Society Crushes Budding Scientists

The video is only 1:39 minutes but it's worth a quick watch.  Science doesn't have to be a rote memorization experience - and it shouldn't be!

Dr. Michio Kaku reminds us that we have to PROTECT our children's creativity and curiosity and wonder about the science that is around us all the time!

For Some People, It's Just Natural

I pondered my options for the June Unschooling Blog Carnival submission. I could share a tribute to my dad, something I wrote last Fall called Holding Onto the Side of the Pool.

Or I could share the photo montage that the kids did for Ron last Father's Day. It was really sweet and if you want to take a little visual walk down memory lane with us, I'd love to snag this opportunity to share it again! So here you go:

But I didn't really feel like that was what I wanted to share. Sure, Ron's a good parent - he's involved, he listens to them (sometimes), he has helped, driven, chaperoned. Heck, once he even agreed to be in one of Katie's plays since he was waiting for her during every rehearsal - probably sleeping in the back row of the theatre. But they needed a Mr. Slugworth in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, so he took a deep breath and stepped up onto the stage.

Double Piggy Back Rides

Instead, what I really think is remarkable about him is that he is The Quintessential Unschooler. He just loves to learn. It's what he does. And when he decides to learn something, it's full immersion.  Sometimes the kids' interests or opportunities sparked his interest, or his sometimes sparked something in them.

Ron & Michael

When I was busy reading about unschooling and how to raise children, Ron was simply... living. Playing with the kids. Exploring whatever was around.  I followed him around the house, reading snippets from various books. I even bought him Gatto's Dumbing Us Down and Guterson's Family Matters. He read a little and said, "Yeah, well we all know this about schools. Um, we were there." Then he put down the book. He felt no need to have any battle cry go up about the injustices of institutionalized learning. A simple, "Bring'em home," was what I got after a long list of why I thought it would be a good idea to try homeschooling after Michael finished 1st grade.

I continued to connect on the internet, reading and learning about this new world we were stepping into. But all the while, he was simply connecting with our kids on topics that interested them. It was just the natural thing to do. And once they were home so much more, he had a lot more opportunities. More reading, more game playing - more adventures out in the community and out in the world!

Ron & Katie hiking in North Carolina

Never too young to hike Enchanted Rock!

Typical evening...or anytime

Ron's not the kind of dad who just sits around with the remote control and waits for someone to bring him a beer.  His TV watching is deliberate - the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Sons of Anarchy, and his John Wayne & Clint Eastwood video collection. But even with those, he's Skyping with Michael in Nicaragua to talk about Martin Brodeur's latest goal save, or he's playing the Movie Line Game with Katie or Alyssa as they pass through the room. I'm sure you know it... you pick a line from a movie and say it, then the other person has to guess which movie it was. For a while, we had quite an extensive movie watching period, so they could come from anywhere: Monty Python, Three Amigos, Beetlejuice, The Blues Brothers, Jeremiah Johnson.... just to name a few. It used to drive my mother crazy when she'd come to visit. They could spend an entire dinner playing that game! She wanted them to have "meaningful" conversations. I just smiled because I knew the connection that was happening between them was the real goal.

Backyard Hockey with Katie & Michae

When we lived in Alaska, where our homeschooling started, Ron took up hockey. He always enjoyed watching the sport, but he was born and raised in Mesquite, Texas. Not a lot of hockey there. So even though he was 20 years older than most of the guys playing, at 44, he signed up for a little boot camp, and figured it out. He started going to pick-up games, the kids tagging along to watch. Next thing you know, they're all signing up for hockey teams, we're trekking across the state to tournaments,  and even building an ice rink in our back yard!

Dry Ice Experiments turned into Mad Science!

Next stop would be California. Sadly, the ice rinks weren't nearly that important to Californians, so it was time to shift gears. Alyssa and Michael were really interested in horses, so Ron took them to find a stable that offered lessons. He picked the brains of the ranchers and horse owners every chance he got.  The kids were always with him out there, so they watched and listened and learned. He helped Alyssa figure out how to drag feed through the stalls to give to each horse. He bartered for horse leasing, and agreed to help build a giant riding arena. So he and Michael climbed ladders, measured and sawed for weeks until it was finished.  All three learned so much there. 

Michael learning to ride Gilly

Once when they were out riding horses together, they found a little injured barn owl.  He showed 

them how to wrap it up in a towel and get it to the local raptor center. A few weeks later he was taking them out to see it be released back into the wild.

Learning to sail with Katie & Alyssa - Folsom Lake

Ron was always interested in sailing, so while we were still in California, he bought a little Venture 22 sailboat. He and Michael worked and worked on it. All three kids learned to sail at Folsom Lake.  So when the homeschool group in Davis needed chaperones for a sailing charter through the San Francisco Bay, he was the natural choice to step in. Ron, Michael and Katie all sailed on the Gas
 Light, a 50 foot Schooner - what a trip!

Helping Alyssa pet a Bat Ray (Monterey Bay Aquarium)

His interest in history took them to Angel Island for a group overnight trip. His love of science led to a Halloween party full of dry ice experiments.  His fondness for the outdoors took them on mountain hikes, snow cave adventures, camping trips, and beach excursions.

I could list one adventure after another that Ron experienced with each of the kids. But that might take a little longer than a typical blog post. Suffice it to say that Ron did not stand on the sidelines. He was a hands-on, involved dad. Not because someone told him it's good to do that, but simply because it was the natural thing for him to do. The kids were curious - about everything - and so was he. So when opportunities presented themselves, he was right there with them - guiding, listening, and stepping up to "give it a try."

Learning is simply a part of life for him.
For Ron, unschooling the kids was just a natural extension of that.

Just a cute picture of Ron & Michael (1991 Welcome Home)

Natural Curiosity

I love the internet. I was sitting there thinking about creativity and learning and suddenly something pops up and points me in a little different direction.This picture floated around Facebook. It shows a subway in Washington D.C. Everyone is rushing by as a someone is playing a violin over near the wall. The point of the message is that people should stop to watch beauty.


Here's the story:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Evidently this isn't the first time this has happened. One commenter says that Paul McCartney did this same thing in London, and no one stopped.  And, yes, paying attention to beauty around us IS an important thing we need to do. But what  I noticed about the story is that the children DID notice beauty.  They didn't look past him. They craned their neck to see what was going on, only moved along by their adult.

That natural curiosity is inside all of us. But after years of schools ringing bells, ending class times just when it was getting interesting, or even just making the presumption that each class time should be allocated X amount of time - no more, no less, we have essentially buried our natural curiosity. I used to think it was squashed out of us. But now I think of it more as heaps and heaps of deadlines, priorities (usually someone else's!), forced competition, and urgency. Those are what come from years and years of classroom exposure.

When we lived in Alaska, we used to go to a science museum called the Imaginarium. Clearly they believed in the benefit of hands-on learning, as each exhibit was about exploration and discovery. We would go every month with other families in our support group. My son would often gravitate to the fossil area. It was a giant sand pit with trucks and back hoes you could use to find the bones and stones that were buried below. Lots of times, the kids would spend their time building forts out of the sand piles, or setting up Indiana Jones inspired settings.

I remember the first time I took my kids to the Imaginarium. We were part of an organized class for the first hour, then we could spend the whole day there afterward if we wanted to. Often that's exactly what we did.  The kids had ended up in the sand pit/fossil area, and I was sitting with another mom.  Just as we were relaxing, in stormed a crowd of kids from school.  They were close in age to our kids, and there were a lot of them. I turned to the other mom who told me, "Just wait, they won't be here long." There was room in the sand for them to join ours, but they didn't. They just watched what our kids were doing. I didn't notice any commenting, nor did I notice that they really wanted to get into the sand. They talked among themselves for a few minutes, and then their teacher handed them a slip of paper - something for them to check off which exhibits they saw - and then she moved them to the next area.

I could see them from where I sat, and they didn't try to engage in anything that would take any time. They picked up a giant balloon wand, once or twice. They gently touched some noise maker. But they didn't stick with anything in particular. And then it was time for them to move to the next area and ultimately off to lunch.

I was struck by the thought that they weren't really engaging anywhere; they weren't encouraged to. And after years of bells ringing and teachers determining the amount of time they should focus, they simply kept it all at a very superficial level. They were rushed through with no time for exploring. Because exploring - really exploring - DOES take time. And all those kids in school missed that opportunity. They were basically being conditioned to set aside their natural curiosity. Over time, they'd forget about picking it up again.

Still, videos like this remind me that it's still in all of us. Some of us held tighter to our natural curiosity. So when the shackles of school were removed, they could easily reach through to rekindle that curiosity that was waiting for them. The rest of us take a little longer to reacquaint ourselves with that which is in us.

And then some of us, our children that were given time to discover and play, won't have to go looking for their natural curiosity.  It's been a big part of their lives all along.