I Don't Think I CAN

I got a bit stressed yesterday thinking about this whole unschooling thing, and decided to give it a rest. I wrote on a message board "I get emotional about this unschooling stuff, and I can't figure out why". It's true!

I think it MAY be because it presses my "magical thinking" buttons.... "just trust the process" -- somehow it will work. That's not enough! So often, that is just a short cut to the ditch.

Neil Young says "the ditch is rougher going, but you meet more interesting people there." In a certain sense, it's absolutely true. Sometimes it's nice to take the scenic route. Not nice, but good. So I can see continuing to ponder the unschooling thing, but I CAN'T just meander in. I'll have to drive in on purpose.

For now, we're going to keep up the math and Latin and I will keep up this blog to record how we are all learning, all the time.

More thoughts again

In the past, I found that super-rigorous didn't work at all for us (for ME or for my kids) and that too little structure made me frustrated and uneasy, and my kids stressed. They felt that the expectations went underground there, and that was probably a true perception. I still had expectations, but I wasn't giving them clear clues how to meet them.

Nowadays, I tend to try things, and then back off if there is a lot of resistance, and try it a different way. I suppose that COULD be called unschooling, in a certain sense of the word. I don't like "schooly" activities and avoid them for my sake as much as because the kids don't like them. Our homeschool is fairly relaxed.

However, it keeps close enough ties to conventionality that if the kids get motivated to excel, they have the basic grounding.

But it doesn't flow from day to day life and interests -- it flows more from a vision of what academics should look like. I don't feel I'm expressing myself well there. I don't have rigid expectations of how learning should look, YET I do have this sort of ideal, and the ideals of classical education (which resemble CM's in the big picture, to me) are the closest to my ideal. I know I've gone on and on about this before, so I won't do it again.

I like the "Homeschooling with Gentleness" vision because it keeps to a minimum of 3Rs and leaves a lot of leeway for the "4Reals". I feel our homeschool needs some more exploring, mentoring time, that it's gotten a bit too compartmentalized -- me saying "Do this and that," and the kids doing it to be done so they can get on with life. ... while I am getting through it for the same reason, so that I can basically chill and get away from them -- exaggerating a bit there but it has been a trend at times.

It makes me feel anxiety though to think of cutting back even that much. My plans are a bit of a security blanket, giving me a way to interact with the kids and disciple them, even if it's a bit artificial. I still can't quite see what to replace them with.

The following are just my thoughts (confused ones...). I hesitate in a way to believe that there is more than one way to approach education. I believe that there are general principles for living, and that there are various "tools" to help accomplish those goals. Plus, different emphases can be present at different times.

Taking classical education, I think the focus is on the ideal, the ideal of what is best and most vital in human knowledge. It's a given that no one person will actually reach this perfectly. But striving for it induces humility and lots of other good qualities (at least, potentially, and that's what I'm talking about). Humility is a GOOD thing; Socrates thought the main benefit of his approach is that it required, and induced humility -- an acknowledgement that the quest is lifelong, will involve all our faculties and the goal will never quite be reached, though there IS constant progress.

But the concept that each person has something to offer is "implied" in classical education, I believe. The focus is on the ideal, but liberal arts is education for the "free man" and Christianity added the truth that we are ALL free men; that we all have different callings in life but that we share our humanness and that anything we are and do by our very nature, we can learn to be and do better.

Charlotte Mason brings this out a lot in her writings as well. We are ALL entitled to have our feet set in a "broad room" as she writes; it's not two tracks, one for the "slaves" who are merely trained to mechanical work, and another for the "free men" who can afford to focus on their humanity and pursue education "freely". We are all free men in God; it is our heritage, that He has given us.

The unschooling literature discusses some of these same truths, but in such different terms it is sometimes hard to recognize. The focus is on the individual there, and implicit is the idea of a goal. So there is the same balance in mind, but a different emphasis.

I fear loss of humility, and a radical subjectivism, if the focus is too much on the individual. I don't think the unschooling "philosophy" recognizes the danger enough, and some of the secular unschoolers actually embrace radical subjectivism and dismiss the cultural heritage altogether, and reach for a kind of complacency that dismisses any humility or acknowledgement of inadequacy. That's what bogs me down whenever I look at unschooling -- sometimes, the philosophical underpinnings ARE contradictory to what I believe to be true. I was just reading one of those types of articles yesterday -- ugh.

With classical education, also, the focus (this time on the ideal education) can get too fixed and the individual, in this case, can be forgotten or subsumed. There is a sort of radical "objectivism" that's always a heresy or danger in our Church and takes spiritual form in Jansenism, Phariseeism etc. I think you are right in saying that is in many ways a worse danger. People end up measuring "success" in narrow, legalistic terms and judging accordingly and forcing students through hoops.

It IS a danger but not as much of a danger for ME personally because of my background. I was sort of an unschooler at heart before they even existed formally. I did the minimum I could in school, kept my head down and my thoughts to myself, and saved my "real learning" for outside the classroom. So I have no problem in believing that unschooling "works", because it DID work in my own experience, I just have regrets about my arrogance and reflexive dismissal of authority. And sometimes I fear my own kids are different "types" and wouldn't learn as much as I did -- to be perfectly honest!

I think that a large part of education is fostering humility and a sense of awe and love. When we TRIED unschooling, I felt that the measure of everything for my kids and for me became too much, my KIDS. They were the standard of measurement, if you see what I am saying. If they didn't like something, or didn't want to do it, then that was the final court, the veto.

I see some of the products of unschooling, the grown kids, writing in those terms -- what suits ME, what *I* want to do with my life. I admire confidence and a can-do attitude, but it has to be subordinate, in my view. Of course, I am talking about teens and young adults here, so maybe that is just how that age group writes! I can't dismiss that possibility!

That's why I appreciate talking with all you with a Catholic unschooling approach, because I can see that this doesn't HAVE to be the way it is. I see you can unschool, focus on the kids, but avoid focusing on them in a navel-focusing way

I see that in many of John Holt's writings as well. He talks about education as "access" -- letting children be part of the adult world, letting their lives and work and learning be real, letting them get away from the useless clutter associated with large scale, institutionalized education. Sort of like what Elizabeth was saying much earlier in this thread. Probably many homeschoolers instinctively work this way, and that's why many different approaches can actually "work", be effective, because they follow effective general principles even though the approach or "tools" may differ. Kids are adaptable -- they can grow up fine in many different types of households as long as they are respected and loved, challenged and encouraged, etc. Anyway, that's my tentative theory FWIW.


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(I took this out of the post I wrote above because it seemed like a sort of side-issue that I wasn't dealing with specifically enough to be helpful in a public forum)

I try to do that largely with discipline and child-raising, I realize. 90% of our discipline is purely positive -- nurturing relationships, meeting needs, discovering what type of people our little ones are, providing an environment where seeking virtue is expected, modelled, sought out as desirable and FULFILLING. OK, I am not saying we live this out day to day but that that is how we THINK about it (DH and I, and now the older teens for the most part as well).

There is some negative discipline, of course, and some very ineffective discipline as well, and things we miss because of our own personal blind spots. But the point I'm making is that if Catholic character formation can be like that without being permissive (we certainly have our permissive moments but I'm talking about the overall pattern and direction here), why can't academic education be like that?

OK, it's Sunday

So here's one more question.

Now let's say I DID move a bit more towards unschooling this school year. What would that actually involve, in our homeschool?

I would like to concentrate a bit more on what I would call "real life". Potentially, that means involving the kids in productive work and in community life. But that rings all my danger bells. I'm an introvert! plus, those general types of goals involve servility -- I'm doing something FOR something else, which implies that the first thing is subservient to the second. When we get involved in something, like football, it is because the activity itself is WORTH the torment of getting outside, mingling with people we don't know very well, and divebombing hornets. You should have seen the ones getting Kevin yesterday at Mendota. He even captured one live on videotape.

So right now I'll rephrase that to say -- I'd like to be more attentive to OUR daily life as it is lived now, and more attentive to my kids as they really are, and do bookish things because I think it would be a good way to spend time together, not to get through a curriculum.

I'm still going to keep up with the math and Latin for now, because that's where my comfort level is.

The kids are hungry for BOOKS. I can try to hunt down some books they would like, around the house and at the library.

I'll go for cultural heritage -- no chronological agenda, but books to awake interest and clusters of books to continue interest if it is awoken. Like right now, Sean is reading ancient history books and asking for more. Brendan wants adventure books.

Argument for Unschooling

I have been rereading Homeschooling with Gentleness and the second time around, I'm reading it with slightly different eyes. I wanted to point out her "Argument for Unschooling" on p 23, because I just skimmed it on the first reading and the second time, it jumped out at me:

Why Unschooling Makes Sense:


--What a child needs to learn (ie the 3Rs I suppose) is not hard in itself.
--A child has a natural ability and inclination to learn.
---A child also has a strong desire to imitate his parents: to know what they do and do what they do.
---A learner is the primary agent of his learning -- and acknowledging truth that avoids the danger of over-teaching or teaching things before the student is ready to learn.



These things are all said often, so often that I suppose my eye skipped over them the first reading, but I believe she supports them quite well with examples. Plus, I've seen all these principles at work in my own homeschool. They ring true with me.

I suppose the main thing that stills worry me a bit is:

Granted that learning the 3Rs is not difficult, are the basic 3Rs "enough"? Catholics have a long honorable tradition of intellectual excellence, involving the study of Latin and Greek, logic and rhetoric, etc. While not every student can or should be a second Thomas Aquinas, isn't there a sort of heritage beyond reading, writing and 'rithetic that we owe some sort of responsibility to?

I think Suzy Andres answers this by saying that her unschooling way is a "little way" -- not that it CAN'T produce scholars, but that it will suit itself to the individual child and his circumstances and gifts. IOW, many unschooled kids DO end up at Stanford and Harvard etc, but that path isn't for everyone and unschooling doesn't guarantee that kind of results.

But then the methods that DO claim to equip every kid for Harvard certainly don't produce 100 percent results, and basically the blame ends up with the homeschooling parents for doing it "wrong" or the kids for being unmotivated and lazy or dullwitted, etc.

In other words, unschooling has a POTENTIAL to produce scholars, and so do other methods -- but none of the methods ASSURE those results, so unschooling is honest about acknowledging this as a good thing and gearing itself to the unique child. Plus, the world does need some Catholic scholars but mostly needs well-formed and informed Catholic laity, and that's a lot more reachable goal.

I can see that -- but I suppose I worry that this more "classical" form of education takes years and years of work. A child can't just start up in his high school years -- or maybe he or she can?? I don't know -- my father spent his first 8 school years or so mostly wasting his time in a small rural school, then went to a rigorous academically oriented high school and excelled, and went on from there. He could do that because he was intellectually gifted and also hard-working and eager to take advantage of his academic opportunities, and those aren't things that are acquired by years of drudging through intellectual labor -- it's a matter of capability, and desire/will.

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Oh, I think another way Suzy addresses the question about the 3Rs being "enough" is by her chapter on books as friends. A less bookish unschooler might address the question by pointing to community involvement, or historical re-enactments etc.

The 3Rs are "tools" for further exploration, but the "cultural heritage" part is addressed by exposing the child to, well, a cultural heritage. Whether books or whatever the parent WANTS his kids to grow up knowing and valuing -- those are the things that will be part of the family's life (hopefully).

Some More Questions

How does unschooling mesh with the ideal of a liberal arts education?

Let's say a child is interested in the Legend of Zelda video game, or in having a pet? (two particular interests of my 9 year old at present)

On one hand, I can *almost* see how everything is a window to the world -- everything made directly by God or indirectly by human creativity. IF everything is related to everything else, then Legend of Zelda could lead to so many things -- interest in designing or art, in creating one's own stories, in skills of reading and strategic thinking and visual understanding.

On the other hand, I worry a bit about "dead ends" -- things that lead to prefer sitting on a floor pushing a button to running about outside, or that lead to a modern-type contempt for anything that's not electronic.

I think that perhaps that "lead to"s -- whether negative or positive -- need a bit more thinking about. Is this talking about secondary ends vs primary? Does Legend of Zelda have or need a utilitarian purpose?

Is it a matter of time spent? If I am spending my time learning about non-essentials, I miss out on the essentials?

But even in an unschooling household, or especially one, don't kids basically pick up on what's important to their parents -- *whatever that is*? So if the parents value these things, ie the parents are truly interested in literature or philosophy or whatever, the kids see that value modelled for them, as opposed to pushed on them artificially?

Hmm, I don't like that last sentence. "Pushed on them artificially" is knee-jerk. When we value something, we DO push it. That's part of the way we show we value it. Of course, when we value something, we don't do things illegitimately to show we value it (at least, not properly....).

Further than that, whenever we are talking about "converting" another human being, no matter how small, we are talking about what methods are not only the most effective but the most truthful, with the most integrity to our message, and part of that package seems to be a respect for the dignity of the person.

In other words, approaching a liberal education servilely -- beat 'em, or they won't learn -- isn't a real liberal education. So part of a liberal education MUST be the respect for and care for the person's free will and consent.

Today

Right now it is just a bit after dinner and Aidan is watching a VeggieTales video. Clare has just helped Patrick upstairs and is now back downstairs. Patrick can basically climb stairs by himself, as can Aidan, but we still supervise JUST IN CASE. Sean is eating dinner (spaghetti and rolls). Kieron is eating too, I think -- both are reading at the table. Where's Brendan? I just asked that question and got the answer (from Clare) "He's outside." Brendan's been out most of the day, either with Sean or alone. He told me it's his favorite time of the year -- FALL.

Paddy is now watching the video, and Aidan is behind me talking about his Pikachu and Meowth pillows (which he propped next to each other behind the computer).

Now a focus on one kid. Sean -- he isn't too happy about our school year starting. He does math without much complaining but certainly doesn't volunteer to do it. He complains a bit about grammar and Latin but basically, just tries to get through it as effectively and efficiently as possible. I've been giving him math, one language arts assignment and then a book to read. He read The God King in one day (Wednesday) then The Bronze Bow in one day (Thursday). Plus he had football practice. But most of the time outside of that he has been outside, or making swords out of old wooden stakes and painting/decorating them. Except when I conscripted him to work on the yard, or when he was doing chores.

He is in 7th grade. I'm not sure if that's really enough, but on the other hand -- a book a day -- that's approximately a week or two week's work in a day, if you look at the Sonlight book list. I suppose if he read a book every day for the rest of his life, he'd be pretty well educated.

I notice that the kids don't mind doing a few schooly, routine things upon request -- math, etc. -- but there's a critical point beyond which they feel like it's taken over their lives.

Learning All the Time

I am a skeptic about unschooling. At the same time, I am attracted to its tenets. So this blog is for the purpose of recording learning in our home and to explore the idea of "Learning all the Time". It's called "Every Waking Hour" for that reason.

John Holt wrote a book called the former, and the last essay in the book had the latter title.

Do we indeed learn all the time? How could anyone dispute that? I'm sure my skepticism is a bit better expressed by the question: Are some forms of learning more focused and more effective than others?

Is learning more effective when it's driven by personal desire?

Are some kinds of learning more valuable intrinsically than others? To give an example -- is being an expert on Pokemon (I'm not knocking it! I am sort of an expert myself) equal to being able to communicate in Spanish, or solve math problems?

Not just rhetorical questions! at least, I hope not!

But most of this will be concrete -- I hope -- I want to journal what my kids are actually doing and what I do as well, as their mom and to some extent mentor.