I’m a Radical?
I am a Radical!
Radical!
rad·i·cal [rad-i-kuh
l]
Someone said I was a radical the other day. I did the head tilt thing I do when someone says something that doesn’t register, (I think I may have been a bird or a dog in a past life, or Vincent D’onofrio). I stood there thinking, me, really, I don’t even have a tattoo! Whatever that means, I just couldn’t picture myself as what I thought a radical was. Dictionary.com says a radical is:a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles; extremist. Maybe, but it seems like an extremely small pigeon hole. I really dislike labels they are limiting and limit how far we can see and how clearly we can see others and ourselves. So why did someone say I was a radical to begin with? Well, I guess it’s because I had two of my three children in my home (gasp!), which, when you consider only 1% of babies are born at home, may make my choice of where to birth, radical. Maybe because I advocate for women and infant rights in public forums. However, I’m pretty sure the person who said I was a radical was referring to our decision to UNSCHOOL our oldest.
No, I don’t mean HOMESCHOOL, I mean UNSCHOOL. We have given our daughter the choice to unschool since she was 4. She has chosen school for the last 3 years. This year however she has discovered on her own that school isn’t a place so much for learning as it is for remembering, she asked us if she still had the choice between UNSCHOOLING and the Third grade. Our answer was of course, of course. She decided one day when I came to her school to bring her lunch in person. I stood with her outside the cafeteria while we waited and waited for everyone to “settle down”. She turned around and faced me and said,”we do this everyday.”as she rolled her eyes. Later the warden or whatever the title was of the lady in charge of the cafeteria was, was yelling at the kids about what she expected of them, my daughter sighed and said, “it’s like this everyday.” A week later she asked if she could unschool.
So what is unschooling? The term “unschooling” was first coined in 1977 by John Holt an education reformer, the founder of Holt Associates and author of the book, “Teach Your Own”. Holt felt traditional home-schooling didn’t go far enough. He believed parents should not DUPLICATE schools in their homes. He favored an education more freewheeling in nature, one that depends on the child for direction. The expectation is that along the way they will get an education.
I guess it’s radical, many of the websites I found about unschooling when my husband and I realized we were REALLY going to do “this”, are literally called RADICAL UNSCHOOLING! Dayna Martin has written a book called Radical Unschooling A Revolution Has Begun. Well, I guess I’m not just a radical I am a revolutionary as well. Who knew? I just want my kid to be a free thinker and not be just another cog in the machine. I want her to have her own thoughts and question things. She would come home from school and tell me that many of the answers she got at school were very unsatisfactory. Her word, not mine, she learned that word at an ice cream parlor when she overheard a couple talking about how ice cream doesn’t taste the way it used to. I mention this because she learned the word OUT of school. Kids learn all the time and really don’t NEED to be TAUGHT to LEARN.
The following is from Sandra Dodd (http://sandradodd.com/unschooling.html)
CAN UNSHOOLING WORK IN THE REAL WORLD?
“If unschooling can’t work in the real world, nothing at all can. People will say “How will they learn algebra in the real world?” Is there algebra in the real world? If not, why should it be learned? If so, why should it be separated artificially from its actual uses? “Why?” should always be the question that comes before “What?” and “How?” There is a Sesame Street book called
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. There is a “things under the sea” room and “things in the sky” room, but still each room is just a room in a museum, no windows, everything out of context. Then he opens a big door marked “everything else in the whole wide world” and goes out into the sunshine. There is unschooling.”
I find when I tell people we are unschooling our daughter, it puts them in a very uncomfortable place. I think that place is full of fear and unknowns. Maybe they sense our radical revolutionary inclinations and it scares them. Maybe they could never imagine making that decision themselves. A few weeks ago at The Iron Bird Cafe we shared with a women a table away from us about unschooling. Poor dear made the mistake of asking my oldest the typical and boring questions most adults are want to do: “How old are you? What grade are you in?” etc. Ava, my oldest informed her that she was old enough to make decisions that kept her safe but helped her mind expand and that she was taking a year off school to see how it felt. Seriously, that’s what she said, the lady took one more long look at Ava and a somewhat mournful look at us and GOT UP and moved a few tables away! No kidding. In a phone interview for my radio show PROGRESSIVE PARENTING on KFCF I spoke with Sandra Dodd and she warned us that if we chose this path this is what we would be met with, anger, fear and reproach. She said people would think we were crazy or even, radical. She was right. But I’m not afraid, I read the following on a blog called pepperpaints.com,” I googled learning and Wikipedia gave me this: (from a very mainstream source even!)
Learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you. Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without it being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant.”
Recently I read this on facebook and all my insecurties about whether we were making the right decision or not melted away…
This is an excerpt from a speech given by the Valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School
“H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. (Gatto)
To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.”
Later in her speech she said:
“For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.” For the full speech go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Must-to-Read/110590642288444
I feel my children’s potentials and happiness are at stake, we know why we are making the choices we make, ask yourselves this very important question, do you?
I know you may read this and think we are nuts, and that’s okay, I guess when you are a radical revolutionary, with or without tatoos, you can’t afford to care if people agree with you or not.
For more information on unschooling join us at AVA UNSCHOOLED ON FACEBOOK
I had every intention of unschooling my daughter Lil (3 1/2) but she has decided that she wants to go to school and for us much like you as long as that is what she thinks is best that is what she will do. My hope is that around 2nd or 3rd grade she will be ready to go back to unschooling. Thankyou for posting this from one radical to another.
Jessi