Experciences by

1) Nurturing Children's Natural Love of Learning by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.

2) By LauraGG

3) So What Do You Do? by Lisa Bugg

4) Our 8 Year Old Son Still Doesn't Read And believe it or not, we aren't worried. by John Andersen

5) Certificate of Empowerment by Sandra Dodd

6) Tips on homeschooling: Questions from a young mom, and answers from an unschooling friend. by Nancy Wooton

7) Moving a Puddle by Sandra Dodd

8) Sandra Dodd May 1998

9) Who could ask for more? No Fear! by Jeanne Mills

10) Refining Basics by Earl Stevens

11) Kicking the Habit by Paul Schmidt

12) A Letter to Concerned Relatives

13) Unschooling or Homeschooling? by Billy Greer [1]

Nurturing Children's Natural Love of Learning by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.

As homeschooling parents, my husband and I sometimes wonder who is learning more in our family, the parents or the child. The topic we seem to be learning the most about is the nature of learning itself. The term "homeschooling", however, has proven to be misleading. Homeschooling children do not spend all of their time at home, nor is their learning approached in the same way that it would be in school. In fact, many of the assumptions about learning found in public school teaching are reversed in homeschooling. The main element in successful homeschooling is trust. We trust the children to know when they are ready to learn and what they are interested in learning. We trust them to know how to go about learning.

While this may seem to be an astonishing way of looking at children, parents commonly take this view of learning during the child's first two years, when he is learning to stand, walk, talk, and to perform many other important and difficult things, with little help from anyone. No one worries that a baby will be too lazy, uncooperative, or unmotivated to learn these things; it is simply assumed that every baby is born wanting to learn the things he needs to know in order to understand and to participate in the world around him. These one- and two-year-old experts teach us several principles of learning:

Children are naturally curious and have a built-in desire to learn first-hand about the world around them. John Holt, in his book How Children Learn, describes the natural learning style of young children: "The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, and do what he can see other people doing. He is open, perceptive, and experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him, He does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, and suspense... School is not a place that gives much time, or opportunity, or reward, for this kind of thinking and learning."1

Children know best how to go about learning something. If left alone, they will know instinctively what method is best for them. Caring and observant parents soon learn that it is safe and appropriate to trust this knowledge. Such parents say to their baby, "Oh, that's interesting! You're learning how to crawl downstairs by facing backwards!" They do not say, "That's the wrong way." Perceptive parents are aware that there are many different ways to learn something, and they trust their children to know which ways are best for them. Children need plentiful amounts of quiet time to think. Research shows that children who are good at fantasizing are better learners and cope better with disappointment than those who have lost this ability. But fantasy requires time, and time is the most endangered commodity in our lives. Fully-scheduled school hours and extracurricular activities leave little time for children to dream, to think, to invent solutions to problems, to cope with stressful experiences, and simply to fulfill the universal need for solitude and privacy. Children are not afraid to admit ignorance and to make mistakes.

When Holt invited toddlers to play his cello, they would eagerly attempt to do so; schoolchildren and adults would invariably decline. Homeschooling children, free from the intimidation of public embarrassment and failing marks, retain their openness to new exploration. Children learn by asking questions, not by answering them. Toddlers ask many questions, and so do school children - until about grade three. By that time, many of them have learned an unfortunate fact, that in school, it can be more important for self-protection to hide one's ignorance about a subject than to learn more about it, regardless of one's curiosity. Children take joy in the intrinsic values of whatever they are learning. There is no need to motivate children through the use of extrinsic rewards, such as high grades or stars, which suggest to the child that the activity itself must be difficult or unpleasant (otherwise, why is a reward, which has nothing to do with the matter at hand, being offered?) The wise parent says, "You're really enjoying that book!" not "If you read this book, you'll get a cookie."

Children learn best about getting along with other people through interaction with those of all ages. No parents would tell their baby, "You may only spend time with those children whose birthdays fall within six months of your own. Here's another two-year-old to play with. You can look at each other, but no talking!" John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, contends, "It is absurd, and anti-life, to... sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life."2 A child learns best about the world through first-hand experience. No parent would tell her toddler, "Let's put that caterpillar down and get back to your book about caterpillars." Homeschoolers learn directly about the world. Our son describes homeschooling as "learning by doing instead of being taught." Ironically, the most common objection about homeschooling is that children are "being deprived of the real world."

Children need and deserve ample time with their family. Gatto warns us, "Between schooling and television, all the time children have is eaten up. That's what has destroyed the American family."3 Many homeschoolers feel that family cohesiveness is perhaps the most meaningful benefit of the experience. Just as I saw his first step and heard his first word, I have the honor and privilege of sharing my son's world and thoughts. Over the years, I have discovered more from him about life, learning, and love, than from any other source. Homeschooling is always a two-way street. Stress interferes with learning. Einstein wrote, "It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion."4 When a one-year-old falls down while learning to walk, we say, "Good try! You'll catch on soon!"

No caring parent would say, "Every baby your age should be walking. You'd better be walking by Friday!" Most parents understand how difficult it is for their children to learn something when they are rushed, threatened, or given failing grades. John Holt warned that "we think badly, and even perceive badly, or not at all, when we are anxious or afraid... when we make children afraid, we stop learning dead in it's tracks."5 While infants and toddlers teach us many principles of learning, schools have adopted quite different principles, due to the difficulties inherent in teaching a large number of same-age children in a compulsory setting. The structure of school (required attendance, school-selected topics and books, and constant checking of the child's progress) assumes that children are not natural learners, but must be compelled to learn through the efforts of others.

Natural learners do not need such a structure. The success of self-directed learning (homeschoolers regularly outperform their schooled peers on measures of academic achievement, socialization, confidence, and self-esteem) strongly suggests that structured approaches inhibit both learning and personal development. Homeschooling is one attempt to follow the principles of natural learning, and to help children retain the curiosity, enthusiasm, and love of learning that every child has at birth. Homeschooling, as Holt writes, is a matter of faith. "This faith is that by nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."6

1 John Holt, How Children Learn (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983), p. 287.
2 John Gatto, "Why Schools Don't Educate", The Sun, June 1990, p.24.
3 Ibid., p.26.
4 Albert Einstein, "Autobiographical Notes", in Schilpp, Paul Arthur, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Evanston: The Library of Living Philosophers, Volume VII,1949), pp. 3-94.
5 Holt, op.cit., p. xi.
6 Ibid., p. 293.

By LauraGG

As a mom who's a returning unschooler (8 y.o. ds unschooling now, 6 y.o. dd still in school cuz she still likes it and wants to be there), I appreciate your story so much. We unschooled for about 7 months when my ds was 6, dd 4. I guess I wasn't sufficiently deschooled myself to stick with it at that time, so we put my son back in school. He finished K and 1st grade there.

Then we "unschooled" over the 3 summer months (meaning, did what they wanted to do - followed their bliss, etc. and learned like crazy), then when back at school this year, I noticed, in my ds especially, how much school was hampering his true learning. Ds went to a very good, small, lovely, creative private school (dd still goes there, as I said), very academic and with lots of enrichment, but because of all the hours school requires during the day, and the loads of homework ( in 2nd grade! ), he didn't have the energy to pursue his science projects, read for pleasure, write down things of interest to him, etc.

He only had time to work through the stultifying workbooks, and write book reports through his tears. It was awful.

Anonymous: I can feel how much you love your god children, and for all of us who grew up with school and strict curricula, it's hard to imagine learning reading, writing, and math without it. What an eye opener it was for me, when I saw my son's learning go down hill when he went back to school! The contrast was striking.

We're unschooling now, and not looking back. I'm hoping my dd will eventually unschool with us too - but it's important to me now that they make their own decisions about how they learn. If she wants to stay in school, we'll support her all the way.

Cheers!
Laura

By jjnlt <mailto:jjnlt@aol.com> on Thursday, November 21, 2002 - 04:47 pm:

My daughter decided to try a standard, but rigorous, curriculum in 9th grade (and of course I provided it because it was her choice). She lasted about 3 months before burning out. It cut into the time she had to devote to all her interests and she could see that a lot of it was busy work. She did keep using the literature series because she liked the selections, but she used in a loose manner and just read through the questions with their answers (she had the teacher's edition).

Especially if your daughter stays in school, you might want to read: Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher (Dr. Pipher is a clinical psychologist) and then her next book: The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families. She wrote the 2nd book after she met a HSing family and comments positively on the relationships that kind of cultural choice can offer. They both may be available at your local library, at Borders or through amazon.com

By LauraGG

Thanks for your response, Joanne. My son has really lobbied my daughter to homeschool with him - to no avail! LOL. She absolutely *loves* her school. She has great friends and the best teacher in the world. I mean, we all love Adele - everyone does! So did my son when she was his teacher. However, it is still school, with all that implies... (my daughter is already tiring of spelling tests, after all!)

That being said, when my son was making the decision to homeschool, we kept both of them home from school fairly frequently and did fun, special things out in the community. Maybe I could take her once or twice a month to organized homeschool events. Taking my son to a wonderful homeschool event was the clincher for him!

By jjnlt <mailto:jjnlt@ao.com>
HSing often doesn't look much like public school. Unschooling is a style of HSing chosen by many and involves child led learning.

There are many ways to learn to be on time and accomplish things by a deadline without an artificial schedule. Many, many books are packed with more information in a more enjoyable format than almost any textbook.

Some books you might like to read that might help you understand different models of education might include:

John Holt's: How Children Learn;

Grace Llewellyn's: Teenage Liberation Handbook or How to Quit School and Get a Real Education; and

Alfie Kohn's: Punished by Rewards.

These are all available at our local public library so they may be at yours or they are available through Amazon.com, etc.

While children can follow nontraditional paths and they don't all have to go to college to be successful, unschooling *can* prepare a child for success in college.

(See: Linda Dobson's: Homeschoolers' Success Stories and Grace Llewellyn's: Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don't Go to School)

My daughter was an unschooler (or as she called herself, an autodidact) but she was also a National Merit Scholar and got into the college of her choice where she is a senior with 3 majors who spent last spring studying abroad. If she had had to be tied down to a traditional curriculum on a traditional schedule, she wouldn't have been able to do all she has done.

Blessings,
Joanne

So What Do You Do? by Lisa Bugg

We were seating ourselves around the table in a small German restaurant on the local military post. The waitress was taking our drink and appetizer orders. Greetings were being exchanged, because Ed, who works with my husband, had a new girlfriend. Just as the waitress brought our tea, I was faced with the first question of the evening. Ed 's new girlfriend knew everyone at the table but me, since I was the only one who had not worked at her company. Logically, and innocently, she asked, "So, what do you do?"
My mind raced. Just what is it that I do? I could feel my smugly employed-for-money husband chuckle to himself. It was one of those "this is going to be fun to watch" chuckles.

Time slowed.

It isn't that I have a hard time explaining homeschooling or the many other choices I make in how I spend my time. It's that the question's deeper meaning always jumps out at me and I never know how to answer. Just what are we doing when we homeschool/unschool or homebirth or make individual decisions about vaccinations or... Just what are we doing out here on this newly blazed path?

By homeschooling my daughters, I am giving them room to develop into young women who do not know that math and science are still considered boy subjects. I have daughters who, during their young lives, are completely unaware of what it means to be graded and judged on what they wear. They think nothing of taking months to master a skill or, conversely, figuring something out in an afternoon. Never will the idea that "this is the way it's always been done" sit well with these two young women, for they know in their bones there are other ways to do everything. They have spent their young lives thinking for themselves. I can't wait to for the time when thousands of homeschooled young women begin to move out into the adult world. We should be in store for some wonderful changes.

My sons are unaware that late reading is a cause for concern. They are busy figuring out some other part of the world. Reading will come to them when they are ready. They have no idea that "big boys don't cry." All of their emotions are fully functioning, thank you very much. My father-in-law wanted me to send them to school so they would "learn how to fight." What he meant was that they should find their place in the pecking order. My sons are unaware there is a pecking order, much less that they should have a place in it. It is my prayer that, when they become men, they will see the damage a pecking order does to a society that needs all the creativity it can find to survive.

How do I explain that by raising children in the manner I have, I have shifted the matrix from which these children work, thus changing the world? I have contributed to the re-evolution of my own culture.

I could answer her with something which hints at the things taking place for my children, but my work goes beyond that. When a distraught parent calls and asks about homeschooling, I offer a vision of lives lived in the matrix my children take for granted. When I hear story after story of 6 year olds needing Ritalin, or of young boys being shamed for not reading, I ask those parents, "Just what would you be doing if you accept what you are being told?" When asked if homeschooled children are successful, I always ask the questioner to define success. I scare a few people. I make a few others angry. But more often than not, I plant seeds. Re-evolutionary seeds that will sustain the future growth of a changed society. In reading the work of Carol Ochs, I came across these words: "We need to acknowledge that we fear freedom; that we are drawn to it, but resist our creative process. Freedom entails change, standing alone, taking responsibility; and all of them frighten us. We must recognize the extent to which we - each of us - have created our own world of meaning, our own reality."

I realized that this is what I do. I acknowledge the fear of freedom. I urge, expect, and sometimes demand that people take responsibility and stand alone. I pray that we create a new reality, one that does not include shaming children for not reading on time, for not memorizing obscure facts and parroting them back on demand. I have created my own world and I welcome every passerby to come visit with me, even if just for a brief moment. I'm intent on shifting the matrix. I'm a revolutionary.

I finally come back to the present and time returns to normal. I meet the new girlfriend's eyes and make a quick decision. I manage to mumble that I stay home with my children. My smug, "I work for money" husband lets out the last breath of his chuckle. I sense his disappointment. I sigh. Discretion is the better part of valor, even for a freedom fighter such as myself.
Well, that's what I do. What do you do?

© 2001, Lisa Bugg

Our 8 Year Old Son Still Doesn't Read
And believe it or not, we aren't worried.
by John Andersen

Our son recently turned 8. He recognizes letters and can write words, but still doesn't read.
By all accounts, we should be panic-stricken. Given our competitive society, many would no doubt feel we are highly irresponsible to let our son fall "so far behind."
Surely, we must be desperately looking for advice on dealing with late readers. Or we must be on the hunt for that breakthrough curriculum which will quickly turn him into a reader.
Nope, neither.
We feel confident when he is ready to read, he will read. And perhaps when that day comes, he will read with passion and purpose. We believe this because we've noticed a lot of interesting things about him.

For instance, whenever I play him in chess, he beats me. I'm no chess pro, but good grief, I can usually make a respectable showing. Honestly, I try to beat him. I give it all I've got. But he always wins. So I'm left to conclude he has a pretty good noggin.

Our son entertains us regularly with some very imaginative stories. The other night he invented an army tank (on paper) which has all sorts of ways of defending itself against enemy attacks. One of those is a force field which turns incoming missiles into liquid just before impact. Another is a net which catches bombs and tosses them back at the enemy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of his fascinating mind. He is always asking questions. He is endlessly curious. We suspect before long, his desire to learn more about a given subject will be his motivation to become a reader.

Our approach to educating both him and his older sister, is that of unschooling. In other words, we serve them up regular platterfuls of learning opportunities and then leave them free to sample and dabble.

Of course, we ensure they do some of the 3R's each day. For instance, we require our daughter to write in her journal daily. And math is a daily kitchen table event.

But beyond those and a few other basics, the children independently follow their learning interests.

I didn't enjoy such learning independence until just a few years ago when I finally freed my mind of the notion that self-learning was inferior; that I couldn't truly learn something unless I attended an institution and paid tuition.

That discovery opened a whole new world. My wife had long since been a self-learner. She was just waiting for me to catch on.

Together, we decided it would be great to "teach" our children self-learning from their early years.

Hence, we unschool. And we don't get too uptight when our children fail to meet society's standards of mastery.

We think passion and curiosity are much more important, anyhow. And we like to believe passion and curiosity have a greater chance of becoming lifelong companions when given enough time and space for development during childhood.

So, we allow our son to spend lots of time in his imaginary world. Who knows, down the road when he finally masters reading and writing, he may have something profound to share with us. Or perhaps, he may not choose to do that, but simply use his reading and writing skills to pursue his passion and curiosity on another level.

Whichever he chooses is up to him. Our only hope is he will forever feel free to learn at his pace and according to his interests.
In terms of learning, it doesn't get much better than that.

Certificate of Empowerment
by Sandra Dodd

This is intended for those who want to be "certified". Feel free to print this out for yourself or a friend.

Certificate of Empowerment

As bearer of this certificate you are no longer required to depend on the advice of experts. You may step back and view the entire world-not just your home, neighborhood or town, but the whole Earth-as a learning experience, a laboratory containing languages (and native speakers thereof), plants, animals, history, geology, weather (real live weather, in the sky, not in a book), music, art , mathematics, physics, engineering, foods, human dynamics, and ideas without end. Although collections of these treasures have been located in museums for your convenience, they are to be found everywhere else, too.

This authorizes you to experiment; to trust and enjoy your kids; to rejoice when your children surpass you in skill, knowledge or wisdom; to make mistakes, and to say "I don't know." Furthermore, you may allow your children to experience boredom without taking full responsibility for finding them something to do.

Henceforth you shall neither be required nor expected to finish everything you start. Projects, books, experiments and plans may be discontinued as soon as something more interesting comes along (or for any other reason) without penalty, and picked up again at any time in the future (or never).

You may reclaim control of your family's daily life, and take what steps you feel necessary to protect your children from physical, emotional or social harm.

You have leave to think your own thoughts, and to encourage your children to think theirs.

Each person who reads and understands this is authorized to extend these privileges to others, by reproducing and distributing this certificate or by creating another of his/her own design. Those who don't feel the need to obtain approval to experiment, to think, or to do things they've never seen others do are exempt, as they didn't need permission in the first place.
Unschooling the Gifted Child: Defining the Challenge from Within

by Lisa Rivero

What does it mean to unschool a gifted child?
The question isn't nearly as simple as it sounds. Like beauty, the meaning of the question will depend in large part on how we understand the terms: What does it mean to unschool at all? Aren't all children gifted? In the home, don't labels such as "gifted" lose their meaning?

As the parent of a home-educated gifted child, I do believe that unschooling gifted children is different in some important ways from unschooling in general, and I do know that the gifted child comes with personality and learning differences that result in special needs. Just as for other children, unschooling can be the optimal educational environment for the gifted child, but only if those special needs are acknowledged and understood.

Gifted by Any Other Name

The word "gifted" is fraught with emotion and controversy, especially if people equate "gifted" with "special." All children are special. All children have talents. "Talented" is the preferred word among many educational professionals these days, but "talented" does not adequately describe the gifted child's true nature and makes me think of talent shows with scrubbed, smiling faces and big blue ribbons--a not entirely benign misrepresentation. Perhaps "gifted" does not adequately describe these enigmatic children either, but other phrases such as "high ability children," "intellectually talented children," and "highly intelligent children" serve us no better and are certainly less graceful from a writer's standpoint. It's interesting that the use of the word "homeschooling" is similarly problematic, with "home schooling," "home learning," "world learning," "community-based education," and "unschooling" some of the alternatives. But these terms are not true synonyms. Like the Eskimos' xxx words for white, each term carries with it a slightly different meaning.

I have finally decided that "gifted" is as good a term as any other perhaps precisely because of its ambiguity. Gifted students are, after all, by no means a homogeneous group. Gifted students may be obviously above grade level in most or all subjects or may struggle to learn to read at age seven. They may be reflective in thought, giving the impression of being "slow," or they may be impulsive, making them seem flighty. They may be physically strong or stereotypically bookish. \

What sets apart the gifted child from his classmates is his intensity and insight, his self-determination and drive to learn about his world, his perfectionism and sensitivity. These traits are intricately and magically woven into one complete and complex child who may or may not achieve according to the world's timetable or standards.

Who Is the Gifted Child?

According to Ellen Winner, author of Gifted Children: Myths and Realities, gifted children, from an early age, exhibit these three traits: 1. Precociousness, 2: A Rage to Master, and 3. A Creative Nature. To these I would add a fourth, Overexitability. Together these four traits are what make unschooling a gifted child a unique but joyful challenge.

1. Precociousness. Whether it is talking, reading or addition, the gifted child will learn on her own at a rate faster than predicted by normal time tables (even if she doesn't know here times tables by fourth grade!). This does not mean that all gifted children learn to read early or can add at age four, but there are some areas in which the child is significantly ahead of age peers. For some children this precociousness will be most notable in the area of language. For others it will be numbers or spatial relationships or inter- and intrapersonal communications.

For the unschooling family, it is important for parents to understand that this does not necessarily mean that they are pushing their child! It also means that the scaffolding that all unschooling parents provide is often at a different level and intensity. A "normal" day of answering questions and probing intrinsic interests will often leave you exhausted and overwhelmed.

For example, when our eight-year-old son became interested in politics and government because of the 2000 presidential campaign, his questions ranged from the supreme court appointments to the history of political parties, from the difficulties faced by third-party candidates to issues of human rights and capital punishment and gun control. His need to know the world in which he lives was intense, but as a parent, I also had to keep in mind his relatively young age and sensitive nature. Books about government and politics written for his age level do not adequately address the questions he was asking, but books that do address the questions are designed for older children who have a firmer grasp of some of the more unpleasant realities of the world. Helping him to learn what he wants and needs to learn in an age-appropriate way is often my greatest challenge.

2. A Rage to Master. Howard Rowland writes in No More School: An American Family's Experiment in Education that his son Seth was, like most children, "predisposed to learn, but unlike most, he was self-propelled." In very young children who are free to explore the world around them, their self-propulsion automatically guides and regulates their curiosity, but this challenge from within is then hindered and threatened by the structure of classroom education.

From this perspective, the problem of providing appropriate challenge--the buzzword of gifted education programs--is a problem that we create by constantly directing children's interests. This is a problem for all children, but the gifted child feels it and often fights it to a greater degree.

Unschoooling parents can find ways to encourage the gifted child to recognize and use his sense of self-determination, to see himself as "inner-directed" rather than "stubborn" or "controlling." They can also realize that the gifted child will challenge authority, may have little concern for the opinions of adults, and may be unaffected by the use of rewards and punishments. Knowing how to use these characteristics as strengths rather than weaknesses then becomes a large part of the unschooling challenge.

3. Creativity. I believe that all children are creative. We all have the ability to produce novelty, to think is new ways, to forge new paths and fashion new combinations. What is different about the gifted child is that creativity is more infused with the whole being, harder to "turn off," and more of a challenge to understand and accept.

Children who are highly creative usually score lower than their less creative peers on standardized tests. This is because highly creative children are drawn to the unusual answer, not the "correct" one. They will see novel possibilities in otherwise straightforward questions. They are the students who cannot follow step-by-step instructions without embellishment, interpretation and revision, much to the dismay and frustration of the adults around them!

Unschooling truly celebrates the creative nature of the gifted child. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, author of Flow and Creativity, writes that creative individuals seek to move beyond dichotomies such as introvert and extravert, or fantasy and reality. Rather, creative people embody seemingly mutually exclusive traits, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in alternation, causing much confusion and misunderstanding on the part of parents and teacher. In the unschooling environment, a child has no need to fit a mold or to "live up" to who we think she should be. She can simply be, in all her dimensions of complexity.

4. Overexcitability.
Finally, the gifted child is an over excitable child. According to Kazimierz Dabrowski, these overexcitabilities can be psychomotor (fast talking, love of fast sports, "acting up"), sensual (heightened senses such as taste, touch or hearing), intellectual (love of intellectual word games, puzzles or reading, introspection), imaginational (daydreaming, intense and prolonged fantasy life, dramatic reactions), and emotional (cries and laughs easily, sense of empathy, embarrassment and anxiety).

This is the area that has the most impact on a gifted child's relationship to the world around him. Parents of gifted children may have to look harder for friends who understand and accept their child's intense nature. And overexcitable children are well served by being aware their often extreme reactions and emotions. Only through acceptance and understanding can they eventually less overwhelmed by their very selves.

Bibliotherapy--using books to address everyday problems and issues--is a wonderful tool of emotional development for the unschooling family. Parents can look for books that portray overexcitable characters, such as Rosemary Wells's Shy Charles (emotional) or Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (sensual and imaginational).

Perhaps the greatest gift an unschooling parent of a gifted child can offer is time. By doing away with traditional notions of grade levels and artificial standards of achievement and progress, the gifted child need not accelerate through grades in order to stay challenged. David Elkind, author of Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, argues that gifted children may actually need a prolonged period of self-discovery, what we normally think of as a child-centered preschool or kindergarten environment, but at a higher level. The child naturally finds and chooses the level of learning--high or low--at which he is comfortable, which will surely change by the day.

Unschooling is radical deceleration for gifted children in the sense that no one else's foot is on the gas pedal and the children are given back the steering wheel. They have the control and freedom to speed up or slow down, to back up to revisit favorite spots and to meander along a country road before zooming past vast landscapes, to forge their own paths through uncharted wilderness, or to stop completely for awhile just to enjoy the view.

If we're lucky and resist the temptation to be backseat drivers, we'll be invited to ride along.
[Adapted from Gifted Education Comes Home: A Case for Self-Directed Homeschooling (Gifted Education Press, 2000) by Lisa Rivero and a manuscript in progress about creative homeschooling. Lisa Rivero is a writer who specializes in issues of gifted education and home education, and she is the parent of a self-directed home-educated son.]

Tips on homeschooling: Questions from a young mom, and answers from an unschooling friend.
by Nancy Wooton, 2/24/99

After being on the brink for more than a year, my 5 year old is learning to read. Not that she's old enough to worry about it, she just loves books so much I thought it would happen earlier. I did do a TINY bit of sitting down and teaching, but it probably only nudged her a little sooner than she would have learned herself.

Probably not. It's so tempting to think we can teach kids, but the fact is, we present, and they learn. If she wasn't ready, she wouldn't have been interested and she wouldn't have learned. Reading aloud is the start; demonstrating that reading is normal and interesting by reading yourself is part of the process, too. My own son, Alex "broke the code" for himself at about age 5, by typing a caption from National Geographic on the computer; he opened a word processing program, got a new document, chose a typeface and size, and started copying this rather lengthy photo caption about sea stars. He was so intent on what he was doing! He looked from the magazine, written in italics and upper and lower case, to the keyboard to find the matching letter, to the screen, where he saw the connection between the printed magazine's words and the ones he was typing. You couldn't make a curriculum or a lesson or a method out of that; it was *his* way, in *his* time. Not too much later, he was reading aloud from Calvin and Hobbes into a tape recorder; his idea, not mine!

Anyway, any suggestions for what to get for C. that would teach her to do math...

OK, let's start with you. "Teach her to do math" is not what you want to do. Schools do that. If you want that, pack her off. Let her explore the world we all inhabit, and discover the mathematical patterns that underlie it all. Let her have her own money to spend. Let her put fruit on the scale at the store, and see the numbers on each side of the dot, and the same kind of numbers on the cash register (ta-da, decimals, fractions, division!) Let her help figure out which is the best value, the five-pound bag of oranges for one dollar, or the fifty cents a pound ones? LIFE is education. REAL LIFE is the best education. Children sit in schools playing with plastic coins, setting up play stores to spend them. Come on. This is not necessary. Paper and pencil math can be approached later, with the foundation of real life experience to build on. (She's *probably* too young for strictly abstract math, by the way, although every child is unique.)

...or reading, or science?
One of Alex's great loves, dinosaurs, helped him in his reading quest. People have this idea of "the basics" that is backwards. You do not have to teach a child to read in order for them to pursue an interest; help them pursue the interest, and the basics, because they ARE basic, fall into place. Kids are forced to read boring little stories, when they'd rather hear about spaceships, with spaceships dangled like a carrot to get them through the little stories. READ the spaceship book aloud, show the kid the pictures of the moon and Tranquility Base and before you know it, she's reading them to you. No boring primers necessary. (And don't neglect Dr. Suess :-)

It's good to know someone who has been doing "unstructured" HSing for a few years. By the way, what do you think of the concept of unschooling? Is what you do unschooling? Someone told me they thought that unschooling is too "new age." That element definitely exists in unschooling, but I'm not sure that's a basic tenet.

I unschool. I don't do unstructured homeschooling or relaxed homeschooling. In fact, if there was a different word people would recognize, I wouldn't say I "Homeschool" at all. I *did* do that with Laura, and she will tell you about it with tears. Alex, on the other hand, has never had a lesson from me that he didn't request and initiate. Laura will approach a subject with interest, but still looks for "the right answer." Alex just gobbles everything up like a Pac-man :-)

It bothers me a bit that unschooling is perceived as "new age." Labels exist to stop discussion. Give it a name, put it in a category, and you've captured it and made yourself safe from it. Label a person, and you have a pretty good idea of what they are; you can feel safe either embracing them, or excluding them, depending on what you label yourself. Call unschooling "new age," and you might dismiss it from the possibilities before you, just as another person might label structured homeschooling "conservative Christian," and thus overlook what could be the ideal learning environment for *their* child.

Unschooling scares people, because there are no guarantees. What they fail to realize is, public school, private school, or school-at-home offer no guarantees, either. What unschooling is about is *freedom.* How it appears in different homes is as individual as the child himself. It does not mean "unparenting," though a wide range of parenting philosophies are practiced (most unschoolers are pretty relaxed, though, since you aren't trying to force the kids to do things all day long). The basic tenet is not new age; it's "what is best for this individual person, my child?" In some cases, unschooling parents will find their child desires a structured curriculum, and they provide it. The difference is in WHO is asking for the curriculum, and who is responsible for doing it.

It is possible to have a structured, orderly life, and still unschool. Your child's day can include lessons outside the home, or lessons within it *if* it is the child who initiates. If you're dragging her to the table because 9am is Math Time, and she really wants to play with her Legos, you're not unschooling. What a school-at-home person would see as "just playing," an unschooler sees as learning. Sandra Dodd uses the saying "Everything is Educational." And she means everything. Even if C. wanted to play dolls, or with stuffed animals, instead of "doing math," that is OK; math is no more or less important than whatever is in her mind with the dolls and animals. Math will still be there when she's done with serving tea to Princess Wilhemina Bear and Mr. Pterodactyl. (And you never know; she may have discovered division as she set out the 3 cups and 3 saucers and served the 10 cookies, 3 each with one left over!)

One thing school does that you don't ever, ever have to do is this: By making certain things "subjects," other things are not subjects, and in school, only subjects matter. What you learn "on your own time" is unimportant, and in fact detracts from the time you should be spending on subjects. Homeschools can end up making this same mistake: You buy a curriculum and you "do school," and THEN you can play (i.e., then you have "free time"). IF you do your lesson, you can play. Unschoolers turn the whole thing upside down: If you follow your interest (play), you will learn in the process.

Think about how an adult learns something new, how you yourself do it; there is no reason why a child can't learn in the same way. You have an interest, let's say, in tying flies for fishing, or in the Civil War, or in chinchillas. What do you do? Research, for one. What kind? The library, perhaps. You find books on the subject. You find movies about the Civil War. You go to the zoo or a pet shop or a state fair to see chinchillas and talk to people who raise them. You find a TV program about tying flies and how to cast, and you go to the lake and see people fishing, and talk to them. You realize you can't quite understand how to do it by reading, so you find someone who can show you. You want to have some fun interaction with others, so you join a Civil War reanactment society. Now, imagine you are in school, and you have to "study" tying flies, or raising chinchillas. You have no interest in these things at all; you are totally absorbed by the Civil War right now. It would take coercion (rewards/grades and punishments/grades) to make you "learn" about flies and chinchillas, and as soon as that last final is done, you forget it all and go back to that fascinating book on Antietam.

People learn because they are interested in learning something, for some reason. A man learns Greek to fulfill a goal important to him; a girl learns to keep her heels down and her reins even, because she wants to advance to using a bit. If these things, being a priest or horseback riding, were not important to the individuals in question, would either of them learn them? Would they be happy doing so if someone were making them do it? Children will learn long division, and algebra, and calculus in the same way. If they truly are not interested in mathematics, then they don't need it. They will most likely not pursue careers that require it. Basic arithmetic, sure. People need that, and without the interference of school, kids find it fun.

It's very common for us parents to panic about our kids' educations, *particularly* in the area we had the most trouble with ourselves. And taking on all the responsibility by homeschooling is very scary -- we can't pass the buck to anyone!! Educating yourself about *school* is important, too. John Holt and John Taylor Gatto will help there. The origins of public school in America are not noble or honorable. That schools continue to operate in the same way as at the turn of the century is part of their failure today. We don't have a need for obedient factory workers, yet we keep educating as though we did. What industry needs are innovative thinkers, people who are flexible and agile learners.

I've often thought how great it would have been if I'd known *then* what I know *now,* so I guess I get pretty enthusiastic when someone asks about homeschooling. Make good use of the resources readily available in books and on the Web; they will be really helpful. Trust yourself. Don't be in a big hurry about anything, especially spending money on curricula. Watch how your children discover the world around them, and trust their innate curiosity to spur them along. Realize that what you think is the most fascinating thing on earth may be met with a yawn on Tuesday, then eagerly sopped up three months later. Present whatever you think is cool, but *always* allow your children the freedom to say, "No thank you." Then, keep on enjoying the cool thing *for yourself.* Unschooling is for moms and dads as much as for kids!

And always remember the wisdom of Hobbes (the tiger, that is):
"If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun."
ALL KINDS OF HOMESCHOOLING
from "Off the Grid" by Sandra Dodd

When the deadline was upon me and I was pacing around, my son Kirby said, "Why don't you write about 'What I Did on My Vacation in Timbuktu' and then make it up from there" Well, I could write about what we did on vacation, but since we homeschool the same way all year and the kids learn more out of town than in, there is no vacation. We went to Ontario, anyway, not Timbuktu.
I kept pacing and whimpering.

"Write it like Lone Wolf," he said. "If you want to learn about math, go to page 132. If you want to learn about science, turn to page 53."

Now THERE is an idea--education as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. Now he's onto something. I mean now I'm writing.
There are many ways to homeschool. Surprisingly (NOT) homeschoolers sometimes look askance at styles which are not their own. Extremists at both ends have complained that they hate to be tarred with the same brush as [fill in the blank with "Other"].
Some homeschoolers are very structured. They do school-style work, with subjects, units, tests, grades, on a schedule with vacations (in Timbuktu, perhaps, but without schoolwork when they get there). They fear to hear, "Oh, so you're homeschooling; you just let your kids do whatever they want?"

Some homeschoolers structure their lives on the open classroom models used in the early 1970's. They were big in many New Mexico school districts, so some of you reeading this might have taught in one, or attended one. This is a structure based on removal of the traditional structure, on interest-based learning, on discovery learning. People enamored of this approach fear to hear, "Oh, you're a homeschooler. So you don't let your children play outside the house with other children?" or "So, call me when your lessons are over."

I'm an unschooler. Lessons are never over. On the other hand, lessons never really begin. Children's question are answered and an atmosphere of learning is created so that questions are constant and answers are never far away.

When people ask a structured family how much time it takes to homeschool the response usually ranges from three hours a day to six hours a day (much more than kids actually spend in classrooms in school). When you ask an unschooling family how much time it takes to homeschool, first there's a pause. I've heard, in rapid succession in groups of unschoolers, "None" and "All of it." Their range is it takes from zero hours a day to 24 hours a day.

When learning is recognized in the fabric of life and encouraged, when families make their decisions based on what leads to more interesting and educational ends, children learn without effort, often without even knowing it, and parents learn along with them.
Many homeschoolers fall somewhere between structured and seamless-life learners. There are families whose children attend school whose houses are learning labs, museums and libraries all rolled into one. Enriching our lives for the benefit of our children isn't just for homeschoolers. Small changes in parental attitude are sometimes all it takes.

Learning isn't in fancy books or computer games, it all happens in the ideas children have, in the trivial facts they fit together to come up with their view of the world--past present and future. You don't need a lesson or a unit to show a child what's wonderful about woodgrain, ice crystals on the windshield, or birdsongs. Five seconds worth of pointing and saying "Look, these trees were not native to North America" might possibly lead to an hour long discussion, or a lifelong fascination. Bringing something interesting home, browsing in an antique shop, listening to new music on instruments you've never heard--all those build neural pathways and give you a chance to be together in a special place.

No matter how your children formally learn, take a few more opportunities to share wonder and discovery with them. It will enrich you all.

Moving a Puddle
by Sandra Dodd

I've long been an advocate of natural learning and unschooling, but there is one very difficult thing about it, and that is answering the question "What is a typical day?" The very core of the idea is embracing what comes along. I can tell a couple of stories which might illustrate this method (or lack of method).

One day we were watering the back yard and talking about flow dynamics, although we didn't use that term. We were observing the speed of the flow, and the swirls, and the "materials" (type and condition of soil, angle of the hill, all that stuff). I told my husband he would have LOVED to have grown up in a place where he'd needed to irrigate. Irrigating an orchard or field is a huge thrill for those who like to play in the water.

A few days later the kids and I were on the way to the unschoolers' meeting place, and Kirby (11) had a small water pistol with him.

"Is that empty?" I asked.

"No."

"Well please empty it, because some of the other moms won't want their kids to get wet, and it's not a good idea to have water fights where we don't have towels or other clothes."

Ooh, I heard that mom voice and looked at the squirt gun, and it was a five ounce insignificant little thing, but still... So Kirby said he would empty it out the window, which he proceeded to do, squirting it on his hand and discussing how much colder it was to have a wet hand in the wind than dry.

We got to the park to find that five ounces of clean water would have been a drop in a lake, and there the lake was--right under all four swings. The park had been overwatered.

As each family showed up I'd ask if they had a shovel. Nope. After half an hour I decided to go and get one. I got two, from two nearby friends' houses, and came back and started to shovel sand into the water. By then, though, kids were swinging and many were already wet from the knees down and happy.

I announced that I was going to move the puddle over, and started digging a trough. Other moms and kids said, "What!?" and came to see, and to help. Hydro-engineering time! Kids and moms took turns with shovels and plastic buckets. We drained and filled the puddles, diverting most of the water into a hole designed for that purpose. It was BIG sandbox play, with fifteen or more participants from babies to middle-aged kids, and as many observers. Sometimes the kids on the swings were dragging their feet in the water to make waves to send down the channel into the new "puddle" so that the swing became a tool in the project as well. Except about gravity, waves and the properties of dry sand vs. wet, there wasn't any "technical" discussion at all, only joking and "This is fun!"
Did that puddle "need" to be moved? It didn't even "need" to be filled in. It was play, a game. I felt the need to try to move a puddle. I would have done it by myself, but it was a blast to have help.

Was it educational? I think it will affect some of those lives forever. Besides the engineering aspect, there was the newness, and the camaraderie of working on a spontaneous project without formal organization, in which people could stop at any moment, change plans and methods without approval, and experiment. The cost of materials was nothing. It was one of those moments (half hours) which is so engrossing that time and place aren't as large and important as they sometimes seem. It was large scale stress-free cooperation.

This sort of learning experience can't be planned. Had it been written up in advance and put on a schedule it wouldn't have been alive and special.

People ask whether unschooling isn't like unit studies. Perhaps in the same way there are hexagonal and pentagonal patterns in nature it is. Mathematicians didn't design the patterns in flowers and starfish, but they see them and name them after the fact. I see, in retrospect, a "water unit," but the best thing I can see in the future is to remain busy, curious, and open to whatever comes along. Flexibility to pursue tangents and cowtrails, and continuing to see the wonder in everyday things will lead to learning experiences without prior planning. A butterfly in the yard is more wonderful than a dusty butterfly pinned in a box, but you can control the one in the box better, as long as you don't want it to fly. At least it will be there when you want to look at it. The one in the yard is on his own schedule.

I'm not recommending that anyone go out and move a puddle. If you tried, you would probably pass right by five better adventures looking for an overwatered park which you might never find. I wish everyone reading this the clarity to recognize opportunities and I hope you have fun stumbling onto those special projects and situations which will be uniquely yours--yours and your children's.

Sandra Dodd
May 1998

This as written for the upcoming Enchanted Families, a local parenting/homeschooling thing in which I have a column called "Off the Grid." When Jon Came Home, by Nancy E. Dodge

I became an "almost veteran unschooler" this year as my oldest child turned 12. I went through the decision-making over to school or not to school,¹ and became enraptured with Waldorf education when Jon turned four. I was almost taken in by the cloth dolls, wooden blocks, nice colors, and soft-spoken teachers. What changed our minds was the fact that we would be driving two hours a day to have our son be part of a simulated home environment! Sounded pretty stupid, so we wrote off the $100 admission fee as a donation and Jon stayed home.

Jon was part of the Sesame Street generation. I don't know if it hurt him any, and I certainly liked spending a year or so in the company of Big Bird. I knew Mr. Rogers intimately that year, (and graciously put up with the Land of Maple Leaf.¹ Speedy Delivery!) As my parenting skills got better and I realized that hiding in the television room of our sixteen room city house with Jon was getting us nowhere, we ventured outside and into the big, wide world. We went to parks and canal museums, took long walks, met friends, and kept the television off lots of the time. I guess you could say that Jon came home again.

When Jon was six, a group of local homeschoolers was forming a homeschool group, complete with a teacher. It sounded wonderful, and for some it was. I sent him off one September day when he was six with a new shirt, Star Trek lunch box, and pencil box. His overwhelming enthusiasm for life got him safely through five months of HomeSchool,¹ as it was called, before he and his father decided to call it quits. Too much bell-ringing, forced Writing Workshop, too much "fold your paper this way" and "draw Spring here, Summer here, Fall here, and Winter here" for Jon's taste. I was still trying to just get him to shut up and just get along. Anyhow, to continue, Jon came back home.

When Jon was seven, it was a tough, tough time. This was my school at home time, and I decided all by myself that the world was a tough place, Jon couldn't just stay home and expect to do nothing, that his schooled counterparts were becoming educated not three blocks away, and that it was by-God time to do some serious work. The kitchen table became a battleground. The typical scene was this:

"Jon (or Jonathan, as he was still known), it's time to do some reading work/math/science/whatever."
"No way."
"Now, don't make me angry. It's time, sit down, we're going to do some work now."
"I'd rather puke."
"Now, Jonathan, I'm going to count to ten...Jon, get back here. I'm going to call the school. Look, I'm getting up! I'm dialing, "Hello give me the principal."
I can't continue. I need to go hug Jon.
There, I'm back. I'm glad to say that by the time Jon turned eight, our financial problems became so overwhelming that I began to let up on him. I read out loud, but that was all, and always fun books. We covered the Redwall series twice that year, plus some. Jon and I both came home. The past four years have been a growing, letting-go time for me and for Jon. It was difficult for a product of 14 years of public education to just let my son wander around the outside of the property, sit in a tree, talk to himself, check the fridge for new developments, and play Nintendo. "What are you interested in, Jon?" "I don't know." "Do you want to try soccer again?" "I don't think so." "Is there anything you are interested in doing especially? What about a chess club?" "Naaaahhhh." "How about your social life?" "I have Tim, that's all I need." "Want to join a choral group? Your voice is superb..." "No." "How about piano lessons?" "Nah." "Why don't you read a book?" "I read a book already."

This year Jon is apprenticing with his father, who is a computer consultant. He has a new pair of pants and two good shirts. He wakes up early, hairsprays his hair, and is ready to start the day. His enthusiasm is boundless, and a joy to see.
He is learning hardware and software from the inside out, and learning from the best. The best part of the apprentice thing is that his enthusiasm for other things is coming out! He didn't flinch when I suggested that we order Key to Algebra, he just suggested that we do it together, with his dad if at all possible. I do believe that Jon is home for good.

Know what he was doing when I went in to hug him just now? Reading a book, that's what. Raptor Red, in case you're interested.
How My Children Learned to Read, by Pam Sorooshian

Do you remember how much fun it was when your child was learning to talk? How each word was just adorable? How you'd strain your imagination, at first, to figure out what the sounds he was making might mean? How he slowly became easier and easier to understand? How he surprised you sometimes when he popped out with a word you didn't know he knew? How he just "all on his own" started putting the words together and how they slowly turned into phrases and then sentences? Do you remember how he made mistakes by putting words together in ways that made sense logically, but just weren't the way we speak the language? Did he make up words? Did he mispronounce them? Wasn't it amazingly wonderfully satisfying to watch the slow, but inevitable, progress he made in speaking? Think for a minute about what your role was in that development.

I remember my oldest daughter, hearing a knock on the front door, standing behind it and shouting, "Whobody is there?" I remember the first two words she put together were "Hi there," which she often shouted while waving at people as we cruised the aisles in the grocery store. Everyone around her responded with hugs and smiles and nods of encouragement and, especially, we responded by talking to her a lot and by listening to her very very carefully.

Learning to read can be just as joy-filled as learning to talk was. If you are lucky, your child will do a lot of it in your presence and out loud, so you can respond with encouraging approval, just the way you did when he started putting sounds together to make speech. Some kids, however, do their learning to read in relative silence, mostly working it out within their own head. We parents can respect that by not interfering by demanding regular demonstrations of what the child prefers to keep private. We'll still notice that the child is making more and more sense out of printed language, that he is reading signs, for example. And we can always do our part by reading to him as much as possible and by surrounding him with print materials of all kinds and with a wide variety of opportunities to begin using print himself.

Books are the most obvious of the printed materials. At our house, we look at books as being just about as important as food to eat and air to breathe. We get excited over them, we drag them everywhere, we talk about them, we give them as presents, we ooh and aah over the illustrations, we read bits and pieces out loud to each other, we pretend we are characters from the books, we develop favorite authors and try to read all their books, we read books of funny poems and lovely poems, we read for information, we listen to stories on tape, we go to book signings, we spend hours and hours in the library and in bookstores. We are not, in general, very careful with our books, the house is cluttered with them piled here, there, and everywhere. So is the car. Kids fall asleep with books in their hands nearly every night. Over the years, though, we have collected certain favorites that are treated especially tenderly, read carefully and never in the bathtub. Many of our books have been purchased at garage sales and thrift shops, by the way.

We also subscribe to lots of magazines. Every year the Girl Scouts sell magazines subscriptions as a fund raiser and we spend hours poring over the list and each child chooses a couple of magazines. Some favorites over the years have been Ladybug, Cricket, Highlights, Ranger Rick, and My Big Backyard. As the children have gotten older, they've selected Puzzlemania, Zillions, American Girl, Kids Discover, Muse, National Geographic World, and more.

Children who are learning to read usually want to create the written word, too, right along with learning to read it. So we provide lots and lots of writing materials. We include good quality colored pencils, crayons, markers, stampers, stickers, stencils, paint, and anything else that might be fun to draw or write with. The house is filled with paper of all kinds: from recycled paper with one side already used to various beautiful papers of different types. Kids LOVE to play with business forms such as a receipt book or a restaurant order pad or an unused check register. I know many kids who have had hours and hours of practicing writing and learning to understand how sounds are represented by letters and how letters make up words, by taking pretend food orders from their family members. My kids have often made lovely decorated menus for dinnertime. Post-It Notes, which now come in many sizes and colors, are very attractive to kids, who usually just LOVE to write or draw on them and stick them all over the house. At their grandma's house, my children and their cousins have developed a tradition of writing little funny things on post-it notes and sticking them in unexpected places. Grandma might, for example, reach for the band-aid box and discover a post-it note that says, "Ouch!"
I have never given any of my children a "reading lesson." My oldest two learned to read when they were still four years old. By the time they turned six, they were selecting lengthy books, such as the Little House series. The oldest learned to read in such a way that I could observe the process. She asked questions about letters and words, she followed along in books as I was reading, she started reading signs, we played rhyming games, she started asking me how to spell words, and, pretty soon, she was reading.
I never saw it coming with my second child. I only knew she was actually reading when, one evening, her older sister called me to their room and complained, "Roxana won't stop reading out loud and she's bothering me." I thought she had memorized the book and was pretending to read. But, nope, she was really reading and quite fluently. Big sister said she'd been driving her crazy for a couple of weeks, asking her, "What does this spell? What does that spell?" during the evenings when they were in bed with their books. I had no idea.

My third child is a very different learner than her sisters; she learned to read at about the time she turned 8 years old. It took about 6 weeks for her to go from barely reading at all, struggling to sound out simple words, to reading Shakespeare. I am absolutely serious. She and her sisters were performing as fairies in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream and, one day, I discovered her reading the script, out loud and with lovely inflection. I admit, I had started to get a little anxious over her not reading yet, although I'd been careful not to let on to her that I was having any twinges of nervousness. As she turned six and then seven and then eight years old, I couldn't help thinking about the many, many books her sisters had read on their own by that age. But, she's making up for any "lost" time now. (I don't really think of that time as lost, by any means, she was always busy, always learning.) Yesterday she read Charlotte's Web. The day before that she read Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. She is in love with books. I came home with a copy of The Borrowers, the other day, and she squealed with delight just at the prospect of reading it.

Who could ask for more?
No Fear! by Jeanne Mills

Homeschooling is always a courageous adventure but presents special challenges when the journey begins after years in public school. Last Fall we entered our third year of homeschool with our ninth-grade daughter and confidently began again as we welcomed home our seventh-grade son for that exciting and challenging first year.

After several weeks of relaxed, unstructured homeschooling, my 12 year old son fell into a weeping mess. Though my heart broke for his emotional pain, it taught me volumes about his public school experience through the 6th grade and strengthened my determination to help him find his way.

According to the school district, my son is advanced in mathematics. Since I had no idea where to start his studies, we decided to do Saxon Math placement testing. No score to achieve, no percentage correct or number incorrect to mark in red pen on the worksheets--simply 50 questions progressing through the levels of the Saxon Math textbooks--levels 54 through Algebra 1. Students are given up to one hour to take the test, may not use a calculator, and must show all their work. They are instructed to work until they cannot work any more problems.

My daughter took the testing in stride and placed higher than we anticipated, but my son was a completely different story. He sat down to theworksheet a relaxed, happy little boy but quickly turned into an anxious,grouchy monster. I was confused by the transformation and cautiouslyapproached the situation. I explained again that the test wasn't really a 'test', that we just needed to know which textbook to purchase for him because mom didn't want to spend money on a book that was too easy or too difficult. I told him to do the problems until he came to those he couldn't complete. My words bounced off his forehead! He was determined he could finish ALL the problems and finish them correctly which, at his age and experience, was just not possible! First he became indignant, then angry, and then he began weeping. Not just tears, but deep sobs with tears running down his face. I stopped him and gave him a hug until he quieted down. Then I asked him to explain, but he truly didn't understand his reaction either. I said, "This is not a test. It's not important. Mom is the only one who will use the results." He just shook his head 'in defeat'. I said, "Look, this isn't school. We can stop and put this away and do anything else you want! This is mathematics and you like math--but this isn't school math." A sigh of relief came from his body. I asked him, "How did you ever get through math tests at school?" With new tears but less intensity he said, "Oh Mom, it was horrible. It was so much worse. It was so bad--not just math. I was so afraid." I gave him more hugs and validated his fearful experience.

I never knew. I never knew he was so scared ... every day. How did I miss it?

In "How Children Fail" John Holt comments about the abundance of fear that exists in our schools and wonders why so little is said about it. He believes we easily recognize the obvious signs of fear but often miss the more sublte signs in children's "... faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working ..." These are the signs that I misunderstood, the signs that serve as true red flags and reveal that "... most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared."

My son was a good student in public school, but sometime during sixth grade he changed. We thought it was boredom; it didn't look like fear. Perhaps he was using too much effort trying to control his fear, live with it and adjust to it, and we missed the signs. We thought he was bored, not being challenged enough. The public school certainly didn't see any red flags when his grades dropped from strong A's to average C's, and we misunderstood what was actually happening with our son. He was trying to control his fears like a good soldier. But as John Holt comments, "The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner."

Though this is a very personal situation (especially for a now 13 year old boy), I'm sharing our experience because it's the Paul Harvey-type 'rest of the story' that blesses me and gives me a chuckle. It may help other children to adjust to homeschool life after public school.

Since that awful day we have done no math worksheets, no testing, and hardlyanything that resembles 'school math'. We did buy a used textbook (TheNature of Mathematics, 7th edition, by Karl J. Smith) which is so interesting I can hardly put it down myself. It's very colorful and includes history notes, a pull-out timeline, and biographies of mathematicians. My son browses its pages when the impulse strikes, but that's as far as we've gone with the issue. He doesn't even realize yet the impact mathematics has had on virtually every instructional day since the Saxon testing.

Last Spring we built a picket fence, and he has spent hour after hour working with the scrap pieces of wood. He has virtually used up every triangular piece of wood in his 'stockpile'. First he 'stapled' them into patterns. Then he nearly drove me insane with hammer and nail projects until he found the hot glue gun (safety lesson there). On his own initiative, following his own interests, he did artwork of geometrical shapes and complementary colors (he favors the triangle.) He even made his own kite but was disappointed that the first test flight proved Mom and Dad's theory rather than his own.

My personal favorite is the video game cheat code antics. These 'tips' and 'shortcuts' are deliberately programmed into the games by the designers as a challenge to brilliant minds. We had downloaded several codes from an Internet gaming site and my son wanted to download more. He was frustrated with me because I was too busy with web design work and kept putting him off until later. Since he couldn't download more codes, he looked at the old codes until his brain recognized a pattern. He yelled, "Hey Mom, I broke the codes!" Well, that is genius--recognizing patterns ... and it's mathematics!

According to our favorite math text, Dr. John Paulos hated math as a kid but is now a widely respected mathematics professor. He admits he learned to love mathematics by browsing through books in the library. Though my son doesn't know it yet, he is learning what Dr. Paulos already knows: "Doing mathematics depends on computational skill no more than writing novels does on typing skills." My son is also learning he doesn't have to be afraid. He's a homeschooler now. He's free to learn in his own way at a safe pace. Learning is now his adventure, not his fear. Jeanne Mills lives in PA with her family. Visit her website http://www.addedimpact.com/contactme.html Reprinted with permission.

Refining Basics
by Earl Stevens

Each autumn I find that I am forced by the events of the preceding year to clarify home education for myself. It is too easy to fall into the habit of thinking within the boundaries of a given philosophy of education and to march ever onward along a single narrow track. Persistence isn't always a virtue. When we make discoveries we grow, and when we grow we change. I can tell that I need to reevaluate when I find myself committed to things that don't work or when I start feeling overly satisfied with myself.

Often we become homeschoolers in opposition to the schools, and then we develop into a particular kind of homeschooler in opposition to other kinds of homeschoolers. Sometimes being in opposition takes on a life of its own, and doing battle on the side of the correct educational philosophy can become an end in itself. Having once been a teacher in the schools, I had built up a plentiful supply of opposition to them. I knew first-hand how incompetent and destructive most schools are. Opposition to the schools was a great source of energy for me and the foundation for much that I have learned about learning. But opposing something bad doesn't of itself furnish us with something good.

I had planned to do a lot for Jamie in our homeschooling. I would make all kinds of information and skills available to him. I wasn't going to push and prod; it would be an academic democracy with both of us vitally interested in the outcome. We would learn a couple of languages, master a few musical instruments, become computer literate, maybe build a nuclear reactor in the basement as a science project. Next to the Earl Stevens Homeschooling Program, the schools would seem to be concentration camps of ignorance and defeat.

The first official homeschooling notification that I produced for Maine education authorities sounded as though I intended to open a branch of the University of Heidelberg. As a supplement to the main body of the text, coming right after the list of several hundred books that we planned to read that year, I wrote a long, long explanation of my philosophy of education. It was righteously child oriented and scornful of the subject orientation of the public schools. Ha! Just let them stand in the way of my vision! I was pretty well prepared to speak to a joint session of Congress should it became necessary. Maybe the people at the Portland Public Schools would read all this material and call out into the hallways, "Everybody come in here and listen to this! Earl Stevens says some pretty definitive things about education that could benefit all of us."

I have since come to realize that school officials mainly want to establish whether or not you are in compliance with the law so that they can act on your paperwork and then forget about you. Generally speaking, they are not all that interested in whether or not you have discovered eternal secrets of learning. However, my labors may at least have given me a reputation at the School Department as a true fanatic, a person to be avoided if you don't want to risk getting a headache. Very likely what they said, after weighing my notification on a vegetable scale, was, "Let's just throw this guy's paperwork in the approved pile, and then we won't risk having to talk with him."

Of course most of my early plans for Jamie's education came to nothing because they had more to do with my new position as home university president than they had to do with him. Often Jamie wasn't at all interested in learning a particular skill or collection of facts, but he was usually polite about it. "Great, Dad, really great.

Interesting!" he would say in answer to my question of what he thought about what I was telling him. But I could see that he was peering out the window at the cat across the street, or dreaming about the day he would lead Starfleet Command against the alien invaders.

Often, neither of us was interested, and it was easy to let things slide. Sometimes inertia protects us from folly. It was more fun to play with the dog, and the dog was always ready. We spent most of our first year letting things slide and fooling around. The dog loved it.

When we see that our home education plans are not working out especially well, there are a number of ways we can react. We can feel guilty for failing; we can blame our children for not living up to our expectations; we can work ourselves and our children even harder and hope that something good comes of it. Or we can just step back for a while and see what happens. Homeschooling isn't a contest.

It doesn't matter a speck whether a seven year old child learns some "basic skill" this year or next or the one after that. I eventually discovered that it is possible to spend the first several years of "official" homeschooling doing little more than nurturing and playing and suffer no ill effects.

My biggest personal discovery is about my relationship with my child.

I found that the basic skills which deserve most of my attention have to do with Jamie's attitudes about life, assumptions about himself, courage, willingness to risk failure, curiosity, self confidence, and a host of other qualities that enable us to live life fully and well. Like any parent or teacher, I have a hundred opportunities each day to make a child think less of himself, to weaken his spirit, and to needlessly obstruct his freedom of movement and thought. The challenge for me is to avoid these opportunities whenever possible by doing more listening than talking and by sharing ideas instead of dispensing knowledge. With that thought in mind I retired from my position as university president, probably for good.

Jamie and I are still fooling around. Some of our fooling around evolves into interesting adventures, profitable to both of us. If we don't master foreign languages or build nuclear reactors, we do learn a lot about the world and about ourselves. I have come to realize that there is a great deal more substance and vision in my child than in anyone's educational philosophies, mine included. Observing him now, and trying to understand him better, helps me to avoid pretending that I know what should be done with him. The less I think about his future, and about molding him to fit it, the more clearly I can see him and the more honestly I can be available to him. While Jamie will be trying many new things this year both with and without me, this autumn I have learned that my relationship with my child is the essence of my home education program.

This essay was originally published in Earl Steven's column Talk About Learning, Nov/Dec 89.

Kicking the Habit
by Paul Schmidt

I am an addict.

It is hard to stop being dependent--to be free of the adddiction. I did it for a year but have gotten hooked again.

Fortunately, the addiction isn't alcohol or drugs. But it is damaging, I believe, to the spirit. I am on welfare and find it difficult to get off. The worst part is, I can afford to get off with some sacrifices, but I haven't.

Welfare was easy to get on. My parents were on it. It seemed a normal way of life. Most people accept it and even encourage it. This is not surprising since 88 percent of the families in this country take this form of welfare.

The type of welfare that I am on is "education welfare." Yes, I send my kids to government-run/government-financed schools. I could make sacrifices and pay for my kids' education rather than use taxpayers' money. But it is too easy--even socially acceptable--to take education welfare.

What I find so amazing is the encouragement of people to be on this form of welfare. The year that I sent my son to a Christian school, some of the administrators looked forwards to the day when they could accept vouchers. Vouchers are just like food stamps, except everyone with children will get them. I expect more from my fellow Christians than to encourage dependence. The use of vouchers will likely hook most of the twelve percent that have stayed off education welfare.

Many other welfare programs have been shown to be failures. People who use these programs are harmed--not helped. I know that taking education welfare is harmful to myself, my kids, and society, just as other welfare programs have hurt many people.

I have a vision of a society where children can get the education they need without the dependence on the damaging welfare state. I pray for the strength to help this come about--in a personal way--by getting off the welfare addiction program myself.

From The Freeman July 1996.
© 1996 The Foundation for Economic Freedom Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533

A Letter to Concerned Relatives

My son is just turning 12. I have not been actively pushing him to do "schoolwork", in fact, he hasn't been doing much of anything. I was getting some flack from relatives because he can't "rattle off" the times tables when they fire questions at him. This had me thinking about how I could explain "unschooling" to people who have no idea what it means. Their main concern (other than the ever popular "socialization" question) were that the kids didn't have "some kind of regimented schedule of learning" and that I was keeping them home to "shelter" them from "the real world". Here is a copy of the letter I wrote them:

Your first concern was that they should have "regimented" schedules for learning. A good schedule is one that meets your personal requirements. Mike's (DH) schedule changes weekly to meet his work requirements. My children's schedules change to meet their requirements. There is nothing inherently "right" about getting up early or going to bed by 8pm. Some of our best learning experiences have occurred at night, when the kids are laying down listening to me read to them. The idea of sitting down at a table and reading out of a textbook is a misunderstanding of what learning really involves. The tiny bits of facts that are generally presented in textbooks are difficult if not impossible to apply to everyday life. I am curious what a "sensible goal" for curriculum would be in your opinion? My main goal is to raise independent, thinking, loving adults with a grasp on the basic skills they will need to succeed in life.

Just how much of what YOU learned in school do you use everyday? Quick, what is the capital of Germany? What is the major export of Brazil? Have you ever dissected a frog at work? Recite the periodic table of elements in order. What is the symbol for Iron? Diagram this sentence and circle the predicate and underline any prepositions. Diagram a factor lattice for the number 32. Had enough? On the other hand, if you make learning part of your lifestyle, you are learning all the time. We made a weak battery by using foil, salt, and baking soda.... to clean the tarnish off my good silver.

We experiment with chemical reactions every day... it's called cooking. What makes an egg go from a liquid to a solid? Why does cornstarch change the physical properties of a white sauce? What makes the holes in bread? How does yeast make dough rise? If you have company coming and you have to triple your recipe for Pepper Steak, how much soy sauce will you need if the original recipe calls for 1/3 cup? If you get $20 for your birthday, and your brother has $5 left over from Christmas, and there is a toy that you want that costs $35 but is on sale this week for 25% off plus tax, if you pool your money, can you buy it? And if you do, what fraction of it is really yours, since you paid more for it than your brother? :-)

Now THAT is practical learning! Quizzing a child to see if he knows the times tables and can rattle them off is not an accurate measurement of that child's grasp on math. I am using a practical, hands on approach to math that give the child a grasp of the fundamentals. If they can see units instead of numbers on paper, then it is easier to manipulate numbers. I don't want my children to just spout memorized facts, I want them to grasp the concepts that make those facts work. For example, yesterday I asked Chris to figure 3 times 12. He got it in seconds. I asked him how he got the answer so fast, since he has only been working on the times tables up to 10. He said "it was easy, you just take 3x10 and add 3x2 ... duh!"

See, it doesn't matter if he KNOWS the answer by memory, it is more important that he knows how to GET the answer! Memorizing math facts is only for your own convenience. It has no bearing on your understanding of multiplication. I could teach IVY the times tables. (she is already learning the 3's times table from listening to her brothers practice) but she obviously would have no idea what they mean. If you believe that my primary reason for homeschooling is to keep my kids away from the "big bad world out there," you are WAY off! I keep my kids home because I LIKE THEM HERE! I want to have this time to spend with them, I want them to be able to develop close ties with their brothers (and sister).

I want them to get their values from US, not their peers. In case you hadn't noticed, my children are sweet, loving, intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, helpful, and basically great kids! Why do I need to send them away for 8 hours a day? What will they learn in school that will make such a difference in their lives? I can think of many negative things that they would learn there that would effect their lives! Hmmm, lets see, there's sex, drugs, peer dependance, bad language, bad attitudes, humanism, humiliation, low self-esteem. I can't see how learning any of these things will benefit my children!

So why send them? What would they get at school that is so valuable that they can't learn it at home? Why not turn that around and ask, what can they get at home that they can't get at school? Unconditional love, acceptance, support, guidance, godly training and values, practical life experience, learning how to make a marriage work, how to be a good parent, to share, to show compassion, to help others, to make good decisions. I would say that the things you get at home are the most important. Somehow, a "good job" isn't going to be much help if your marriage is falling apart, is it? What good is a high school diploma if you don't know how to balance a checkbook or do your own grocery shopping, or cook your own meals?

And if you think school teaches these things, you are sadly mistaken! School is an artificial environment, nothing there pertains to real life. No other time in your life will you be in that kind of circumstance where you are stuck in a room with people exactly your own age, working next to, but not with each other, being told to do things by an "authority figure" that have absolutely no bearing on your real life. (Ok, maybe prison comes close) It is no wonder that school attendance is compulsory, no thinking person would voluntarily go there! You talk about my kids having to go out and meet the world face to face. Well I have news for you.... they LIVE in the real world, it is the public school that is the sheltered environment.

My kids get "real life" experiences every day. They go shopping, they run errands, they do housework. How much of what goes on in a classroom is what YOU do every day? There will be no great "shock" for my kids, they are already LIVING in the real world. Why would I want to take them and pen them up in an institution for 12 years? If you have any specific questions about my children's education, please feel free to ask me. I am quite pleased with their progress. - Stephanie

Unschooling or Homeschooling?
by Billy Greer [1]

What is the difference between unschooling and homeschooling? At one time they were just two terms for the same thing, so the question was like asking what the difference is between a car and an automobile. Today, homeschooling has remained a generic term while unschooling has come to refer to a specific type of homeschooling. So now the question is like asking what the difference is between a Ferrari and a car. Just what is it about unschooling that differentiates it from other types of homeschooling enough to warrant its own term?

Before we look at that question, let's look at a history of the words. At one time, there was no special term for people who took their children out of the public school system to teach them at home. If you look at references to education before there even was a public school system, you will see phrases such as "tutored at home," "self-taught," or "no formal education" to refer to people we might now call homeschooled.

Even after the modern homeschooling movement got started, there wasn't a standard term for what these parents were doing. People simply referred to teaching their children at home, or not sending them to school. In issue #108 of Growing Without Schooling, Susannah Sheffer tells us that the first issue of GWS (published in 197'1), did not even make use of the term homeschooling. In issue #2, John Holt used the term unschooling, but it was used as a general term for what we now call homeschooling. In issue #1 18 of GWS, Aaron Falbel tells us that Holt wrote in issue #2 of GWS (Nov. 19'7'7) that they [GWS] would use unschooling "when we mean taking kids out of school." Falbel goes on to say that it wasn't until the early 1980's that the term homeschooling became more popular.

I don't know when it happened or who first used the phrase, but it is pretty easy to see that if most kids went to public school, then people might say kids who were taught at home went to "home school." As the term has become more an accepted part of our vocabulary, it has moved from the novelty phrase "home schooling" (in quotes) to home schooling (no quotes), to home-schooling (hyphenated), and now homeschooling (one word).

John Holt is considered the father of unschooling and the person who coined the term. In Holt's early writings, he seemed to hold out hope that the school system could be fixed, but he later became more convinced that parents were better off taking their kids out of schools. I imagine that it then seemed natural to him to refer to the process of not sending your kids to school as unschooling, as in not schooling.

While the terms may have been interchangeable originally, that is no longer the case today. Unschooling has become associated with the particular style of homeschooling in which no set curriculum is used. Where the split originated is hard to say, but part of the reason for the division is probably because of the words themselves. Homeschooling carries an implication of schooling-at-home, while unschooling connotes that what you are doing is the opposite of school. People who accepted the teaching techniques of school but wanted more control over the subject matter, socialization, or morals that their children were exposed to might readily accept the term homeschooling. People who disliked the teaching techniques and environment of school might be more inclined to use the term unschooling.

Currently, homeschooling is considered to span a spectrum from those who schooled at-home to those who unschool. The school-at home designation is self-explanatory. This group revels in all the trappings of school! They may have the same desks used in the public schools, some of the same text books, and they may even start each day by ringing a bell and saying the pledge of allegiance. The parent assumes the role of teacher, preparing lesson plans, assigning homework or tests, and grading papers. Their "holy grail" is the search for the perfect curriculum, the one that will cover everything their children need to learn.
What is it that unschoolers do! Where do you find a curriculum package that will help you to be an unschooler! The reason that unschooling is hard to explain and hard for some people to understand, is that it is not a technique that can be broken down to a step by step process. Rather, unschooling is an attitude, it way of life. Where most homeschooling puts the emphasis on what needs to be learned, unschooling puts the emphasis on who is doing the learning. This makes it a very personalized experience and one that does not lend itself well to the one size-fits-all approach of a commercial curriculum package.

What are some of the unintended lessons of a "school" approach to learning! First of all, the student is taught that learning is something that takes place in a certain location at certain times. From 8 to 3 you do lessons at your desk. Learning is also unpleasant and often boring, so it is usually a relief when "school" is finally out. Students become used to the idea that learning requires a teacher - someone more knowledgeable than them. This follows the old model of learning in which students are empty cups waiting to be filled and the teacher is the pitcher full of knowledge that will fill them. This also emphasizes the idea that students must be taught - in other words, what happens to you (learning) is the result of what someone else does to you (teaching). School also reinforces the idea that learning is a linear process. You work and add knowledge incrementally over time in a steady process. To get from point A to point C, you must first pass point B.

In unschooling, learning can happen anywhere and at anytime. It is an ongoing, natural process - part of the journey we call life. It is not unpleasant or boring anymore than breathing, eating or sleeping are. There is no sense of relief that school is out because learning is always happening. Students also know that they are responsible for their learning. They do not need an "expert" to teach them. If they have an interest, they can go out and pursue the knowledge they need. This is another fundamental difference between a schoolish approach and an unschooling model. School is a case of knowledge (that someone else has determined to be important) in pursuit of the student, while unschooling puts the student in pursuit of the knowledge (which they have decided is important). In this role, parents are not teachers who always know more than their children, they are often fellow learners making the journey along with their children. (See the side bar for more comments about the non-linear learning of unschooling.)

It is unfortunate that the older term unschooled often means uneducated. As unschooling gains acceptance and its effectiveness is recognized, the dictionaries will have to be corrected to re~ect the positive aspects of someone who has been educated by unschooling.

[1] Reprinted from Issue no. 12, 1998 of the Family Unschoolers Network News, 1688 Belhaven Woods Ct., Pasadena MD 21122-3727

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