Comments on: Unschooling and parenting

By: Atypical Homeschool.net » 2 more posts

Atypical Homeschool.net » 2 more posts — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:09:55 +0000

[...] I’ve found 2 more posts, written in response to the Unschooling Voices question I answered here, by WJFR & Gem. [...]

By: everywakinghour » Unschooling and Reflecting On How to Live

everywakinghour » Unschooling and Reflecting On How to Live — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:07:27 +0000

[...] We were having visitors and travelling last month and so I missed out on writing an entry for Unschooling Voices #2. Besides, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to write… Ron wrote it all out for me at Atypical Homeschool in a post called Unschooling and Parenting. Like Ron and Andrea, my husband and I were practicing mostly attachment parenting before we knew what it was called. And it was working. AP took several years to seep into our educational method, though, or rather into mine. (My husband has always been sort of an unschooler at heart.) [...]

By: lesa

lesa — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:22:24 +0000

great post Ron…

but I’m here to give a bit of advice to Kay… Kay, you can still show your kids logic, reason, and rhetoric without “schooling” them in it. the beautiful thing about unschooling is… is that all that time that would be taken up by school work is now time freed up for LIVING! woohoo! talk, talk, and talk some more to your kids… discuss the fallacies that you see… discuss how to argue without hitting below the belt. listen to talk radio, watch TV, go out into the world and see for yourselves how life works and then talk to your kids about your values and then listen to what they think about what they’re experiencing.

really, I never heard of logic, reason and rhetoric studies until I came to CM while researching different homeschooling methodologies… and very very quickly came to unschooling (it just fits us… we love freedom!) I am a Public School survivor… but I am now a LIVER of unschooling!

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 02:52:34 +0000

WJFR – We’ve met quite a few that are making their way there.

In addition to what Ren has described, we have also seen that with bigger families it has been things that have shown up in the oldest that have prompted them to reconsider the method of education.

By: Ren

Ren — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:22:17 +0000

Y’know, I really wish I had come to unschooling through our other parenting methods…but it was unschooling that helped change the other. For me, it was easier to trust their “educational” learning, but I got stuck on more traditional methods in relation to chores, discipline etc…

Unschooling helped me see (finally) that if I could trust them to learn what they want, when they want, then that included ALL of their lives, not just academic stuff.

I think there’s an advantage in coming to it the way you did, because there is such a great foundation of trust established between parent and child. I had some damage to undo in my case….sigh.

By: Kay

Kay — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:32:05 +0000

I love the unschooling philosophy but have done so much reading about homeschooling that I’ve just confused the heck out of myself. I’ve been homeschooling our daughter for 8 years now (since she was born) and we pulled our (before we knew about homeschooling) son out of school when he was 8. I’ve never been consistent, switching from school at home, to eclectic to Charlotte Mason to unschooling then back to relaxed eclectic and now seriously considering a classical education because the arguments for it “seem” so right.

Classical education teaches logic, reason and rhetoric which is something that I never learned going to public school. I never learned how to spot fallacies or argue properly, so to me it seems as though its a must…but my heart just can’t get there. Is there a way to help children in those three areas without a classical education which suggests that the child learn in chronological order and be forced to write, read, write read all day long?

My son will be 12 in a couple of weeks and he does talk about going to college someday, I’m just starting to get a little bit freaked out and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

By: WJFR

WJFR — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:59:36 +0000

That’s how I got there, too. At some point I realized that a lot of my homeschooling had gotten a bit artificial compared to the way I did parenting and other things. So it was the other way about, for me too.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:40:44 +0000

JoVE – I think it would be fascinating to read the progression from the perspect of a parent of younger children.

Jax & Carrie – You could both answer the question from your own perspective. Perhaps in the sense of how the lines between homeschooling and pareting have blurred.

By: Carrie K.

Carrie K. — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:24:41 +0000

Glad you’re posting again!

By: JoVE

JoVE — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:33:39 +0000

That is very well said. I think I might need to write something for this carnival too, though I suspect it might be very similar to what you have said. Maybe the short version is ‘No, but the rest of my life has led me to unschooling’.