s suppose that we could build or create a community which was consistent with a typical community in our society in as many ways as possible except two. The first difference I would like to introduce in this community is that it did not contain a school, college or university. The second difference is that the community would be populated with adults who understood and agreed to the parameters of the experiment, and by young children who did not have a concrete sense of what school was.

  1. The adults would not discuss even among themselves any aspect of their own schooling.
  2. The community would have a community center which included a composite library of the types of materials that would be found in a public library, public school library and a university library.
  3. Children’s television programming would not be school centric as the majority of it is now.
  4. The community would have hi-speed internet access consistent with the typical community in our society.
  5. Children would be permitted or perhaps expected to observe adults carrying out their professions.
  6. Children’s questions on any subject would be taken and responded to seriously.
  7. In general, children would be respected as young people instead of treated as infants, toddlers, preschoolers, elementary kids, tweenies, teenagers, and adolescents.

The hypothesis I would like to put forward is that children in this community would grow up to to take up many of the professions held by the adults in the community without school. The basis of the premise is described in the paragraph I quoted from 2 weeks ago. If the concept of having to be taught was never introduced to children, wouldn’t they continue to assume that they could do or learn to do the things that big people did. If the doctors in the community never told the children about medical school, wouldn’t the children assume that the doctors had learned medicine on their own. And if, from the children’s perspective, the doctors learned medicine on their own, why wouldn’t a child interested in the field believe that they could as well?

You see, the inescapeable logic in our technological society is that the technology itself is in the end a result self-directed learning and not a result of curriculum based teaching. Consider the telephone, electricity, the internal combustion engine, solar power, and the integrated circuit. All of these things were pursued by self-directed people who had no one to teach them how to invent what they pursued out of personal interest. And from my perspective, until the proponents of compulsary schooling are willing to give this experiment a go, there is no evidence that schooling is necessary or even desireable.

Filed Under: Articles, Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy, Unschooling Adventures

Late showing

January 25, 2006 By

Because I was away over the weekend and am still trying to catch up, I’m posting a late link to this week’s Canival of Homeschooling. we are featured in the PHILOSOPHY section.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy

Carnival of Unschooling #2

January 12, 2006 By

Just like dawn rising, snow melting and spring flowers easing their way into the sunshine, many long-term homeschoolers find themselves in a full-blown summer of unschooling, not quite sure how they got there.

But first, for the new readers, WFR at EveryWakingHour will try to answer What is unschooling? A good place to start for a big question, one with many answers.

So that may leave you wondering just what do unschoolers do all day? Play video games? Well, some do. It’s a part of the whole. Everything my son learned about Carthaginians is the fault of Age of Empires.

Perhaps we can stop by Samantha’s and we’ll temporarily interrupt her reading while she highlights some of the learning that goes on. And naturally, one unschooling household learns different things in different ways from another unschooling household. Allison shows us how everyday objects and occurances are chock-full of crunchy learning goodness and all about the word play. And legos. Who doesn’t love legos?

Updated: I missed this link this morning, but oh what a goodie it is! Amelia Earhart / Doc / Butch does a complete breakdown of the practicalities of creating a house, nay, your family, your life, that sets a stage where learning just can’t NOT happen. Even better, it’s part 1 of a series. Thanks, Doc.

Oh, I can hear you now wonder aloud. “But what about basic things like math?” Running2ks has agreed to field this question and shows quite precisely how something seemingly big scary and intangible (for some) like math really is all around us every day.

And there are families for whom unschooling is a season, something that drifts in and out of their routines. Melissa has explained it beautifully, this tidal homeschooling of hers.

Many wonder how something seemingly undisciplined can coexist with a Christian life. Spunky shares her lessons learned while unschooling : four undeniable truths.

After getting past the basics of unschooling, we are often asked deeper and more thought-provoking questions about freedom, choice and responsibility. Daniel talks about subtle differences in the choices we give our children. And in another entry here on site, Ron does a brilliant job of breaking down exactly what any child “needs” to know.

Unfortunately, even unschoolers have to put up with the standard question lobbed at any kind of homeschooler: (say it with me now) “But what about socialization?” Joanne goes further than the pat answers we all give and explains that here too, we give our children choice and freedom.

Thank you for joining us this month! I hope you came away with something thought-provoking, a better understanding of the process of unschooling and possibly some new reads. Tune in next month on the second Thursday, February 9th, for the third round. We are open for submissions until then. Please email the URL of your submission to submissions@atypicalhomeschool.net so they don’t get accidentally missed.

Note: The Carnival of Unschooling has move to Unschooling Voices.

Filed Under: Articles, Carnivals, Educational theory and philosophy

Unschooling and the need to know

January 11, 2006 By

We recently received linkage at The Education Wonks where he mentioned his Expanding Vocabulary. When Andrea found the entry, there was a single comment from Donna. Donna asked an interesting 2 part question.

“How do you reckon “unschooling” addresses the very things kids need to know and understand in order to be successful later on in life? Isn’t that what accountability is all about?”

Donna, if you don’t mind, I would like to address the second question first. My first thought was, ‘accountability to whom?’ In theory, we live in a democratic and free society. The insistence of a need for accountability (something we encounter fairly often) suggests that we do not live in a free society. If an individual is accountable to some one or some group, then they are not free. His or her freedom, success and future are endlessly dependent on the approval of that person or group. A free society does not require accountability. It requires responsibility.

An education model where the student has little choice in the content, in schedule and in determining whether he or she was successful, teaches the student the model of accountability. Students in a classroom setting are accountable to the adult at the front of the class. If one of the aims of education is to produce or perpetuate a free society, then it is essential that the education system inculcate responsibility in its students. A responsible person is free because his or her actions are solely a result of his or her choices.

An unschooling environment affords a child the opportunity to learn responsibility because the child has the opportunity to experience both success and failure at the hands of his or her own choices. Of all things, I believe that being responsible for ones own life is central factor in ones success. (Note: In our society there is a segment of the population that enjoy a success that was created for them by others.)

In your first question, you asked about the things kids need to know. I think you will find the definition of what they need to know has been debated since the inception of compulsary schooling. The reality is that we live in a changing world. Much of what I needed to know when I was my children’s age, is no longer taught in public schools. One might believe that the basics of reading and writing essential to people in our society. However, given the statistic I wrote about a few months ago, obviously they are not essential. It is of no less consequence that, given that statistic, the system established to educate our society continues to operate without accountability.

A third subject which is usually identified as ‘basic’ is math. I agree that it would be difficult to live in our society without basic skills in math. A simple solution to this for an unschooler is for the child to have an allowance. Through an allowance, a child will learn basic computational skills and budgeting. However, it is difficult to imagine that the typical child will not exceed the abilities acquired through managing finances, in pursuing his or her interests. Estimating both time and distance require math skills. Many hobbies including most games make use of math.

What I believe is the main philosophy of unschooling is to refrain from teaching a child that it needs to be taught. In the last 5 years, my youngest has learned to feed herself, to walk, to talk, to compose sentences, to communicate complex ideas, to draw, to paint and many other skills. She has a substantial understanding of the world in which she lives and of the functioning of the human body. For many of the things I have listed, she learned them because she saw us doing them and knew that they could be done. For the remainder, our role in her learning has been to provide her with access to resources, to answer her questions and to respond to her needs and wants such as reading to her. Prior to compulsary pre-schooling, this was how nearly all children spent their early life. It is obvious that, barring severe handicaps, with or without being taught, children are capable of learning.

Given that we live in an unprecedented era of change, the skill which is essential to a young adult hoping for success in life is the ability to learn. The importance of facts is as changeable as the weather. Who could forecast what facts my 5 year old will need to know when she is 20?

Filed Under: Articles, Carnivals, Unschooling Adventures

Carnival of Unschooling #1

December 6, 2005 By

Gather ’round all yee readers, for the first edition of the Carnival of Unschooling. “But what is unschooling?” you may ask. Go forth to wikipedia and readeth the entry on unschooling, and then come back. I’ll wait.

Ready? Well, let’s see what unschooling gems we have discovered in the blog-o-sphere…
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Carnivals, General
Newer Posts »