Thursday, January 13, 2011

Unschooling is How Adults Naturally Learn at The Mahogany Way

Pottery Class


I have a guest post today over at The Mahogany Way on "Unschooling is how adults naturally learn."

It was a concept that occurred to me when I first started hearing about unschooling. See, I'd originally moved to Seattle with a stated intention of attending a graduate school/seminary program out here — and the more I didn't go back to school, the less I wanted to. I was having too much fun learning to be educated!

Sam went off to try West African drumming and draw cartoons. I took a hatmaking course where I blocked four hats in the traditional style and spent way too much on watercolor supplies for my painting class. Every quarter, a new catalog [of adult-education classes] would come, and we would dog-ear the pages, marking up what looked interesting and trying to prioritize based on the time and money we had available.

I had been considering continuing on to grad school, but it was almost as if these new classes helped convince me not to go. I had been a very good student throughout my traditional-schooling years — teacher's pet, straight As, the whole deal — and what I loved about my adult education classes was that all the rules had changed. In fact, there was no game at all anymore, no rules to keep or break. It was just learning, for its own sake. I was not going to become a hatmaker, a painter, a ballerina, or an actress. But I could go to the classes and learn and absorb, research more on my own, and enter into that new world for as long as I wished.

I hope it's reassuring for you if unschooling seems tempting yet mysterious to realize that you already do unschooling every day in your adult life, so it's more just a matter of applying that philosophy to your time with children. I hope you'll click over and join me in the comments over there.

While you're at The Mahogany Way, take a look at the joyful unschooling Darcel does with her three children, like a recent child-led time at the bookstore and an acknowledgement that playing is necessary. I always enjoy seeing how she documents unschooling in action in a real-life family, and I appreciate her wisdom and experiences with attachment parenting as she writes about breastfeeding, babywearing, and her most recent homebirth.

If you're interested in guest posting for me or having me guest post for you, let me know.

Catch you at The Mahogany Way!

Photo courtesy simplifies on flickr (cc)

1 comments:

Darcel @The Mahogany Way said...

Lauren, thank you for coming over to my blog. I am honored that YOU are honored to be a part of my blog.
I look forward to coming along with your family during this journey.

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