Grown Unschooler Kate Fridkis: Embracing the Weird

Kate Fridkis lives in Manhattan. She works as a lay clergy member at a synagogue in central New Jersey, teaches in the city, writes a blog called Eat the damn cake, and writes for the Huffington Post. http://www.eatthedamncake.com/

Her newest blog is called Un-schooled (Superman isn't worth the wait) http://un-schooled.net/

You can hear the complete interview here:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/48260

You were unschooled up until you started college. How was that transition like- from being in a situation where you could pick and chose what you wanted to do, to one where you are still choosing what you want but you have to go by the rules?

I’m not going to lie- it was very difficult for me. I think that had to do with the particular school that I went to; I went to a really big state school, and later I went to a smaller grad school. That was a really different experience –I thought, “Oh man! I should have done this one first!”

A lot of the things that were tricky for me were the obvious. Like, I thought it was so ridiculous to be sitting in a classroom. I’d never really spent time sitting in a classroom before. I looked around and everybody was facing forward and a lot of people were falling asleep. The professor was at the front, at the board trying desperately to keep everybody’s attention. It seemed like such a silly format to me. It was stuff like that that kind of threw me a little bit for a loop.

It was a little bit rough but I adjusted and I did enjoy being able to meet a lot of professors; and be exposed to a lot of subjects that I had no previous exposure to.

That exposure- that always comes up as a critique of unschooling-;You are not going to get a balanced or overall exposure to subjects out there!" Comments?

First of all, I have a problem with the idea of balance. I’ve never liked the notion that ‘well rounded education’ is the ideal education- because I think that when people pursue that model of educational success they end up with a lot of people who maybe know a little about a lot of subjects but who aren’t experts at anything and who also haven’t learned how to pursue their interests.

So the idea of balance- maybe in its ideal form is awesome- when it’s applied broadly kind of prevents people in a lot of cases from learning what they love to do. Because when you learn to love learning and do things that interest you-whatever it is that interests you ends up connecting you to a whole huge network of other stuff-other subjects-- in really surprising ways.So maybe you end up being more balanced then people expect in exciting ways, but it's never through pursuing well roundedness.

To my eye, that is not really an issue-all those people who went through school don’t seem to more ‘balanced’ or know a whole lot more than those who didn’t-be anymore well balanced but the argument goes- "You won’t know Canadian history-a great gap- how are you going to fit in culturally?".

The truth is that you learn something new in absolutely every environment. It’s not like there is an environment that you can go to and that is where you get access to all the important information. You learn everywhere! The idea that I love and always find true about unschooling is that you are always learning.

Because you are living.

Because you are living! Of course when I went to college I learned from interesting people who I wouldn’t have otherwise met but to be perfectly honest I would have learned somewhere else too.

On your blog you have a post about how being unschooled is a lot like being grown up. No one tests you, as an adult. People don’t go around asking adults if they are well rounded. Do you have anything more to add?

My experience as an unschooler kind of felt like being an adult – the idea that I saw that people had about what it meant to be an adult. I kind of discovered this through interaction with adults. By being around adults and being in the community rather than in school I had a lot of contact with grownups who didn’t expect to end up being my friend because here I am, a kid.

It is kind of expected that kids are going to be with other kids and adults with other adults: everyone is going to be slotted into their particular age bracket and that is where they are going to stay-which is kind of a strange idea really because it is so useful for children to learn from people who are older than them.
So a lot of my experience as an unschooler consisted of being around adults who told me, "Oh! You seem so grown up!"

Well, it wasn’t that I was grown up - it was just that I was interacting with them us I would with a friend. And through these relationships I was able to talk about things that were relevant to adults.I was able to have a lot of educational and relational experiences that other children didn’t seem to have access to.

There is a lack of fear of adults with unschooled kids- they are not afraid of speaking with adults-not wary of adults.

I think that is exactly right. I was surprised by my school peers I met in college who were still afraid of interacting with adults when they were 20- not that I wasn’t scared about interacting with large giant of my peers.

And another thing about unschoolers being grown up I’ll add is that you just have a lot of responsibility and that is something that people don’t expect from kids who are in school- but I have to qualify that and add that kids in school have tons of responsibility.
Not the same kind of responsibility, not the kind where you get to decide what you do with your time, and what you learn and what you pursue. It’s the kind that I shrink at- like having to do hours of homework or getting straight As in every subject. I mean the stuff that sounds so stressful to me I can’t imagine how anybody does it.

It’s imposed responsibility-not coming from the self.
Another thing I noticed about your blog is that you seem to be very playful-your idea your way of thinking. So you think it has something to do with your upbringing?

I don’t think it has very much to do with my upbringing.
For a long time I felt I needed to defend my life to the world. I felt that I needed to explain that I was valid; that I was smart and successful because they kind of assumed otherwise. And just recently a couple of years ago, I felt that I was tired of trying to defend my existence in these very solemn terms.

I thought, “You know what? Everyone is weird, everybody is different. And it’s so much more effective to relate to people as people-because we are all human."And my particular weirdnesses and my particular weird experiences they are really valuable and great. Just like I think other peoples' particular weird experience are valid and great. But I just don’t want to defend myself. And I also want to be able to laugh at myself.

Have fun.

Yeah! Have fun.

If schools were closed for good, do you see a vision for that kind of a world? Do you think that it is something that our society could go back to? We didn’t always have school-right? What with technology how relevant is school to the great enterprises of our time. Do we really need school? What do you think?

No one has asked me that question! I feel like people should ask. It’s a great question. I think that what you see now, even in school-- I blog sometimes Lisa Nielsen for the innovative educator and she works with New York City schools-- introducing technological innovations into the classroom and building a network of interconnectivity between schools. Getting everyone online and expanding education beyond the walls of the school and across state lines. I think that is the direction that school is heading in just like it is the direction that everything is heading in.

It doesn’t mean that everything is going to change overnight. But if it really did change over night and schools stop being school I think it would be the logical conclusion of what is happening anyway.

Because I think that-- the way our consciousness works, our interaction works now, as a nation and globally as well- is much less concrete, much more in the realm of ideas. That is what the internet has done-it has connected us with people; we are friends with people who we have never met. We are exposed to the same ideas and information that is free. There doesn’t have to be so much of a hierarchy of information like there used to be- when you had to go to find people who possessed a certain body of information and they would be the ones to impart it. Like teachers –maybe rural farmers wouldn’t have the information that a teacher who was instructing their children had.

It sounds radical, but in terms of knowledge and learning, I don’t think it is really incredibly radical to say that schools are not as necessary as they used to be- but then the way that they are necessary will continue to be valid until society changes dramatically in other, economic, ways.People need their kids to be in school because they are working.So it’s hard to imagine a world without school before imagining a world in which jobs have been dramatically restructured.

There’s that movement of unjobbing-the equivalent of unschooling; people becoming more self-sufficient and the whole nature of work is changing anyway with the internet and technology.

Yes and if really we could just plunge into this new world where there wasn’t school and jobs had been completely rerouted, I think that what we would see is that people would be starting their own companies a lot more-these things would be intertwined in a new way –but only new in the sense that it was widespread because, again, we are already seeing that things are moving in that direction.

Now, with the economy as it is, we are seeing that there is tons of new job innovation, and the entrepreneurial base is growing enormously because people are forced to do something differently and think creatively and that is fundamentally what unschooling is.

Unschooling owes schooling nothing

I found this quote yesterday evening in the Writer magazine (January 2011 issue). It's an interview called The Love of a Good Story with Lisa Cron, story consultant and agent.

Think about it. Have you ever gone into a bookstore, pulled a book off the shelf,glanced at the first page and thought, "You know, this is kind of dull. I can't tell what it's about, but I'm sure the author tried really, really hard, and probably has something important to say, so I'm going to buy it, read it, and recommend it to all my friends."
Nope you're gloriously heartless.
I'm betting you never give the author's hard work or good intention a second thought. And that's as it should be. As a reader, you owe the writer absolutely nothing. You read their book solely at you own pleasure, where it stands or falls on its own merit. If you don't like it, you simply slip it back onto the shelf and slide out another.

It's with this kind of attitude that I approach unschooling.

Browse. Discard if we don't like it. Embrace what excites us.

Complete freedom. We owe the Gods of Education, the Institutions of Learning, the Masters of Curriculum absolutely nothing.

Think of your life- and the times you were made to learn things you didn't care about. How much of any of it do you remember today?
For my part, I can say none of it.

I don't even consider what I was doing then education- it was school.

Reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain;

I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

Education that is uniquely shaped from one's own intrinsic motivation is true education- at least the education that we care most about.

Unschooling gives

My 15 year old is grade 10 at the local high school. She's been attending public school for over two years now. An unschooler up to that point, she tells me that she still considers herself to be unschooling. She explains it this way; "It's my choice as an unschooler to have gone."

I've since been thinking about the idea of unschooling in school and if this is actually possible.
What I see from my daughter's experience is that her unschooling mindset is allowing her to bring to the school context something fresh and stimulating. She, as an unschooled agent is sharing her way of seeing and being in the world; doing things that are helping other kids understand learning in a light that is different from what they are used to.

She likes doing well (that is getting the good grades) but at the same time she knows that it's all a game that she can drop any time she feels like it. She knows that her future success does not depend on the outcome of her marks.

Unlike the kids who when the teacher asked the students what they think school offers them, what's the best part of school, the kids answered, "A chance to get a good job."

"And?" the teacher asked her eyebrows reaching in to her hairline; urging them on.

Blank faces. "You come to school to learn to think." She said, a touch of disappointment.

"No. We don't learn to think at school," the class burst out laughing.

But I digress. Back to what my daughter brings to school. What keeps this kid in school then, is the fact that she is following her interests which currently are rights for gay and lesbians etc and also her current passion which is all things anime/manga-from the graphic novels, to the costume play.

So driven is she that she has gained notice at the top.
The principal stops her in the hall to express his admiration of the work she is doing with the GLBTQ group: "I stand in awe of you," he tells her. The teacher in charge of the GLBTQ urges her to take on even more leadership in the new year. She has already started organizing workshops that the group will be taking to local middle schools to help educate the youth there.

Singlehandedly she has created an anime/manga club against the indifference and lack of support that the teachers showed at first and now in its second year, as a fund-raiser, she has been making holiday greeting cards with manga characters which her dad helped make copies of as well as showing her how to make buttons to sell.

In short, she raised close to $100 for the group in a day through her art, and selling the cards. The only other person to raise money in the group managed a grand total of $1.

This indicates to me that the self directed person that evolved out of unschooling continues to act in the world -even in the restrictive world of school-on her own terms.
I like to think of her as a gift to the school system.

Readers-I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. Do comment!

wordle this blog

Unschooling does....

I'll leave it to others to hash out the precise and strict definition for what unschooling is.
My post today is about what unschooling does: how it acts. And what it gives you.
What does unschooling do for you, the individual?
And you don't have to be of 'school' age to be an unschooler. In my books, anyone can be an unschooler when they are approaching living in an independent, inquisitive way.

Let's get personal.

Life is hard but does it have to be dull? Does it have to be routine, predictable- boring? Must you always have to be told what to do, when to do it, how to do it-following orders like a lackey?
Do you have to seek permission? Do you have to have expert advice for every decision you face? Do you always have to wait; and wait and wait some more to maybe get your chance to shine?
Unschooling says, "No way!"

Life is for living--not tomorrow, not when I grow up, not when I'm older, not when I'm retired. Life is for living now. Unschooling understands this. It takes responsibility for one's time on this earth.

Unschooling acts immediately; it bites at the bit. But it also examines; it also reflects; it lets things stew and simmer; it is unhurried and unconcerned with the hurry-scurry, demands and expectations of peers and society.

Unschooling digs- it digs life, loves it, has you sniffing for hidden treasures, unearthing secrets, welcoming surprises.
Unschooling makes you have to trust, makes you scared sometimes but that's half the thrill of it-isn't it?

Unschooling has you questioning- your parents, authority, the world and the way it works. Unschooling allows mistakes; in fact mistakes are good because they help you learn- they don't prevent it!

Unschooling preserves-your originality, your curiosity your self-trust.

Unschooling nurtures your spirit of independence and has you demanding more out of your life; out of yourself.

"The child that's still inside me."

I came across this 1980 interview with author Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking and other books) and Agnetha Faltskog was singer for ABBA.
http://www.agnethaarchives.com/articles/ANonsmokingGeneration.htm-post

I was particularly interested in some of the insights Lindgren shared when dealing with kids and writing for them.

To the question "Were you a kind mother?"

Astrid: I played with my children and had just as much fun as they did. That's something that only children knows, if an adult enjoys being with them, if they have fun being with them. You can't pretend, "now we're going to have a good time". It has to come from inside you. Not everybody enjoys spending time with their children.

Astrid: When I walk in the streets I observe all people intensively. I saw a mother and a young boy and I thought that this boy is lucky. They were calm, both of them relaxed, holding each other's hands and were occupied with their own separate thoughts, but they exuded affinity and trust. I felt like walking up to them saying: Oh, how good things are with you and your mom. But you see others "now come with me"...

Astrid, why do you think adults like your books just as much as children?

Astrid: When it comes to a children's book, adults have to be able to stand it in order to read it. If not, it's not good. If you ask me the question: How should a good children's book be like, then I answer: It should be good! Because you never ask how good a collection of poems or a good novel should be like. There's really no good way to judge children's literature, in any other way than as literature. You have to have the same demands, on artistry, on genuineness, a good language and so on. You can't just sit down and say: well, this is how a good children's book should be.

Agnetha: It's just as if they would ask us, especially the guys, how do you write a hit, do you think that now we're going to write a hit? They don't. You don't work in that way. How would you know?

Do you picture any special kind of children in front of you when you write a children’s book?

Astrid: No, I write for the child that's still inside me. I never think that there will be children reading my books. Never. I write just to have fun. It's just as fun writing books as it is reading them. Since I always read books, as a child, and I still do, I can feel when I write that this is the way I want it. I go inside it in some kind of way. No, I never think of any other children. It doesn't matter what they think either... I can't let it. It's good if they're just as childish as I am.

Blake Boles on Unschooling : College Without High school

He's not a grown unschooler himself, but Blake Boles of www.unschooladventures.com works closely with the unschooling community and has written a book called College Without High School: A Teenager Guide to Skipping High school and going to College. In this interview, Boles shares about how he got interested in unschooling in the first place.

 














How did you get interested in unschooling and alternative education?

I discovered unschooling in 2003 as a sophomore at UC Berkeley after 12 years of California public school. I was majoring in astrophysics, which I initially found fascinating, but then I hit quantum mechanics and suddenly realized that real-life physics research required a ton of weird math that didn't stoke my curiosity.

Did I really love astrophysics, or did I just want to be the Dr. Arroway character from Carl Sagan's "Contact"? As I sweated over this problem, a friend handed me a John Taylor Gatto book. I devoured it in three days and immediately delved into whatever "recommended books" that Amazon suggested. A few weeks later, after discovering Grace Llewellyn, The Sudbury Valley School, John Holt, and Summerhill, I decided that I had to study this stuff full-time. It was just too fascinating.

Initially Berkeley gave me trouble--they wanted to shoehorn me in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department, which wouldn't accept most of my astrophysics units--but I was persistent and they eventually pointed me to the hidden "Independent Major" program, where I could design my curriculum from the absolute ground-up.

With the sponsorship of two professors, I designed my own program in alternative education, and in the process learned about all these tricks for individualizing my college experience like independent study, interning, senior thesis, teaching my own class, and exploiting pass/no pass units. Those two years were an intellectual feast that gave me a strong theoretical foundation for understanding alternative education and fueled my passion for unschooling (largely because I got to "unschool" myself while in college).

What's the connection with the Not back to school Camp?

My relationship with unschooling remained rather theory-based until I applied to work as a staff member at Not Back to School Camp in 2006. Grace Llewellyn, the director, accepted my application (you don't have to be a former unschooler or camper to work there), and I was suddenly face-to-face with 100 real-life teen unschoolers.

This is where I made most of my connections in the unschooling community, and campers were the first participants on my inaugural Unschool Adventures trip to Argentina (more on that below). The following year I began every session of camp (in both Oregon and Vermont), and today I continue work at as many sessions of camp as I can each year.

Not Back to School Camp is an incredibly supportive social environment for teen unschoolers, both new and old. I give it my highest recommendation for any teens who want to bolster their tribe of friends.

Where do you see the unschooling movement heading and what is the significance of this type of education on mainstream schooling models?

Unschooling seems to be getting bigger and bigger. The selection of conferences, camps, and other support programs expand each year. And media mentions, while typically slanted (see the recent Good Morning America piece), continue to appear. So "big" is one direction that the movement is heading.

Despite this trend, I don't see unschooling exerting any significant influence in changing mainstream schooling. Unschooling's power is in providing a positive alternative to school, but as a movement it holds no unified approach to breaking the school monopoly. I see lots of room for growth in that area.

Now for your book:Why did you write this book and who is the target audience?

My primary audience is disaffected high school students who, while bright and desiring to learn, feel squashed by school politics, social scenes, poor classes, or the simple restriction of freedom. I wanted to show them that a viable alternative--unschooling--is possible, and it doesn't require that your mortgage your future--especially in the realm of college.

As I saw it, the ability to get into a decent college seems to be one of the largest factor preventing many families from choosing homeschooling or unschooling. And as I learned through the NBTSC community and various interviews and research, the assumption that unschoolers (as opposed to rigorously parent-directed homeschoolers) can't get into decent colleges is totally unfounded. That's why the book needed to be written.

Thus far, it doesn't seem that the book has penetrated very far into the mainstream market (e.g. it's not in Barnes & Noble). Lots of home/unschooling families are reading and enjoying it, and I'm glad for that. I'm still figuring out how to reach a larger audience.

Lastly, a little bit about what you are doing these days (besides writing the book). Any parting words?

Since 2008 I've been leading international travel adventures through my company Unschool Adventures. Lots of Not Back to School Campers expressed desires for travel and adventure opportunities outside of camp, so I obliged them by organizing a 6-week unschooler's Argentina trip. The trip was a hit, so I ran a few more in 2009 (a Novel-Writing Retreat and Australia adventure). The next trip, a 7-week South America adventure, filled to capacity within one month of its debut, so I think we're onto something good.

Last month I ran my first leadership program (through my other company, Homeschool Leadership Retreats, which I plan to fold into Unschool Adventures). During this 2-week program based in Ashland, Oregon, I challenged our group of seven teens to go out and create short-term internships, mentorships, and job shadows based on their interests.

In the evenings, the other staff and I would run workshops on topics like communication, personality psychology, goal-setting, and learning theory, all tailored to the needs of teen unschoolers. The hope was that they would employ these workshop tools in the internship challenge.

And the trip was a total success--our teens mentored with university professors, got short- and long-term work internships (one turned into a paid employment opportunity), and interviewed local artists, among other pursuits. More importantly, they experienced a lot of failure and rejection and learned to deal with that in a constructive way. This was the real skill that I wanted them to get out of the program.

For more information:
www.unschooladventures.com
www.collegewithouthighschool.com
www.blakeboles.com

Approaching the thing with lightness

I was thinking about how when you go to a thing in a really serious way, much is lost. The edge is missing. The mystery waiting to reveal itself, never will. The chance at discovery vanishes.

It's like if you're doing a painting and you absolutely have this image in mind and you won't deviate or allow for surprises, you'll end up with a less interesting piece. That's my experience anyway.

I think that its got to do with playfulness. So when you get all serious and grim about something, say education, or changing the world, it gets really boring for you and everyone involved.

And as Karlsson on the Roof (Astrid Lindgren) has been known to say, "If there's no fun, I won't stay." Something like that. It's my motto for this week. And that goes with my idea of not taking myself so seriously.

What do schools do? They make learning dull.

Now look at how my daughter learns about the axis powers without ever having being bored in a history lesson- she watches Hetalia!
http://www.tegmentum.net/hetaliaeps.html
Here's a short description from Wiki:
Axis Powers Hetalia (ヘタリア Axis Powers Hetaria Akushisu Pawāzu) is a webcomic, later adapted as a manga and an anime series, by Hidekaz Himaruya (日丸屋秀和 Himaruya Hidekazu). The series presents an allegorical interpretation of political and historic events, particularly of the World War II era, in which the various countries are represented by anthropomorphic characters. Hetalia (ヘタリア) is a portmanteau combining hetare (へタレ, Japanese for "unreliable") and Italia (イタリア). This is to make light of Italy's apparent cowardice during World War II.

So in grade 10 history at the high-school she goes to- who has the highest mark in the class? She does with a 97% average.

I like to think of it as approaching what we do with lightness rather than heavy handedly. To quote again and this time accurately from that fat, chubby, man Karlsson, "Easy, just easy now."

Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw: "We just Played."

Elizabeth Bagshaw (October 1881-January 1982) was one of Canada's first female doctors and the director of the first birth control clinic in Canada.
She was also made a member of the highest order you can get here- the Order of Canada.

In a little book for kids on Elizabeth Bagshaw we picked up at a used store by Marjorie Wild, I read the following about her early childhood:

Winter on the farm was an enemy to a child's schooling. The Bagshaw farm was in a snow belt, and in winter the side road to school was blocked. From the first heavy snowfall, usually the first week in December, until after Easter, Annie and Elizabeth stayed at home. They had no schoolwork. There were no lessons by correspondence, and the days of lessons by radio were yet to come. "We just played," Elizabeth recalled much later. "I didn't mind."
When she started school again in the spring, Elizabeth had to learn and remember what the other children had studied during the winter. Her retentive memory helped her bridge the gaps in her education.

Clearly, in Bagshaw's early childhood years, she was unschooled.

It seems that her life was a simple one on the farm, with little distractions, time to observe and discover, and little 'peer' association apart from her sister Anne.

She had strong roots in her community and was allowed and encouraged to follow her interests and be herself, no matter the conventions of the day.

The story continues;

Although the side road which led to the school was closed in the winter, the main road was kept open. The Bagshaw family could go into town and to church....Church going took up a large part of any Sunday, but as Elizabeth once pointed out, it was one of the few real social events they had at that time. Some Sundays, relatives came to dinner and visited with the Bagshaws in the afternoon....

Other highlights of rural life were the annual fairs,,,Sometimes John Bagshaw took Elizabeth with him to the political meetings that were also and important part of the country life. She would be the only girl there. She once heard Willfred Laurier speak.

Elizabeth Bagshaw always had a strong attachment to her family, their farm and the part of Ontario where she grew up.