Can Unschooling Clearly Exist?

[Sandra Dodd]

The writing below was for something on the AlwaysLearning list, but I think it's better suited for this. On that list I called it "Christianity and other cults" but neither title is perfect. It's about the integrity of unschooling itself, and a reminder that people should try to see it as separate from any one set of spiritual preferences.

It's not an easy topic. It won't hurt my feelings if everyone ignores it. It helped me to write it out and try to list the angles from which unschooling has been questioned and criticized, or from which people have said "But you're unschooling--don't you also believe X about (morality/TV/plastic/chickens/ecology)?"

==================================

Christianity has for years had the most effect on homeschoolers who aren't even Christian, in the U.S. anyway. Ten years ago, they were being told they created, owned and operated homeschooling. It wasn't true, but it was reported with feeling, and with statistics, and one tendency of Christianity is they trust that men of God (however self-proclaimed) are telling the truth.

Lately there are another couple of movements (in the US, and maybe it's more widespread) people have jumped into. They too sometimes (too often) assume that all other unschoolers are coming from that perspective too. One group adopts Marshall Rosenberg's stuff in a religious way and come to consider those don't want to side up with the giraffes or the kangaroos to be heathens (or out of the corner of their minds, categorize them as "violent communicators"). The other group wants desperately to believe in Ester Hicks and her imaginary friend, because if they believe those things they can be rich and happy.

A little older than that and less harsh in the assumptions is formalized paganism.

Waldorf is another set of beliefs that can turn cult-like with some people. The best way to get over that one is to read more and more about Rudolf Steiner. (Or don't get over it, but don't try to cram unschooling into that limited area.)

From the point of view of people who like the idea of being surrounded by powerful spirits and "laws" and who like to feel helplessly placed where they are (or worse, powerfully placed where they are by pre-birth contracts), humanistic ideas of genetics and native intelligence and potential for goodness and plain-old cause and effect without cosmic factors probably can seem irritating.

If unschoolers have other religious or philosophies, that's probably not going to be a problem if their own families can figure out how to prioritize the requirements of the situation. If they believe more in one than the other, that will help them in their decision making. If the two coexist smoothly and easily or they can find a source of assistance to tweak their understanding so that they can do both at once, great!

I know there are people on this list with fondness for or deep involvement in one or more of those "come and belong to us!" groups. I don't think of humanism as a group, but some people do and have managed to make a minor counter-religion of it, just as some atheists have, with meetings and literature and I guess they have picnics and social stuff.

I'm not trying to talk anybody out of their spiritual preferences. I just want to say to everyone, as I've said to Christians since I first started having to defend my own unschooling on the *Prodigy user group, that people can homeschool without being Christian. People can unschool without having the overlay of another set of rules and justifications. Not all homeschoolers are "pro life" or vegetarian or believers in a pre-birth waiting room, and it should be remembered that not all other unschoolers believe any particular thing about politics or diet or spirituality.

Just as unschooling works the same way for all kinds of kids, it works the same way within all kinds of side-beliefs (or primary beliefs, if that other belief is larger than unschooling in that family), if it will work at all.

Unschooling works when the parents are open and energetic and creative and love their kids without a set of reasons to suspect them and limit them and hold them back. That works not because I said it, and not because there are laws at work in the universe that draw it out to work. It works because of human nature. If people go with human nature instead of against it when they're in the parents-of-young-children phases, the results are way bigger than had ever been suggested in anything I had read when Kirby was little. I've seen it in many other families whose kids are young adults now. We really, truly are onto something wonderful and it works by itself, once you get it working, in normal houses without magic requirements and without special equipment.

[Ren]

I think that's what bugs me about all the Law of Attraction stuff. Sure, I agree that changing your thinking to be more positive is always helpful. Sure, I agree that shifting your thoughts can change the opportunities in your life. Awareness is very useful.

But this:
~~If you want a garden, start small, learn more, plant stuff, trade seeds, plant again and more extensively next year.~~

is more what I believe works really well for life. Get off your ass and do something. You can think and manifest all day and a garden won't grow. Action has great power. Even more than mere thoughts.

The two together will help you get really far though.:)

[Joni Zander]

Funny, I just read a great article about the Law of Attraction (LoA) this morning over at Oprah. It really explained it in a much more realistic way - in a way that I believe is more useful. I don't think it is about thinking and manifesting - even though that's what all the LoA gurus seem to be promoting. (Of course, if they were saying to the masses, "You have to get up and make things happen" they wouldn't be selling as many books and movies, right?)

In the article, Martha Beck talks about how most people try to use LoA in "the shallows" - that place of materialism and wanting. But LoA can't be about getting stuff. I believe it really is about finding your authentic core and making your life work from there. Now, maybe I'm not really getting it, but that is what I believe it is. And I think that's why it rings true to so many RUers - because that's what we do. We find our authentic core - who we are at our center - and make our life, and the lives of our families work from there.

So, Ren, I agree, the two together will help you get really far!

[Julie B]

The word that kept occurring to me as you discussed various beliefs was "cling," and how clinging to anything at all (including, paradoxically, the label "unschooling") is contrary to the basic tenets of unschooling. Naw, maybe that's too strongly stated. People may be very attached to the idea that unschooling is The Right Way, and that may fit in perfectly to someone's religion of/belief in unschooling. But isn't the key to successful unschooling the ability to get over our attachment to everything under the sun? Or is it only nearly everything?

What I personally have discovered through unschooling is the freedom that comes when we release attachment to static perspectives. So through unschooling, I've also had to get beyond unschooling. This also comes from someone who laps up that Law of Attraction crap (or a certain segment of it, at least) like candy. I'm happy to call it crap or gold or anything at all and to simply see it as a way that I use right now to feel better. I've also used chocolate or nursing or the Flying Spaghetti Monster to feel better. (In fact, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has never failed to help me feel better.) And I've heard that some enlightened people use nothing at all but pure being. (Image of big red ball from I Heart Huckabees here.)

I guess what I constantly reach for when observing my own belief system is a combination of acceptance (for whatever works right now) and a broad, flexible perspective (i.e., knowing that anything at all could turn out to be a load of hooey and being willing to move with it). Agility describes it pretty well, I think.

[Ren]

~~In the article, Martha Beck talks about how most people try to use LoA in "the shallows" - that place of materialism and wanting.~~


That is my other issue with it.:)
Most of the people (not all) that talk about it, are so focused on manifesting STUFF in their lives.
I'm trying to learn how to live with less "stuff" and less need for "stuff" so it's hard for me to see how LOA fits into that.

But I like some of it. Just like I love parts of Buddhism and parts of Taoism. Whatever fits for the journey and resonates within ME. Mostly, I like what is in me....because I don't need another person's religion or belief system to find that.

All those other systems and beliefs and dogma came from another human. What *I* come up with is more valid for my own journey. I think we can get encouragement and shifts and all sorts of cool things by learning from others. At the end of the day, I answer to my inner guidance and my family though. That's what matters to me...being able to live with myself.

[Sandra Dodd]

I haven't seen it lately, but years back it happened three or four times that someone (failing to make friends right up front) would write "Well, that's fine for your children, but we really care what happens to ours" (some version of that), or "I'm sure that's fine for your children, but ours are gifted."

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-I believe what Jesus taught was important and that we can use it in our lives. Christianity was supposed to stem from that premise--that we follow Christ. -=-

In the old days of Christianity, only priests read much philosophy and history (Jesuits; not the Franciscans, I don't know about the others). Protestants seem to have been actively discouraged from studying non-Christian texts.

There was medieval resistance to learning what Moorish doctors knew because they were infidels.

My point is about to come. :-) If you read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman who wrote quite a bit for a guy who was going to become emperor, you'll see many things that sound like Jesus. He didn't get them from Jesus. Those are just some of the best ideas people had in those days, in Rome and Greece and thereabout. It's better for Christianity's exclusionary habits to tell people not to read outside stuff or it will shake their faith.

There are Christian homeschoolers who make their kids study baroque and classical music, but only by Christian composers. So they know Bach, but the don't know Beethoven because he wasn't writing for church-purposes. He wasn't a church-going father of twelve (or however many kids Bach had). Handel is in. Mozart is sometimes out and sometimes in.

That's a lot of convoluted sorting, but it's because their homeschooling is part of their religion. So our ideas about letting kids explore and choose is dangerous satanic nonsense to them.

"The Golden Rule" is something some Christians love to think was a Jesus original, too, but it was everywhere already, because it makes simple good sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity

And as to Jesus impressing priests, I doubt they were quizzing him on times tables. From his mom's side he had purity. From his step father he learned carpentry. From his biological dad he MUST have gotten a lot of existential intelligence. (Let us not think otherwise.)

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-I do think it clearly exists.... unschooling. Especially in its more radical apparitions.-=-

Can it exist in the clear, though, separate from add-ons. I think it can and does.

[Sandra Dodd]

I don't think Ren was saying "the two" (law of attraction and actually doing things) would work together.

If unschoolers are already doing what Martha Beck said on Oprah (just going from what you wrote above), and Martha Beck is backtracking on behalf of the LoA gurus (this is irritating for me to even write about) then why not just bypass ALL of that and unschool the way others have been doing for 20 years?

Just think directly and clearly about what's right here right now, without reference to who was on Oprah or what people are arguing about on webpages FULLY designed to rake in money.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=- a broad, flexible perspective (i.e., knowing that anything at all could turn out to be a load of hooey-=-

Holding a baby isn't hooey.
Nursing a baby isn't hooey.
Learning by observing that babies like to be in a peaceful place isn't hooey.
And when those things lead to a cradle-to-adulthood environment of attachment parenting gone large, where could the hooey come in?

[Julie B]

Right, and the things that aren't hooey stand out so clearly, so life unfolds easily from that. But when I see myself with the potential for getting attached to orthodoxy, "hooey" is an easy, useful, playful concept for me to keep in mind.

An example of my "hooey" is thinking everyone should be like me.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-Nobody is just one thing. That's one of the practical (and pie in the sky) values of unschooling. It's both.-=-

I'm just Sandra. There are parts of that. I have lots of hobbies and friendships and projects, and so I'm part of them at the same time they're part of me.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=- Martha Beck talks about how most people try to use LoA in "the shallows" - that place of materialism and wanting.-=-

This is so far from being right in the right now.

IF LoA is (as practiced by most people) about materialism and wanting (even if what they want is happiness and peace), then how is that the shallow end? Why does there need to be any definition or exploration of the deeper end?

Becoming happier and becoming more peaceful can just be done in every moment that a person makes decisions about whether to do one thing or another. They only need to "visualize" to the point that they have a direction. Too much detailed visualization will result in failure. Knowing the principles by which one wants to live and then making decisions in that light is likely to lead to success in each small moment, and small moments lead up to big lives.

http://sandradodd.com/parentingpeacefully
http://sandradodd.com/choice
http://sandradodd.com/principles/