S2E1 | Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Curiosity, Flexibility, and Trust with Sandra Dodd and Sue Elvis

00:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
okay, so welcome to season two of the ladies fixing the world. I'm really nervous. I'm just gonna say it because I think that's better. I'm also I'm very much more excited to record a new season with a new group of amazing unschooling women that I am so fortunate to know. Yeah, I was walking back through Kharkov this evening, almost running to make it, and I felt so humbled by the fact that I was going home to have this conversation with these wise women. I have Sandra Dodd here. Welcome, sandra. I think most unschoolers know about Sandra already and if they don't, they should definitely google her. Uh, I read your book a hundred years ago or some. I read parts of a lot of books when I started my journey. It was a great journey. I'm so happy that I got to know you on the other podcast and now we're here and I have Sue Elvis also from the podcast we Became Friends. It's been so lovely to get to know you. Welcome, sue.

01:09
Thank you, cecilia, I'm really excited too and yeah, it's just so lovely that we get to have these conversations I decided, and I agreed with Sandra, to give her the talking stick to start the theme of the day. So here you go, sandra.

01:31 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
Well, I think we have two themes, but first definitions. Definition of unschooling it's hard. It was years I was unschooling for years before I had a definition I was really happy with and the one that's in the book that you read a long time ago. It's a little expanded from that read a long time ago. It's a little expanded from that, but I've never dealt with anything in my whole life that's so hard to understand as unschooling. Even for people who really want to get it, it takes a year. They can get a glimpse and they can try it, but they can't really understand it.

02:01
And so in the early years we would just say we don't use a curriculum or we play, we just learn by being around things and doing things and running around. And also for me, when it was new, I was able to say it's like the open classroom, because where I lived and when I lived, the open classroom was a concept that a lot of people knew about from either having gone to university and studied education or from being in New Mexico and Albuquerque specifically, there were schools that were set up like that. So they it was a vague idea, they kind of knew what it was. It didn't work in schools very well, but it works at home really well. So that was easier for me personally to be able to say it's like the open classroom. So that was easier for me personally to be able to say it's like the open classroom. But I was wondering what you guys had said, or what you say now, or maybe how that developed, because used to be people would say what's your elevator speech?

02:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You know what do you say if somebody asks you and you only have 30 seconds or a minute, I don't know, I don't know what I would say in an elevator, but I know what I very often say, and that is, if people try to say, ask me so what does that really mean, unschooling, then I ask them if they have three or four hours to listen.

03:16 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
so when you said a year, I thought yeah, that's actually smarter, but at least three or four hours if you've never heard about it before that won't work in an elevator, unless the electricity no a definition, oh damn it well, we started with um, kids are naturally curious that they'll learn all they need to know when they need to know it, and but I don't think that that barely scrapes the surface. And, as you're're saying, sandra, a year. Well, we have many, many years down this track and you said it's hard to define. It's something I can't remember your exact words, but I find it so deep and that even years later, I'm understanding a little bit more about the way of life we've chosen to live. And so a little bit of definition with one or two sentences, really something good to start with. But it's an amazing journey, digging deeper and understanding it more. And I think you're quite right you can't understand it in a I'll give it two weeks, I'll give it a month, and sometimes people say that I'll, I'll try unschooling for a term, and I think how can you do that? Because it takes.

04:34
It took me a long, long time to realize uh, such things as uh. I had this idea that kids would, parents would couldn't interfere with their children's learning, that kids were curious, that if you stepped out of the way and let your kids get on with it, they would learn everything they needed to know in the time when they needed to know it. But I thought that meant that I had to keep hands off and and it took me a long time. Well, we went off on other tracks because I thought I can't do that. I'm itching to tell my kids about Shakespeare or whatever.

05:13
I want to invite them to do things with me, and I thought I can't do that because we're going to be unschoolers. So, yeah, that's where we started, and these days my definitions have got a lot more complicated and, as you say, you'll sit down all day trying to explain it, but I think it's got a lot to do with. I would pull in the words love and respect and trust, freedom, but all together. And a new one yesterday I picked up um, when I I was talking, had another unschooling discussion. A word I'd like to make my own is invitation, because we all love to be invited early on.

05:56 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
I used to say it was like a lifetime of Saturdays. Yeah, that only makes sense in the context of school.

06:04 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
Sandra, I was just about to say that. I was just about to say that that line about the Saturdays. It really resonated with me and I've passed that on and I've written about it. I always quote you, I always put your name. That's where it came from.

06:21 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
But I think that's a wonderful image of unschooling it is for people who went to school, but for unschoolers themselves they're like what's the big deal about Saturday?

06:33 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I actually have a child who still can't do the weekdays unless he really focuses, and we talked about it recently. He's I'm not going to share which one it is, but none of mine are young any longer, so should they know the weekdays? I would have expected them to know the weekdays, but what he said was it makes no difference to me. Right, right, I know the months, I know the seasons, I know where I am, I know what time it is. I don't care if it's Sunday or Tuesday, I don't care. It never made any difference to me. They've never been on any courses. They had to go every Wednesday or whatever. So, yeah, it's just a lifetime of Saturdays makes sense to people who went to school, but it's a little bit cheating because Saturdays I've had a lot of inquiries of people who wanted to make documentaries about our life, right and uh and um. The problem is you can. You can edit it either way. It could very easily look like we're on vacation all the time, and are we, maybe, but we're not vacating.

07:53 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
That's the problem. That's the problem with explaining it, because you start explaining it and then you come to the place where it doesn't work with this audience, where it doesn't work with unschooling, kind of it sort of tips, and then you need a new definition. It's hard, it's really hard, and I've worked with a lot of journalists who wanted to really interview somebody in depth and they wanted to really understand it, and they would spend hours on the phone with me and maybe a couple of days or more with a family, and they still mess it up because it's not enough time. That's not enough time, and so those people wanted to get it. They really wanted to do the right, the most neutral, great article, but I haven't seen anybody really succeed at that. And families who have been unschooling for a year a on a tangent that you came off of too, about not helping them very much uh, even people who are trying to live it are working back and forth. At first it's like oh, too far, this way, too far, that way, still trying to find a good rhythm and a good calm place where they don't wake up in the morning. Go, oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do?

09:02
I just saw a little video about south koreans liking american accents when they're learning english, which is fine. I think it's easier to. It's more in line with the spelling. Maybe we say our r's Ireland and United States have some r's, but uh, there was a. There was a an Australian man who was, who was in, who was being interviewed about it, and he was living in South Korea. And he said when I went, I see, I started using my internal r's so people could understand me, so South Koreans could understand my English. And I went home and told my mom it's so nice to be back in Perth and she said what? He didn't use his own accent when he, when he was back in Australia Perth. That's funny. Well, okay definition.

09:45 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
Do you think that a lot of people want to know a definition so they know whether they're unschooling properly or not, so they even know if they want to? Or whether there are some people out there who, like the keepers of the definition and they want to say well, you're unschooling and you're not. I've come across a lot of people say but you're not unschooling. When people say I'm an unschooler and it's very off putting and I wonder if that's why we need it, Well, why I don't think it's easy to define, but to have a starting point. And does it really matter how we define it?

10:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
isn't it just how our lives are lived out and that will look differently for all of us yes, I think I need it when people ask me the question so how do you educate your children?

10:42
And I say I don't, and then the eyebrows go behind the hairline and then we start having a conversation and it would be very nice to be able to, in a short, lift elevator way, to say what I'm doing.

11:12
I would also sometimes need it when I think the concept becomes too open, and I like it to be quite open. I don't like defining other people and telling them they're not really unschooling. But if you have a little bell and you have a curriculum and a stack of books and you have three hours set aside a day, the parents deciding what the children are doing and what workbooks, I think it would be pushing it to call that unschooling. So somewhere between the radical not assisting at all and the sitting at the kitchen table for three hours or five hours a day is a line and sometimes, when I discuss this theme with other people, I'd like to know where that line is or to be able to discuss when do we venture, venture out, when are we not failing but not doing unschooling? Where's the? Yeah? I've had that problem a few times and and I've also gotten into trouble pointing at it, saying could we discuss the lines um?

12:18 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
yeah, for me it doesn't matter whether people unschool or not. They come read my stuff or they're in discussion with me and they go away. I, I don't care what they do, I'm not keeping track of them. You know, I've never had a sign up sheet and we're going to check back with you every five years. Nothing, nothing like that.

12:31
I was accused of running a cult one time and Deb Lewis said if this is a cult, you're really bad at it, and I don't have meetings and I don't know who's there and who's not. But within a discussion, if we're, if if there's an ongoing discussion and someone comes and starts giving advice who isn't an unschooler, then it matters to me because we're in, we're in the maybe not this discussion, but you know, like the, like the old discussions that I used to do, um, um, mailing lists you know we're at writing um, because it's going to be there, because the things that they said are going to be sitting there permanently like everybody else's stuff. So then at that point it may be worth saying this advice that you're giving can be a problem for people who are trying to get unschooling. So that's the way I would do. It is like this piece of advice won't lead people more toward unschooling. So it wasn't. You yourself are not being an unschooler. It was like wait. We need to aim more toward this giving kids choices.

13:34 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
I'm a completely different person than I was before. We started along this pathway and we could define it more, as I am more respectful, I listen, I value my kids interest, I'm, I'm willing to trust them, um, and and I could make a long list of things I look at my kids with wonder and awe, instead of problems that that that, uh, before they were well, not a problem as such, but kids begin to feel like they're a problem when we continually thinking about are they going to get a job in the future? Have they got the right qualifications? Are we along the right pathway? And then we could just look at them and say, wow, they're such wonderful people with so many talents they're going to do all right in the world. I'm going to give them the opportunity. Just look at them and say, wow, they're such wonderful people with so many talents they're going to do all right in the world. I'm going to give them the opportunity to be themselves. And so if we start with ourselves, we could write a totally different definition of unschooling.

14:37 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
You've given me a lead-in to share my favorite definition, but I want to say that on my website I have at least 30 definitions. Oh great, we're good from one time or another. Like I have three pages of collections of different people's. One of the pages is somebody else collected Ren Allen collected years ago, but I saved that when it lost its home. What I ended up with, my personal favorite, is about the parents. It's more about what the parents do. Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish. So that's what parents create and maintain that atmosphere. But that's going to involve giving kids choices. It's going to involve things that the kids do or that you've arranged a space and a time for the kids to do these things, but creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish. I didn't ever improve on that one once I came to it, but I'd been doing it for probably 15 years by the time I came to that one.

15:37 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
And then from that definition, you could go lots of different ways. That's just the beginning you can come into. Uh, creating that atmosphere, well, telling kids, uh, not. Well, not valuing kids interests wouldn't fit into that framework. Uh, telling kids what to do won't fit into that framework. Um, working towards a future goal, which may or may not be what the kids want, that doesn't fit into that framework. There, I like that, sandra. I might go and copy that one out, because you know, I was blogging for years before I actually wrote a definition, a post called what is unschooling, on my blog, and I found it just so difficult to do that.

16:26
I thought it was better just to write about what it is, and it's like having, instead of telling somebody what it is, show them what it is. And then I I needed a what what is unschooling, an article for my book, and I thought I can't write a book and not actually have a definition. So I started googling other people's ideas what is unschooling? And all these things coming up and I'm thinking, well, they could describe it that way or this way or that way. Uh, yeah, it's very, very difficult, but yes, um, pinning myself down to just a couple of lines was very, very difficult, but I like that. Sandra, I'm gonna go and um copy that one, not not copy it as my own, but share it with other people as yours the definition page can be in the in the show links maybe yes, let's put it there.

17:19
That's a great idea for you.

17:21 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
So when people say what is unschooling, we'll say, well, here's go to Sandra Dodd's page and you'll know exactly what it is and then they'll come to a really, really long page of all all the discussion and definitions, with links to other pages of definitions and they'll get stuck in the rabbit hole and they won't appear for days, but they'll have a fantastic time exploring unschooling.

17:46
I think if you understand like if you want to be an expert in puppies, you want to advise people on how to, how to take care of puppies or whatever you have to have really known a lot of puppies hundreds. If the only dog you ever had you got when it was grown, you don't know anything about puppies. If you've had one puppy or one batch of puppies, you can't advise about puppies. You only know those puppies. But if you, if you read a lot of people's definitions, that might be like a big bunch of puppies, I don't know no, but it's zooming in on it because it is very hard to define what it is.

18:22 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But if you get a lot of different angles and perspectives then maybe you can wrap your head a little bit around it. I was thinking defining unschooling in a way is also very much talking about what it's not. For me, it's the centerpiece that it's actually not about education, it's not about learning. For me, one of the things that was really, I remember as a turning point in my understanding very early on was that learning is a byproduct of living. So if we live with enthusiasm, we get to unfold who we are, we get to to to explore our passions and do the things that we really that wants that makes us want to get out of bed in the morning. It will never be about learning. I disagree.

19:16 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
Well, because you're learning. You're learning what your passions are. You're learning what you like. You're learning who you are. I'm not doing it to learn.

19:24 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm doing it because I'm passionate about it. I'm doing it because I love doing it. I'm not doing it here's my Spanish skills or my English literature level or anything like that. I'm doing it because it makes me happy, or it makes me because I'm curious, or because I'm because it makes me able to solve some problems that I'm actually having.

19:48 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
It may be that it's possible that your definition of learning when you say it's not about learning, you're thinking of academic learning, because I'm not.

19:58 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm thinking about learning being the goal of the activity.

20:05 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
Okay, I think learning is inevitable.

20:10 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Exactly.

20:11 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
You can't not learn, not learning. Sometimes people say unschooling has been happening since caveman days. That's, unschooling is what there is without school. I don't believe that we wouldn't need it. If you look at history, even the past 100, 150, 200 years, a lot of kids didn't go to school. I don't believe that we wouldn't need it. If you look at history, even the past 100, 150, 200 years, a lot of kids didn't go to school. They just did whatever job their parents did. They learned on the job to be whatever their parents did, or they would apprentice them out to somebody else to learn what they did, or girls would just learn how to do home things. That's not unschooling. That's living at when school really didn't exist. But unschooling is a replacement for school.

20:50 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
School does exist.

20:51 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
All the countries we're from because there's nobody here from India require school. There's some sort of compulsion, compulsory schooling. They used to say compulsory education, but after schools got sued for not for the kids graduating without being able to read well, they said okay. Okay, let's rephrase compulsory attendance yeah, whatever, but still there's a good point, though.

21:15
so yeah, so. So if, if we're going to opt out of that, we need to legally and morally and ethically replace it with something as good or better. So when an unschooling family says, oh, I don't care if my kids learn, or we're not about learning or it's not about learning. Or somebody who had been unschooling a long time said one time when I said, when we have a choice, I either do what's new or what's comforting. If I can't decide, I go with what produces the most learning. And he said I didn't think you should talk about learning and I said what? I didn't get his objection. And yet he used the word education a lot of times. So that's another reason to read all the definitions you can find and decide which ones make sense to you or that appeal to you, because I think we have an obligation to, at least out of the corners of our eyes, see that our kids are learning, because we're sorry to interrupt, sandra.

22:15
I'm just saying for school.

22:18 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
Yeah, cecilia's life isn't ordinary. It's full of learning opportunities, so you don't probably don't have to think too much about things that maybe I thought about. Am I helping my kids expand their, their interests and their passions are? Ourrj is interesting, but, cecilia, your whole life is. Your kids are learning on the go because you're living a life that is full of learning opportunities, whereas I always thought that unschooling could be about living life, but only when life is interesting. At other times I needed to go out there and listen carefully, strew, make invitations to help my kids learn what they wanted to learn. But do you find that your life as on the road, visiting all these beautiful places and having conversations with people, learning other languages just because you need it? Do you find you sometimes sit down and think about particular passions of your kids that you feel the need to help them with, that you're going to direct some energy and some resources, some conversation, whatever, for a particular child who is particularly interested in something, despite your life being very interesting?

23:47 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I have a whole list of things I feel like saying right now I might get very confused yes and yeah, my life looks very interesting because I travel and it is. It's the life I want to live, that's why I'm living it. But I think I have the same. I mean, I just borrowed a big keyboard, piano kind of thing. That was really annoying when I was driving from England to Poland in the van because one of my kids started playing that.

24:26
So that's like a very practical example of me having to do something to keep up with what my kids want to do. I always have to talk to them about their passions or ideas about my kids want to do. I always have to talk to them about their passions or ideas about what they want to do, and it's very often going in three different directions. I have the habit of inviting more people. Right now I have five teenagers with me and they're going. Fortunately, they share passions, but it is a thing we have to give some attention. But it is, it is a thing we have to to give some attention. Of course I'm in a way. It's very easy to be an unschooler when you're also traveling, because everyone can see that they will be exposed to a lot of different things and they don't have the option of going to a regular school because they're never in the same place for more than a month. So I have I don't get a lot of questioning because it looks on the surface very amazing. It has its its struggles to I mean, it's not always strawberries and I also think you had a very fair point, sandra, saying that we have to pay attention to the learning and that we can't just say we live as if school doesn't exist, because it does exist and we opted out on purpose and we know it exists and actually it often gets in the way of the life I want to live because, for example, there are not a lot of children available to hang out with because they're all in the schools. There are many things where the fact that everyone else is schooling is becoming part of our life when we opt out of it and it's giving us fewer choices. Sometimes it's opening up doors, but often it's closing doors. Often it's closing doors.

26:24
My point of saying that we don't do things to learn the learning is not the goal. Learning is the byproduct is that we do things because we're passionate. We do things because we're curious. We do things because we need to do them. That would be probably the three main reasons. But I've put thought into this before I started doing it and I am convinced my children are getting a way better education than they could ever get in a school situation, and it's a good definition. Well, I think it changes the perspective.

26:59
It's not about learning a language. It's about getting the potatoes at the market in poland. You know how do you pay for them, how do you ask for them. So I wish I could remember the word for potatoes, because two of the teenagers have been shouting that word all afternoon and if I was a little bit smarter it would have been stuck in here. But it's not. Um, yes, your son being one of them. Yeah, he, he's the passionate potato peeler in the group, so he was getting potatoes and they had to learn the word, him and my daughter, and they've been having a lot of fun with the word, because the guy at the market apparently made a little dance teaching them the word. Well, side story, so, but anyway, it's not not about I don't. Oh man, double triple negation. I don't not care about their education, I am just convinced it will be so much better if the focus, the reason we do things, is not education. It's not because we want to be smarter that we're reading shakespeare. We're reading shakespeare because it makes us laugh.

28:19 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
But that's why in my favorite definition, my current favorite definition, it says for natural learning to flourish. Because they're learning about potatoes in Poland. Yeah, that's not on anybody's curriculum, not even Poland, no.

28:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So yeah, and will they ever need that word again? Ever.

28:38 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
I don't know. There used to be a complaint that still comes up and some of you have probably heard it and responded to it, but that is. I don't like the word unschooling. Unschooling is so negative. Why is it on? Uh, because it's not schooling. Because it's it's, it's schooling not. But there's a, there's a page on my site that you can come through through the definitions, which is the history of that word. John holt named it because of a commercial, because of a seven up commercial, and it was seven up the uncola that was out when it was coming along, so he called it unschooling, which everybody who knew that commercial at the time.

29:14
it was a really cool commercial. There's a. There's a copy of it on my site, a video, and so that was. That was humorous, it was cute it made sense Like, boom like seven up, isn't? I didn't know that. Yeah, so anyway, but.

29:27 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I need to go on the show notes as well. I heard that direct link.

29:32 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
Pat Ferenga. Ok, ok, pat Ferenga told me that that that's, that's why. But it made sense anyway, because it was those days. It was the 70s. So there was a definition or a little poetic thing written by suzanne carter. She goes by zan carter on facebook and she's in indiana. I met her in 95. Several families got together, eight families got together in indiana. We drove a long way from here for that and we stayed in one. One family had a big house. So it was the first thing that was anything like a conference I went to, but it was just for us to meet other unschoolers, because there was nothing like that in those days in 95. So Zan wrote this.

30:08
Lots of people make this point, but I never see the negation as negative in a value judgment sense when I use the word. To me, unschooling is as positive as unchaining, unbinding, unleashing, unfolding, unfurling, unlimiting. All mean freedom and growth and vast possibilities to me. And I will send that link. Yeah, do it. Pam Sarooshian, years later, added to this, added to that list. She said and unhurt, unharmed, undamaged, uninjured, uncontaminated, unimpaired, unspoiled, unprejudiced and unbiased. So that if you ever have people complain about unschooling now I will send you the link to this and to the Uncola page.

30:54
It is sweet to think of it, of the things that you're undoing or preventing from having happened in the first place by unschooling. Yeah, another thing. Another thing people ask when they first are learning about unschooling is will this work? And it's a weird question. Will it? What this work? And it's a weird question, will it? What do you mean work? It's a long. It's something that's almost impossible to discuss, because what they might mean by work is will my kids go to the university? Or will my kids be happy and love me forever and ever and ever and always be happy that they weren't in school?

31:31
You know, sometimes people want to guarantee, or sometimes in a discussion, if anybody would say, if anybody in a discussion that I was running would say take my word for it, I'd be like put the brakes or I guarantee you that if you unschool, you know no, you can't. Based on what? What do you think? You're going to give them their money back? What do you mean guarantee? You're not even there, or I promise you that unschooling will give you this net and I will always stop them and go. You can't make any promises with these people and they don't even know who they are. You don't even know who you're talking to and you're saying I guarantee, I promise. So that's a place that I stopped people right away because it's a gamble. Everything in life is a gamble. If we save our money today instead of spending it, what if we both you know, my husband and I die tomorrow and we should have spent that money? You know like our kids feel good. They saved it because now we have it, but you know what I mean.

32:22
I mean, you don't know you don't know what's going to happen, even physically, or with life, or with freedom, or with your house. You know your house could burn down a tornado Well't get tornadoes, but you know people who do some sort of natural disaster could come and mess your house up, or your RV.

32:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Sorry, I'm not wishing ill on your RV, no, but I could say I mean I beat cancer almost 14 years ago. That was not fun. Things can happen. The problem is that when we unschool we take the responsibility back and we own it If we send our kids to school. If it fails it's the school's fault. If unschooling fails it's our fault. And I think a lot of people have to get used to that feeling of you know it's your child, so it's kind of your problem and it was to begin with and it will be if you put the child in school but you just don't really realize that or you kind of it can be someone else's responsibility.

33:35 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
It really is not that seems um too much. All or nothing, though, because there's even if your kids are in school, there's still parental responsibility, exactly action, and, you know, contribution to that. But I think, although we can't guarantee that unschooling will work, we can tell stories people can collect stories of. Okay. There are some unschooling will work. We can tell stories People can collect stories of. Okay, there are some unschoolers who went to university. They did fine. There are some who didn't want to go to university and did fine. There are some who figured out that they would really rather have some trade that didn't require university, or started their own business, or, or, or Lots of things. And so it's not. It's as bad as defining unschooling, I think, to talk about will it work and what's the guarantee? Because I can't guarantee anything for anybody, but I can help them step more toward what feels safer and comfortable to them.

34:40 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I also think I have a friend who would always say unschooling always works because there's no outcome, it can't go wrong. You have no, I mean you have. There's nothing that it has, there's no end point where you have to go. So, wherever you end, it will be right and she's right. But it's a little bit like the the critique you gave me before Sandra. She's right because she's she's right, but it's a little bit like the critique you gave me before Sandra. She's right because she's done the work of thinking before that what are my values? Why am I doing this?

35:07
And there is an outcome of what kind of human beings do you want to put into this world? What kind of framework? Well, what was your definition, again, sandra, to put to make the context where natural learning can flourish. So you want to let your children grow up in this specific context? I have. But, but at the same time I a little bit disagree. But it can it go wrong. I think it can go wrong if you don't stop to think where or how you what, why are you doing this? Where do you? I put a lot of thought into what I said before, that I'm very sure that my children are getting a better education than they could ever get in a school system also if you think academics and if you think about how to carry yourself and how to become emotionally mature and how to handle life and and how to handle changing cultures.

36:09
And it's not, it's not random what I'm doing. It's just I'm not shoveling anything down their throats. If I have the idea that you need to learn something and they're telling me, really, mom, I don't need that or I don't want that, I'm not pushing them, I'm just giving them the option. And if I have a strong opinion I think everybody should learn this, then I share that opinion. But I'm not. It's not foie gras, it's not yeast. I'm not doing.

36:45
That Makes me think about I don't know if it's in one of your many definitions, sandra. I usually say that unschooling is very much about conversation. The only thing we consistently do is we talk. We talk so much. We talk all the time. I'm exhausted I mean it starts at seven in the morning and I have to go to bed before the conversation ends About all the things, all the ends.

37:16
About all the things, all the people, all the impressions, all the Also what's happening. They're growing from being little babies until they are young adults and they're still under your wings and you process their emotions and you help them with their ideas. You get critique I try to explain something and they're like that's. You get critique and you know, I try to explain something and they're like that's lame. I think you have old information and we have to look things up and they're polite and nice, but they I am often wrong and they will correct me, and then we have another conversation about that, and then it moves on and on and on. So is unschooling just one long conversation that takes about 20 years longer, longer.

38:01 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
Yeah, my youngest turned 33, yeah, and they're still kind of it because there's no outcome, because there's no end, because, um, I don't, I don't remember who said said that unschooling can't fail because there's no outcome. That was you, cecilia said. Your friend said yeah, yeah, maybe when it seems to have failed, when the kids don't aren't, aren't glad that their parents unschooled them, or whatever, it's easy to say, well then they weren't really unschooling. But that's cheating, that's but it that. I know some families in which it didn't do that well, but then I have to overlay that on this.

38:35
On the statistics, just in general, I didn't do that well, but then I have to overlay that. On the statistics just in general, I don't mean numerical statistics, but on the range of school, of people who go to school. So if you just think of all the people who went to government school, whatever it might be called here it's called public school, but different places, different things. If they went to the regular local, most this is the default school of our, of our place, our state, our province, whatever. They don't all come out with an, a they can't, they physically can't. That's what a's mean. A's mean 10 or 15 percent of the people got this and 15 or 20 percent of the people got a B or whatever. However that grade grading system works, 40 percent have to fail. If they have no failures, the A's are worthless and the A's are used to compete to get into other schools or whatever.

39:32
And and I don't know in the UK about GSCEs or O levels or whatever it might be I don't think they have UK about GSCEs or O-levels or whatever it might be. I don't think they have to have failures there, but they do they must. There must be some people with higher scores than other people. 100% yeah, because you're competing to impress whoever you're trying to impress for a job or a graduate program or something. There's an unschooler in England who's in Oxford now and so I'm getting to follow that. I've known him since he was four. That's fun, that's fun, but school doesn't have a guarantee. School has some guarantees that we don't like to talk about Some guaranteed negatives and I don't want to badmouth school too much. I personally really love school and I have grandkids in school.

40:17
I think, when unschooling is going smoothly, the guarantee is that the family is still making choices together and being together, making options together. And I think if it stops going smoothly then the parents probably know that there are schools available if their kids would rather or go early to university or get a job or something. There are. If options are the habit of that family, I think they're in good shape to adjust if things aren't going well.

40:47 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
I'm married to a school teacher so I often see the other side of things and I respect my husband's job. But I remember when he he's a mature age student. He was a businessman for many years. I got made redundant, maybe 15, 16 years ago, then went back to uni to do his master's in teaching. He already had a Bachelor of Science and for maybe a year and a half we unschooled at home with all the kids and he did his Masters of Teaching and what I was really struck by was the atmosphere of learning within our home that our kids, we were all learning whether he was doing his coursework, whether we were following our passions, going on our teams, that atmosphere of learning that it was such a wonderful time in lots of ways and my kids learned a lot from my husband going back to uni. Things like it's never too late to follow your dreams, your passions. He never got he well, he could, have, suppose, have been a school teacher at the beginning, but we got married as soon as we got out of uni and he didn't go on to do his teacher training course. He did that in Wales on our travels, and so he got the opportunity, when he got made redundant, to think about his life again and he went back to uni and it really impressed my kids that the end point isn't necessarily 18 when people say, does an unschooling work? And people have this idea of where their kids will be at 18 will they be in a secure job, will they be able to support themselves. And he went back to uni in his I, I don't know, thinking late 40s maybe and trying to work out how old we are now. And he did that and he and my kids were always talking education, things they found out about and having mutual respect for one another.

42:53
And so does unschooling work? Well, it depends whether what you, first of all, what you want to happen, if you have, what do we want for our kids, but also on the timeframe of it all. We've got our whole lives to do things and our lives can look different at different places, but what unschooling has given us is that sense of adventure, self-confidence, curiosity, the idea that, uh, it's never too late to go out and learn something, and and that's how sort of uh, how it's been shown in our family. Now I also think that uh, personality also plays a big part in unschooling. It's turned out these wonderful adults that we've unschooled, but sometimes our kids personalities. It looks different in every child and there's no guarantees there because we're not rolling out kids on the production lane. This is what we're going to do. We're going to unschool them. They're going to turn out this way at this time and then this personality comes along and ruins all my plans. Uh, is it?

44:11
You know I had son. He was that, uh, doing a bachelor of nursing. He got in all right to do uni. I said, oh, look, you're in school, your kids can go to uni. He's driving trucks in the mine at the moment and his big delight is that he's been passed to drive the biggest truck in the mine and he just works with his hands and he loves the challenge and that's what he wants to do. He could do nursing and I thought he was going to be a good nurse. But, yeah, one day I came home oh, mom, I don't think I'll go back to uni next year. And I'm thinking, oh, my unschooling story. You were a wonderful example for unschooling and now you're going to drop out.

44:59
And he worked in a supermarket for ages, became a manager at a supermarket, but you know, that doesn't sound nearly as impressive. As I unschooled my child. He followed his passions. He was a St John ambulance officer, he won awards for his work, he became a nurse and now he's a paramedic and wow, that would have been a good story and uh.

45:24
But it's not about us, is it? It's about them. And they've got their whole lives and whatever they do, we support them through that and approve. Well, they approve. We can be so uh quick, not even by our words, but our attitudes, our body language, to disapprove of our children's choices. But I think what we have given them is the self confidence there to go try new things, to take a gamble, um, do you? Um, be curious and keep on and not do what is expected. Sometimes. And I don't know what he'll do next. Maybe he won't always be driving trucks, doing a night shift, a younger person's job. And my children are in their 30s too. Well, not all of them. Some of them are in their 20s, but it's not a career for life. But I'm excited to see what the next stage will be for changing jobs that I love him for very much. You know that. I'm very proud of him. He's a oh, he's just such a lovely person, I think. And isn't that sometimes the output that we want?

46:41 - Sandra Doo (Co-host)
that sounds wonderful. I think probably the job that he has now is more peaceful than nursing or medical, but he still. But he still has the knowledge he has. He's a truck driver who knows all of this stuff about medicine, emergency medicine or that sort of thing, first aid I. Another thing about individuality yeah, all of all of the people who work there have their own histories and their own knowledge. I think that's wonderful this whole talk about.

47:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Is it a gamble, and what's the outcome? And can we, can we, you know? Do we dare unschool? Does it work? Like many other talks in, in unschooling we also have to flip it a little bit and say would you dare putting your children in school? Would you dare giving them over to someone else? You'd really have to trust that someone else. Do you trust in that school system? Isn't it always a gamble? I mean, if you choose to, I hope that you do that for good reason. There can be many good reasons to use the school systems, and there are schools out there that are better than other schools.

47:56
I'm not here to judge anyone, but that too is a gamble. It's a big gamble and and lots of people come out with scars that would take a long time to heal. So, like you said, sandra, are we saving up our money for tomorrow? What do we know about tomorrow?

48:22
I think, of course, I do live as if I'm going to live another 50 years, but I also want to live for the here and now, and that's another main reason we unschool.

48:37
I don't want, I don't want to live for some fictional outcome, some idea about the future, very often fear-based idea about the future, thinking I have to do things I don't want to do because otherwise I will fail in life. Because life is now and if I'm happy and the people around me are happy and things are running smoothly and we're all growing and sharing, well, that's the life I want and that's the life I want for my loved ones, so I don't need to work for a different outcome. I don't need to. Oh God, my brain is tired. I need a word in English. I can't find it Sacrifice. I don't need to sacrifice my hours here and now hoping that I'll gain something at the other end, because I want my hours here and now to be meaningful, and that's one of the big things for me about unschooling. Maybe because I'm a cancer survivor, maybe just because I'm, I'm me.

49:54 - Sue Elvis (Co-host)
I don't know you can't go back and reclaim all those hours if you don't take advantage of them as your kids are growing up, and I found that what ended up more important to me than working towards academic uh outcomes was those connections with our kids, so that, willing to spend time with them while I could, listen to them, while I could uh, so that they became people that were, as I said, confident and and you, I think you said uh, cecilia, earlier, earlier children who know themselves. So I don't really believe that anybody knows themselves at 18. That's a lifelong. Maybe what is better to say is people who know that they're valuable and they're all right as they are. They don't have to change just because somebody from outside tells them they're not good enough, somebody from outside tells them they're not good enough. But I think that that's a good foundation, is that love and that respect, the listening, the time we spend doing all those things that are enjoyable together and saying, hey, I think this is a valuable way to spend our days. I like sitting here with we've talked about coffee before, cecilia having coffee around the table, having those discussions and not, you know, you must get on and learn your advanced math because you can learn all those skills academic anytime but as a parent we can't go back and instill all that that foundational love and confidence, respect into our children.

51:36
Children we can, I think, work on our relationships as adults, but I think it's a wasted opportunity that we can't send our kids out into the world knowing that at least their family believes in them, loves them so much, has confidence in them, trusts that they're going to be okay out there in that world, and providing that safe refuge because they're going to make mistakes, they're going to come to dead ends and they'll come back. They know they've got somewhere to come back and recoup and be bathed in our love again, to go back out into the world and have new adventures. But that's what I ended up thinking as well. It took a long time to get there, but for me that was more important than um the outcome of academics, except saying that all my kids who wanted to go to university got into university. So I don't think the academic side was at a disadvantage just because we spent a lot of time sitting around the table drinking coffee and talking about all kinds of things it's a better education in many ways.

52:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I love this conversation. I think it's been very interesting and very lovely to hang out with you women tonight, today, this morning, on different places on the planet, but uh yeah, and I'm looking forward to the next conversation that we're having. I think it this has been fun. Thank you very much for joining me it's. Thank you so much cecilia, thank you for coming.