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Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural  parenting, green living, social justice and more by writer, author and Natural Life magazine editor Wendy Priesnitz.  Archives - May, 2009 Working With One’s Hands – May 24, 2009 There’s a new book that’s generating a buzz these days about the value of working with one’s hands – both financially and for the greater good of self and society. Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work has just been published by Penguin Press. Crawford has a doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Chicago, but after five months working for a Washington think tank, he quit and started doing motorcycle repair. His philosophy is described in this article from The New York Times that ran the other day. I’m fascinated (okay, jealous too) that this book is getting such widespread publicity. Working with one’s hands – as a motorcycle mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber, a gardener…is not something that our education system trains people to do. My husband and business partner Rolf is the director of apprenticeship and skilled trades at a local college when he’s not co-publishing our books and magazines and his insight and out-of-the-box thinking in this area is sought after across the country. He is constantly amazed at how many people – from students to school staff to parents – look down on skilled trades as an occupation. They put aside their elitism and begin to pay attention when he describes his personal journey, but there is a long way to go before working with one’s hands gets the respect of academic or professional life. And it’s about more than earning a living…although skilled trades can provide a good one. It’s about life– hands-on, active and authentic. Posted: 2009/05/24 8:05 PM Who Needs School (or School-at-Home)? – May 22, 2009 There’s a video interview with unschooled teen Holly Dodd and her mom Sandra in the Huffington Post today. The full piece by New Mexico-based filmmaker, writer, photographer and unschooling dad Lee Stranahan is on his blog. It’s worth checking out. Posted: 2009/05/22 8:29 PM Green Shame On Us – May 19, 2009 When politicians in Canada and the U.S. talk about reducing behaviors that lead to climate change, they often express an unwillingness to create policies that reduce their countries’ carbon output until developing countries do their fair share. Well, a report issued the other day indicates that they’d better revamp their rhetoric (a polite way to say “stop talking and start acting”). In their second annual survey to measure and monitor consumer behaviors that have an impact on the environment, the National Geographic Society and the international polling firm GlobeScan have, for the second year in a row, ranked American consumers as the least green of the 17 countries studied, followed closely by Canada. The greenest consumers of 2009 are in the developing economies of India, Brazil and China. Greendex 2009: Consumer Choice and the Environment — A Worldwide Tracking Survey measures consumer behavior in 65 areas relating to housing, transportation, food and consumer goods. Consumers in the top-scoring developing countries generally show smaller increases this year than those in developed countries, due in part to their adopting more consumptive behavior as they become more economically successful and aspire to higher material standards of living. However, in spite of fears their Greendex scores could drop with economic development, most of these countries have improved their scores over last year. You can read the whole report online. Posted: 2009/05/19 3:09 PM Recycling Frugality – May 16, 2009 My mother tried to teach me how to knit when I was a kid. She wasn’t successful. Her mother also tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to knit. I probably didn’t try very hard, because knitting seemed so, uh, uncool. Old ladyish. My mother tried to teach my daughters how to knit when they were kids. Again, not much ability or enthusiasm resulted, probably because they didn’t initiate the activity and didn’t see the point in it. I did learn how to sew during home economics classes at school under the strict tutelage of dour Mrs. Reid, but turned my nose up at that too because my mother made all my clothes as I was growing up, while I coveted the blue jeans and latest fashions worn by my friends. Fortunately, I saw the light by the time my daughters were born and, refusing to dress them in the pink, frilly dresses that were available in stores, made most of their baby clothes. Later, they sewed doll clothes and eventually developed the ability to fashion vintage finds into fabulous wardrobes. And then, a few Christmases ago, my 30-something daughter gave me a wonderful scarf that she’d knit and I found myself answering rug hooking and felting questions as she turned unraveled thrift store sweaters into household items. Like so many trends, activities and fashions that get recycled if you wait long enough, crafting became hip. Enter the new eco awareness…and recycling the old into the new and useful – known as “upcycling” – has put a coat of fresh pain on the trend. Then the recession got even more people began sewing, knitting and gluing as a way of saving money…and that became hip too. Even the official poet of President Obama’s inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander, invoked images of the old thrifty ways, describing “[Someone] stitching up a hem, darning / a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, / repairing the things in need of repair.” Apparently, craft supply stores, knitting cafés and craft courses are doing a booming business these days. And that brings me to Natural Life magazine, which will be launching a new column in the July/August issue called Crafting for a Greener World. I’m very excited about it, especially since it’s written by Robyn Coburn, a professional artist and environmentalist who is also an unschooling mom (and contributor to our Life Learning book). You can read all about it here. Posted: 2009/05/16 5:27 PM Rational Sunday School – May 14, 2009 I believe in the real world and in people. I believe in treating people well without expectation of punishment or reward after I’m dead. I believe in separating myth from reality. I believe in thinking for myself. Some people might say that makes me a Secular Humanist. However, I famously am not interested in being labeled in any way, and certainly not as anything ending in “ist.” I also disliked attending United Church Sunday School as a kid. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this article in The Humanist magazine by a homeschooling mom. Posted: 2009/05/14 6:40 PM Learning Without Raising Your Hand – May 14, 2009 Call it the democratization of learning. Via the phenomenon of OpenCourseWare, anyone with computer access can study university-level courses for free. I wrote about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare initiative back in 2003, when they began to upload their syllabi, course notes and lectures for public use. But, recently, the idea has exploded into a movement, which includes Apple and YouTube. Today’s Christian Science Monitor features an article that profiles how a variety of self-directed learners (unfortunately, all adults) are using these materials to learn for learning’s sake…without the reward of credentials. It also lists a variety of supposed drawbacks aside from certificates and degrees. What results is a revealing discussion of the difference between learning and schooling. One drawback, according to one learner, is the inability to raise your hand. Aha. Posted: 2009/05/14 12:14 PM The Importance of Questions – May 13, 2009 Perhaps the most common question I get asked about unschooling/homeschooling/life learning/self-directed education involves a parent’s ability to help his or her child learn, which involves doubts about being qualified to answer all the child’s questions. My response is that answers are easy to come by; it’s the questions that are important. The answers will come to the child who is curious and open – not to mention supported in finding the answers by a caring adult. Unfortunately, in school, that idea is stood on its head, with the adults asking the questions (to which they already know the answers) and the children expected to parrot back the “correct” answers. When children are born, they want to learn about their world by exploring their surroundings in ever widening circles. Learning is not something that we do to them, or that we can produce in them. An education is not something they “get”…it is something they create for themselves, on a life-long basis. The best learning – perhaps the only real learning – is that which results from our children’s personal interests and investigations, from following their own passions and asking their own questions. Our role as parents is to help them to pursue their own answers, not necessarily to provide the “correct” answers. Posted: 2009/05/13 3:44 PM Not an Education – May 12, 2009 Earlier this school year, Toronto’s York University, which has a history of union militancy and labor unrest, experienced a lengthy staff strike. As a result, the school year was extended by a month and students are now writing final exams. Unfortunately, the disruption continues, as some people are setting off fire alarms during the exams (apparently an age-old trick and not unique to this situation). The policy is that exams must be stopped and rescheduled/rewritten if that happens. This is an unfortunate situation because the extended school year has already cut into students’ summer work time. But media reports are concentrating on what appears to be students’ main concern, that they were all prepared for the exam and will now have to prepare all over again. That means, of course, that they had only memorized the material and not really learned it. So whatever they got (and was presumably interrupted by the strike), it was not an education. Posted: 2009/05/12 10:53 AM Overcoming Our Own Schooling – May 7, 2009 I’m feeling a little more understanding than I was on May 3 about people who can’t manage to reject the broken way we educate our children and young people. After all, most adults went to school, some for many years. School measures, sorts, files, drills and sucks the pleasure out of learning. As the pursuit of a product rather than a process, it turns learning into a commodity. Students are raw material waiting to be molded into products of someone else’s design. Because school is seen as a ticket to a job, most people are willing to forget/bury the boredom, humiliation and even pain they experienced as part of their own school experiences and subject their children to the same thing they went through. They see no other choice! School has, as John Taylor Gatto wrote, dumbed us down, lowered expectations, narrowed horizons and prevented us from thinking creatively about our children’s future, which for most parents, is one of the most important things in life. That is the unspoken tragedy that causes them to heap shame on those few of us who dare question the status quo. Those of us who are able, for whatever reasons, to heal our own school wounds (see Kirsten Olson’s new book Wounded by School) are leading the way to a new, kinder and more effective educational future.  Posted: 2009/05/07 8:25 PM The Way to a Real Future – May 3, 2009 Interesting piece in this morning’s paper entitled Why I Won't Send My Son to School. What I find sad and knee-jerkingly ignorant are the comments (it is still early in the day and I hope others will post more positive reactions) about how not using curriculum for a five-year-old and (horrors) taking him out at night with adult friends and letting him sleep in the next morning will make him unemployable. I guess these folks didn’t read the article in the same paper yesterday about young people with decades of curriculum under their belts who are unemployable. But we wouldn’t want to try something different, would we, so that our kids could break out of the cycle that their parents and school systems have created? Such refusal to embrace new perspectives is astounding; such adult arrogance is frightening. Posted: 2009/05/03 10:05 AM Return to current blog Comments? Suggestions? Email me copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2009

Topics & Passions life learning / unschooling simplicity environment natural parenting creativity / writing books ~ Monthly Archives April, 2009 March, 2009 Feb, 2009 Jan, 2009 Dec, 2008 Nov, 2008 Oct, 2008 Sept, 2008 Aug, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 Apr, 2008 Mar, 2008 Feb, 2008 Jan, 2008 Dec, 2007 Nov, 2007 Oct, 2007 Sept, 2007 Aug, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 April, 2007 Mar, 2007 Feb, 2007 Jan, 2007 Dec, 2006 Nov, 2006 Oct, 2006 Sept, 2006 Aug, 2006 July, 2006 June, 2006 May, 2006 April, 2006 Mar, 2006 Feb, 2006 Jan, 2006 Dec, 2005 Nov, 2005 Oct, 2005 Sept, 2005 Aug, 2005 July, 2005 June, 2005 May, 2005 April, 2005 Mar, 2005 Feb, 2005 Jan, 2005 Dec, 2004 Nov, 2004 Oct, 2004 Sept, 2004 Aug, 2004 July, 2004 June, 2004 May, 2004 April, 2004 ~ What I'm Reading Risk by Dan Gardner (McClelland & Stewart, 2008) The Maternal  is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change by Shari MacDonald Strong, ed (Seal Press, 2008) Wounded by School by Kirsten Olson (Teachers College Press, 2009) ~ What I'm Listening To Live in London by Leonard Cohen (Sony Music, 2009) Bare Bones by Madeleine Peyroux (Rounder Records, 2009) Messin' Around by Molly Johnson (Anthem, 2006) ~ Fav Bookmarks Daughter Blog The Mother/Daughter Project TED: Ideas Worth Spreading Organic Consumers Association Grist We Are What We Do Free Rice Mothers Movement Online Personalised Education Now Foundation for a Better Life ~ Fav Quotes Art, Writing, Creativity Life and Living Men and Women Learning Environment and Peace