My first blog questions!

I am so excited to have gotten some questions from friends and family about my previous posts. I feel the love and support coming from everyone and truly appreciate it. Questions generally revolved around Lifeschooling and how it will look for our family. The later I can answer with an unequivocal, "who knows?" It's like asking what your life will look like in the coming years. You can plan, organize and prepare, but life does not consider your preparations. Troughtschooling will be whatever the dynamics of our family creatively produce. I can imagine what my vision of that will be, but that would be my vision, quite probably not the way all will play out, with the infinite possiblilites that my mind could never fathom.

The other questions being a bit more concrete in nature I can answer as best I can. I will do it in a Q & A format in multiple blogs~

q: What sort of curriculum does life-schooling use, and how do you endeavor to create a well-rounded experience?

a: Lifeschooling uses the most pervasive, creative, ubiquitous curriculum currently in existence...LIFE. It gets no better than real and true experiences. For example, say you wanted to learn Spanish as a second language. Which method would prove more effective, more interesting, more culturally relevant and more fullfilling: Sitting in a class for an hour or 2, 5 days a week, having it taught to you in a catagorized fashion? Perhaps your instructor even makes it a bit more interesting and uses the immersion technique, and you speak only the desired language during the duration of the class. OR Travelling to Argentinia, El Salvador or any other Spanish speaking country, spending time getting to know the locals, conversing with those you meet?

Joyce Fetteroll has a good explanation on her website (http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/academics/alltheyneedtoknow.html,)"...school gives us the impression that there's a huge body of knowledge that's unconnected to its use. Mainly because schools teach it that way: isolated and out of context. It seems the only way to learn math is to do a gazillion math problems. The only way to learn science seems is to memorize all the answers scientists have discovered. The only way to learn history is to start at the beginning and go through all the "important" events to present day.

But when we learn by living life, all those subjects are just tools that we pick up and use when we need them. And we learn how to make the tools work by using them.

There's no reason not to use (and learn as a side effect) math when there are games and things to figure out and stuff to spend allowance on. There's no reason not to use science when the world is full of wondrous things and a child is filled with curiosity. (It won't look like school science. It will look like -- and be -- real science: observing and asking questions and theorizing what could be the cause.) There's no reason not to use history when the past is full of stories of interesting people and places and events."

The idea that it is necessary to learn a set of (bureaucratic) predetermined criterion in order to be a healthy functioning contributor to society is not only false, but lends itself to this idea: If government can dictate to its people what their children should be learning and how, then we've given our most precious asset to an obscure, unreliable, often unethical entity , our children's creative minds.

For the second part of the above question: "how do I endeavor to create a well-rounded experience?" Well-Rounded is defined as "comprehensively developed and well-balanced in a range or variety of aspects. Also, "desirably varied (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/well-rounded.) Looking at the first part of the definition, I found the "comprehensively developed" portion to further drive in the above point of giving away the freedom of our children's minds. My question is, who is doing the comprehending and developing? What makes them more of an expert on life than you or I? How do they define success? What are their values? The obvious truth is that our minds cannot comprehend the universe in it's entirety nor the complex human organisim in it's relationship to itself, the world and beyond. That being said, who determines what constitutes a "well-balanced range or variety of subjects?" And don't such persons then have the power to skew history? Don't they have the power to dumb us down?

The second portion of the definition, "desirably varied," could interestingly enough be used to conceptually define Unschooling. Children are born curious, and remain so(until they are forced to sit and endure hours of boring disconnected information hammered into their minds, thereby chipping away at their natural inquisitiveness as the years go by.) The natural world is filled with an unending well of experiences ripe for the picking. Sage will create his own "desirably varied" curriculum of life. Ghee and I simply have to ensure, to the best of our ability, that (particularly) while he is young, we offer him a variety of experiences. Once he begins to determine what things he'd like to explore more in depth, we help him to gain access to any and all resources to support him in his journey.

Ok, off to bed, I'll address some other questions when I get a chunk of time! We've all been sick so our sleep cycles are thrown off a bit. Once everything finds its rhythm again, it is my intention to be more regular with my writing. Thanks so much for the questions and the interest. I am so blessed by all the support of my family and friends!

Oh,if you have any desire to go deeper on the subject, I'd be happy to provide a compilation of resources that have been helping me along the way. I've been blessed to have been steered towards great authors by seasoned unschoolers. My cousin Joss has been especially AMAZING with her book selections for me. In some uncanny way, she has been able to give me exactly what I need to fill in the blanks! Thanks Joss!

Ok, really, I am going to bed now...