The Rethinking Everything Conference is one I’ve had my eye on for several years, and came very close to attending as a regular ol’ attendee a couple of years ago when Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael and Beyond Civilization among other books) was speaking, but ultimately it was just outside my budget. So I was truly thrilled (and honored) to be invited to attend this year as a speaker! I’m greatly looking forward to being part of this conference, now in it’s 16th year, that has the aim of “Exploring our lives in brave new ways, supporting radically empowered birthing, gentle parenting, sustainability, unschooling and self-design, entrepreneuring, super enlightened wellness and sexuality, and lots more.” Click below to see the bios of all the speakers and the talks they’re doing:
You’ll probably notice some familiar names there, like Peter Kowalke of The Unschooling Experiment and unschooling author Dayna Martin, among many other really interesting looking people!
The talks/discussions I’ll be doing/moderating myself are as follows:
What Do Unschoolers Do?
It’s easy to read lots of philosophy and theory, the history and evolution of unschooling. But when you get right down to it, sometimes it’s hard to know what exactly unschooling looks like in actual peoples lives, hard to know what, exactly, unschoolers do? Join this panel discussion to find out about what unschooling looks like in different people’s families and lives.
The Art of Nonconformity
Sometimes not going to school is the only thing we’re doing that’s against the ideals of the dominant culture, but often, unschooling is just the start. When the food you eat, your political views (or lack thereof), your relationships, and the way you’re choosing to live your life all seem to set you apart from the majority of people, it can be both a difficult and rewarding experience navigating through the world. Come to share your experiences and support each other, as we discuss finding community, following our own paths, dealing with negativity from others, and other important things to think about when you’re living an unconventional life!
Misconceptions of Unschooling
Unschooling especially as it’s begun to be a bit better known thanks to recent media attention, is plagued by quite a few myths and misunderstandings about just what it is and how it “works.” In this workshop, we’ll dispel a bunch of common misconceptions, and discuss sharing what unschooling really is with others.
Unschooling is Forever
Now you’re a little bit older, and suddenly the questions are changing. Instead of “don’t you have school today?” it’s now “so what college are you going to?” We know that unschooling means we’re always learning, thus it can naturally continue long past what are conventional compulsory school years for many, though definitely with some new challenges. For those of us who have decided (for the time being, anyway) not to go to college or university, and instead to continue unschooling, it’s a unique time and experience in our lives, both very similar yet different from unschooling in the younger years. How does unschooling evolve as we grow older? How do the expectations and reactions from the culture around us change and impact our experiences? Come to this discussion to share your experiences and support with each other.
I hope some of you will be joining me at Rethinking Everything this year, as I’m sure it’ll be a fun, challenging, and just all around enjoyable gathering of like-minded people!
Idzie is Speaking at the Rethinking Everything Conference 2012 @ I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write. »
As regards knowledge, we need to avoid approaches that imply that everyone needs to know the same bank of information and that learners of the same age need to know identical things. Subjects—the staple diet of schools—are only a minor part of the toolkit of knowledge and are declining in importance and, in any case, learning the toolkit does not constitute an education. We do, however, need another kind of knowledge to be effective in the modern world—to know how to find out, to learn, relearn and unlearn, and how to manage our own learning. In other words we need to become competent, capable and confident researchers.
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Learning is not something that is done to us, or that we can produce in others. An education is not something we ‘get’…it is something we create for ourselves, on a life-long basis. The best learning—perhaps the only real learning—is that which results from personal interest and investigation, from following our own passion.
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| — | Wendy Priesnitz in the essay Taking Risks & Breaking Rules from Life Learning: Lessons from the Educational Frontier |
Knowledge is an interconnected web of information and insight and doesn’t easily submit to subject divisions and grade levels. In my experience, optimum learning occurs when the learner can ignore such arbitrary constraints and venture where her pursuit takes her. Keeping the world whole and not dicing it up into ‘manageable’ pieces extends to boundaries between work and fun, between learning and other activities.
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As an unschooled child, I discovered that learning is a part of everyday life. Through every moment of experience, something happens to us, adds to our being and incorporates itself into us. We are constantly learning.
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I’m delighted to present a guest post by my friend and all ‘round awesome person Kelly Hogaboom! We’ve all experienced similar questioning and reactions from people as school-free learners, and I greatly enjoyed hearing Kelly’s take on the experience of “being held hostage by small metal implements.” I hope you’ll enjoy it too!
Getting talked at, while pinned down.
Today, the dental hygienist: “Do you have the day off of school?”My nine year old daughter Phoenix: “No. I don’t do school.”Hygienist: “Oh… do you homeschool?”Phoenix: “Yes.”Hygienist: “So it’s just like school, but at home!”Phoenix: “Not really. It’s quite different.”If you delve into almost any alternative education blog (homeschooling, unschooling, life learning, or any other related variation) you’ll soon find author(s) discussing the seemingly endless querying we practitioners receive. Strangers, family, and friends regularly ask us not only to explain why and how we do things differently, but to in fact justify our life choices in a way seldom required of compulsory education adherents. More surprising still, although I admit I should no longer be surprised, many of these questioners will listen very little before proceeding to tell us how education really works, regardless of our perhaps relevant experience. Confirmation bias runs rampant and deep: often in these outsider assessments of our family life, children who give the appearance of excelling (by their manners, displayed intelligence, or skill acumen) are often labeled as “exceptions” (or “smart” or “bright”, etc); while children who display any different-ness or perceived social faux pas are taken as proof that such alternative methods Don’t Work (and of course, you rarely hear the compulsory schooling model being blamed for the sum and summation in the reciprocal case of a schooled child with “behavior problems”, etc).This is familiar ground for any family who has, with confidence, been navigating the alternative education or life learning waters.
Human beings are learning creatures. Babies come out of the womb curious and ready to learn. They immediately begin to explore and learn about their world, without our persuasion. Later, they learn how to walk and talk without being artificially motivated. They don’t take a course. They don’t ‘goof off’ while learning these skills because they’re bored or the ‘work’ is too hard. They are not marked, tested, graded or nagged to practice. They just do it. They are motivated by wanting to do these things well, like bigger people.
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Learning is like breathing. It is a natural, human activity: it is part of being alive. A person who is active, curious, who explores the world using all his or her senses, who meets life with energy and enthusiasm—as all babies do—is learning. Our ability to learn, like our ability to breathe, does not need to be improved or tampered with. It is utter nonsense, not to mention deeply insulting, to say that people need to be taught how to learn or how to think. We are horn knowing how to do these things. All that is needed is an interesting, accessible, intelligible world, and a chance to play a meaningful part in it.
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| — | Matt Hern, in an amazing excerpt from his book Deschooling Our Lives, later significantly revised and updated then published as Everywhere, All the Time. |
Newest post on the blog.
Wanting others to like what you like is perfectly normal. But where many people go wrong is in how they attempt to approach it. With friends, you mostly have to be respectful about it, and introduce things in a “I think this is so cool and thought you might too, want to watch it/read it/try it with me?” But when it comes to children, so often their very thoughts are considered to be under parental control (because really, what is attempting to teach something against someones will if not attempting to control their thoughts?), parents decide what their children should be interested in, and decide to make it happen.
