Continuing on from my last post, I wanted to share another Unschooler’s thoughts that are along the same lines, but delve more into another reason people might have issues with Unschooling — they see it as laziness.
February 20, 2009
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Interesting post. Thanks for the link!
Comment by Idzie — February 21, 2009 @ 12:25 am
I have more thoughts on this myself…but just not enough time to explain, but I’ll take a stab at it.
The main thing is that most people have been conditioned to feel as though success can not come without ‘hard work’ and ‘hard work’ must mean doing things that you don’t want to do or that you don’t like to do. So far, Unschooling has shown me that this doesn’t *have to* be reality. While it’s true that sometimes we might need to do something that is less than desirable to reach a goal — I have two thoughts on this concept: 1) Why do something undesirable; doing undesirable things diminishes happiness (even if only temporary) and isn’t the point of Unschooling to be happy. 2) If the goal we’re trying to reach would require us to do something undesirable, then it might be a good time to reevaluate our goal.
I know that it might sound like I am advocating that no one be challenged or try their best to overcome a challenge, but I’m not. I’m throwing some thoughts out there about where the line is for people. Do you continue to work at a job that you hate in order to make ends meet or do you risk it all by doing work that brings you pleasure? It’s that sort of ‘undesirable’ and ‘challenge’ that I am talking about. I’m not talking about, “I hate tests, but I have to take a test to get a driver’s license…maybe I won’t get my driver’s license, then I can avoid taking a test”…although, I’d argue that this line of thought is acceptable in my world.
We wear clothes at my house, which leads to clothes getting dirty and needing to be washed. There are days when we really need clothes to be washed and I have no desire to do laundry. I have a choice to do the laundry so that we have clean clothes (suck it up), pay someone else to do it (provided finances allow it), ask my Dear Other Half to do it or to help me do it (commiserate), not do anything about it (I have that choice in reality), find some creative solution that allows me to put off doing the laundry one more day (yay, brain power!)…
or I can choose to see doing the laundry as a gift that I can give my family and I like giving gifts to people. Giving gifts brings me Joy and Happiness. In this light, I can choose to Joyfully do the laundry as a gift for my family. Now, I have turned something undesirable into something quite desirable AND something that helps me reach the goal of having clean clothing AND I gain more happiness, which leads to more success.
I really plan on making the connection between my tangent and unschooling NOT being lazy. When we own our lives and can make free choices, knowing that we don’t *have to* to something only frees us to allow ourselves to do it and usually to do it Joyfully. I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing nor do I have to subject my child to an an oppressive, micromanaged & sterile life that so many other parents are choosing to subject their children to. When you are making free choices and living Joyfully, from the miserable outside looking in, I can see how it might all appear so full of laziness.
I know that there is more in my head, but my grumbling tummy needs some breakfast. Hmmmm, breakfast after Noon
Comment by michele james-parham — February 21, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Yes! You should definitely write a whole post on that. Something I’ve been discussing with my sis a lot lately is how much I hate how “productivity” is valued over pretty much everything in our society… I agree with everything you have to say in this comment. I wish I could think of a more intelligent response right now, but my brain is tired! :-S
Comment by Idzie — February 24, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
One person’s “hard work” is another person’s “meaningful work.” Many people think that when people avoid meaningless or arbitrary hard work, that they would avoid all hard work, but that’s not true. Look at how hard kids work at WoW and other video games, while slacking off at school or life responsibility. For some reason, they have found a lot of meaning in the game and are willing to do laborious, repetitive, and even boring tasks to get to a goal. Someone who has no interest in the video game wouldn’t be willing to do that work, even if it got them an “A” in a class.
If you look at pretty much any successful person, on the outside, it looks like they’ve done a lot of “hard work”, but in reality, they probably don’t see it that way. They see it as meaningful and purposeful work. Sure, it was hard, but it was worth it.
Kids need to be able to see their own meaning of the hard work. And us telling it to them is not enough. Saying, “You’ll be glad I made you do this one day” or “It’ll get you into a good college” is not meaningful to them if they themselves don’t have their own internal drive to achieve those things.
Unschooling requires that we SEE what our kids motivation and drives are, and then help them see how they can achieve those goals. Any kid who has drive and ambition will work hard to get to where they want to go. And as soon as we try to force them to do some arbitrary “work” it’ll be like pulling teeth.
From the outside, that looks “lazy”, but from the inside it’s simply understanding how people work, and not using wasteful energy doing meaningless tasks. Successful people know how to use their life energy efficiently, because they are awake to the realities of life, and not taking the lazy approach of letting the rest of the world tell them what is the “right” way to be successful.
Oops, guess that got a little long. Sorry about that.
Comment by Tammy Takahashi — March 2, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Tammy~
Thanks for your comment and thoughts! I don’t mind long comments, actually I think they’re great. I completely understand what you are saying, but so many people don’t see it that way…especially those who aren’t living anything close to an unschooling life.
All they see are the ‘problems/issues’ that are right in front of them, but filtered through mainstream culture and this causes them to think their children would NEVER do anything, but [fill in the blank with their fears]…they don’t realize that they’d have to change how they view children and how they treat them, in order for their children to thrive in an unschooling life — you can’t just take your kids out of school and still treat them like second-class citizens and expect them to “succeed” and develop meaningful (meaningful to them) passions.
“…not taking the lazy approach of letting the rest of the world tell them what is the “right” way to be successful”
That is so true and one of my biggest complaints about the ‘rest of the world’.
Comment by michele james-parham — March 2, 2009 @ 10:31 pm