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Unschooling Discussion...
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On unschooling math:
things like calculus, geometry,
trigonometry and possibly algebra. I have been
thinking about it ever since, and I can't discover (in my own mind) a
way to
learn these things "naturally" or at the very least without textbooks.
Am I
just not thinking far enough outside the box? Are
there ways to come across
learning opportunities in these higher math areas that don't require a
more
"formal" type of tool?
A lot of basic trig gets used in
carpentry—my partner uses it all the
time, although he's a high-school dropout, never took a day of trig and
couldn't tell you the difference between a sine and a tangent. He
occasionally looks things up in books about carpentry, or asks another
carpenter but mostly just works things out on his own.
Geometry and algebra... gosh I use them so often, it's hard to think of
an example. I don't mean proofs or the quadratic equation, but cooking,
sewing, knitting, basic home maintenance involve the priciples of
algebra and geometry pretty regularly&madash;maybe you're
having trouble
thinking "outside the box" in terms of what math is.
One of the
things school and textbooks do is confine math to
numbers when its
really about relationships and problem-solving.
Last weekend I rearranged my living/dining-room; a process which
included adding a couch and two more chairs to the table. It was a
pretty complex geometry problem. I did a lot of measuring and
critically
examining the shape of the space (my house is tiny) to get everything
to fit and be usable—and have the door still open. It's the
sort of
thing that seems so normal that one wouldn't
necessarily call it
"Geometry"—no, surely that's too grand a term for rearranging
furniture! But the concepts and thinking involved were exactly that.
—Meredith
On labels:
I probably won’t read the
article. A couple of months ago doing some personal research, when it
happened to be Mental Health Month or some such, I read quite a lot of
distressing articles about child mental health, including the
horrendous side effects of some medications that could hardly be better
than the supposed disease. I got enough sadness about the state of
things from that reading.
What bothers me is that these kinds of simplistic check lists make it
too easy for laymen (school teachers, school nurses, school guidance
counselors with limited qualifications) to jump to making diagnoses of
what can be genuine and serious conditions. It can start looking like
almost every child has some mental illness. What do
“normal” or “healthy” children
then look like to these people?
We know what normal, healthy children look like because we live with a
bunch of them in all their temperamental glory.
Lists like this can say more about the wider culture’s
attitude towards children as inherently flawed or broken and needing to
be molded or repaired, than about some kind of emergency in pediatric
mental health.
Maybe there is an emergency in mental health—adults who are
angry, controlling and acting out their feelings of powerlessness. (See
Alice Miller’s writings).
Of all the symptomatic behaviors on this list, the one that would have
me worried is the last:
Acts spiteful or vindictive at least once
during the last three months
This would certainly suggest to me a child who was feeling so powerless
and resentful that they were starting to engage in behaviors that were
beyond merely hard for an adult to cope with or be acceptant of. This
could plausibly lead the child into dangerous situation with other
children. Supposedly a red flag for future violent behavior connected
to psychotic disorders is cruelty to animals. I guess it’s ok
to laugh at phrases like, “Don’t get mad, get
even” when it is some movie hero, but not when it is a kid.
Yet look at how subjective this language is. Both descriptors require a
value judgment and assumptions about the enactor’s motives.
One person’s “spiteful” is another
person’s justifiably angry, one person’s
“vindictive” is another person’s utterly
frustrated or even merely experimenting.
In our life any of these behaviors from Jayn would be signals of need.
Or in my case, PMS—but then I’m not a child so
I’m allowed (by society) to be pissed sometimes.
—Robyn
Here
is a more detailed "screening" for ODD—a child is considered
to have ODD if he/she exhibits four or more of the following:
- Loses temper at least twice a week
- Argues with adults at least twice a week
- Actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules at
least twice a week
- Deliberately annoys people at least four times a week
- Blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior at least once
during the last three months
- Is touchy or easily annoyed by others at least twice a week
- Is angry and resentful at least four times per week
- Acts spiteful or vindictive at least once during the last three months
At 13, dd could have easily been diagnosed with this or any other of a
number of "disorders." When she wasn't actively arguing with her
teachers and defying school rules, she was skipping school and getting
into trouble with the law. At home we were constantly fighting because
of my attempts to get her to conform (do homework, etc). The only
counsellor she saw wanted to put her on anti-depressants. Instead I
chose unschooling—a recent discovery I'd made thanks to my
own
personal growth and incessant curiosity (All hail the internet!).
The change in dd was dramatic. Two years later I find myself sharing a
house with an honest, thoughtful, kind, considerate, generous, warm,
loving, happy 15 year old who helps out whenever I
ask and has
recently begun volunteer work with the Good Samaritans. The days of
opposition and defiance are long, long gone. I look back and shudder
at what our choice could have been.
Thank you.. all you unschooling "missionaries"... for giving my
daughter back to herself. I know I could never thank you enough for the
gift you've given us all.
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