I found this little tidbit today when reading some email lists.

This isn’t an answer to the twenty hour question but the question
reminded me of a bit from “Learning all the Time” by John Holt.

“At the Ny Lille Skole (New Little School), near Copenhagen, which I
described in “Instead of Education,” there is no formal reading
program at all – no classes, no reading groups, no instruction, no
testing, nothing. Children (like adults) read if , and when, and
what, and with whom, and as much as they want to. But all the
children know – it is not announced, just on of those things you find
out by being in the school – that anytime they want, they can go to
Rasmus Hansen, a tall, deep voiced, slow speaking teacher (for many
years the head teacher of the school), and say, “Will you read with
me?” and he will say, “Yes.” The child picks something to read, goes
with Rasmus to a little nook, not a locked room but a cozy and
private place, sits down right beside him and begins to read aloud.
Rasmus does almost nothing. From time to time he says softly, “Ja,
Ja,” implying “That’s right, keep going.” Unless he suspects the
child may be getting into a panic, he almost never points out or
corrects a mistake. If asked for a word, he simply says what it is.
After a while, usually about twenty minutes or so, the child stops,
closes the book, gets up, and goes off to do something else. One
could hardly call this teaching. Yet, as it happens, Rasmus was
trained as a reading teacher. He told me that it had taken him many
years to stop doing – one at a time – all the many things he had been
trained to do, and finally to learn that this tiny amount of moral
support and help was all that children needed of him, and that
anything more was of no help at all.

I asked Rasmus how much of this “help” children seemed to need before
they felt ready to explore reading on their own. He said that from
his records of theses reading sessions he had found that the longest
amount of time any of the children spent reading with him was about
thirty hours, usually in sessions of twenty minutes to a half hour,
spread out over a few months. But, he added, many children spent
much less time than that with him, and many others never read with
him at all. I should add that almost all of the children went from
the Ny Lille Skole to the gymnasium, a high school far more difficult
and demanding than all but a few secondary schools in the U.S.
However and whenever the children many have learned it, they were all
good readers.

Thirty hours. I had met that figure before. Years earlier, I had
served for a few weeks as a consultant to a reading program for adult
illiterates in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the students were from
thirty to fifty years old: most were poor; about half were black,
half white; most had moved to Cleveland either from Appalachia or the
deep South. There were three sessions, each lasting three weeks. In
each session, students went to classes for two hours a night five
nights a week: that is thirty hours. To teach the teachers used
Caleb Gattegno’s “Words in Color,” a very ingenious (I now think, too
ingenious) method. Used well, it can be very effective. But it
makes great demands on the teachers. That is, it can be used very
badly. Few of the volunteer teachers in the program had previously
used “Words in Color”; they themselves had been trained in an
intensive course just before they began to teach the illiterates. I
observed a good many of the teachers in one of the three sessions.
Most of them used the method fairly well, one or two very well, a few
very badly. The students and classes themselves varied; some classes
were much more supportive, some students much more bold and vigorous
than others. I don’t know what, if any, follow-up studies of the
program were ever made, or what the students did with their newfound
skill. My strong impression at the end of my three weeks was that
most of the students in the classes I had observed had learned enough
about reading in their thirty hours so that they could go on
exploring and reading, and could become as skillful as they wanted to
be on their own.”

And this other bit:

“Some years later I first heard of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator
and reformer, who, until the army ran him out of the country, had
been teaching reading and writing to illiterate adult peasants in the
very poorest villages. One might say that his method was a kind of
politically radical, grown-up version of the method Sylvia Ashton-
Warner described in her books “Spinster and Teacher.” That is, he
began by talking with these peasants about the conditions and
problems of their lives (this was what the army didn’t like), and
then showed them how to write and read the words that came up most in
their talk. He too found that it took only about thirty hours of
teaching before these wretchedly poor and previously demoralized
peasants were able to go on exploring reading on there own. Thirty
hours. One school week. That is the true size of the task.”

Holt doesn’t say that after thirty hours everyone knew how to read,
he says they had enough information to explore reading on their own.

This is the question that’s been posed for the 10th edition of Unschooling Voices. It’s an optional question, but one that I’ve been thinking about so I thought I’d answer it! We fell right into unschooling after pulling the kids out of school, so we didn’t go through some of the other steps that other parents might have dealt with who maybe came from a school-at-home or maybe with more public school time served. It always felt right, so we never suffered from second-guessing ourselves. We never had the urge to push workbooks etc, in fact, we probably went too far second-guessing ourselves in the opposite way…”OMG they WANT workbooks???” so maybe one piece of advice would be to follow their lead. We DID however, get defensive about our choice. Instead of sharing our choice, we felt we had to defend it to people. Not that we thought we were making the wrong choice, it was never that, but that we felt on edge; that people wouldn’t want to understand, and this made the first little bit uncomfortable. So my advice would be to let it go. Don’t explain, don’t defend, just move forward. If people were genuinely interested, then explain.

Another piece of advice would be to maybe stop worrying. Yeah, I know everyone’s going to say that one, but from time to time, we both worried. About one little one in particular, but as he’s gotten older, the worry is lessening.

Maybe I’d tell myself that I couldn’t imagine how much fun it would be to be exploring and learning and doing and being side by side these amazing kids. I liked the whole SAHM gig before they came home, but it’s almost more fun now.

I’d tell myself that one computer isn’t enough for 6 people, and a second one would be the first thing to buy, along with that second TV. And that I should be prepared to answer a million and one questions a day, and that some of them would shock and amaze and stump me. And that I would be utterly speechless about what the kids learned and from where they learned it.

Really though, I’d not have too much advice or would want to do much differently from when they first started unschooling, until now. Maybe in 10 years I’d have a different answer…maybe not though.

Come read all the amazing posts from other unschooling bloggers! If you want to know more about this crazy life called “unschooling” or want some great posts to read about other families living this life, or just have a little time and want to read something, or just because come read!!!

UNSCHOOLING VOICES #9

And a shout out to Joanne who did an amazing job getting so many entries posted and up!!! THANKS for all your hard work!!!

unschooling voices

***how long has unschooling been around?***
***Since humans have roamed the planet and before. Even Neanderthals
learned!***
Yes, learning is so easy, even cave men did it. <g>

• Shell beads found in Algeria and Israel have been dated to 100,000 years ago, well before there were jewelry makings schools. <g>
• The stunning Chauvet drawings were created between 29,700 and 32,400 years ago long before there were art schools. <g>
• Signs carved in tortoise shell, found in China were written down in the Stone age or Neolithic age, predating the previous earliest writings by two thousand years, well before there were writing schools.<g>

HEY! This is fun!

• Archeologists have found pottery dating back 13,000 years, many, many years before there were pottery schools.
• The first known sewing needle, found in France, is about 25,000 years old, some considerable time before there were sewing schools.
• There is some evidence that people had discovered a way to weave cloth and baskets as early as 27,000 years ago, before there were weaving studios or, well, looms. <g>

There seems to be no shortage of evidence that humans learn.

Deb Lewis

Lately there’s been a lot of discussion among parents with kids Sophia’s age about this coming fall and school. Not just in real life with Sophia’s preschool mates but online too. I remember this happening as well when Max was this age because I noticed it more because of involvements in online and IRL groups of parents who had similar aged children. I’m a member of several online communities…ok, “several” isn’t the right word. A lot? Some I’ve been a part of for over 7 years, one I’ve been a part of for almost 5 and the rest for 4 years. The ones I’ve been a part of for four years or so are all unschooling groups of one caliber or another so that sort of conversation doesn’t come up.

We’re one of 4 (I think I got everyone counted in there) homeschooling families in one of the groups I’m a member of (out of forty or so families) and one of 3 or 4 from the other group (out of about 75). It gets pretty lonely since I can relate to the schooly conversations since Azura and Brandon briefly went to school, and heck, I have a kid in preschool, but I don’t see it that way anymore. It really kills me to just stay out of conversations about school because I always want to show the other side/other options, but all the talk of school sometimes feels really lonely especially when it’s hard for people to understand what we do LOL.

The thing is, though it’s very lonely at times, and in our day to day lives there are very very very few homeschoolers in town and I’ve yet to meet an unschooler let alone a radical unschooler so it’s really hard to find people that can relate at all, I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. Even though it’s a radical idea that I feel compelled at times to explain and we’re constantly asked about it (you know, you don’t ask public school families the same sorts of questions you ask homeschooling families), it’s worth it. It’s not like we’re isolated from everything, so it’s not lonely that way, it’s lonely in a “like minded parenting” way I suppose.

We’re happy in our choice, the kids are flourishing and happy and busy and loving every minute of their lives, so I’m thoroughly thrilled with that, but I think it’s more of not having the same community feeling as a parent than the usual mainstream, traditional parent does or can have. It takes more work The kids don’t have the same problem. Kids are blind to a lot of that. At least the friends of our kids don’t seem to. It never comes up. Then again, you’re not going to hear many kids going on about how awesome school is to our unschooled kids So they’re not affected by it, which is great, but it’s a lot of work parenting this way.

I suppose if we were just unschooling academics or if we were even using a school at home method it would be a little easier to understand and I wouldn’t feel so out of the loop. And really, I’m quite happy being the weird freak, since I’ve been one my whole life….LOL It’s like what I touched on in the post I made about religion and unschooling; in fact, I think maybe it’s the same thing. It’s hard at times being the minority of the minority of the minority (secular unschoolers). I don’t really want to fit in…LOL…I just don’t want to stick out so much at times, but hey, the things you do for your kids, right??

So when conversations like this crop up, it’s just a matter of either not responding, or just mentioning what we do Or don’t do as the case may be………it works for us, so we do it and it’s what our kids need. It just means I spend more time reading my unschooling lists to offset that lonely feeling.