Other adults in their lives

I was chatting with an acquaintance about our kids and what they are up to when she told me about having the daughters of a mutual friend over for the night.
"They always come over," she explained. "If they are having a bad day at home, of if they just feel like hanging out over here the door is always open," she said. "The other night, we sat on my bed in pajamas and talked for hours."

Her son, the same age as the girls, regularly goes over to their house as well.
When I told her how much I loved that sort of interaction and wished it for my daughters, she exclaimed,"Oh good! So many people see this as breaking up the family."
It's a perspective I'd never have considered. I imagine that this kind or reaction comes from parents that feel insecure about their relationship with their children or are over-protective of their kids.
It also made me think about my own rapport with the friends of my own kids: am I a mentor for them? Am I approachable? Do I care about them?

In a book by John Holt entitled Escape from Childhood, Holt questions the institution of childhood and argues that, "not only is the modern nuclear family a very bad model of adult and social life, because so incomplete and distorted, but it is its isolation from the world that creates the need for models."

This is interesting; we often bemoan the lack of models for our kids but if we lived in a world where kids were not isolated from adults, but worked, played, celebrated side by side grown ups, the 'models' would be a given.

Holt continues,

"For many reasons children need a much larger network of people to relate to. The small family is so often unhelpful or destructive because it is so small. The relationships are too intense, too much is always at stake.... The family is so dependent on these high-powered feelings, so shut in on itself, so non-involved with others or with the community, so devoid of purposes outside of itself, that it is fragile, easily threatened by a quarrel. Human relations cannot be only about human relations. If there is nothing in a family but feelings, if it is only an arena for feelings, if its life depends on everyone feeling good about or loving everyone else, if the members have no other way of being really useful to each other, then it is constantly threatened by anything that might upset the good feelings, and perfectly normal differences and quarrels take on too much importance."

Like Holt, I think that children and youth need more adult friends. Like Holt, I'm all for recreating the 'extended family.'
There is one interesting part in his essay where he uses a poem by Robert Frost to illustrate his point. He says:

Robert Frost, in his poem “Death of the Hired Man”, put it very well. The hired man,now too old and ill to work, is sitting exhausted in the kitchen of a younger farm couple.The husband, not quite knowing what to do about him or with him, wonders why he has come to their house, since he has other relatives nearby. For answer his wife says to him -it could not be said better - “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.”Just so. Children need many such homes. Perhaps we all do...."

Unschooler Jessica Barker: "Redefining Success."

Jessica Barker is a lifelong autodidact based in North Carolina. Her blog is
http://lifewithoutcollege.wordpress.com/

Going against the entrenched mainstream belief that to have a successful life you have to get higher education, can you define your idea of what success means?

Through my blog I have discovered that "success" is quite a touchy subject. In this day and age it is very hard, even as an unschooler, to break through or get around what mainstream society preaches as "success."

The standard, at its core, seems to be college = wealth = success. College means you get into a high-paying job (whether or not you actually like it is irrelevant); wealth means you make tons of money at this high-paying job, therefore having the financial capacity to own signs of wealth, such as nice cars, a big house, etc. As an unschooler, this confuses me, which led me to want to redefine "success" in the first place.

To sum it up, I like to simply say, "success is what you make it," even though it's rather cliché. As an individual, there shouldn't be obligations to only see yourself as successful in the way the rest of the world defines the word. It's understandably difficult, though; no matter how much we say we don't care what other people think, we do, especially when it comes to big things like life choices. It's just the way we are made.

However, overall people will respect you more if you are feeling successful in your own way, whether that is by going to college and becoming a CEO, or by bypassing college and starting up a small gym downtown. Being successful is you doing what you want to be doing, in my opinion.

For me personally, success is very progressive. I don't just aim for some vision of success further on down the road, when I am 28 and run 3 online businesses, work as a seasonal naturalist, and spend my spare time recording music or whatever; I see myself as successful in whatever I am doing at the time.

I'm not a professional concert pianist, I just started taking piano lessons last year; but I consider myself a successful piano student because I am learning exactly what I want to learn and I am at the exact point I want and need to be in my lessons right now. And the same goes with everything in my life. So, to me, success is accomplishing exactly what I want and need to accomplish at this specific time in my life.

Are you working at things that bring satisfaction as well as $$?

At this very moment, not wholly. My job I have right now as a customer service/office admin is more of a means to an end, although that is not to say I am not learning from it, because I am. It is also a very mobile job, so I can take it wherever I go and I don't have to ask for vacation time. But other than that, my source of money at this present moment is not bringing me loads of satisfaction; however, I am thankful that, at this time, it provides time and money for me to find satisfaction in other areas.

Besides that, at this time I am focused more on learning. I am "only" 19; my mainstream counterparts are in their Freshman and Sophomore years of college right now. This is a wonderful, ideal time to be learning and discovering further what I want to do in life, all the while living in the "real world." My primary interests are animals, wildlife, nature, alternative education, writing, and music.

Right now I am doing a self-study project on chinchillas, volunteering at a local wildlife center, doing a marketing internship for Homeschool Leadership Retreats, writing my blog, "Life Without College," taking piano lessons, and I even have some spare time for performing with a local improv troupe I've been on for 4 years, and reading and writing.

I am also going to be volunteering next month on the inaugural Homeschool Leadership Retreat in Ashland, Oregon, as a mentor, lackey, dishwasher, and anything else the leader, Blake Boles, decides he wants me to do or learn.

These things are bringing me great satisfaction, and, again - I feel successful as I am right now in life. That doesn't mean I am not looking towards the future: to the contrary, I have many plans to both further my learning in my areas of passion, and eventually make money in those areas.

Tell us about your educational background and the pros and cons of an unschooling lifestyle.

I was an "unschooled homeschooler," if that makes sense. My parents wanted me to at least do the basics of math, reading, and writing; they only really had to "make" me do math, and I would read and write till the cows came home.

But I had a lot of freedom to pursue my own interests. I could often get kits and books through curriculum companies, and then I would take ballet and drama classes, read books from the library, and watch TV. Those were my forms of "learning intake." Output often was in writing, playing, painting, performing, and talking with great enthusiasm.

The pros of unschooling, for me especially, are the freedom of time and the freedom of pursuit. I have a feeling that, if I had ever been put in a 9-3 school environment, I would have died in so many ways. I would have no time to imagine and create, and no motivation or energy to pursue anything beyond what was being forced down my throat for the majority of my day.

I am extremely self-directed, and, frankly, I like to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. Of course, it's not reasonable to apply that to everything in life, but when it came to learning in my "grade school" years, my curiosity and love for learning were able to flourish and grow because of the freedom I had.

I could spend two or three weeks finding out everything I possibly could about snakes; my mom suggested I write fact pages and draw pictures, and of course that reinforced my learning. And that, of course, has led to me getting to work with snakes on a regular basis now, and that is so awesome.

The cons of unschooling are, to me, very few and hard to acknowledge. (I'm not biased at all, can you tell?) But I can acknowledge that it isn't for everyone. Many people prefer or require a lot more structure, or need assignments and deadlines, or any number of things. There's nothing wrong with people that prefer classrooms; they aren't stupid or unmotivated or anything, they are just wired differently. And I respect that, even though I don't understand it.

Do you like the world you live in? How would you like to see it changed?

I love the world I live in. Sure, there are many downfalls to being a human on the earth today. But all the hate, and the wars... I can't help but look beyond that to see all of the wonderful people in this world and the beauty of the nature around us.

Every time I set foot in a different place, whether it's across the street or across the country, I see the most gorgeous landscapes and the most interesting quirks that land has; and I meet new people who, for lack of a better word, are amazing. There's the avid cuckoo clock-collecting poet; the old man with the family-run bakery serving the most delicious danishes; the "accidental" friend who shows you how to look at the world in a whole different way. There is just too much good in this world to only see its rough edges.

I guess the ways I would like to see it changed is that, overall, there would be more love and less hate. I feel a little like a silly hippie chanting "give peace a chance," but... I am a silly hippie, so it's only fitting. If we all loved more (and I'm not pointing fingers, except at myself because it's definitely something I need to constantly be working on), then I think the other sore spots in the world would begin to heal too. Of course, we can't hope for a perfect world, not in this life; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it together.

Unschoolers do Science

I've just been perusing an old Life Learning Magazine (July/August 2004) and came across an article by Jan Fortune-Wood, a free lance writer and parenting adviser, who home educated her own four children in Britain.
Fortune-Wood's article talked about plunging into degree level subjects without any background in the subject and not only finding "understanding, but also fascination."
It sort of speaks to some of the questions people have about unschooling not being up to tackling the sciences.
She asks,
"How does years of reading stories, doing the odd kitchen experiment, baking cakes, watching TV, talking, talking and more talking, become (with what seems like extraordinary rapidity when we haven't been able to witness the internal gestation) a love of philosophy,....a thirst for and understanding of complex scientific methodology and principles.....?"

She continues with;

"Children don't go from having no knowledge to university level science courses, but they can go from no formal study to university level science courses when they are accustomed to learning by living and when they are accustomed to the notion that whatever problem is facing them can be solved-in short when they are used to thinking they can do anything they are interested in and have enough passion for."

At the time of writing this, Fortune-Wood was happy to report that her "ultra laid back" household was now a hive of activity with her assisting with pre-university and undergraduate level courses in biology, science, philosophy and art while striving to maintain the autonomous environment in which "above all conversation predominates."

It comes down to what I've being thinking about recently and what the authors of Freakonomics have written about parents in their chapter 'What makes a perfect parent?' what really influences how your child will be as an adult is actually the person you are, not what you do.

This is important in the context of unschooling parents: Are you curious? How do you approach problems? Are you always challenging yourself or and learning new things? Are you reflective? and so on.
As Fortune -Wood concludes in her essay, "Flourishing educationally is not about preset outcomes, but about achieving whatever an individual wants to achieve. Years of formal preparation, constant testing and monitoring, and tuition by those who set themselves up as the guardians of knowledge are not the secrets of education after all.
The secret is to do whatever you want when you have the passion to do it.
The secret is having parents who may not be experts, but are as open-minded as their passionate, creative, inquisitive children. The secret is that life is the arena for learning."
Way to go Jan!

Unschooler Eli Gerzon:"I love my life."

Eli Gerzon of http://eligerzon.com/index.php is a grown unschooler or 'worldschooler' as he likes to call it. He shares his insights into finding one's own true path:

Going against the entrenched mainstream belief that to have a successful life you have to get higher ed can you define your idea of what success means?

Both my parents are college drop-outs who have started their own successful businesses so I never really thought you needed college for success.

For me, real success is being able to provide for whatever family I have and doing all I can to share my true gifts with the world and make some sort of meaningful contribution. In some ways that's more pressure than "conventional" definitions of success. In other ways, it's a very simple, humble, and humbling thing: you figure-out what you can do, you put your whole heart and all your smarts into it, and on some level you accept whatever big or small part you end up playing.

The way to find those "true gifts" I think is by following your bliss: your joy will naturally lead to what you're meant to do, what you truly want to do. But by "naturally" I don't mean easily! It can require facing some real challenges. Still I've found that after, or even while, facing those challenges I find real meaning and happiness.

Are you working at things that bring satisfaction as well as $$?

I've been busy recently with two things that bring me satisfaction and money. Since 2002 I've run my own natural landscaping business that I've used to make a living and finance my travels around the world to over a dozen countries.

Inspired by all the learning and growing I did during those travels, I started Worldschool Travel Tours in 2008: small group travel especially for homeschooling/unschooling teens and young adults to gain awareness of the world and experience personal growth. I'm leading my third tour this summer to Japan: July 20th-August 10th: http://eligerzon.com/traveltours.php. And there's still space available for one or two more teens who want to experience Japan this summer!

Landscaping gives me a great, simple, daily satisfaction. But with Worldschool Travel Tours I get a deep and meaningful satisfaction when I see or hear about how much a young person has grown and changed from experiencing a whole new part of the world.

Tell us about your educational background and the pros and cons of an unschooling lifestyle.

I went to a Waldorf/Steiner school for 1st and 2nd grade and then public school until 9th grade. At age 15, I chose to leave school and did homeschooling/unschooling for the rest of high school.

Why I chose to leave is something I've written a lot about. You can find a speech and an article on my site about it: http://eligerzon.com/writing.php. But suffice to say I had been frustrated for years with the lack of concentration on real learning and I think school was crushing my soul, to be honest.

The cons of my unschooling lifestyle have been that I've often had no idea what I was going to do with my life. That's been very challenging for me. I have been tempted to go to high school or college for the relief of being normal and having a set track to follow for awhile.

I've taken a few college classes and loved them. But I know I couldn't stomach going full time. Otherwise, who knows, I might have?

The main positive aspect of this lifestyle is that I have created a life I'm happy with and proud of. I've explored the physical world and the world of ideas in a way that may have been impossible if I was attending high school or college full time. In the end, because I didn't follow the usual track I've had the opportunity to find my own path that does actually work for me. It's not set, I can change it any time, but I'm happy with the direction I'm going right now.

Do you like the world you live in? How would you like to see it changed?

I love the world I live in and I want to see it change in many ways! Everywhere I've traveled around the world I've found an unbelievable amount of richness and beauty in the natural world and in people and the art, of all kinds, that they create.

As far as what I'd like to see change: we need to stop causing our own self-destruction and figure-out ways that actually work for us to live together in small or large groups. I spend a lot of my time trying to figure-out how we'll do that!

I don't think there's one answer or model to follow. Recently, I've been thinking it's about two things: foolishness and wisdom.

We need to be foolish enough to try new or old things that other people, or even parts of ourselves, think are ridiculous. We need that free-thinking and doing. Unschooling is a perfect example of this: what a ridiculous idea! Trust children? But, beautifully, gloriously, thankfully, it works.

In our foolish explorations of the world we need to learn from ours and others experiences and gain wisdom on which we can all build and create things that work. I call this "worldschooling".

Wisdom is when you have a deep understanding of something based on enough real life experiences that you're able to know when and how to apply it to other situations. We need to care about, work for, act on, and build upon wisdom.

What words of advice can you offer a young person who is trying to convince her parents that school/higher education is not the right place for them at the time?

Be persistent! Parents want to know that their children are going to be alright. Show you've done your research, you really care, and are really insistent about living without school for now. Let alone the info itself, when they see your dedication they can imagine you can apply it to other areas of life.

I have known high schoolers whose parents were reluctant to let their child leave school, or unschool, but the parents really came around. As far as college, it seems like it's usually the young person her/himself who wants to go to college.

I think they're often looking for an adventure, a challenge, meaning, and even a passage into and acknowledgement of adulthood, actually. My advice: travel! It's such a cheaper and more meaningful and real endeavor. Even the parties are better.

Still, sometimes it can feel like you'll never find your own path. And maybe you will decide to go to school or college and that will become part of your path.

But I decided to continue putting my trust in myself, my communities, and the world rather than a single institution, and for me it's paid off well: I have found a path that works for me and I love my life.