Tuesday, October 20, 2015

No Classes, No Teachers, No Books? The Reality of Structure in Unschooling

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen article headlines proclaiming “Unschooling: No Classes, No Books!” I always shake my head in frustration.

I suppose when people hear that unschooling is not school, they jump to the conclusion that any and all even vaguely school-like trappings of classes and teachers--or even books, apparently--must be thrown out the window. Not school must mean nothing that looks like traditional learning, and nothing that looks like structure.

The reality, though, is quite a different story.


Unschooling might be against such school trappings as forced memorization and compulsory classes, but it’s not against individuals choosing to learn in whatever ways they feel work best for them. In fact, that’s kind of what unschooling is all about! It’s the ultimate in individualized and personalized learning, which means while the lives of some individuals will look very carefree and unconventional, the lives of others might look very traditionally “educational.”

Unschooling is characterized not by its lack of structure, but by its flexibility.

There are classes. As children me and my sister went to co-op classes and French classes and science classes. In recent times I’ve been to dance classes. My sister has been taking Ninjutsu for years, which at this point in time means two classes a week with an extra practice day thrown in. Unschooling is self-directed learning, which means you choose what classes you take (or don’t take). What it isn’t is learning only by yourself with no help. I’d hope that everyone can recognize that learning in group settings can be helpful and fun for some people some of the time. Would I like to only ever learn in class settings? Definitely not. But sometimes, it’s really great, and no one should ever believe that unschooling means shunning a specific type of learning just because it looks traditionally educational. It’s all about choosing what works best for you.

There are teachers. Not only present in classes of various sorts, but also in one-on-one situations. Sometimes the best way to learn something is by seeking help from someone skilled, which means a teacher or mentor of some sort. It may end up looking like a familiar school teacher-student relationship, or as is more often the case, it might hopefully be a more mutually respectful and reciprocal relationship. I have learned so much from other people: learning in isolation would be a sad and, well, isolating thing indeed. But by freeing ourselves from the need to be taught, I (perhaps ironically) feel that we can become much more open to all that is to be learned from those around us and those we seek out, both professional teachers, “experts,” and community members.

There are books. In some cases, lots of books. In my house, the house I grew up in, there are two over packed bookcases in the living room; a bookcase stuffed with cookbooks in the kitchen; two bookcases in my bedroom; one in my parents room; two bookcases plus towering, precarious stacks shoved everywhere they can possibly fit in my sister’s room; and I don’t even know how many more bookcases are scattered around the basement. Point being? Between us, my family owns a whole lot of books. The internet provides lots of useful information and access to a ton of terrific essays and stories, but there’s still a lot to be said for both novels and nonfiction books. It seems absurd that I should even have to say this, but generally unschoolers like books a lot. While some people are never going to really enjoy reading books for pleasure (or will be unable to due to learning disabilities), the vast majority will at the very least use books when appropriate to get the information they need.

We’ve established that some unschoolers will appear more “school like” in their pursuit of knowledge, or in the ways they choose to structure their learning. But while that may be one sort of “structure,” even for the most freeform unschoolers out there, the patterns of life will create a structure of sorts. Daily habits and rituals, visits and activities, will build a scaffolding for the unschooling life, a structure that evolves and changes over weeks and months to support the needs of each individual and the family as a whole.

Unschooling doesn’t mean doing away with any structure whatsoever: it means creating a structure based on the needs of actual people, instead of following a structure designed for the needs of an institution.

This means that sometimes unschoolers will go to classes, seek out teachers, and read books. And sometimes, they’ll learn quietly by themselves, they’ll teach themselves a new skill, and they’ll play a video game.

However much or little structure their lives end up including, life learners are trying to open themselves up to as much of the world as possible. To pick and choose what works for them, and discard what doesn’t, all with the knowledge that they can always make different choices in the future.

And those choices will quite likely include classes, teachers, and books!

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

For The Love of Learning: Exploring Unschooling With Pat Farenga, Pam Sorooshian, and Idzie Desmarais

I was happy to be part of a recent conversation on the online TV show For the Love of Learning, along with Pat Farenga and Pam Sorooshian. We covered many interesting topics, and I was left feeling like there was so much left we didn't get to explore. While I don't agree with everything my co-guests had to say, I was still blown away by many of their insightful comments and stories, and was thrilled to be included in such good company. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Monday, September 14, 2015

Unexceptionally Exceptional: A Gateway to Learning

This is the third and final installment of Unexceptionally Exceptional, which is the text from the talk I presented at the Northeast Unschooling Conference at the end of August. You might want to read part one and part two first: The Meaning of Success, and Time for Struggle, Time for Joy.

Downtime of all sorts can be valuable, and one of the way that manifests is in boredom.

I decided that me and my sister should sing a duet for the talent show because I was bored. I’ve been bored a lot in the past year, mainly because when things aren’t going great, I’m less likely to have a good routine going with regular activities, and more likely to feel restlessness.


So, in some ways the boredom I’ve felt has been a sign of things not going as well as they could be. But in other ways, boredom has always been a force of creativity in my life. As I wrote in a post on the Home School Life Magazine blog back in February:
“Boredom acts as a gateway, as the beginning of something new or different, or the introduction (or reintroduction) to a new hobby or passion, something that will go on to be an important part of our days. 
Or not. As important as the productivity that boredom can lead to, equally important is simply the space of boredom itself. The time for us to get past the initial restlessness or discomfort of not being busy, not doing, and settle into reflection, observation, stillness. We need the time to process and digest our learning, our experiences, and sometimes boredom can be a part of that.”
To struggle, to be bored, is part of the process of learning, and of healing.

I’ve never sung a duet in public before. I sung in a church choir and a homeschool choir when I was young, but my voice, when others are listening to me perform, has always been part of a crowd: a hopefully harmonious small part of the whole. I’ve sung in small groups, casually, where everyone is messing up and messing around, playing instruments they’re less familiar with and maybe trying out a new harmony. It hasn’t felt like much pressure.

But what I was suggesting to my sister when I turned to her and said “we should do a duet at NEUC” was scary. Everyone would be listening to my voice. They’d hear if I messed up.

But, I was bored that evening, and I wanted to sing with my sister, and once the thought crossed my mind and the words left my mouth, I became determined to follow through with it.

We sung Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars.

Sometimes, too, boredom is the impetus to actually work through emotional shit. Keeping busy, always talking and working and doing, can be a way to hide from difficult emotions, to avoid facing difficult experiences. Boredom, an absence of busy-ness, has forced me to process what’s been happening in my life, to reflect, accept, and work towards moving forward.

And as I move forward, I find myself asking again and again, what is success? It’s layered and multi-faceted, and my definition is constantly changing. I’m working on being at peace with my life, with where I am right now.

I’m learning to move forward. I may still be grieving the loss of two cats who meant the world to me, yet I have two different cats who have now come to mean an incredible amount to me as well. I’m still not living the dream life, there are still so many things I might want to change. Yet the garden still grows, and my family still loves me.

My darling Bea, of the no-tail and too-many-toes.

Success isn’t something you can attain in one grand swoop. I’m reminded of an Allie Brosh comic, where the author in scratchy comic form is shown gesturing sweepingly towards a purple ribbon wrapped trophy on the mantlepiece. “That right there is my ability to be responsible” she says. “I won it when I was 25.”

People my age, whether unschooled or not, have so many flawed and conflicting beliefs about what it means to be a successful adult, and how that can achieved. I guess we’re all floundering, at least some of the time, and just trying to figure out what we’re doing.

Unschooling, too, is a practice of learning and un-learning and re-learning, trying to find a path to respectful relationships, a peaceful home, and joyful learning.

Ah, the joy. Because the thing is, no matter how hard some times in our lives might be, no matter that our lives might not always look how we think they’re supposed to, there’s so much joy.

Pursuing an unschooling life is pursuing joy. It’s cultivating the excitement of discovery; the satisfaction of doing hard things on your own initiative; the companionship of strong relationships and time spent with people you not only love, but like.

Me and my mommy.

I spend as much time as I do talking and writing about unschooling because, despite none of this being new to me, it still fills me with so much excitement. My mind spirals into thoughts of what I’ve learned, with great pleasure, to do: bake pies and ferment kombucha and grow zucchinis. I think of all there is that I’m going to get to learn in the future. I think about how learning feels: the playful, relaxed, yet deeply focused intent of doing something I truly love, something that hits the perfect sweet spot of challenging yet attainable. It feels like freedom. And it’s one of the best feelings there is.

How can I not consider that joy, in and of itself, a form of success? I delight in learning, and in sharing, and in making the tenets of unschooling a continuing part of my adult life.

This past year may have tested me in a hundred different ways, but I’m proud that I managed, through everything, to find those joyful moments.

It takes a shift in focus to start seeing the success in your own life. It’s hard. Do I ever know how hard it is! I struggle every day to truly value my unique education, to recognize how much I’ve done and am doing in my life. To really feel my success.

But whenever I force myself to stop and really look, I can see it. I see the learning, and the growth, and the joy, and I know that I’ll be okay. I’ve got this. I’m busy building the life I want one messy, difficult, enthusiastic piece at a time.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Unexceptionally Exceptional: Time for Struggle, Time for Joy

This is part two of my talk Unexceptionally Exceptionally, which I presented at the Northeast Unschooling Conference a couple of weeks ago. I'd suggest reading part one, The Meaning of Success, first! Look for part three on Monday.

As much as I might often be seen as “successful” by unschoolers, this past year has not been one which looked very good from the outside, and one that often didn’t feel very good on the inside. This past year in my life has been rough. When I was writing the outline for this talk, I put down “the year of hell” as the heading for this section. For any Star Trek Voyager fans in the audience, you’ll remember the episode of that title, where in an alternate timeline, everything just keeps going wrong: aliens keep attacking; equipment breaks; people keep dying.

My own year of hell has been a time of great difficulty for my whole family. In December, a beloved cat who had been with my family for almost 14 years passed away unexpectedly. In January, my great aunt died. In february, my grandmother’s basement flooded, and shortly afterwards, she fell down the stairs, hitting her head on rough cement uncovered by flood repair work and getting a concussion. In March our other elderly cat, who had been with us just as long and been just as loved, got sick and died shortly after. In April, my father had surgery.


When I see people criticizing unschooling for its supposed sheltering of children from hard things, I laugh. My response to that concern, whenever it’s expressed to me, is that the world provides plenty of difficulty all on its own: no need for parents to artificially engineer misery in the lives of their children.

There’s a quote I really like by Alfie Kohn, who says:
“People don’t get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. On the contrary, what best prepares children to deal with the challenges of the real world is to experience success and joy, to feel supported and respected, to receive loving guidance and unconditional care and the chance to have some say about what happens to them.”
I guess my parents did something right, because I seem to have ended up as an adult who can cope with adversity. This past year success has felt like being there for my mother when her aunt passed away. It’s meant rushing out of the house in record time to meet my grandmother at the hospital, and bringing my father in for his surgery along with my sister, hiding the terror we were both feeling so we could joke with him while he waited. Success meant bringing my cat’s body to the veterinarian's office to be cremated, even though I wanted to just curl up at home and grieve, because she was my cat and it was my responsibility.

Sometimes success means simply doing what you need to do.

And, through it all, learning keeps happening. Not even in a growing from adversity way, though that can’t help but be part of it, but just through everyday exploration. Books are still read, questions Googled, words written, Ninjutsu classes attended, skills honed and projects completed.

A large part of unschooling is seeking joy in learning: embracing learning as a playful, exciting process. But it seems that in all our discussion of that joy, some people seem to take to heart that that’s all unschooling should and can be. I see people concerned that their house isn’t constantly filled with light, or that life sometimes gets in the way of living in a way that looks how they think unschooling is supposed to look.

I think that cooperation and exploration and yes, joy, should always be the goal: of course we all want that. But there needs to be the recognition that circumstances will sometimes intervene in surprising and on occasion devastating ways, and what happens through that might not looks like the ideal of unschooling, but it will be real, and genuine, and the learning will still be happening, every step of the way.

My year of hell has included a whole lot of time spent not in crisis, but simply in living.

“When life is busy testing your endurance, it seems like the perfect time to bring a bit more magic into your days.”

I wrote that line back in January, and that thought, that idea has come to mean a lot to me in the past year. More than any other time in my life, I’ve been reminded over and over again of the importance of finding joy each day, in all it’s forms and in any way you can. Bringing little pieces of magic, of inspiration, into even the most difficult of days.

For one thing, I could spend hours picking berries. The only thing that generally drives me back indoors is when I’ve found every last ripe one in whatever patch of brambles I’m delicately working my way through. Sometimes I hum to myself. More often I’m silent, moving slowly, listening to the soft rustle of branches, hum of insects, and birdsong. Even the thorns on my favourite black raspberries seem more like a challenge than an inconvenience.

Black raspberries.

A lot of what bringing inspiration into my life has meant is self care rituals: picking berries; making myself and anyone else who’s around a fancy coffee; making a beautiful plate of food; cutting flowers from our yard and putting a bouquet on the table; baking a loaf of bread… Much of my self care involves food, because that’s what’s important to me, but everyone will have things that make them feel grounded and nourished.

And a lot of what “magic” has meant to me has been learning. I haven’t taken any classes since last fall: nothing has been formal, and little has been with other people. Even turned inwards, as I’ve been, towards family and healing, I’ve found myself still learning constantly, in countless simple ways.

Gardening has been a big thing for me and my sister this Spring and Summer. My sister Emilie has spearheaded things, at times dragging me along, short on motivation, behind her. Conversations on car rides have been about the ideal soil composition for beans versus tomatoes, and how best to treat powdery mildew on zucchinis. There have been sweaty days spent building a large trellis out of branches and reclaimed posts for our winter squash, building raised beds, and transplanting small growing things. In more recent days, time spent in the garden has waned, as more and more that’s left to do is simply harvest, take stock of what we did wrong and right, and discuss how we want to do things next year.

The tomatoes did especially well this year.

Besides the garden, bringing two new cats into our home, in a desperate attempt to fill the holes left by our recently deceased furry family members, has lead to plenty of breed research and new discoveries about cat behaviour, as each new animal always presents new challenges and new joys both. I canned some jelly semi-successfully for the first time this summer--the canning part was successful, though the “jelly” was more syrup than anything else. I’ve learned more about areas of history I previously knew little about; I’ve learned to cook new foods; I’ve learned that I can step up when needed even when I’m personally struggling.

A whole host of learning, from how to handle an overstimulated kitten and how to create an ingenious tomato watering system, to deep personal growth.

Remaining aware of all the learning that keeps happening, no matter what, can be encouraging and soothing. When it feels like you’re “doing nothing,” it might be a good idea to pay more attention to all the things that you, and your family, ARE doing.

We live in a culture obsessed with productivity. Whether you want to blame it on capitalism or on the puritanical work ethic, the fact remains that busy-ness, doing something, is generally considered good, and not doing anything “productive” is seen as laziness, as wasted time.

The idea that time can even be wasted, that every moment should somehow be accounted for seems like a deeply toxic idea. It’s definitely proved a harmful one in my own life. I’ve struggled with mental illness for years, and this year has been a particularly trying one with all that’s happened, and I struggle with the idea that I’ve “wasted” so much time in struggle.

In a culture that sees a lack of productivity as one of the seven deadly sins, people who are struggling are often seen as lazy. They just need to get over it, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

The reality is that big life struggles are sometimes inevitable, and there isn’t an exact recipe for how people are “supposed” to deal with adversity. Sometimes you just need time and space to heal, and to get back on your feet.

Our two new black cats, Silver and Bea.

Both children and adults need time to struggle with those big life events, to make sense of them.

One of the core tenets of unschooling is recognizing that everyone has their own timeline when it comes to learning. The same is true of emotional difficulties and growth. When we take constant productiveness as a measure of success, we’re doing a great disservice to ourselves and the people around us. Time is a great gift: time to figure things out, to grow, to process, to hibernate. Periods of downtime are essential, especially when life has been extra hard.

Part of learning to be kind to myself is learning not to beat myself up over a lack of productivity, not to punish myself for struggling. Sometimes picking a full container of raspberries is success enough.
As a grown unschooler, I might feel the pressure to excel in obvious ways especially keenly, but recognizing that the only timeline I’m on is my own allows me that space to breath, and when I’m kinder to myself, I’m more able to do and learn and grow.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Unexceptionally Exceptional: The Meaning of Success

This is the first of a three part series exploring what success is and means, unschooling when the going gets tough, and finding joy in the simple things. The text is from a talk I wrote for the Northeast Unschooling Conference, and I've broken it up here into more manageable post lengths. Look for parts two and three on Thursday and next Monday! 

As I was preparing for this talk, I found myself thinking a lot about what success means. What it means in this culture, what it means to unschoolers, and what it means to me, personally.

Culturally, the most common middle class narrative of success runs neatly from elementary school and high school, through college, and straight into a well-paying office job.

Unschoolers, obviously, have strayed from that path right near the beginning. And I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all questioned whether that’s really the best--or the only best--path to follow. After all, as soon as you start re-evaluating the place institutional education holds culturally and in each of our lives, it’s a pretty natural step to start wondering if that education is really seeking the right “results,” or if we want to be focusing on different goals.

But, I often wonder if we haven’t just replaced one set of expectations with another one, which, while less rigid, still falls far short of encompassing all the ways that humans can create their own versions of success in this world.

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It’s a day a couple of weeks ago. I’m curled up in the corner of the couch, knees tucked underneath me, the television playing something I’m not watching in the background. I’ve spent most of the day caught in a negative thought spiral of failed attempts and disappointments. In other words, it hasn’t been a good day. “I’m a loser.” I say. The words slip out without my thinking them through beforehand, but in that moment, I believe it. It doesn’t matter that I don’t want a degree: I’m supposed to have one, aren’t I? I don’t have a “real” job, and despite the fact I’m earning a small amount of money doing something I care deeply about, or that ongoing health problems have gotten in the way of outside work, it seems like something I should have. It doesn’t even matter that, at the core of all my beliefs about people and politics and everything else lies the belief in equality, and that there aren’t--or at least definitely shouldn’t be--any ranking of people based on how well they’re “winning” at capitalism or success or anything else.

But in that moment, I’m convinced that I’m a failure.

Those moments are just that: moments, and ones that pass. But I’m reminded of how strong cultural messages are by how easily I can get caught up in (and dragged down by) those narratives, especially in moments of emotional difficulty and uncertainty. Unschoolers or not, I think many of us can’t help but be affected.

In the unschooling community, ideas about success are different. I usually feel like people consider me pretty successful in unschooling spaces: popular blogger and speaker definitely falls under the range of well-thought-of unschooling endeavors, right alongside world travel and entrepreneurship.

Writing, writing, writing...

It’s nice to see other accomplishments beside the typical college to good career track being recognized for their validity. But, the things that are viewed as successful by some vague yet very much felt unschooling consensus are things that, well, look good. Things that are somewhat performative, public, and easily seen. It’s the public intellectuals, the travelling writers, the startup superstars whom it seems we’re most proud of.

I think it’s no coincidence that the word “performative” was the first one that came to mind for me. Unschooling is often faced with such harsh criticism from uninformed non-unschoolers, and even legal difficulties in some places. When people first learn about unschooling, they don’t usually get an image of the type of lifestyle many of us have lived and are living. Instead, they see one of chaos and ignorance and maybe even neglect, You mean you don’t teach the kids anything?? How will they ever become productive members of society??

With that type of outside reaction, I suppose it’s unsurprising that the lives of teenage and especially grown unschoolers can get turned into performances of success, most clearly seen in what and who we choose to talk about. Individuals become not just themselves: uniquely flawed and skilled people with their own lives to lead, but results. A product of a pedagogy, instead of simply people who’ve lead a different lifestyle. We broaden the definition of success, yes, to include more varied options. But we still want it to look damn good.

I don’t think it’s a deliberate choice, or a deliberate ranking of some pursuits as more important than others, yet regardless of intentions, it can sometimes feel, as a grown unschooler, that you’re caughts between a dance of sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary pressures to prove unschooling success in one way or another, whether that means more mainstream or counter-cultural narratives. And when none of those paths looks like one you want to take, it can feel really difficult.
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My sister, Emilie is a musician, a martial artist, an amateur Arthurian scholar, and a writer of fantasy fiction. I think she’s pretty impressive, as does pretty much anyone who knows her. But unlike my own life and work, which I’ve chosen to share in a very public way, her pursuits are much quieter. She’s an excellent writer, but she only shares her writing with a select group of trusted friends. She’s very close to getting her black belt in Ninjutsu, and her teacher, who’s moving, wants Emilie to take over her class. Her accomplishments are real and important, but they’re not necessarily ones that receive much recognition outside of the specific groups in which she practices her skills.

She makes adorable plushies, too.

Many people, unschooled and not, lead quieter lives, with less outgoing passions. In holding up the unschoolers doing TED talks or getting into prestigious colleges as the pinnacle of unschooling success, I feel like we might just be missing an opportunity to discuss, and to truly embrace, a vision of truly unique life learning. If we mean it when we say that all interests are valid and important, then we must follow that belief through to it’s natural conclusion, which would be that all life paths, as long as they’re not harmful to others, are also equally valid, no matter how they might look to outsiders.

If we’re to do that, it seems that we need to be making a lot more space in discussions of success for people whose success doesn’t follow the most popular forms.

Monday, July 27, 2015

How Do We Value Ourselves?

Originally published in the November/December 2014 issue of Home Education Magazine.

In our culture, it’s very obvious that we value certain knowledge and skills more highly than others. Namely skills that are academic and intellectual, communication skills, and social skills (somewhat less tangibly, seeing as those are harder to test). It seems everything else comes a distant second.

Schools are all about teaching academic skills to the exclusion of all else (though how good a job they do at imparting those skills is very debatable).

When we take school out of the equation in our own lives and families, we have the option, the opportunity, to take a hard look at what skills are valued, and decide to broaden what we personally value and encourage.

But are we taking that opportunity? Too often, I don’t think we are.

My family didn’t, or at least didn’t to as much of an extent as we could have. This isn’t meant to place blame on my parents; we’re each of us constantly learning and growing, and unlearning ideas that have a negative impact on ourselves and others. My parents did the best they could in the places they were at, and I’m grateful for it. But looking back, it’s very obvious that the skills they were most concerned with me and my sister acquiring were those taught in school. It was subtle, because it was unintentional, but that preferencing of academic skills, at least to some extent, was very much present.

It’s easy to find ourselves trapped in an invisible framework built out of concerned queries from friends and families about how kids who don’t go to school will learn math, and PSA’s about the importance of graduating high school, and parental insecurities born of what they themselves were good and bad at in school.

I think it’s important to look beyond that framework, though, to recognize the variety of important and amazing skills and strengths people can have, including skills that are definitely not taught in school.
___________

My sister is a caretaker. She washes dishes and dusts and tidies, she likes doing yard work, and has increasingly been taking on odd jobs around the house that my father used to do (cleaning out the gutters and sweeping the chimney, snowblowing and mowing the lawn). She likes organizing things, works as the quartermaster in her Highland band, making sure every member is properly outfitted with everything they need. Her dream is to build her own house, a hobbit hole as she refers to it. She likes to take care of spaces, organizing and making things work.

This type of domestic work, work related to home care, is not exactly highly valued. I don’t think it’s an accident that this type of work (besides a couple of ‘manly’ chores) is generally coded as feminine, either, though that’s a whole ‘nother story.

It’s work that’s deeply necessary, often difficult, and that lives at the core of each and every one of our lives. We all need to eat, need to have clean clothes to wear, need to stay healthy by living in a clean environment. Even when we move past what’s strictly necessary in our current modern way of living, domestic skills often provide real enrichment: fresh food from a garden in your own yard, or homemade soap with your favourite scents. As soon as you move past the strictly necessary aspects of domestic skills, you move into the “artisanal.” Which, to a growing extent, is in. It’s trendy and popular to knit and make pie, at least for women.

We like cooking together.

But while the general movement towards a back-to-the-land and back-to-our-grandmother’s-skills can’t be a bad thing, I don’t think the movement is nearly broad enough in scope, as the majority of domestic skills are still being learned by girls and women only, and the trendiness only goes so far. These skills are still just considered hobbies, things women can do in their spare time. When it comes to the more mundane skills, they remain simply invisible: if they’re noticed at all, it’s probably just in an outdated sense of approval that the time honoured housekeeping skills are alive and well with some women, at least.

I believe the undervaluing of domestic work is reflected in how much money is usually made in such work outside your own home, and in who’s doing it (almost entirely women, and the majority immigrant and otherwise marginalized women). You can also see that attitude in what’s conspicuously not thought important enough to include in a modern school curriculum.

While certain select domestic skills might be valued when practiced by certain select people, they’re certainly not valued overall.
_____________

It seems strange that in many ways the most basic and integral skills needed to provide shelter and food are those valued least. Domestic skills, as mentioned above, but also trades, construction, and farming (which, even with the increased desire for organic and specialty foods, can be difficult to succeed at financially no matter what type of farming you're doing)... Some of these jobs, like select trades, do earn a lot of money (I don’t find it surprising that trades are also male dominated fields(1) as opposed to female dominated low-paying domestic work), yet they still lack a lot of prestige.

Money isn’t the only sign of value, of course, but in a capitalist society that values money over pretty much everything else (like the wellbeing of the Earth and the majority of people), how much money any given skill or knowledge set can make says a lot about what things--and which people--are valued most.
_____________

My sister is a caretaker. She takes care of people. Friends ask her for relationship advice, and go to her when they just need someone to listen. She told me the other day how much she likes helping out the newer people at her Ninjutsu dojo, and I’ve seen the amount of patience she has whenever she’s in a position of helping people to learn something. There’s been numerous times she’s stayed up late into the night and early morning talking to a friend or acquaintance who’s suicidal. She cares about the people around her, and is quick to step in and stand up to someone when she believes they’re being hurtful or inconsiderate. One of the reasons she wants to have her own land and build that hobbit hole is so that she has a place where loved ones can go when they need a place to be, no matter their financial situation. She cares about people.

And as you can probably tell by now, I really admire the skills my sister has a great deal. I admire her a great deal.

But it’s hard, as she confided to me recently, that the skills and strengths she values and cultivates in herself are not ones that are generally valued. They don’t make money, or at least not easily, which is all most people seem concerned about, and she’s left feeling like those skills, as much as her contributions have meant to so many friends and acquaintances, just aren’t good enough.
______________

"There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature." William Upski Wimsatt

This quote has always felt grounding to me, reminding me when I start to panic about my (lack of) math skills or feel that my knowledge of certain parts of history seem less than a schooled friend. A reminder that the most important skills are those that actually help us function in the world we find ourselves in. This can mean knowing how to make healthy and tasty food for yourself or for a crowd, handling friendships when they get difficult, doing taxes, raising money, supporting a depressed partner while not losing yourself, or how to get soap rings off of the sides of your tub.

All the things, big and small, that truly make up the day to day art of living.

As unschoolers, we have a tremendous opportunity to rethink what’s valued and what’s important. It’s hard to let go (or maybe more accurately throw off) deeply ingrained ideas about what learning looks like, what important learning looks like, and what should be most encouraged in children.

I think encouraging life skills can be as simple as de-emphasizing academic skills a little bit (messages everywhere are telling us that they’re important. Kids are going to get that idea no matter what!), and working to expand our personal definitions of what learning looks like and what skills it’s important for children to learn. If we actually believe that all those important real life skills are valuable, I think everyone around us, kids included, are going to see that belief reflected in the way we talk and the things we do. I also think it’s important to, in an age appropriate way, involve kids of all genders in every aspect of running and maintaining a household: cooking and cleaning and fixing and yard work and finances and pet care. Making things into “chores” is often unhelpful; instead, I believe it’s important to just live and work together as a family, including everyone in both day-to-day tasks and big decisions. Easier said than done, I’m sure (and I’ll likely be even more sure of that once I have kids myself), but striving for that cooperative state seems important, and when you can achieve it it really feels great. I know it’s what I’ll be striving for when I’m a parent.

It’s great if a kid finds manipulating numbers comes naturally, or starts reading at age three. But it’s just as wonderful if a child has a real sense of when things are out-of-place and likes organizing the house, or loves working with wood, or has a knack for growing things, or a seemingly innate sense of the right thing to say when someone is sad.

Emilie tending to the garden last summer. Our garden is much bigger this year!

These skills and strengths are every bit as important as academic skills, and if we can stop the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that intellectual work is somehow superior, if we valued the unique strengths of every individual around us, both children and adults, I can’t help but think it would be a better world.

Unschooling gives us an excellent opportunity to value those unique strengths, and encourage kids to develop all kinds of important, exciting, and nourishing life skills.
_________

My sister is 20. I'm 23. We're both still figuring out a lot of things, still struggling sometimes. I'm deeply passionate about food and cooking, and though right now I'm just working hard to get my health to a place where I feel I'm able to work a "real" job, I remain excited about working in that field.

My sister Emilie was asked to be the manager and caretaker of a fledgling intentional community being dreamed up by her Ninjutsu teacher (as well as friend and sometimes employer) and others. Though the land isn't bought yet, her near-future "duties" would be to do a lot of the learning and skill-gaining related to sustainable building and gardening practices, something that a lot of the older working people involved with the community don't have the time to do. In the longer run, some of the things she'd do would be organize who was there when, bringing in and managing volunteers to help build it, and living on the land during the week when those who still worked in the city couldn't be there. Basically an opportunity that perfectly suits her desires and skills! I'm excited for her, and I'm hoping it all works out. Even if it doesn't, she's still striving towards her dream of homesteading and sustainable community living.

Which I guess just shows to me that there is a place for those skills, for people whose strengths and passions are less of the academic persuasion and more about the domestic, hands on, emotional, and "life skills" realms, even if they can be difficult to find sometimes.

There are many skills that help us function and succeed in this world, whatever success looks like to the individual. Some of them are academic and some are not. They're all valuable, helping us in different aspects of our lives, some of which will help with earning money and some not. Regardless, they're all important. They all contribute to making life better, making life richer, and helping us to take care of ourselves and those around us.

In valuing all skills, not just the school ones, we're helping kids do well in all different parts of their life, and opening up doors to a wider range of possibilities.

I think that's one of the most important, and personally exciting, things we can do as unschoolers!

(1) I say this based on the findings in Women in Non-Traditional Occupations and Fields of Study by Kathryn McMullen, Jason Gilmore and Christel Le Petit from statistics Canada, and Women and Education by Martin Turcotte, the latter of which commented that, out of six trade groups (building construction, electrical, electronic and related trades, food and services, industrial and related mechanical trades, metal fabricating, and motor vehicle and heavy equipment), the only one in which women are a majority was food and services.

Friday, June 26, 2015

I'm Here and I'm Queer

I’ve been wanting to write this post all of June, since it’s Pride month, and today on a day when my social media dashes are blowing up with rainbows over the legalization of same-gender marriage in the United States seems like a pretty good time!

First thing you should know? I’m queer.

What does that mean to me? Basically that I have the capacity to be attracted to, get crushes on, and fall in love with people of any gender.

I’m pretty much as “out” as I can be in most areas of my life. I even make a point of saying I’m queer on my unschooling Facebook page every now and then, and I lose “likes” every single time.


I’ve had people say it’s inappropriate to talk about “what I do in the bedroom” which is such a ridiculous statement, since I’ve never said anything more than I did just now in this post.

I’m queer. I’m into people of all different genders.
It’s not about sex: it’s about who I like and love, and how welcome--and how safe--I feel in any given group. It’s about the internal struggles I’ve had to go through to accept this part of myself that I didn’t see reflected anywhere around me, that caused a lot of anxiety and fear and a little bit of shame, too. It’s about how I present myself, how I want to be seen and understood, how I experience the world. It’s a part of my identity.

My queerness doesn’t wholly define me. Of course it doesn’t. But it is part of what defines me as a person, a piece of the Idzie puzzle.

And as with many positive things in my life, unschooling had something to do with where I’m at now. More specifically, the unschooling community, and all the queer friends I made in it at a crucial time in my life. I was really questioning my identity in my late teens, and there were so many patient, supportive new friends who listened to my fears, validated my feelings, and assured me that I didn’t have to attain some pinnacle of queer perfection to identify as such.

Basically? I met a bunch of people who understood what I was feeling, and who welcomed my confusedly queer self with open arms.

So on this day, a landmark occasion in the US, I figured I’d take the time to be even more out, and to remind people that you’re surrounded by LGBTQIA+ people, whether you know it or not. Don’t make assumptions about who people are and who they like based on their perceived gender. Don’t assume your children are straight and cisgender. Leave space in your words and actions for people of all stripes, so that when someone you love is ready to start sharing more of their true selves, they’ll know you’re there to listen and support them.

Happy Pride month everyone!

Friday, June 12, 2015

Learning by Doing: Education Made Real

My sister got a new cookbook, all about making hot beverages: coffee, teas, flavour infused milks, hot punches. We looked through it together, quickly got excited about a recipe for spiced Moroccan coffee, and before we knew it we were pulling out the cinnamon and cardamom, toasting sesame seeds and readying my trusty little French press. It wasn’t long before we were settled down together, delighting in our tiny cups of spiced coffee, sweetened and mellowed by sugar and milk.

I share this afternoon activity because I found myself thinking, as I was sipping my beverage, that this was a perfect, small scale example of just what I’ve been wanting to write about for the past week, which is the importance of learning and doing always being connected to one another.


When I think about learning, more often than thinking about the processes involved, I think about the feelings. Excitement, focus, joy. When I was small, learning was doing. Reading about medieval Europe quickly turned into me and my sister digging through drawers to create our very own English peasant looks. An astronomy show sent us out into the night to spot constellations. A discussion of poetry lead to us settling down with notebooks and pens, furiously scribbling haiku. We learned about plants and trees and wildlife from going on hikes, bird watching, and catching frogs.

Exploring a topic or a skill meant actually exploring it, in immediate, hands on ways. Our house was frequently filled with science experiments and playacting, building and writing, painting and gardening. I think I was in my teens before it really occurred to me that most children had a very different experience when it came to the learning they were supposedly doing in school.

The realization that people learn better when they’re involved in hands on ways with various subjects is well known in education circles. A quick perusal of the popular education blog MindShift shows posts on the various ways that hands on, project based, and physical learning benefits kids of various ages. However, opportunities for students in school to experience this type of learning--nevermind experiencing it in the all-important context of self-chosen and self-directed projects and activities--are few and far between, still seen more as something highly experimental and innovative than the way all learning should be.

In that light, it feels even more special to me that my learning has always been that way. I’m so grateful that the associations I have with the word “learning” are all so very positive: delight and excitement, curiosity and exploration, immersion and just plain old fun.

I feel the same kindling excitement today, when I put together a new style of coffee with my sister, as I did when I used to rush out to watch how the ants in my yard behaved after watching a fascinating nature documentary. Trying new things, watching and doing and experiencing is fun, whether it’s in the kitchen, the backyard, or anywhere else.

I’d prefer all my learning to feel like it did when I was a child: tactile and immediate and exciting. That doesn’t mean I eschew hard work, just that I prefer my projects and my education to feel more real and personal. More hands on.

I think part of the reason I’ve stayed so enthusiastic about all things education--and the accompanying writing and speaking I do about it--is because I’ve held on to a lot of the attitudes about learning that I had as a child. I want to share how amazing--and amazingly simple--learning can be, without all the artificial construction of “learning experiences” that fill most schools (and some homeschools). Learning is one of the simplest things we can do (though not always the easiest or most effortless), because all you need to learn is to do. Small things and large; daily activities and all-encompassing, months long projects; writing and building; making food and budgeting for a trip; the things you need to do and the things you want to do…

We all learn and remember what matters most to us, so having a real connection between the abstract and the concrete, between the theoretical and the practical, is what builds a bigger picture in our learning. What makes an “education,” some might say. When you’ve cultivated an unschooling lifestyle, those connections are being made all the time, in everything you learn, everything you do. Our education becomes real in the truest sense of the world.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

I Don't Want to Build My Own Curriculum, I just Want to Live My Own Life

I read a lot of posts by young adults who skipped college in favour of self-directed learning, from both unschooling and traditionally schooled backgrounds. It’s pretty exciting for me to see people discovering unschooling at all different ages, and I love that so many young adults are embracing it! I love to read about the discoveries and experiences of fellow happily unschooling 20-somethings. But I find myself noticing lately how often “uncollegers” talk about the process of their learning, the detailed plans and self constructed curriculum, and I’m struck by how very different my outlook is. It gets me thinking about the positives--and the negatives--in my own learning, and how it compares to others’ experiences.


In some ways, I wonder if my own less structured approach is a sign of how long I’ve been unschooling, and how much deschooling I’ve done. Many seem to feel a strong pressure to create something school-like, something to point to and say “look, I’m learning, just like if I was in college!” This is a pressure which, while I sometimes feel it, it doesn’t really affect my learning. I’ve been an unschooler for so long that I’m very aware of how ever-present learning is, so I notice and appreciate how much I’m learning and growing without needing to justify the validity of my education, at least to myself.

On the other hand, I think a little more planning would do me good, and maybe a little more thinking about my learning. I’d like to have a posting schedule on my blog, and manage to convince myself that self imposed deadlines are still “real.” I’d like to get better at saving and organizing all the articles I read on a variety of subjects every day. I’d like to get better at networking with like-minded people in my local communities.

But when I start questioning whether I’ve been approaching my college free life learning in the best way, the conclusion I find myself coming to is that far more important than building your own curriculum, or getting caught up in all the details of your “education,” is understanding what you want from your life. Knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your values, and what type of person you want to be. If you know the answers to those questions, from that base the paths to follow and the steps to take start to become a lot clearer.

I know that I’m good at communicating, and feel that that’s a big asset in my life. I’m not so good at consistently putting myself out there in the “real world,” networking, making friends, and getting involved in exciting projects. I find learning in front of other people scary, so I know that taking classes can be a really good way to stretch myself and overcome that fear. I write most prolifically when under the pressure of an imminent deadline, so I know that deadlines provide a certain helpful structure and much needed push when it comes to growing my writing career. I know that I pretty much always regret not trusting my gut, or making sure a situation or opportunity is in line with my values and with who I want to be as a person.

Yes, I need to get better at being organized, at being reliable, at producing even close to as much writing as I want to be doing. I’m working on it, struggling sometimes, finding moments of clarity other times. But whenever I start to flounder, detailed planning never seems to help much. Instead, going back to that base, those important questions, taking a deep breath, and setting a few attainable goals seems to be the best course of action so far. Different ways of learning work for different people, and I know for some, the excitement is in the details and organization. Just not for me.

I’m still figuring out what I want to learn and do day by day, and I think to some extent I always will be. As we all know, learning isn’t finite: it’s a lifelong journey, an endless series of experiences and choices.

My education outside of college isn’t perfect. My life is not exactly what I might want it to be right now. But it’s mine. It’s my choices, my experiences, my values and goals. And it’s something I value deeply. I’m not building a curriculum. Instead, I’m just busy figuring out what it means to live a good life.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Building Life on a Foundation of Untamed Learning

I originally wrote this for possible inclusion in a magazine. It didn't end up getting accepted, so I'm sharing it here instead!

I never went to school. Or, to be accurate, I went to half a year of kindergarten before leaving to learn from life instead. My family practiced unschooling--sometimes called life learning--which basically means learning from parents and friends, group activities and classes, books and the internet and nature and everything else that comprises the day to day happenings of our lives. It’s learning that’s guided by the interests, goals, and needs of the individual and their family. Supported by parents and mentors, a life learning education isn’t confined by an externally imposed curriculum, by grades and test results and lists of what should be learned at what time.

It’s the opposite of standardized education. Instead, I’d say it’s untamed learning. And this way of learning has had a very large impact on my life.

___

When I look at the choices I’m making now, and at the type of life I want to lead, when I think about the activities I’m drawn to, what fills me with joy and a sense of purpose, and even my political views and world outlook, I find myself asking the question, how did I get here? Why do I think and believe what I do? What led me to this place? When I trace it all back, I always seem to find the roots in growing up as a life learner.

The ability for a child to freely follow passions is one of the core tenets of unschooling, if unschooling can be said to have core tenets. For years I was interested in anything to do with pioneer-settlers. I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and I adored visiting a local living history museum. There was a textile mill, a smithy, a doctor’s office, a schoolhouse, a farm... I remember watching people bake bread, make candles, and milk cows. I loved getting to chase piglets at the farm and card wool at the mill. I even had a “pioneer” themed party for my eighth birthday, where we made candles by dipping wicks repeatedly into a pot of hot wax, and lanterns to place them in by hammering holes into old aluminum cans.

As I got older and learned more about the history of colonialism in North America, and the genocide and destruction settlers wrought across this continent, the way I viewed those pioneers certainly changed. But what had drawn me to that museum had never been the supposed pioneering adventure, it had always been the connection to the everyday necessities of life: building your own shelter and spinning your own yarn; growing and cooking your own food; caring for animals that provide you with fiber, and food, and even wax for candles. A life that felt connected to place, daily tasks that felt involved and immediate, not distanced and mediated by corporations and retail stores, until you never see where the products that support your life come from, and you never meet the people who grew or created them.

I recently laughingly told someone that my dream life--that of living somewhere both rural and wild, building community with friends and family, keeping goats and chickens, planting big gardens, and best of all, spending lots of time making delicious food in the kitchen--was largely the same as the dreams of my six, eight, and ten year old self. Time might have changed, but what excites me now in my early twenties isn’t all that different at all.
____

As a child, the choice to leave school was made solely by my parents. I was pretty indifferent to my brief kindergarten experience, and felt perfectly fine leaving after just a few months. I had a good childhood, filled with memories of taking turns reading poetry together as a family; learning about edible plants on homeschool group nature walks; catching frogs and grasshoppers; spending hours reading historical and fantasy novels; painting and playing and creating… I took the strangeness of the life I was leading--one without school buses and homework--largely for granted until I hit my teenage years and started to have doubts. It took a lot of personal research into radical education, along with some serious introspection, before I came to embrace life learning again.

In my teens I started questioning not just the necessity of schooling, but the necessity of many institutions and cultural practices that most people take for granted. Everyone thinks you have to go to school to “get an education,” which obviously isn’t true. So what else is everyone wrong about? Because of the way I grew up, I experienced learning, both hands on and more intellectual, as something joyful and exciting. Because I chose how and what and with whom I learned, I considered all different pursuits important, and for the most part I learned to value all different types of skills and knowledge (despite cultural messages to the contrary and the insecurity I sometimes still feel). Being trusted in my learning from a young age, I learned to trust my own thoughts and feelings, and perhaps that’s why I trace so many parts of my current identity back to the way I was raised. I see the influence of unschooling tangled into my thoughts on horizontal organizing instead of strict social hierarchies (hierarchies that begin in and are entrenched by the structure of both the traditional nuclear family and schooling institutions). I see it in my belief in the human potential for growth and change and living respectfully with each other. And I know that life can be more joyful than many people seem to think, because I’ve experienced what it’s like to live life on your own terms.

One of the definitions of “wildness” is that of being “uncontrolled and unrestrained,” and it seems when many people first hear about life learning, they automatically think that children must be running wild in the most negative definition of that term, without structure or what is believed to be much needed control.

In reality, life learning functions more like so many systems in nature function: there are routines, repeating cycles, stages of life, and surrounding environments that all shape an individual's day-to-day living and learning. It’s a lifestyle that sometimes feels calm and comforting, sometimes wildly exciting and exhilarating, and mainly something that just feels like living a rich life.

It is learning that’s uncontrolled by teachers or institutions, and unrestrained by externally mandated curriculum. It’s also learning that’s supported by parents or caregivers or mentors, who help an individual develop self-control and self-restraint of their own.

Untamed learning in the most positive definition of wildness.
____

It’s a good foundation, really, though building up from it can still feel incredibly daunting, frustrating, and difficult. I find myself still living in the suburbs with my parents, and struggling with how to create a financial reality that can support the type of lifestyle I most want to create for myself. I have to remind myself that every step brings me closer to where I want to be, and to focus on the parts of my life that feel good and right for me. It’s in the moments of flow when reading about the fascinating subject of fermentation, or the joy of kneading bread, or burying my fingers in cool soil that I feel the sparks of rightness. This is how life is supposed to feel, I think. It feels like the hours of make believe I spent as a child, like the unadulterated excitement of learning about something new. It’s that connection to the practices that shape my life, it’s about how authentically satisfying real work feels, and it’s about always pursuing the subjects and skills about which I’m most passionate. Life and learning that’s truly untamed, shaped by our communities, shaped by the natural seasons, by the stages we all grow through in life, and by the unique experiences and interests we all have and hold dear.

I’m always going to be a life learner, and it’s in this lifestyle and practice that I feel I can best create the type of life I most want to be living.

Monday, February 2, 2015

You Don't Need an Ideal World to Unschool: Why the Concerns of Progressives are Misplaced

There’s a frequent criticism of unschooling that comes from progressives, liberals, and even anarchists of various stripes, which is that, by removing children from schools, parents are hurting the schools themselves; lessening the quality of said schools (since they’re no longer involved in school improvement); and taking money away from where it’s most needed.

I’ve always found this argument to be both puzzling and misguided for several reasons.

Parents are unable to make a real impact on schools and how they function. Even teachers have virtually no control over the structure or curriculum found in schools, and are often left frustrated by the bureaucracy and standardization stopping them from making any significant changes, even in their own classrooms. If teachers have that little impact, than parents certainly don’t have a bigger one.

Secondly, in many regions a large portion of each school’s budget comes from property taxes, meaning that schools situated in more affluent neighbourhoods will have a bigger budget, leading to more resources, more enriching activities, and at least nominally better schools. This is a true cause of inequality between schools and students, along with institutional privileges and prejudices that lead marginalized students to do worse, even in the same schools, when compared to more privileged peers. Some parents choosing to take their kids out of school, or to not send them there to begin with, are going to have a negligible impact on the finances of a single institution.

Yet even if both of the above concerns could actually be backed up, the argument still doesn’t hold a lot of weight to me. “Other children have to attend an outdated institution--one that often feels like a socially toxic environment, where the basic rights of students to free thought and movement are sharply curtailed in favour of imparting a top-down, universally mandated curriculum to be given to age segregated groups of children--so you have to go too.”

To me this seems akin to deciding that, because some communities are food deserts-- areas where poor residents have no access to fresh and healthy food--everyone, no matter their finances or neighborhood access, should avoid fresh food on principle. Instead, the approach should be to recognize that inequalities exist, and start having important discussions with people in your communities about what can be done to help solve those inequalities. Start taking real steps to enact change, or support the individuals and groups who are doing said work. Whether we’re talking about food deserts or a failed education system, the proposed solution shouldn’t be to subject everyone to the same level of bad, but should instead be a search for solutions that allow everyone to have access.

It seems to me that progressives have a long list of reasons not to unschool: It takes away from schools by removing parental and student involvement; there aren’t enough community resources; there isn’t enough parental support… All of these seem to hinge, not on a disagreement with the actual underlying philosophy of unschooling, but instead on the premise that the world at large and the individuals in it just aren’t ready for unschooling.

I wonder if this points towards a larger problem in how progressives and anarchists attempt to solve various societal problems. Most progressives don’t actually seem to be making all that many different choices in their lives when compared to people with more mainstream political views, regardless of their economic status or the amount of support available to them. Is the issue of education just another sign of fear holding us back? Is there a widespread feeling that we just need to wait, need to focus on broad incremental change instead of radical changes made in our own lives, and those of our families and close communities? 

Individuals have to make the choices that are best for them, based on their unique situation, and I certainly don't believe that everyone should or has to unschool. But I also don’t think we need an ideal world to be able to make important and radically different choices about how we live and learn. Yes, to focus only on our own lives at the expense of the wider culture would be a mistake. But I don’t see why we can’t have both: a push for broader change, and choices made that are actually best for you, your families, the people you care about most, when it comes to where, or whether or not, your children go to school.

We need to stop waiting for everything to be perfect to make any significant changes, or we’ll never make changes at all.

I hope more progressives can stop making excuses about waiting for the ideal, and instead focus on creating something better for the children in their own lives, as well as pushing for better alternatives for all children.

Further reading 
Learning About Culture & Community: Unschooling in the Real World by Eva Swindler

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Learning to Eat: How Life Learning Principles Helped Me Develop a Healthy Relationship With Food


Originally published in the November/December 2014 issue of Life Learning Magazine.

I made a chocolate pudding with a whipped cream topping this past week. Using just coconut milk and semi-sweet chocolate, with some vanilla and rum for added flavour, the pudding tasted and felt more like a mousse than anything--rich and dark and creamy--and was in fact rich enough that none of my family could eat much at a time.

In other words, it would be classified by some as “not good for you,” though I think it was an ideal treat, fun to make and eat.

My sister and I, both adults now, have grown into adulthood with remarkably few issues around food. Neither of us have ever dieted, we’ve never counted calories or gone out of our way to avoid “bad” foods. I care whether the food I’m eating is healthy for me (which is why I tend to avoid soy, which messes with hormone levels), but I also feel strongly that health, when it comes to food and other areas of life, is about our emotional health as well as our physical health, which means that when I get a craving for noodles with fried tofu, the next time I’m at the grocery store I buy a big block of the stuff.

In short, my approach to food is one of listening to my body and mind, and approaching both cooking and eating with an attitude of excitement, fun, and enjoyment.

Guilt or limiting has nothing to do with it.

The fact that my sister has a similar attitude kind of amazes me. Two women from the same house, and both of us have a healthy and joyous relationship with food? In the world we live in, which places a whole lot of pressure and guilt on women especially when it comes to food, I don’t think there is a magical set of steps that guarantees children will grow up with a good relationship to food (I certainly have my own set of issues when it comes to other aspects of life, regardless of my upbringing). Some of the reasons are probably as diverse as genetics, the communities we’ve been a part of, our personalities, and pure chance. However, I feel like some of the ways I was raised created an environment that was conducive to that positive relationship.

Life learning wasn’t the sole contributor, for sure. But, I can’t help but think that my upbringing did have an impact… We weren’t radical unschoolers, we didn’t have unlimited access to sweets, and we were generally only allowed to have dessert after supper. I can’t really say whether that was a harm or a help, though I have felt that certain foods being “treats” meant that I only really discovered I wasn’t so fond of them later in life. Mostly, though, I don’t really care about what limits were or weren’t placed on food when I was young, since at this point in my life food is such a marvelously positive thing.

I was never told I had to finish what’s on my plate. It was okay to stop eating when I was full.

I didn’t have to eat if I wasn’t hungry. We had regular mealtimes because it was important to my father that he get to eat at certain times, but I didn’t have to eat then if I didn’t want to.

My mother felt very strongly about never trying to trick us into eating “healthy” food. I never had to look at my meal suspiciously, wondering if something I hated was mixed in there. Any discussions we had about healthy eating were open and honest, and not a matter of manipulation.

My parents never commented about our weight. It just wasn’t mentioned. There was no “you need to exercise more, you’re getting chubby” or comments about food being too fattening. While my mother might have frequently had insecurities about her own weight, that was never transferred to me or my sister.

My parents very clearly and vocally valued us for things other than our looks. While my grandmother focused very much on prettiness and looks and activities that she deemed appropriately girly (in a well-intentioned though very misguided way), I always had the strong feeling that she was wrong to do so, a feeling that my mother very much validated.

My mother always had great excitement for trying new things. That doesn’t mean my sister and I always felt the same. Children especially can be good at being very picky! But both of us did eventually develop a similar love for new flavours, cuisines, and dishes, as well as a love of making exciting new dishes ourselves.

When I started to become really into food, my parents supported that passion. They didn’t discourage me from pursuing something so un-academic, or feel that I was wasting my time. Instead they just found me cookbooks, acted as very happy tasters, and encouraged me to pursue more food-related opportunities. They liked seeing me so happy about something, and I don’t think it much mattered to them what that something was.

I’m a cook, and I’ve done some cooking professionally, and I’ve spent many more hours in my own kitchen. I can tell just how passionate I am about creating tasty food by how exciting a thought it is that no matter how many new dishes I make, there will always be more to try! Food holds a large and important place in my life. I love reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows, talking about food with friends and thinking up new dishes. Cooking is a main artistic outlet for me, and just generally causes a whole bunch of warm and fuzzy feelings.

I’m drawn to the philosophy of “intuitive eating,” as it just seems really right to me that most people, if they’re never taught to distrust their own bodies, can figure out quite well what and how much is best for them to eat. We’re all different, and will all require slightly different fuels in different proportions, guided by personal tastes and preferences and availability. Instead of fighting against an individual’s naturally developing relationship with food and eating, telling them that certain foods are bad or “unclean,” and introducing a whole bunch of guilt and body shaming into the picture, it seems we would be much better served by always treating food with the respect it deserves. Food is about our physical and emotional health, it’s about our cultures and community, it’s personal and it’s social and it holds and expresses so much history and creativity and innovation. No matter how you look at it, food is important. And if we can embrace it with a sense of joy and discovery from a young age, hopefully it can remain something deeply positive throughout our lives.

My upbringing wasn’t perfect. And no matter how good my upbringing was (because it really was pretty good), there are still a lot of negative messages and pressures to be found in our current culture. However, I do think that my parents got some things really right when it came to food, and I’m so grateful for the place it now holds in my life.

I have a beautiful relationship with food, and I think that life learning helped me to develop it.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Why You Should Start Unschooling

I'm seeing a tag going around, proclaiming today to be National Start Homeschooling Day. In honour of that, I figured I'd share my top reasons to start unschooling. I understand that, for any number of reasons, unschooling just might not to be doable in your life. If that's the case, I hope you can still glean inspiration for doing your best to devalue standardized assessments and instead place value on passion lead, self directed learning, no matter where it takes place. If, however, you are considering leaving school or taking your kids out of school, I hope these reasons will prove so inspiring that you actually do it!


Building a self-directed education

Forget teachers and standardized curriculum dictating what and how and when you should learn. Instead, learn about whatever really interests you, what you feel is truly important and relevant. Your learning then becomes truly personalized, unique to you and based on what you want and need. You get to spend as much time as you want doing whatever it is that you wished you could be doing instead of sitting in a classroom, bored by the current lecture.

Learning and growing without externally imposed timelines

When you control your own learning, timelines of when certain things "should" be learned become irrelevant. Your child isn't a "late" reader, and you're not "behind" in math when you're no longer comparing yourself or your kids to others, based on what the school system thinks you should be learning. Instead, you can learn and grow at your own pace, and in your own way. We all learn differently, and unschooling allows us to truly embrace that.

Recognizing that we all have knowledge and skills to both learn and share

In school, there are teachers there to impart knowledge, and students attending in order to have knowledge imparted to them. Outside of school, you start to recognize that everyone can fill both of those roles at different times, and that the relationship between those who are teaching and those who are learning can be a cooperative, collaborative, and respectful one.

Improving relationships between parents and children

Parent-child relationships, especially parent-teen relationships, can often be contentious. Fights often revolve around issues of homework, bed time (early school days seem to require one), and other school-related things. When you remove school from the equation, and when parents start striving to trust, respect, and truly listen to their children, relationships can change dramatically, and "teenage rebellion" can become a thing of the past.

Socializing on your own terms

The forced socialization of schools, complete with bullies (both other children and sometimes even teachers), a lack of freedom of choice and movement, and an inability to choose more or less socializing based on each individual's needs, does not exactly promote the development of a healthy social life. As an unschooler, socializing can be based on the emotional needs of each child, and you can build a social life that truly feels good to you.

Learning in the real world

Instead of learning in a single, age segregated building, unschoolers learn in the real world. You can learn at home, in nature, at the library, at museums and community centers and yes, in classes. The world opens up, and you start to see all the myriad opportunities that are all around you for learning that feels relevant and important in your life.

Growing in an environment that feels supportive and safe

For many students--including LGBTQ people, disabled students, and students with mental illnesses--schools can feel anything but safe or supportive. People learn best and are most creative in their learning when they're not stressed and afraid, so if family life is nurturing and loving, home can make a much better base for learning.

Having time to daydream

Instead of being pushed to focus constantly, school-free learning leaves plenty of time for relaxing, processing, daydreaming, playing, and quiet introspection. As an unschooler you can reject ideas of "laziness" and choose to value the whole learning process, including boredom, not only the parts that look most active and productive.

Doing real work

When you're not simply studying for a test or producing a project or paper that will never be seen outside of a single classroom, you can instead focus on work and creation that actually feels real. You can volunteer doing important work in your community, get a job or apprentice in a field that fascinates you, write blog posts and articles for an actual audience, create visual art for a community exhibition, and otherwise share yourself with the world. You have the time to do things that feel genuinely meaningful, and that make a real impact on the lives of others.

All of these are compelling reasons why many of us have chosen unschooling for ourselves or our families. I hope that they encourage you to choose a freer, more personalized, more exciting way of approaching learning in your own lives, as well.