Beverly Mickens, comedienne, said: Conservatives say teaching sex education in the public schools will promote promiscuity. With our education system? If we promote promiscuity the same way we promote math or science, they’ve got nothing to worry about.

It seems to me something very basic is wrong about testing students. The meaning of testing is to try something to see if it’s good, interesting, worthy, or true. Is that what schools do with students?

I think the best purpose of testing is for learning. A person tests what is being learned about and judges what is interesting to them about it and then tests it still further to see what else there is that’s interesting about it. Therefore any test in the hands of the person learning benefits them, even if the thing turns out *not* to be interesting.

In my opinion, to the degree that the test is the property and instrument of the learner, it can facilitate learning. Tests don’t belong in the hands of teachers.

Here are some ways that testing is what learning itself is all about. To go by the list below, testing is simply put “experiencing” anything at all in the world to find out what’s valuable about it.

Test: to try, tempt, feel, sample, choose, approve, prove
Chois: French for to choose, to taste, test
Approve: to attest something with authority; to try, test something (to find if it is good)
Prove: to test, prove worthy
true: O.E. triewe (W.Saxon), treowe (Mercian) “faithful, trustworthy,” from P.Gmc. *trewwjaz “having or characterized by good faith” (cf. O.Fris. triuwi, Du. getrouw, O.H.G. gatriuwu, Ger. treu, O.N. tryggr, Goth. triggws “faithful, trusty”), perhaps ultimately from PIE *dru- “tree,” on the notion of “steadfast as an oak.” Cf., from same root, Lith. drutas “firm,” Welsh drud, O.Ir. dron “strong,” Welsh derw “true,” O.Ir. derb “sure.” Sense of “consistent with fact” first recorded c.1205; that of “real, genuine, not counterfeit” is from 1398; that of “agreeing with a certain standard” (as true north) is from c.1550. Of artifacts, “accurately fitted or shaped” it is recorded from 1474; the verb in this sense is from 1841. Truism “self-evident truth” is from 1708, first attested in writings of Swift. True-love (adj.) is recorded from 1495; true-born first attested 1591. True-false as a type of test question is recorded from 1923.

And I quote:

“Children are not just awesomely cool. They are YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. They didn’t ask to be here, you dragged them into this world. They naturally know what they like/don’t like, when they are hungry/not, what they want/don’t want and what their bodies need. ‘Eat it or fix something … is shirking your responsibility once YOUR needs are met . We prepare and share meals with each other out of love for our families, not to meet some minimum traditional standard of care set by society, (“I made dinner its not my fault she wont eat it”) It is your fault – If you cant want to prepare food they want, in order to meet their needs because you love them, then at least do it because its your responsibility to feed them what they need, not what is convenient to feed them. The alternative shows them that their best interests are not yours and negatively impacts their attitude towards and relationship with you and food forever.“

So here it is. I have a li’l meme to play with, if anyone’s interested. Feel free to pass it around if it strikes you as fun. I’m not going to tag anyone because tagging’s not my thing. It might not see much net-time, but that’s ok.

Art can be related to anything. Put a word after the phrase and see what you come up with. Email me or something to let me know where you put it and I’ll link it to the end of this post. I like it even without any other word after it, just — ART IS.

ART IS ________________ .

Edit: When I moved my blog over to WordPress, some of my comments went missing. They were here and then they were lost. Sorry about that. 😦

Karl and I had an interesting conversation in the car today (first time we’ve been in the car for a while what with the homebody streak he’s been on lately).

He mentioned that it’s very easy to speak English. And I said well it is if you were born into the English-speaking world… there are many parts of the world that kids are born into which are Spanish-speaking such as Mexico. He knows about Mexico from watching Dora and Diego stuff off Nick Jr. He said I wish I had been born in Mexico then I could speak Spanish *and* English. I love how he thinks… he wants the best of both worlds. So I said I’ve been to Mexico and that I bet he would love it, and then said I would show it to him on the map. Now’s not the time at almost 8 pm and Karl is snuggled up in bed with a cold watching Winnie the Pooh. I can go one better than that actually if he’s interested and show him pictures of my trip taken while I was in Mexico. Wish I had a scanner that works. Karl knows a few words in Spanish and our favorite that is pretty good for laughs is “el gato.”

… it’s supposed to be about the kids. I would like to be less in the way.

I feel at least two ways about that. One is my kid(s… I have one but hope to have more) deserve/s the kind of childhood that is unclouded by any bad I perceive from mine. Another is in order to be successful, parents would want to understand how their childhood shaped certain aspects of their parenting style, and how to reformulate what doesn’t work well in unschooling (or parenting either for that matter).

Thanks to Pam Sorooshian, I have a way to separate the junk in my psyche from overwhelming my child’s home life: reframe the way our children see us by treating children (and in my house it’s important to include me and Brian who aren’t children anymore in this designation too) as guests.

Would you expect a guest to be:

Seen and not heard?
Disciplined?
In need of modeling to? Behave So Your Children [aka Guests] Will Too (not a bad idea but a funny perception on guests, eh)?
Required to have permission slips?
Arbitrarily or automatically taken “sides” against in favor of the host/parent?
Expected to help out and do chores?
Told to listen?
Ignored?

I mention modeling because though it is important in realizing what our behavior actually says to our children, it can be a strange way to interact with them if they end up feeling that our relationship and their lives are about mimicking adults. I want Karl to know that he has choices, and even at 5 he amazes me with the simplicity and directness of his decisions. I think that has to do with the above… he *doesn’t* have the kind of baggage cluttering up his ability to make decisions simply.

Thank you, Pam, for the “children as our guests” idea.

Unschooling as a philosophy springs from the writings of John Holt. The short version is raising a child with none of the trappings of school, even at home, a totally unfamiliar idea for me until the last few years. Basically unschooling is an explanation of how learning occurs naturally and thrives best outside schools and other teaching environments.

Unschooling may sound the same as “no learning” but that would be like saying “no thinking.” “No’s” or “un’s” don’t reveal unschooling, an idea which leads … as Suzanne Carter says… to “unchaining or unbinding” and many of those other freeing notions.

I said it’s a philosophy but that’s not it’s true nature. When you add people, it’s just living life.

Among unschoolers it’s commonly said that learning is a by-product of living. As long as we live, we have the opportunity to learn. It is a by-product of living. Life reproduces itself in a myriad of ways. Doing produces knowledge. And even not doing produces knowledge. In choosing one thing over another, you get something like this: not going to school can put an emphasis on the world outside school. The very best thing about it is that no one needs to stay aware of education or learning. Just be intent on going where interest leads and the fun will follow.

In a family, unschooling can have a way of permeating all of life, and lead to freedoms not typically available. The thought is the child and the family will grow through experience, so that in essence we have a homegrown child foraging off the garden that life is. That doesn’t mean putting a child in isolated environments. It’s not the polar opposite of more structured styles of parenting. And optimally unschooling is intensely interactive.

I began unschooling simply by joining unschooling groups. Thanks to the ideas in Frank Smith’s Learning and Forgetting, I realized that I could just get on the same path and go. I learned a lot online for free on this site and this site. It’s seems I needed a continual flow of information. 😉 I listened and read.

What’s the value of living like this? For a child, unschooling can mean not being bound to predefined concepts, being free to question, accept, move on or return to ideas later. It can mean fitting or charting thoughts about the world onto an internal puzzle or map (thanks Sandra Dodd for that word picture). And gradually making a unique passage, straight or meandering, rather than commit to a predetermined route before even knowing where s/he wants to go. Having the space to think for oneself from birth onward, to just play with ideas and things. Uncoerced, amply supported and interacted with. Allowed a wide array of choices as soon as interested.

Which brings us to the point of unschooling …

Happiness.

That’s as good a reason as any to go on an unschooling venture.

“You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – TOLKIEN