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Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural parenting, sustainable living and more by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - January, 2007 Where is Education? – January 26, 2007
Breastfeeding in Public – January 24, 2007
The Ontario Human Rights Commission already has a policy that states, in part, “You have the right to breastfeed a child in a public area. No one should prevent you from nursing your child simply because you are in a public area…They should not ask you to cover up, disturb you, or ask you to move to another area that is more discreet.” Maybe I was naïve 30-some years ago. Or maybe times have changed for the worse. But I breastfed my two daughters wherever I was in the early 1970s. It never occurred to me that anyone would object. And nobody did, that I recall. After all, feeding children is the purpose of breasts…and it’s a very sad commentary on our messed up culture that we connect feeding a child with sex and relegate it the bedroom, or with other bodily functions and banish it to the bathroom. Indeed, in most places in the world, breastfeeding holds no sexual connotation. At any rate, most breastfeeding mothers bare less skin than many entertainers – just have a look at the upcoming Academy Award presentations! Anyway, the La Leche League has info on its
website about breastfeeding laws in various places. I recall in the early
days of homeschooling, I used to carry a copy of the education law around
with me in public…maybe breastfeeding mothers will have to start doing
that. Neat-freak Education – January 18, 2007
In the upcoming March/April issue of Life Learning, which I’m just finishing up, Karen Whitescarver explores the meaning of chaos, which she concludes is essential for growth and change. Rote memorization of facts and the orderly regurgitation of them tend to be neat – not to mention easily assessed – processes, but they’re not learning. When my office gets particularly messy, I just quote the cliché that a messy desk is the sign of a creative mind. Fortunately for me, there is increasing evidence that disorder is, indeed, “the detritus of a creative mind”, as Penelope Green wrote in the New York Times late last year. In their recently released and highly publicized book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, business school professor Eric Abrahamson and journalist David Freedman show that moderately disorganized people and institutions are frequently “more efficient, more resilient, more creative and in general more effective than highly organized ones.” And probably more successful too. They cite a survey done by a professional staffing company, which found that the higher the salary, the messier the person: “Sixty-six percent of Americans making $35,000 or less are self-described ‘neat freaks,’ whereas only 11 percent of those earning above $75,000 claim the same.” Abrahamson and Freedman are at the forefront of what one might call the “anti anti-clutter movement.” They are encouraging people to invite confusion into their lives in order to be more creative and productive both personally and at work. In an article in Inc. magazine, they advise us to “be inconsistent, pile up, blur categories, make noise, bounce around, get distracted.” Sound like any kid you know? In fact, unschooled kids are a good example of how making a mess gets things done. And usually, the more they’re learning, the bigger the mess they create. Places that stress neatness, order and quiet might make good retreat spas, but they don’t function well as learning environments. The art of learning to read can be one of the messier processes, and it’s also one of the processes that academics attempt most often to standardize. As professor Alan Thomas writes in the same issue of Life Learning, the fact that children can learn to read on their own is shocking to professional educators who, in spite of (or perhaps because of) being highly educated, stick to the “simple ideology” they were taught was true and refuse to allow for other possibilities. Thomas quotes one school authority who dismissed the idea that people can read without being taught as “plain crackers.” Unlike that dinosaur, unschoolers are at the
leading edge of the chaos theory of learning. But we’re still learning
how to implement it and recovering from our own experience of the neat-freak theory of education.
Just ask reader Junyee Wang, whose personal confessional tale about
overcoming the programming she received in school, which taught her she
isn’t a writer, rounds out the next issue of Life Learning.
Assaulting the Ivory Tower – January 13, 2007
This past week, I have been editing articles for the March/April issue of Life Learning magazine. One of the essays we’ll be publishing was written by Dr. Alan Thomas, a Visiting Fellow, Institute of Education, University of London and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society – another academic who has seen the light. He describes how he became interested in and learned to trust first homeschooling and then unschooling. After relating how his observations of unschoolers taught him how people can learn from life and presenting some research that supports the philosophy, he tells the story of a chief inspector of schools in the UK education bureaucracy. This supposedly well-educated man was quoted in a newspaper a few years ago as saying, “The idea that children could learn to read by osmosis is plain crackers.” How’s that for arrogance and closed-mindedness? Unfortunately, the man is not alone. Sadly, many academics heap scorn on the idea that people might want to learn for learning’s sake, can learn without being taught and, indeed, are quite capable of conducting even advanced intellectual searches successfully on their own, for the purpose of solving a problem, pursuing a passion or purely for the joy of learning. I often wonder how to integrate these principles
into public education – by preserving the right to unschool, obviously,
but also by changing the way the broader public education system works. A
starting place might be to gain the respect of the academic community for
informal, learner-controlled education. I wonder if the ivory tower would
survive the shock. I’m Not Working Hard – January 10, 2007 Now, I came of age in the late 60s, where not working hard was somewhat of a badge of honor as we rejected everything our parents’ generation stood for. But now I see it differently. My goodness, have I become my parents and suddenly embraced what is often called the “Protestant Work Ethic”? No, but you might call what I’m talking about a “Passionate Work Ethic.” If you have the misfortune to be a wage slave, doing a job you dislike, perhaps in an environment that exploits your need for an income, then working “hard” might be a problem. If you spend long hours at an unfulfilling job, counting the hours until you can live your real life on the weekends, then working “hard” will surely be a problem. But that’s not what my life is like, fortunately. My work is important and I love it (even though there are aspects of it – like bookkeeping, for instance – that I quite dislike.) You might say my work is my passion and often my play. I spend long hours at it and don’t feel I’m harmed. In fact, I’m very happy when I do my work. I’d probably do it even if it didn’t provide an income. OK, I did it when it wasn’t providing an income. Anyway, I see that same passion in children who are concentrating on learning something. Yes, they’re working hard, but what they’re doing is not “work” in the sense that people mean when they tell me not to work too hard. Ultimately, what those New Year well wishers want
for me is to have joy, balance and health in my life. And those are good
things…and they are among the benefits I get from my work, most of the
time.
Better Than Homework – January 7, 2007
Happy New Year – January 1, 2007 Four of us spent a magical foggy Easter weekend at a
cottage in “Second Paradise” on the south shore of Nova Scotia
(that’s the view I captured in the photo on the top left of this page). My mother slipped deeper into dementia but
ironically seemed to find
a level of contentment that has eluded her most of her life. Natural Life magazine turned 30 and evoked many good
memories as well as some wonderful letters from readers. Life Learning magazine
continued to grow and its
readers continued to say amazing things about how it enriches their lives. I have had the luxury of spending time making sense of my
life so far, thanks to Natalie Zur Nedden who is crafting my life history as
her PhD dissertation. Rolf
and I spent a lovely little Christmas with our youngest daughter
Melanie, who was visiting from Nova Scotia for a week to share her
unique brand of joyfulness. My
writing muse recently returned from wherever busyness and stress had
made it hide away for many months. (So yes, I have begun that
long-promised book about natural learning; it looks like it is
turning into a collection of memoirs, but I will let it take its
course.) A very Happy New Year to every one of my readers. I wish you a sustainable, healthy, happy
2007. Thank you for all your input and comments over the past year. I
will be building on some of them in postings later this month. Return
to current weblog copyright ©
Wendy Priesnitz 200 |
Topics & Passions: natural learning ~ What I'm Reading:
Moral Minds by Marc D. Hauser (HarperCollins, 2006) ~ What
I'm Listening To:
Bach Violin Concertos by Itzhak
Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman with the English Chamber Orchestra (EMI,
2001) ~
Fav
Bookmarks:
Positive News ~ Fav Quotes:
Art, Writing, Creativity
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