"With our youngest we have had this conversation many times:
"Would you like to try this?"
"No."
"OK, that's no problem."
A minute passes.
"Actually, yes, I would like to try that."
Every person is…"
the network for radical unschooling families
Scott's Groups
Gifts Received
Scott has not received any gifts yet
Scott's Page
Profile Information
- what does "radical unschooling" mean to you?
- Unschooling is learning or education which is free from a specific fixed curriculum that is followed strictly. In comparison to work, normal schooling is like a factory job where you are trained as a machine and follow directions precisely, whereas unschooling is like a vocation where one creates new products, writes books, performs scientific research, or other interesting or useful activities.
minifaq
Q: "Scott, I noticed in your definition you failed to use the qualifier 'radical', so does that mean you are one of those good for nothing low down ordinary unschoolers who are simply not committed enough to the cause?"
A:I have done my own thing long before the unschooling or radical unschooling labels ever existed. As did my father before me and his father before him. And I continue the traditional learning with my own children. These terms are only labels. As such, they are very useful as a description and as a way of understanding. I do not see any of them as proscriptions, and not as a church or a set of teachings to be followed. No one invented unschooling. No one invented radical unschooling. Both have been around since the advent of mankind.
- how long have you been unschooling or homeschooling?
- Kids could be said since 2008, or 2002 if we'll say since birth and not call the point that otherwise they would have entered school.
Self for a long time.
- first names of children
- 3 children.
- a little about me
- Without getting too specific since net stalkers like to fish for personal details to launch attacks: I am a designer of many interesting things. Some of these things are complex. Some are musical. Many are both.
My spouse is a traditional healer, using herbs and methods which are thousands of years old. She gets very good results and seems to attract many hopeless chronic cases for whom all other methods of healing have failed. She is well respected in the medical community.
We do organic farming non-professionally.
Concepts
"[Thomas] Jefferson conceived of the university as a non-coercive entity, allowing relative autonomy to the individual faculty members and their individual schools, and fostering a mixture of independence and interdependency. The model departed radically from the compulsory curricula employed by other universities of the period. With an entirely elective course of study, involving no class divisions and no requirements regarding attendance or coursework, no set textbooks and no disciplinary system, the University of Virginia, in its first academic year, was as deferential to the judgments of its students as it was distrustful of the judgments of a single authority figure." — http://faculty.virginia.edu/villagespaces/essay/#36r
"Television destroys the power to think by providing pre-seen sights, pre-thought thoughts, and unwholesome fantasies." — John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher, 2001, pg. 68
"Institutions create certainties, and taken seriously, certainties deaden the heart and shackle the imagination." — Ivor Illich, The Celebration of Awareness: A call for institutional revolution, 1970
"Television destroys the power to think by providing pre-seen sights, pre-thought thoughts, and unwholesome fantasies." — John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher, 2001, pg. 68
"Institutions create certainties, and taken seriously, certainties deaden the heart and shackle the imagination." — Ivor Illich, The Celebration of Awareness: A call for institutional revolution, 1970
Scott's Photos
Scott's Blog
Fall Reading
Posted on October 7, 2010 at 4:27pm 4 Comments 0 Likes
They each have magazine subscriptions they have chosen and an important event each day is the walk to the mailbox to see if anything has come for them. Which one is in charge of this task is rotated, but both of them almost always go together regardless of whose turn it is. When a new issue comes, often they don't manage to return to the house for some hours. Here is where I found them this evening.…
Continue
Unschooling is for Everyone
Posted on October 7, 2010 at 12:30pm 3 Comments 0 Likes
Schooling is a recent invention in human history and since becoming institutionalized has been used much as tool of oppression, suppression and enforced conformity.
Unschooling is a much older way of learning.
Some may ask, can unschooling benefit everyone? Are there classes of people who can not benefit from the unschooling approach?
One might wonder for example if a family is not wealthy, does not have a car, lives…
Continue You don't get to call yourself an unschooler
Posted on October 7, 2010 at 4:49am 8 Comments 0 Likes
What sort of power dynamic must exist for one person to be able to determine what another person gets to do, or to determine as their identity, or even description of how they live their life?
For one person to suppose to tell another than they don't get to call themselves something then the first person must be some sort of very high ranking and powerful dictator who has the right to tell others who they are and what they can do.
Such a power…
Continue Building a Cat House
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 11:30pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
We had a tree felled last week. Since then they have been working outside most of the day each day on different projects with the limbs. There have been many experiments with arrangements of limbs to see which is the most stable. There has also been exploration and…
Continue Latest Activity
Scott commented on sarah newell's blog post school attendance order"Attendance and schooling laws vary from state to state in the US, so here it depends.
I see you're in the UK and will call that out in case any other UK readers see this comment and have advice.
In the US, I'm skeptical that…"
Scott replied to Hema A Bharadwaj's discussion Need advice about Snap Circuits"Since he is so obsessed with it you should probably just get it!
I checked the RadioShack site, the prices are similar to amazon's now. Maybe I got ours during a clearance sale or such. One think about them that wasn't ideal was the…"
Scott replied to Hema A Bharadwaj's discussion Need advice about Snap Circuits"I got these for DS8 when he was 5. He was able to follow the instructions and make things and by 6 he was improvising. The set we got seems closest to the SC-500 kit there, but if I remember right it was around $35 on sale at radio shack, not…"
Scott replied to Lauren Fisher's discussion Does embracing unschooling philosophy also mean that we can reject labelling our children?Scott replied to Missy Bell's discussion Deschooling."Hi Missy, I didn't get any sense from your post you were "being dramatic" as you called it, sounds like you're just saying what your concerns are and that's good.
It blows my mind how only a year in school tried to…"
Scott commented on Sazz's blog post Avoiding Ultrasound: on the fringes of the fringes"Correction to last comment — my wife reminds me that the fetalscope (stethoscope for hearing baby heartbeat) was what they used after the first trimester. The issue with the doppler was that for the first check at 10 weeks they couldn't…"
Scott commented on Dawning's blog post He Wants Worksheets!!! EEEKKK!!!!"It sounds like there are two separate issues here, though they came up at the same time. One issue is that today he thinks he is not smart.
The other is that he is interested in doing worksheets. I'll just address this second concern. I do…"
Scott commented on Scott's blog post Fall Reading"Yes, volcanic craters definitely qualify.
Sand, it depends. Sand on a beach is pretty close to swimming pools so that wouldn't qualify. But sand in a desert might qualify depending on what sort of desert. For example, steppes, which are the…"
Fawn Klein commented on Scott's blog post Fall Reading"what about the beach? On the sand ?
If We were to haul books up to the rim of Carney (an extinct volcano crater) Can that be close enough to meadow?"
Fawn Klein commented on Scott's blog post Hair Issues"I try not to judge people by anything.
Not by hair style and not by where they live (for example a bum)
I hate the Grammar Nazi's who see fit to correct others on the net. I see it as judging another for not using the Queen's English.
And…"
BetteAnne commented on Scott's blog post You don't get to call yourself an unschooler"good post Fawn! :o)"
Fawn Klein commented on Scott's blog post You don't get to call yourself an unschooler"Thank You !! I agree whole heartedly.
I wonder how a line can really be drawn between an Radical Unschooler and a Unschooler?
It is like politics sometimes I lean more Republican and sometimes more Liberal. This year I think I'm more…"
Fawn Klein left a comment for Scott"Scott,
Been away for awhile. Glad to see someone with the same views as I have still on here. Ok, Maybe we don't have every view about unschooling the same but you are a lot closer to my beliefs and how I interpret unschooling.
I deplore how…"
Koffee Witch commented on Scott's blog post Hair Issues"Yes, I do know some straight edgers (mostly because I'm a longtime vegetarian)....even if I don't often agree with their sometimes violent methods (beating up drug dealers/users, etc.) I can sympathize with their need to separate…"
Badge
Latest Activity
Blog Posts
what do you want to be when you grow up?
Posted by laura bowman on May 10, 2013 at 10:38am 1 Comment 2 Likes
Boys & Writing
Posted by Sue Patterson on May 6, 2013 at 9:38pm 0 Comments 3 Likes
This evening...
Posted by Sunset on April 24, 2013 at 10:23pm 0 Comments 1 Like
Re-Awakening
Posted by Rainbow Rivers on April 16, 2013 at 4:58pm 0 Comments 1 Like
maybe new to Missouri....
Posted by Alexandra Jacobs on March 22, 2013 at 9:11am 1 Comment 0 Likes
© 2013 Created by laura bowman.
Powered by
Comment Wall (1 comment)
You need to be a member of Radical Unschoolers Network to add comments!
Join Radical Unschoolers Network
Been away for awhile. Glad to see someone with the same views as I have still on here. Ok, Maybe we don't have every view about unschooling the same but you are a lot closer to my beliefs and how I interpret unschooling.
I deplore how one or a small group of people try to fine tune their ideas about what Radical Unschooling has to be on a way of life/schooling. It is more like a concept with no concrete structure but a bunch of basic ideas. Well, it seems that way to me anyway.
When they give me a list of concrete "what Radical Unschool is" It is like them trying to force me to see their views. These same people who don't even want to force their views and ideals on their kids want to force me to accept their opinion of what unschooling is.
I came here to join people who want to accept everyone as they are and who have similar views and opinions. We all have something to add to the whole family of Radical unschoolers and unschoolers as a whole.
Maybe I'm not radical enough in all my beliefs but who is to say I'm not more radical of an unschooler than someone else? Is there a line that can be drawn between the radical unschooler and just a unschooler?
I am so glad we joined up as friends.
Ciao from Italy (I can't get on here much I only get 5 hours a day of internet.) But I enjoy reading your comments when I have some time left over.
Fawn