The Middle Way

It is very interesting to me how people have to pick a side and defend it by dissing the other side. In the last week, I have hung out with both schoolers and homeschoolers and observed this strange habit galore. It is as if they fear that their reasons to do something can never measure up to the reasons not to and they have to rationalize their choice by putting down the opposing choice. The truth is that school can be a horrific place and a wonderful experience. Not going to school can save you from the horror and leave you lacking in many experiences. It is not black and white.

I'd like to see people make choices for their children based on all the unique factors in their and their children's lives, the goals they have for their children and the goals the kids have for themselves. Not on what they will avoid.

All of life is an uncertainty. You cannot ensure any outcome. There is no need to bash the other side to lessen the fear of having such little control over outcomes.

No matter what you choose, your child will be someone that, in the end, you realize you had very little influence over. They are who they are meant to be. They will live their own lives. Sometimes you help them achieve their potential and sometimes they achieve it in spite of your efforts.

It can be maddening, but only if you see it as your job to "make" them into the person they "should" be. Rather, walk the path alongside them for the few short years you are blessed with and marvel at how perfectly they become, and already are, themselves. Offer your wisdom, a helping hand, your love and support, and then stand back and watch with awe.

Good Advice

This was going around Facebook and I wanted to keep it here to refer to since it is such a great reminder. Got it from here.

1. Show respect for all of a child's interests equally.

2. Keep the child in mind as I go through life, so that I notice things that might be of interest to that child.

3. Find ways to include the child in my own daily life - live a more"open-book' life than the norm.

4. Follow up on things the child is interested in - and do this in a wide variety of ways, not only by "getting him a book on it."

5. Live a family life that is rich with experiences of a variety of kinds both at home and outside the home.

6. Have resources around the home that are interesting and stimulating - things that will encourage exploration of ideas.

7. Discuss things - spend time in conversation. This is probably overall the most important parental 'action' involved in unschooling.

8..Have a"playful' attitude - play together, have fun, appreciate the amazing world around you. Don't be cynical, be able to be amazed and find the world a fascinating place. THIS is the most important"attitude' for an unschooling parent.

9. Be self-aware of your own thinking and behavior. Purposely stretch your imagination - question your own assumptions, check your own automatic impulses.

10. Be very observant of what your child is really doing - don't view him/her in a shallow superficial way. Recognize that there is a reason for a child's actions, that a child is"born to learn' and is always learning. Get to know your child's own special favored ways of learning

11. Wholeheartedly support a child's passions EVEN if, to you, they don't look like "education."

Unschooling in Alice Springs

As many of you know, I have over the past many years either helped with or outright ran support groups for unschoolers and homeschoolers in the various places we have lived. My speciality is the park day. This time-honored tradition of homeschooling folks has been the backbone of our unschooling experience. It is more than just a chance for the kids to get out and play.

Park day is the day of the week we most look forward to, when we have good friends to be with and time to develop those relationships. The kids have fun and learn from one another and the other adults, as well. We establish a true community of people, who are there for each other for homeschooling help and help with life in general. Some of my best friends are the people I have met at our park days. The kids can say the same!

As we get settled into our new lives here in Alice, I have found a local homeschooling group (alas little to no unschoolers to be found) that has been open to my help getting a park day going. The Downunderhomeschoolers have a small group of people so far and I would like to see that increase. Since when you google "unschooling in Alice Springs" or "homeschooling in Alice Springs" my blog is one of the first that pops up in the search, I thought I would put out a post that would set me on top and give all the folks looking to find a support group the info they need. I am planning to get some flyers up at the library and even on the newsletter for the facility C works at to attract the American homeschoolers here. Hopefully, we can nurture and grow us a great group here to support us in our unschooling and have a lot of fun with as well!

A few years ago I wrote this on the email list of one of the groups that was just getting a park day going: "I wanted to say something about these park days. In my experience, as a group gets up and running, you will have lots of people interested, but not able to attend. Classes, other plans, etc. get in the way. Ideally, what will begin to happen is that everyone will set the day aside as “sacred” for our Park Days. You will come to see the time spent together forming relationships and playing will trump anything else you could possibly plan for that day! Well, that is my vision, anyway. ;-) No pressure, btw. This will happen naturally and I am prepared to be patient as it does. If you all wonder why Miranda and her girls are ALWAYS at park day, now you know what we are committed and waiting for."

Now, that said, where are all the unschoolers!? In such a hippy alternative lifestyle place like Alice, there has got to be some natural learners around! Come on out and play. Click that link above and join us!

Bucky was an Unschooler

“None of the world's problems will have a solution until the world's individuals become thoroughly self-educated.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

Been fans of the ol' Buckmiester for pretty much my whole life, but who knew he was an unschooler?! Sweet.

Tool of the Oracle: Your True Nature

Meme found at Frank's blog.

Instructions:
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

"The adults just jumped right in and invited the kids along for the ride."

Sounds like unschooling to me! And a great way to live life. Oh wait, unschooling IS a great way to live life.

Making Lemonade

I'm going to answer a question I got in a comment to the I'm that Mom post here instead of in the comments. This is what she said:

But here's my question: Children eventually have to grow up and get a job.
They'll have to follow rules they think are dumb, unproductive, unfair. They'll
have to be somewhere at an externally decided time. If they've never had to do
any of those things, how are they going to be in the work force?
Believe me, I'm not being agrumentative....it's really a question I struggle with as a mom.
It was something I struggled with as a teacher. I think there are times you have
to "play the game" a little because you DO at some point have to function in the
world.
I love the reckless abandon my girls have...but I also love that
they're learning there's a time and place for everything. I struggle with
finding the balance.
Your thoughts?

And here are my thoughts:

The key here is that in life when you have to do something unpleasant, you to do it to meet a goal that you chose. You get up really early when you are a night owl, to go work a job you chose to work for reasons you decided were good reasons. You deal politely with a cranky father-in-law because he is your soul mates father and he loves him and you love your husband and want him to be happy. You endure the experience of labor and birth because you really want a child. If you look closely at the things you do in life that you don't like to do, I am sure you will find you are doing them for a reason that is important to you or to meet a goal that you choose to accomplish. It is the same with your children.

Even now, my kids do many things they don't like to do in the name of reaching a goal or making someone else happy or making things easier for the family or with friends. They know life is not always a cakewalk. They know the good stuff is worth the trouble it takes to get it.

I don't have to force them to do anything unpleasant for them to know this. You do not have to break a kids arm to get them prepared for the future possibility of a bone fracture. I know, extreme example, but I have always liked how perfectly that analogy drives home the point. Life will provide all the challenge and struggle your kids need to learn how to make the best of it. They will have things that are important enough to them to endure the yucky parts of life.

And, if life tends to provide a struggle all on it's own without your help, why not focus on the fun? Why not make life as good as it can be, when you have the power to do so? By doing so, you can show your kids how to make lemonade out of the lemons.

Hope that helps!

Best Speech Eva!

I realize I am a little late in sharing this, as I hear it is all over facebook and such already, but some friends here had not heard about it, so here ya go!

http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html

Here is a taste :

I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told
to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great
artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While
others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading
about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were
creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I
never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned
it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I
be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my
life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I
excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning.

And, quoting John Taylor Gatto, she wrote:

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of
public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and
awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim
... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level,
to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and
originality. That is its aim in the United States."

I have just finished reading John Talyor Gatto's newest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, and have all things school-y on my mind. My question to those whose kids go to school is do you even know what you are doing? There is probably nothing I have spent as much time researching and thinking about as how to educate my kids. I knew nothing of what was in this book when I decided to keep them out of school. Now that I do know, all I can say is thank heavens I did! Anything to save them from the type of experience that young woman spoke of in her speech. At least she woke up and now knows what happened to her.

Oh, and if you think college is any better, check this out:

http://www.academicevolution.com/2009/01/dear-students.html

Oh, oh, and here is a blog post by an unschooling mom who had a chance to have a conversation with Erica. She links to the audio on the blog:

http://kelly.halldorson.com/blog/?p=1454

So cool!

Grown Unschooler

This is a long, but great, speech given by a young grown unschooler about her experience growing up and unschooling in general. I really enjoyed it and had to share! Enjoy!

Wanna Hear My Crazy Thoughts?

Check it out! Sandra Dodd put my speech from the Good Vibrations conference up on her website:

http://sandradodd.com/listen/mirandademarest

Cool! Hope you enjoy getting inside my head...

Reset

I feel like someone pushed the reset button on my life. Lately, I have been in a bit of a funk. I know most would say it was the winter, but I really don't think so. I try very hard to find the good in every season and to relish that good. So, I can't say what has kept me feeling stuck, but I know what has gotten me out of it. UWWG. I have come back re-energized. Yesterday, I got up at 5am, got on the road by 6 to head home from Ohio, got home, unpacked the car, unpacked the suitcases, went out to snow blow the driveway, decided to shovel the snow to build back up the luge run, then I started clearing the 6 inches of snow off the ice on the pond until it got dark, came inside and sent an email out inviting people to come skate and sled here today! I needed, and took, a nice long bath after that! But I felt good. So, today, three families came to play with us and we had a great time. Disastrous dinning rooms be damned! I have my life back.

I started the conference off feeling like I wasn't too sure how things were going to go. The place was great, but HUGE, and with over 1000 people (estimated, 300 families x 4 people per family) attending, I was missing the intimacy of the Good Vibrations conference. I also knew that a lot of the families were not even unschoolers, so I was reluctant to get excited about hanging with the tribe if it was going to end up not quite my tribe. So, I had a quick freak out moment when I did not know what I was doing there and then C calmed me down, got me back on track and it was smooth sailing from there. It was good to see old friends, and it was great to spend time with the local families we roomed with and get to know them better. I let the conference type stuff go mostly, and just spent time with people, my family, our roomies and I only went to talks by people I consider friends already. Except for John Taylor Gatto, but he came before freak out moment! And he rocked! Got to read his new book...

My dear husband made a comment on the drive home that really stuck with me. He said being there for the week reaffirmed his faith in humanity. I agree. It is just so wonderful to be with people who enjoy life so much. And who enjoy their kids so fully. And the kids. What can I say? Free range children are the most amazing, life affirming, awesome bunch out there. Ooooo, take a look at this! I wish I was an unschooled teenager so I could go! The video premiered at UWWG and is an example of what a free kid can accomplish. I'm so glad my kids are going to be old enough to go soon.

So, now that I have had my life reset, I'm excited to see what comes next! Stay tuned!

Powerful Truth

This video has made it's way around the unschooling circles before, but I thought it needed another showing, for those who have not seen it before.

Ever since my mother died, I have been trying to sing and dance through life, instead of rushing to the destination. Life is short. Death is the end. Try to live Now. It is all you have, really.

It's a Small Small World

Let me first apologize up front if my post title has you singing that song for the rest of the day! I wanted to get back to the idea of a shrinking world and how to reconcile that with unschooling. Oh, wait, I don't know how to do that! OK, so I will tell you my thoughts and maybe we can sort this out together. Most of my thoughts come in the form of questions, by the way.

How many of you who are aware of the big issues facing us, and unschoolers to boot, ask yourself daily how playing video games now will help your child navigate a world where most of us won't be able to afford electricity to power the Wii? How will a life of leisure and freedom prepare them for a world of considerably more toil and far limited options? Will giving them a childhood full of play and fun set them up to fail in "the real world"? I'm not talking about the "real world" as it exists in the minds of people today. I'm talking about the possible future "real world" where life really is much harder and you really do have less choices. A life where survival really is the focus most of the time. I'm not saying we need to break our kids arms to prepare them for a future possibility of a bone fracture. I really don't think the answer lies with anything that drastic. But what level of guiding them to learn what I fear they will need to know is too much and a hindrance to the relationship I prize above all else?

How much should I support maintaining friendships with kids across the country, rather than getting out there and meeting and strengthening friendships here, when they might never see these far flung kids again? A certain level of maintaining contact is right and good, but not at the expense of developing local relationships that have a greater chance of serving them in the future.

If there really is going to be a drastic reduction in the ease of travel, wouldn't my efforts be better spent helping my children explore their local environment, deepening their sense of place, here, rather than filling their heads with thoughts of world travel and seeing the world outside of National Geographic magazine?

I go back and forth between thinking that I should show them as much of the world as I can, while I still can, and feeling like I should block out the majority of what they will lose, so they don't have to lose it, after all. You can't miss what you never had. Will they treasure the single taste of the tropical fruit flown in from across the globe, for example, or will they pine for it once it is no longer available? One of a mother's jobs is to protect her children. But another of my jobs is to show them the world. How big a world do they really need to know? How much protection is too much? Especially since I don't know how things will play out, don't know the timeline.

The worst of what I fear might not even come to pass in my lifetime. It might be something only my grandchildren will really have to deal with. But shouldn't I help my children learn what their children will need to know? Wouldn't that give them the advantage and make life easier for my grandchildren? I know reinventing the wheel is not much fun for me, so if my grandchildren are brought up living a low energy lifestyle, it will be second nature for them. My girls are not going to get that, since half of their childhood has been lived a high energy lifestyle, and my efforts to power down are going very slowly. They might be out of the house before I finally get us to the level I am sure my grandkids will need to be.

One thing I am certain of is that the school system as it exists now is so far from being able to prepare the children of today for the potential future, it is laughable. If it wasn't so scary. I mean, I have nieces and nephews and cousins and friends in that system and I worry about them. They are all still young and, so far so good, but I can't even imagine what a full 13 years of government run education will do to their chances of learning what they will really need to know. Bottom line, what they will need takes time to learn, and school sucks up all that time, trying to teach them things that they will have no need of in the future.

But, back to unschooling, it is not like I am sitting my kids down everyday and going through Pioneer Living 101 with them. I am not actively teaching them what I think they need to know, either. I am trying to learn it myself, and model it to them, and make it look fun and fulfilling (and it is!) so that they want to learn it. And they are learning. It is just that when the sand in the hourglass seems to run faster and faster, and I fear they are not ready yet-hell, I am not ready yet-that is when I worry. Will unschooling give us enough time?

But then I ask myself, time for what? Time to be ready to live life? Ultimately, how can any of us know that we are prepared for life? Just when you think you are all set, life usually throws you a curve ball and asks you to stretch and learn something new. And that is good and the way it should be. So, maybe I don't need to worry about it. Maybe they really will learn all they need to live, as they need it.

No doubt about it, the world will shrink for our children and grandchildren. I don't even think that is a bad thing, not really. Simpler is good. It is the transition that could be tricky, will be tricky. I just hope and pray that unschooling gives us the flexibility and time and worldview to make the transition as smooth as possible. And I have to believe that the memories of a larger more complex world will be remembered fondly by my girls, and that those memories will be told to rapt grandchildren, who will wonder at the thought of flying from one side of the country to the other in a few hours!

So, what do you all think about this stuff?

All in the Family

Are you familiar with the concept of a holographic universe? Well, it's kind of like fractals, where patterns at one scale mirror the patterns at larger and smaller scales. The whole contains the parts and the parts contain the whole. Where am I going with this? Just a quick thought I had, and I don't have time to elaborate, but I wanted to put it out there. I think that a lot of the troubles we have in this world stem from our identification with the individual, the Ego. If we were to realize that our basic building block is not a singular person, but a group, a family, and start to act from that, everything would be different. How does this reconcile with my libertarian ideals? Well, if you seek freedom for families, tribes, instead of individuals, it jives. The trouble arises when the scale of the group gets too big for proper function. There is no way for a Nation to work as a group, a collective, effectively. The proper scale is so much smaller. In fact, if you have a group that is too big for each individual in that group to know the others well, the group is too big to function. I have many thoughts about this, but I am not going to go into it today. I just wanted to say that if we could remember that we are interconnected, not isolated separate individuals, and act from that, we'd be so much better off. But interconnected at a small scale. Think family -ideally radical unschooling family- and how we function at that scale. Respect, love, care, gentle guidance and freedom of choice inside a group's structure. Each man is not for himself, not really. We all have family, either by blood or by choice, that we rely on, or we wish we did in our heart of hearts. Anyway, think about it!

Love, Love, Love

I wonder how much of life is wasted and angst is created trying to prevent a future possibility of angst? I'm thinking of a certain event that happened when E was little. She had gotten a pretty dress for Easter and wanted to wear it right away, even though Easter was two weeks away. I told her I did not want her to wear it because she might get it stained and then she would be sad on Easter when she could not wear it. This led to much sadness on her part and she fought me for the right to wear her dress, right now.

I tabled the argument and went to take a shower. In the shower, or inspiration box, as I like to call it, it hit me. I was creating sadness and a wedge between us, all in order to prevent sadness in the future. Even though my intentions were good - I was trying to save her from pain - all I ended up doing was causing pain. How ridiculous was that? There was not even a guarantee that she would dirty the dress or want to wear the dress at all come Easter morning. Even if she did dribble grape juice down the dress and stain it, what sane reason in the world would prevent me from letting a five year old wear an imperfect garment to church on Easter anyway?!?

I got out of the shower and brought the dress to E, telling her she could wear it whenever she wanted. The look of joy and relief on her face was priceless! Turns out, her Nana sent her a dress for Easter, and she choose to wear that one.

What if I had refused to let her wear the dress? She would have been mad at me and our relationship would have been negatively affected all for nothing. So, I say, as long as what your kid wants now is not going to hurt them or you and will bring them joy, Now, don't worry about what might happen and refuse them what they want in order to save them from that future possibility. Chances are what you fear will not happen. If in the present moment you say yes, Joy will be created, Love will expand, and Trust will deepen.

What if what you fear comes to pass and your kid is upset? Well, that is a new challenge for you, to be present in that moment. A chance for you to be as loving as you can, as understanding and as forgiving, both of yourself and your child. Adding angst on top of angst, or "I told you so", is not going to help your child through their tough spot. It is not going to build the love between you. And it is not going to show your child that they, and their feelings, are important to you.

Pretend like someone else is at fault for the upset your child is feeling -not you for letting them do what they wanted to do and not your child for their failings - and your job is simply to be present and hear their woes, to comfort and to soothe.

The time for reminders of consequences is not in the heat of the moment. People usually think that you have to seize the "teachable moment" and remind the kids what they did wrong so that they will learn "the lesson". Actually, this is the worst time to do this. The emotions of the moment cloud rational thinking and chances are your child will resent the reminder and shut the "lesson" out. How do you feel when you are reminded of a mistake right when you are suffering from that mistake's consequences? I don't know about you, but I usually feel like throttling the messenger. Not exactly what your well meaning loved one intended, I'm sure.

Love them instead and see what happens. Like the Beatles sang, Love is all you need. It really is.

Unschoolers Rock!

What is it about unschoolers being so cool? I got to hang with some new friends yesterday, some I had met last year at Live and Learn briefly, and some we met just then, mixed in with friends in our local group. I don't know if other people have this experience, but every time I get to meet some unschoolers, I feel like my cup runneth over. Instant connection. Total acceptance. Fun!

Maybe it is the peace of being around other people who you know "get it" about respectful parenting. No yelling, shaming, or controlling to suffer through. Maybe it is the sense of going with the flow and following the path of fun and comfort. The lack of "have to" and "should" and "because I said so". The genuine regard for the kids and their needs, the open minds about what is good and okay. So refreshing.

I don't think I can adequately explain this to those who are not on the unschooling path. I hate to just say, "You don't know what you are missing" but.... *Sigh*

All I know is that when I get to spend some time with other unschoolers, I never come away from the experience wishing I had said this or done that. I feel accepted, understood, known. It feels so good. I'm not the freak in the room who disagrees with most of what is said, but can't speak up because she knows she is alone. And they would not understand, even if I tried.

I'm grateful for my unschooling friends. I'm grateful for the internet that allows me to hook up with unschoolers from across the state and arrange meetings with strangers, or I should say "friends I have not met yet". I'm grateful for unschooling. Period.

Finding Joy

I am on a roll here, clearing out the archives of my past work. Must be I needed to re-read these! This one would have been published in Live Free Learn Free if the editor had kept it going. I miss that magazine. :-(

My daughters have a beautiful puzzle that is really a set of square wooden tiles with fragments of a scene painted on them. A piece of sky, with sun or rainbow, here, a window, door or roof there, various animals, people, and plants as well. There is no correct way to put it together. You start with one piece and add on, as you like. Each finished picture is different, but they are all beautiful. Four tiles, ten or thirty, it does not matter; each is a complete scene.

I like to think of life and the learning that happens as like a puzzle with no edge pieces. There is no limit to what you can learn and no set time frame for how long you have to learn it. Each piece you find will fit somewhere in your own personal puzzle of life but it does not have to connect to any particular other piece. You build it as you fancy it. And it all adds up in the end because it is YOURS. It does not have to, and really should not, look like anyone else’s picture. Our present method of educating our children is to hand them the standardized puzzle pieces and tell them they have 13 years to complete it. And that they will be failures if they don’t complete it or if their puzzle looks different from everyone else’s or if they reject the standardized picture altogether.

Unschooling is honoring that individual picture of a life in each child, even that picture in ourselves as well. Respecting that we each have a picture of our own choosing to create. Trusting that we will “finish the puzzle” because in each given moment it is complete. Knowing that all the moments leading up to the present moment create a finished life. You never know which moment will be your last. Why not live each one as if it IS your last?

When people first start learning about unschooling, they think it is a method of homeschooling. You know, throw out the curriculum, pretend you are on summer break, and watch as your kids’ learning takes off. But what a lot of them find along the way is that unschooling is so much more. It tends to change the way you see the world and how you live in it. In profound ways that are hard to describe to the uninitiated.

It all boils down to the meaning of life. No, really. No simple matter, but the crux of understanding unschooling requires a shift in your beliefs about what life is all about. I’m sure most of you have heard about the idea of living in the present moment. Well, that IS unschooling. Pure and simple, but oh so very difficult for those of us brought up to live for the future, which is just about everyone out there. From the earliest times in life, we are encouraged to focus on what comes next, to prepare for the future, to put aside momentary whims for more important pursuits. What else is school but a preparatory course for “real life”? So they say, anyway. No playing now, you have to learn to read, so you can get good grades, so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can make a lot of money, so you can be happy. All that time and effort and wasted joy. All for a promised moment of happiness, in some distant future you might never live to see. And who says money makes you happy anyway?

You see, that moment when you wanted to play but could not because you had to do something for the future was life wasted. Joy sent packing. Peace disrupted. What kind of foundation for a joyful life is that? Finding joy is the meaning of life. Discovering what your passions are and pursuing them is the meaning of life. Choosing your purpose and fulfilling it is the meaning of life. Unschooling is how you find joy, pursue passions, and fulfill purposes. How does that work? Live in the moment.

Yes, I’m going in circles. You’ll find life is like that when you slow down enough to see that life is NOT a straight line drawn out for you by someone else, about which you have little choice. Learning does NOT have to happen in proper scope and sequence. One thing does NOT necessarily follow the other. Life is meandering; it builds on the past, but not always in a linear fashion. Each new piece of life adds to something that was already there, deepening the meaning, polishing the theory, bringing each bit more into focus. You start in the center of your model of the universe and add on to the edges as you live and learn. Very much like that wooden puzzle of my daughters’.

Copyright 2004 by Miranda Demarest

Beauty and Balance

Another blast from the past, this one was published in Live Free Learn Free magazine in 2006.


Do you ever find yourself with tears in your eyes over silly stuff? Just a tiny moment that speaks of the beauty of life, like a scene in one of your kid’s cartoons, or an ad in a magazine, or a moment in your life that seems like a gift. Gifts from beyond are not silly, of course, but try to explain the reason you are crying to someone else and it might make you feel a little silly. I find myself having these moments more and more now that we are unschooling. I remember the first time I found myself crying over something I would have deemed insignificant. It was a Hallmark card commercial on TV when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. I was never one to go for touchy-feely sentiments and it took me by surprise. I had little idea then of how having children and sharing my life with them would change me. And since I have found unschooling, my life has been changed so deeply, it brings me to tears more than ever.

Unschooling seems to me to be the recognition of life as a series of moments you only get once, and the vow to do them right the first time. Children come into the world with no concept of life beyond the Now and it is a shame we put so much effort into abusing them of that gift. We should be learning from them about how life is a series of silly moments. You can either brush them off miserably in your haste to “do something” or “get somewhere”, or you can sit and laugh with wonder at the perfection.

I have learned from my second child about how each moment Is what it Is and how you can move on to joy from despair, in only a moment. Really. She can go from shrieking to giggling in 10 seconds flat. No grudges held for this one. We cannot control what life gives us, but we sure can control how we deal with it. We can choose to be the source of situations that our children have to exercise their amazing ability to forgive over, or we can partner with them in joy.

Unschooling focuses on the relationships in our lives, so that we can clear the way for joy and beauty and love and trust. Ask yourself each time you interact with those you love, if what you wish to do or say adds to the love between you or subtracts from that love. If this were your last breath on earth, would you choose to waste it yelling at your child or forcing them to fill out worksheets? Relationships are the most important things in life; they are what give our life meaning. It is not what we have; it is who we get to share what we have with.

Unschooling is not so much about learning as it is about living. Learning is inevitable, so they go hand in hand, but to really embrace unschooling, you almost have to forget about the learning. You don’t stop providing interesting stuff and experiences for your children, but you start to do it in the interest of a life well lived, not a learning moment. You buy the video game because it is fun, not because your child might learn something from it. You go to the museum to look at interesting stuff because you enjoy it, not for the educational opportunities. The really cool thing is that the learning happens anyway, even, and especially, if you don’t plan and scheme for it to happen. People really do learn what they need, when they need it. For me, to believe otherwise would be a serious lack of faith in a higher order and purpose to life.

There is a balance to be found between living in the moment and living in the world with others who do not share your belief that the moment is paramount. Too much laissez faire education does look to the world like educational neglect. Rest assured, it usually means they just don’t know what they are seeing. However, engaging your children in the world and showing them all that life has to offer is our job as unschooling parents. To allow our children to think the world is only what they know and have seen so far is to do them a disservice. My mother used to say that what I knew could fill a book, and at first I took it as a compliment. Then she would say that what she knew could fill the encyclopedia on our shelves, and I realized that what she was saying was that there was always more to learn. She knew more than me due to her longer life, but what there was out there to know could fill every book in the world and then some. As long as they know that there is more to know and as long as you strive to show them ever more, unschooling will flourish. That is to say, your lives will be full and interesting and, well, worth living.

Find the balance between striving and being, reaching and relaxing, living for and just living. Find that place and unschooling will become living and that will be a beautiful thing. Watch out, it just might bring you to tears.

Copyright 2006 by Miranda Demarest

Unschooling Thoughts

I wrote this a long time ago, but realized I never shared it here on the blog, so here goes:


There are two days about which nobody should ever worry, and these are yesterday and tomorrow.
Robert J. Burdette

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are. Marianne Williamson

Unschooling is a terrible term to use to describe what I envision our life with our children to be. The focus on the "un" brings up a negative connotation from the start. And the word "school" emphasizes the exact opposite of what we will be living. "Unschoolers" have gotten into the habit of defining what they do by what they don't do. This tends to look like we are running away from something (the school model), rather than striving towards something (living and learning as inseparable). It makes us look like we are basing our decisions on fear of school rather than simply choosing differently.

For me, it is about choosing a lifestyle for our family that can offer so much more than the public school model. It is about allowing our children the opportunity to figure out Who They Are and then live that Truth. Starting Now, not some distant time when they are set free to "find themselves", as so many young people seem to need to do once they get out of school.

Unschooling allows our children to discover and learn freely, when the interest strikes and as they come upon new things, not according to some predetermined schedule set by someone else. The learning is more real and the "lessons" are forever. When you think of the things that you have learned in your life, I would bet that most of the learning that you actually use in your life is the stuff you have learned on your own or that which you were already interested in when it was taught to you. How much of what you learned in school do you even remember, let alone make use of in your life?

Unschooled children will most likely not learn the same things that their peers in school are learning and they will learn similar things at different times. This is okay because unschooled children will be learning every day the things that are important to them and the things that are relevant to their lives. They learn the things that they need to accomplish their goals according to their passion. Over time, this leads to a vast repertoire of knowledge that they can actually use in their lives. During this effortless process, they are learning the most important thing of all, how to think.

Learning to think for your self is a crucial skill and unschooling is an excellent way to "teach" this skill. If you don't know how to think for yourself, you are forced to let others do the thinking for you and are therefore under their control. It is a common practice of some organized religions, in order to protect their dogma/tenets, to encourage their followers to avoid questions about their faith. Do you know why? It is because the dogma does not hold up to critical analysis. It usually does not even pass the internal BS meters of the followers of the faith, as evidenced by the infinite individual interpretations of the tenets. For example, the Catholics who think that birth control or abortion are okay, a belief that is directly contrary to the teachings of the church. Why is it so important that everyone follows the dogma, or at least keep their mouths shut about it if they don't, and not trust anyone who questions their beliefs? Power. Plain and simple, it is an issue of power for the institution of the Church. It affords the institution power and therefore control over the followers.

The institution of school has power over us for the same reason, although maybe not so overtly. But we generally do not question the necessity of school. And if our children do question us, we silence them with dogma about how it is good for them and how they won't succeed without a good education. Most of us have not stopped to question our motives and goals for sending our children to school. We go along with what we were taught, what everyone else is doing, and never stop to think that there might be a different way, let alone a better way.

It is imperative that our children learn to think critically, lest they be controlled their whole lives by the institutions of our world; church, school, medicine, etc. They must learn to march to the beat of their own drummer, to know and follow their hearts, to seek and meet their life purpose and goals. The best way to do this is to ask themselves, as they encounter new ideas, "Is this what I believe?” "Does this support Who I Am?” "Why, why, why?” Otherwise they will live unexamined lives, pushed along by the groupthink, never truly happy, never knowing what it all means.

And this brings me back to unschooling. This is the hands down best way for children to grow up knowing Who They Are. It requires living in the moment, leaving out fear of a future never actually experienced. The future is truly a figment of our minds. When the future gets here it is then Now. Now is All There Is. If now is all there is, then there is no sane reason to spend all your time preparing, and poorly at that, for a future that will never come. This is school. You work so hard to learn the stuff someone else has decided is important for your future (and risked being judged poorly if you do not "learn" it well enough). No one can know what you will need in the future, not even you. All you have is the now, and all you can do is be in the present moment. All you can do is use your resources, both internal and Divine, to act appropriately in any given life situation. The more present you are, the more effective your actions will be, unmuddied by fears of the future or weighed down by thoughts of the past.

Unschooling allows for living in the moment, pure and simple. That is what unschooling is. You live your life, now, and along the way you learn. You follow your passion, now, and it leads to a successful life. If you define success by the amount of Love, Joy, and Peace in your life, not by how much money you make, that is. Fortunately, for you skeptics out there, a life filled with Love, Joy, and Peace tends to include all the money you need.

It is an exercise in faith and trust to unschool. As the saying goes, faith is stepping out into darkness and knowing you will either find solid ground beneath your feet or you find that you can fly. Unschooling is leaping off the cliff and finding you can soar to heights never dreamed of while standing at the edge.

Copyright 2004 by Miranda Demarest

School Math

Got the below here.

The Standard School Mathematics Curriculum

LOWER SCHOOL MATH. The indoctrination begins. Students learn that mathematics is not something you do, but something that is done to you. Emphasis is placed on sitting still, filling out worksheets, and following directions. Children are expected to master a complex set of algorithms for manipulating Hindi symbols, unrelated to any real desire or curiosity on their part, and regarded only a few centuries ago as too difficult for the average adult. Multiplication tables are stressed, as are parents, teachers, and the kids themselves.

MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH. Students are taught to view mathematics as a set of procedures, akin to religious rites, which are eternal and set in stone. The holy tablets, or “Math Books,” are handed out, and the students learn to address the church elders as “they” (as in “What do they want here? Do they want me to divide?”) Contrived and artificial “word problems” will be introduced in order to make the mindless drudgery of arithmetic seem enjoyable by comparison. Students will be tested on a wide array of unnecessary technical terms, such as ‘whole number’ and ‘proper fraction,’ without the slightest rationale for making such distinctions. Excellent preparation for Algebra I.

ALGEBRA I. So as not to waste valuable time thinking about numbers and their patterns, this course instead focuses on symbols and rules for their manipulation. The smooth narrative thread that leads from ancient Mesopotamian tablet problems to the high art of the Renaissance algebraists is discarded in favor of a disturbingly fractured, post-modern retelling with no characters, plot, or theme. The insistence that all numbers and expressions be put into various standard forms will provide additional confusion as to the meaning of identity and equality. Students must also memorize the quadratic formula for some reason.

GEOMETRY. Isolated from the rest of the curriculum, this course will raise the hopes of students who wish to engage in meaningful mathematical activity, and then dash them. Clumsy and distracting notation will be introduced, and no pains will be spared to make the simple seem complicated. This goal of this course is to eradicate any last remaining vestiges of natural mathematical intuition, in preparation for Algebra II.

ALGEBRA II. The subject of this course is the unmotivated and inappropriate use of coordinate geometry. Conic sections are introduced in a coordinate framework so as to avoid the aesthetic simplicity of cones and their sections. Students will learn to rewrite quadratic forms in a variety of standard formats for no reason whatsoever. Exponential and logarithmic functions are also introduced in Algebra II, despite not being algebraic objects, simply because they have to be stuck in somewhere, apparently. The name of the course is chosen to reinforce the ladder mythology. Why Geometry occurs in between Algebra I and its sequel remains a mystery.

TRIGONOMETRY. Two weeks of content are stretched to semester length by masturbatory definitional runarounds. Truly interesting and beautiful phenomena, such as the way the sides of a triangle depend on its angles, will be given the same emphasis as irrelevant abbreviations and obsolete notational conventions, in order to prevent students from forming any clear idea as to what the subject is about. Students will learn such mnemonic devices as “SohCahToa” and “All Students Take Calculus” in lieu of developing a natural intuitive feeling for orientation and symmetry. The measurement of triangles will be discussed without mention of the transcendental nature of the trigonometric functions, or the consequent linguistic and philosophical problems inherent in making such measurements. Calculator required, so as to further blur these issues.

PRE-CALCULUS. A senseless bouillabaisse of disconnected topics. Mostly a half-baked attempt to introduce late nineteenth-century analytic methods into settings where they are neither necessary nor helpful. Technical definitions of ‘limits’ and ‘continuity’ are presented in order to obscure the intuitively clear notion of smooth change. As the name suggests, this course prepares the student for Calculus, where the final phase in the systematic obfuscation of any natural ideas related to shape and motion will be completed.

CALCULUS. This course will explore the mathematics of motion, and the best ways to bury it under a mountain of unnecessary formalism. Despite being an introduction to both the differential and integral calculus, the simple and profound ideas of Newton and Leibniz will be discarded in favor of the more sophisticated function-based approach developed as a response to various analytic crises which do not really apply in this setting, and which will of course not be mentioned. To be taken again in college, verbatim.
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And there you have it. A complete prescription for permanently disabling young minds—a proven cure for curiosity. What have they done to mathematics! There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract.
And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could all be having so much more fun.
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Phew! Glad my kids don't go to school. Time to go play with triangles in boxes...... (Read the article to find out what I mean!)

Isn't It Ironic?

Lucky you. Now that I have found the guts to post my thoughts in the form of my speech, I am freed from the burning desire to talk about all that heavy stuff. There, you heard it from me, now it is up to you to save yourself. Whew! Let's get back to love and life and unschooling and chronicling my amazing kids adventures and our wonderful life, shall we?

But first, a small rant. So, the other day, the girls had their first ballet class. It went well for them. I, however, was subjected to listening to a mom talk to her friend in the waiting area. She told about how her little girl tells her she wants a new mother. And how when the girl told her she wanted to live with her when she grows up and has lots of kids of her own, she laughed at her and told her she is out when she is 18. I was facing away from the mom, watching my girls dance in the class through the window. Good thing, too, because I wanted to cry for that little girl. This same girl was brought out early to her mother when she lost interest in the preschool dance class and was missing her mother. She had been crying and the mother told her in a sing song voice to dry her tears. No empathy. No understanding. Just the message to stuff it. Lovely.

Contrast this with my kids who tell me I am the best mother they could ever have. This got me thinking about why they would say that and what other people outside our relationship might think is the reason they think that. I can see someone saying my kids think I am the best because I give them whatever they want. Yes and no. Yes, I don't thwart my children's wishes, and actively help them to achieve them. But I am constantly monitoring the big picture and making suggestions for balance, helping them make decisions for themselves, talking about my choices. I do tell my children no. Sometimes it is a knee jerk reaction and I take it back if they push. Other times I have a really good reason ,and then they usually listen and comply. If they don't, I humbly allow for the possibility that I don't know what is best for my children, only they do. I prepare to help them deal with natural consequences, should I be right after all.

Sometimes I put my foot down, and piss them off. I'm not perfect. I think the trick is to build trust so that they will see my thoughts and wishes for them as valuable, rather than be a nag and cause them to shut me out. I don't like to be wrong. If I am not 100% sure of myself about something, I will not force my will on anyone, my kids included. If I only ever push them when I am 100% certain that my way is the best, they will come to see that my advice is sound and will come to me for help. If I only make a bunch of rules and enforce them strictly in the interest of making my life simple (whatever!), they will come to see my advice as arbitrary and often out of step with their reality. I want to partner with my children in life, not be a dictator.

And if they grow up and have a bunch of kids and want to live with me, all the better! I'll be one happy grandma! And I will have help around the farm. ;-) Sounds like a win-win to me. We would be a role model family for the re-strengthening of family and community so desperately needed in the world today. Really, we are going to need to expand our idea of family if we are to have good lives in a lower energy world. You can't do it alone, when you don't have that army of oil slaves at your side. The more families live and work together, the easier, and fuller, life will be.

I will consider myself a very good mother, if my children not only want to live with me, but fully choose the life they were raised living. This isn't about me being selfish and wanting to have my kids never leave me. It is about living in partnership with your kids so that they will consider taking up the family business as a valid option for their adult lives. So that they will want to raise their kids as you raised them, not because they don't know what else to do, but because they choose it fully. So that they are spared the need to rebel against everything you stand for, just because. I'm fully prepared for them to choose differently for their lives than I did for mine. They are not me. But, if they choose to do what I do, I will know I did not push them away, at the very least. I will consider myself blessed.