S2E8 | The Math Myth: How Do Unschooled Kids Learn Math?

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✏️ Shownotes 

In this episode, we explore one of the most persistent questions in unschooling: What about math?

Cecilie, Sandra, and Sue examine the widespread belief that children can’t learn math without formal instruction — and explain why that belief doesn’t hold up.

Cecilie reflects on the early years of home education in her family, the pressure to “cover” math, and the quiet fear of doing too little. Sandra shares examples of how her children developed mathematical thinking through games, practical needs, and everyday problem-solving — without ever relying on school-based methods. Sue talks about letting go of structured lessons and learning to trust her children’s approach to math.

Together, they look at how math fits into unschooling — and what becomes possible when we stop trying to teach it and start noticing how it shows up in real life.

🗓️ Recorded February 7, 2025. 📍  Finhan, France

 🔗 Links & Resources

• https://sandradodd.com 

• https://storiesofanunschoolingfamily.com 

• https://cecilieconrad.com

See Episode Transcript

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

S2E8 | Ladies Fixing the World

[00:00:00] Cecilie Conrad: All right, so welcome to episode eight of The Ladies Fixing The World Season Two. 

[00:00:07] Cecilie Conrad: As the other episodes I have with me Sandra Dodd from the US Welcome. Hello. Hi. And Sue Well, with whom I can't see because my little things on my screen. Keep moving. Here you are. Hi. Hi 

[00:00:22] Sue Elvis: Cecilia. Hi 

[00:00:23] Cecilie Conrad: Sandra. 

[00:00:24] Sue Elvis: Hi. 

[00:00:24] Cecilie Conrad: And you're in the future because you're in Australia, so you're in school.

[00:00:27] Cecilie Conrad: Oh, we've 

[00:00:28] Sue Elvis: already started out the 20, the day after you, and it happens to be our last day of summer. Oh, 

[00:00:37] Cecilie Conrad: summer. So this would be my last day of what? Spring. I don't get Winter. Winter. No. 

[00:00:44] Sue Elvis: I think everybody else around the world calculates the seasons differently from us. I, we have a nice system of exactly three months for each of the season, starting on the first of each month and ending on the last day of the month.[00:01:00] 

[00:01:00] Sue Elvis: So it's really easy to. Easy to remember, but I think that'll, come in very handy. That, fact with what we are going to be talking about today, if we get onto a little bit of mess. And, what, so we 

[00:01:16] Cecilie Conrad: al we always have a little headline, a little thing we plan to talk about, and sometimes we actually talk about it for most of the podcast, and sometimes it seems like something else is more important.

[00:01:28] Cecilie Conrad: But today we have the big bad wolf going on. today we have the question of math, and it's one of the questions that comes up just like the toothbrush and, the social life and how do they learn to read. One of the big ones, the big worry for many parents and the big well where the eyebrows go behind the hairline for many people is when we say we don't teach any math and they don't [00:02:00] get it.

[00:02:00] Cecilie Conrad: They don't, it's a do not compute situation. It's like, how do we handle not forcing children to learn math? There's a big then what question mark in the room once we say this, and I think a lot of worry and a lot of beginner on schoolers. That's where they struggle. I've heard a lot of people say, I unschool except for math, which is 

[00:02:38] Sue Elvis: another, it's a strange question.

[00:02:40] Sue Elvis: It's a strange, statement, isn't it? I've been asked that question. Can I unschool? Except for math. It's, I'm gonna be saying math. I'm sorry, Cecilia and Sandra, it roll maths rolls off my tongue. And you'll be saying math. it's just the custom of our countries. I 

[00:02:59] Cecilie Conrad: think we're allowed to [00:03:00] speak our own languages here.

[00:03:01] Cecilie Conrad: I speak my version of English and 

[00:03:04] Sue Elvis: Yeah. somebody once said to me who wasn't familiar with the, idea that different countries have different customs, and one said to me that I was wrong. And why was I saying myths? And she had, no idea that quite a bit of the world does use the word myths and it is, math isn't universal.

[00:03:26] Sue Elvis: So that was a bit of a learning moment. I think I 

[00:03:30] Sandra Dodd: forgot. Makes it makes sense if it's an abbreviation for mathematics. It's a plural noun, but, we just don't, I don't think Canada does either. But I know, that the UK and a lot of other colonies do other former colonies they do in, India maths.

[00:03:47] Sue Elvis: So I wanna start say that because sometimes people get annoyed by somebody's, something somebody's saying or the way they're saying it, and. They concentrate on that more than what we are [00:04:00] saying. So I like, I just thought I'd explain that first before we got going. But what I'm interested in is, Cecilia, from what you were just saying, we, kids can learn math and all sorts of other things without any formal instruction, but did you ever sit down with, a formal course, a workbook with any of your children?

[00:04:22] Sue Elvis: Did you learn as you went that wasn't the right way? Or how did you always, approach maths differently with all your children? 

[00:04:35] Cecilie Conrad: So my personal story to become an unschooler is not starting with the concept of unschooling. It's starting with not ha one of my children did not want to go to school.

[00:04:50] Cecilie Conrad: And so we started with the concept of homeschooling in our minds. I was not very aware of the different [00:05:00] nuances. I just knew he was not going to be in the school setting and we had to do something else. And I had to also, I've shared this story several times, so I'll just do it briefly, but I had a cancer disease when our second child was

[00:05:24] Cecilie Conrad: four, I wanna say. Our third child was a baby. Our first child was about 10 or 11. And when I was done with treatment and we were hoping and praying, we had this, our fourth child who was a miracle child. I was not supposed to be able to have any more children. And we took the two youngest out of the kindergarten situation because we didn't know if I would survive.

[00:05:57] Cecilie Conrad: And I had just been away for six months [00:06:00] and it was clearly the only thing I wanted to do was to be around my kids. And, obviously they needed it a lot and we only knew we had four weeks. Every time I had a blood test that was clear, we knew I had another four weeks. So we just, that was a very easy choice.

[00:06:15] Cecilie Conrad: It was not motivated by philosophy or, I liked the idea, I wanted it, on a higher level as well, and I'd wanted it for a while, but the real motivation was very urgent at the moment when it happened. and then I got pregnant and we expected the fourth one. And I kept having the tests and I kept surviving.

[00:06:41] Cecilie Conrad: And the statistics were, for every day I survived. The statistics got better after a year. It was really good. I was down to, I think a relapse risk of about 20% at that point. And we started breathing again. And that's when he was supposed to start school [00:07:00] or slightly before, and he didn't want to and I didn't want him to.

[00:07:07] Cecilie Conrad: And I had a neighbor who wanted to unschool. So I had heard about the concept. It's really random that I had that because at the time we were maybe 20 families in Denmark home educating at all in total. So the fact that there was someone in my street was just, yeah, amazing. And she wanted to unschool, she knew one of the three unschooling families in the country and I met them.

[00:07:33] Cecilie Conrad: And so I knew about the idea and I liked the idea. I offered my oldest child who was in a alternative democratic kind of school to, to, quit, but she wanted to continue. The second child didn't want to go to school. And, but my husband didn't agree. He didn't like the plan, he didn't like the idea for me.

[00:07:56] Cecilie Conrad: He said, you need a career. You need to be able to [00:08:00] breathe. You can't just stay at home, be mom all the time. And, we're taking something away from the, he just, all the things. and I'm trying to be brief and I'm not sorry. 

[00:08:12] Sandra Dodd: It's interesting. Go ahead. 

[00:08:15] Cecilie Conrad: So. 

[00:08:16] Cecilie Conrad: I knew that I couldn't homeschool under any form if my husband didn't agree.

[00:08:25] Cecilie Conrad: So I had to work with him. I, it, my son is, this is my oldest son who is now 19. He's a very, gentle person. I always say he's my sweetest and nicest child. It's not polite to say, but he really is because that's his nature. He is very sweet and nice and he never aggressively threw any tantrums or anything.

[00:08:49] Cecilie Conrad: He just said nicely. I don't think school is for me. It might be for everyone else, but I don't think it's for me. And we brushed it [00:09:00] off and we were like, but you'll be in school. This, the school was a, an age integrated school, so he would be studying with his seven year older sister, would be a very safe environment in many ways.

[00:09:13] Cecilie Conrad: and we tried to convince him. And then at some point he said, he, sat us down. This is a 6-year-old. He sat us down and he said, mom and dad, at what point are you going to listen to me when I'm telling you that school is not for me? And that one hurt? and still, I said, so we talked about it, my husband and I said, I think it's fine.

[00:09:42] Cecilie Conrad: I'll home educate him. I was home already. I had a newborn. I had a 3-year-old, and I liked having my son around. I didn't need him to go to any school. And I said, I liked the idea. My husband was not sure. He said, why don't we try so [00:10:00] he knows what he says no to. and so we tried and, the, my veto was, I'm not going to drop him off.

[00:10:08] Cecilie Conrad: I will take him to school and I will stay with him until he says, it's all right. You can go home. And so we negotiated that with the school. I went three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, in the morning. And when he said, I can't take it anymore. I wanna go home, we went home. So we did that for a few weeks, a few hours, three times a week.

[00:10:32] Cecilie Conrad: and he's sweet and nice and polite, and he did his best to adjust and he did not like it. His whole system shut down. He became very tired. He became very overwhelmed. He just didn't like the concept of it. he tried, he made a friend that he still has. he, it wasn't like he would sit in a corner refusing.

[00:10:52] Cecilie Conrad: he really tried. after a few weeks, the school said to me that the child was too attached to me. [00:11:00] That it, it was a too close and too strong attachment, which is, we all know this, it doesn't exist. You cannot have a too strong and too good attachment to your primary care caretaker. but this was what the school thought, and I thought that was bullshit, but I didn't say it.

[00:11:19] Cecilie Conrad: They also said that, all kids go from paradise to some version of a stressful environment then when they start school. And he just had to learn to cope with it. And I was like, why? Why is he not supposed to be happy every day? I, maybe he's not happy, why is he here? But I didn't say much. And then they set their preposition was, why don't we try it where the dad comes with the child every morning because we think you are the problem, or the relationship between you and your son is the problem.

[00:11:53] Cecilie Conrad: So I thought about that for about two and a half seconds and I thought, that's a great [00:12:00] idea because it's my husband who wants him here, so why don't he take that one and I can stay at home at the time. So we had a newborn or, he was six, eight months old and in Denmark you have about 10 months of maternity leave, but that can be transferred to the dad in two cases if the mom is dead or if the mom has a deadly disease.

[00:12:25] Cecilie Conrad: And I had a deadly disease technically because I was still actually a cancer patient. I just didn't relapse. So my husband had the maternity leave. I was also too weak to do it alone at the time. I was just out of the cancer situation when I had a baby. So he had the time he went or he didn't, but he agreed.

[00:12:46] Cecilie Conrad: I went home. I told him, you, you're gonna have to do it. The school was not, will not work with me any longer. And, it's also actually your idea. I don't think this is going to work. This is a Thursday and the next school day is the following [00:13:00] Tuesday. but on the Saturday I get a phone call that a friend of mine died and she died of the disease that I was surviving.

[00:13:13] Cecilie Conrad: you make a lot of friends, I made a lot of friends in the hospital get pretty close when you get chemotherapy together. and she died and she was a great woman. So we went to the funeral on the Monday and going back from that funeral, which was, it's quite confronting to be the one who didn't die.

[00:13:36] Cecilie Conrad: I hardly had hair at the time, and her children was, carrying out a casket and my children could drive back in the car with me. and that was a very clear and eye-opening moment for all of us. And on that car ride back from the funeral, my husband said, I don't know what we're thinking. Why would we force [00:14:00] him to go to school?

[00:14:02] Cecilie Conrad: So this was a not short version of how we started. And so here he, realized. Of course we wouldn't do this. But still, he wanted me to teach. He was still afraid of the situation. He was afraid of what everyone else around us would say. And he was afraid that we would ruin our son's life by not giving him an education.

[00:14:29] Cecilie Conrad: And he was afraid, oh, he was afraid of all the classic things. And so was I, in a way. And he also started by saying, you can teach him at home for a year, or maybe you only said six months, and then we'll see how it goes. But only if you teach him what they learn in schools. So this is a very long answer to your question.

[00:14:52] Cecilie Conrad: Yes, I sat down with school books. I felt I had to, I did that [00:15:00] for about, I don't know, I tried to do it for about, I would say a year and a half before I fully let go and it into unschooling. but I didn't do it. I just lived a life feeling guilty of not doing it, feeling I should do it, but it didn't make sense to do it.

[00:15:24] Cecilie Conrad: So I didn't do it. But I had, I was afraid my husband wouldn't keep agreeing with the homeschooling. he actually learned about. He was able to let go much faster than me once he realized what unschooling was and I was still afraid for a while, and then I realized I'm doing something every day or trying to do it or feeling guilty, I'm not doing it to my children who are the most precious people in my life because I'm afraid of what, am I afraid of really?

[00:15:59] Cecilie Conrad: [00:16:00] And if I am that afraid of the state, the government coming to check me. Should that be my kids' problem or should I, I'm the adult. I should figure that out. I should hack that problem and solve it without pushing my kids to do things they don't want to do.

[00:16:21] Sue Elvis: Yeah. Yeah. I was, one of those people that said we were unschoolers, but we didn't do math. And because this was years ago with my last two children, and because I felt a little bit uneasy about being an unschooling blogger, uns, I did, I could I call myself an unschooler, an unschooling blogger.

[00:16:44] Sue Elvis: I made out and I think we can, what's the word? Not lie to ourselves, but we can deceive ourselves. My kids loved math. This is what I told everybody. And we were all like, 'cause I like myths. [00:17:00] And I thought they just like me. They love myths. We do our myths every day. But, yeah, that went by the wayside after a while.

[00:17:08] Sue Elvis: So I do have, very, a lot of empathy with people who say, ah, okay, we're unschoolers, but we can't let go of maths. But I wanna know your story, Sandra. Have, we, when you start with maths in particular, did you, was there a time where you had to let go of it or were you happy to unschool as a whoops, unschool completely just, you didn't make any separations between, areas of learning that your kids were experiencing?

[00:17:46] Sandra Dodd: I have a couple of stories I wanna tell to set the trajectory and then we can, I can come back and tell other stories in, the holes, but there are two that are moments Points on the line. I knew from the beginning [00:18:00] why not to teach it. I understood the problems with teaching it because, Cecilia, earlier you said that, schools force kids to learn math.

[00:18:09] Sandra Dodd: They don't, they pretty much force most kids to hate math and fear it. And to avoid it, you cannot force a child to learn anything. I don't care how much. Yeah. aversion and electro shock stuff you set up, they'll just learn that they hate you, that the thing is stupid to get away from you. So when parents try to force kids to do things at home, it works against the success of unschooling.

[00:18:37] Sandra Dodd: Maybe gradually, maybe largely, maybe quickly. It, that's different in every situation. But I knew not to, and when, my oldest was six five, I consciously did not use those school terms for subjects. I didn't use the terms math or science or history. If he was interested in cowboys, that was cowboys.

[00:18:56] Sandra Dodd: If he was interested in rocks, that was rocks. A lot of [00:19:00] parents do the sing songy sort of voice. Oh, you like this, you like, world War ii. That's history and that's geography. and then that's like the, why. What are they talking about? So they've changed the subject. The kid wants to talk about World War II and the parents are totally dismissing it in a way, minimalizing it in a way.

[00:19:20] Sandra Dodd: So I knew not to do that, and I was careful not to do that When Marty Mar, my, my kids in order are Kirby. And then two and a half, two and a half years later, Marty, and then three years later, Holly. So they're within about five years. And, Marty and Kirby. Wanted to go walk down to the convenience store and get a soda.

[00:19:43] Sandra Dodd: So Marty said, oh, I guess Kirby had some money and Marty didn't, or something like that. So Marty said, what can I do, mom, to earn some money? And I said, you wanna do this? And I drew a timestables. I just drew one to nine across the top and one to 10 down the side, one to nine down the side. And I [00:20:00] said, I'll show you how to fill this in.

[00:20:01] Sandra Dodd: And I showed him you like just the first couple, what's two times two? And he knew, and he wrote it down, I think he was seven maybe. And so Kirby would've been nine. So he said, oh yeah. 'cause I knew he would like it. He liked numbers, he liked counting by threes, counting by fives. So I had never said, but that's math.

[00:20:17] Sandra Dodd: And, but that's multiplication. I didn't, because I was super careful. And so he said, how much will that be? And I said, it'll be what this is. And I pointed where nine times nine would be. And he messed with it just in his head for a little, just me, 91. So I just left him to it, I said, if you fill this in, I'll give you money.

[00:20:35] Sandra Dodd: And then I thought that was so dumb that I went nine to nine. I did that because that's what they taught us in school. So I went and put tens, so he'd have a dollar anyway, Kir. So Kirby said, what's he doing? and I showed him and he said, I wanna do that. And so I made Kirby one that was one to 12.

[00:20:50] Sandra Dodd: And then they're just sitting there like they're bubbling, helping each other, talking about it. How cool. Seeing patterns. And I thought, I understand they're gonna discover some stuff on their own that will be [00:21:00] exciting. They'll be way better than if they had done it with a bunch of other kids around who are going, I don't get it.

[00:21:04] Sandra Dodd: What is this? It's dumb. Because they were both excited. So I gave him some money and they walked and got a soda, and that was over. I told my husband, it was a fun story for us. Oh, I'm gonna tell you three stories because I just remembered which room we were in at the time. There was a time before my husband and I were married, before we had kids.

[00:21:23] Sandra Dodd: I was at his house visiting, and I'm sitting in a room, he's sitting around the corner, he's on the toilet. But anyway, we, don't see each other and we're talking, and I said, I, he's a mathy guy. Very math was working on a math degree. Everything's easy for him. He would help his friends with calculus, and I was just like, I, finished Algebra one, geometry one, that was great.

[00:21:45] Sandra Dodd: When we got to algebra two and they start doing squares and cubes, I'm like, can you explain this to me? And they didn't do it well enough. I was baffled. So I dropped outta math in those days. I took one math course in college and it was called Math for Non-Majors. And it was a book [00:22:00] with every chapter, all words.

[00:22:01] Sandra Dodd: It was all in English. It wasn't in math. and it wasn't in numbers, it wasn't in math, but I didn't know that. So I told Keith this day, I said, I liked math in school. Okay, I got it for a long time till I was about 15. I said, but the question, the only questions I really liked were the word problems. I didn't like the number problems.

[00:22:20] Sandra Dodd: And this voice comes from across the wall. The word problems are the only math in there. The rest of it, the, rest of them are the answers to unstated word problems without the calculations. I just sat there. I couldn't say anything all my life. I liked math because the part that was math was, what if you have this situation and you have to figure out, I liked that.

[00:22:47] Sandra Dodd: I didn't like what they said. Here are 30, sets of numbers for you to do something about and for us to mark in red and give you a score. And I did well in those too. I could do them. I could do it. I just didn't thought it was stupid. [00:23:00] Turns out it was. So that's what calculators are for. So if a, if on a piece of paper it says 20, what's 24 minus eight?

[00:23:08] Sandra Dodd: It's like 24. what, who, where are those eight going? What's going on? It's that's not the question. That's not what you're supposed to be thinking about. And so that's just counting on your fingers. That's monkey math. That's, not, even considered math. When you, when people talk about math at a higher level, that's considered arithmetic.

[00:23:27] Sandra Dodd: That doesn't lead anywhere. But to bookkeeping, which is not considered math, bookkeeping is clerical work. 

[00:23:35] Sandra Dodd: So par parents, most parents whose kids go to school don't know that. They don't care about that. They think that all of the, a addition, subtraction, multiplication, that, that's higher mathematics, but it isn't.

[00:23:46] Sandra Dodd: You need to know some of those, if you're gonna do algebra or anything, physics, anything that has formulas involved with formulas. So yeah, you're gonna need some of that. Eventually if you go into mathematics, but that itself is not mathematics, [00:24:00] which was really interesting to me. So after that, I followed Keith around about math ideas, and what about this?

[00:24:05] Sandra Dodd: What about this? He said, since he was a little kid, he thought in patterns. I didn't, I thought in words. 

[00:24:15] Sandra Dodd: And I thought in language. And I thought in emotions. So he didn't think in emotions. He didn't even consider emotions, didn't care about emotions. And I was all about who feels how and what can we do about that?

[00:24:27] Sandra Dodd: Which, which two people need to hang out together because of the emotions in this, group, in this school, group of kids. And I was really good at that, at figuring out what would make peace among other kids. And my husband didn't consider that he was good at sports and math. So that's, that was interesting for me to know as my kids were coming along too.

[00:24:46] Sandra Dodd: I don't, we don't know what they're gonna be interested in. And it didn't go by gender either. It didn't, there were, Holly was great at math and she's great at spatial reasoning. One of the, another kid's story, is Holly [00:25:00] loved to change rooms in our house. She had four or five of these rooms as her 1, 2, 3, 4 or five, six different rooms as her bedroom, different times.

[00:25:10] Sandra Dodd: So she would just trade me my office for, to let it be her bedroom or whatever, or what. Her brother moved out for a year. We saved it for him and it was a gaming room. And then he told her, I'm gonna stay in Texas so you can have it. When she would move from one room to another. She and her dad would get graph paper and she would measure all of her pieces of furniture and they would cut 'em out so that they were proportional on this with graph paper.

[00:25:35] Sandra Dodd: And then she would rearrange those on another piece of graph paper. And then she would tell her dad, she would show it to her dad, this is how I want my furniture. And he would go and move it. When she, when we bought her a house, when she was grown, she did the same thing. she, was making models of her furniture and trying it in different rooms.

[00:25:51] Sandra Dodd: I would've never thought to do that. I would maybe at most go in with a measuring tape and say, it'll fit here, bring it in here. But she was, that was some, [00:26:00] that was a habit and a hobby between her and her dad since she was a little kid. when my oldest was a teen and, 18 or 19, he went to the community college.

[00:26:12] Sandra Dodd: He and another unschooler, the other kid needed to go because he needed 15 hours of college credit to join the Marines because he didn't have a high school diploma and he wanted to be a Marine because his daddy had been a Marine. So they said, okay, you need to take at least, so what would that have been, five classes?

[00:26:28] Sandra Dodd: He needed to take five college classes and they didn't care what they were. So the two of these kids went up to the community college, which is pretty close to our house, and they signed up for some classes. And one of them was, oh, to get to sign up for any classes, you take a test so that they know what you can place into.

[00:26:44] Sandra Dodd: So they were taking a college prep class, like how to study. It was a class about how to do well as a student. And neither one of them had been to school at all, and they were loving that class. And it was all of the stuff that people tell you in school all the time about time management [00:27:00] and preparation and how to decide how long you need to do a report.

[00:27:02] Sandra Dodd: And that's a lot of mathematical thinking in, in, and that it's logic and planning and reasoning. And so these boys were on it and they said, this is awesome. They were talking to 'em about notes on three by five cards and how to keep a notebook. And all of the other kids were like, oh, I've heard it a hundred times.

[00:27:19] Sandra Dodd: And the teacher's yeah, but you haven't done it yet. And these boys were like, I'm doing it. They just loved that class. So meanwhile, Kirby tested into the middle of the three math levels of remedial math. There's, doesn't have a clue. Almost gets it in the middle. So he's in the middle and he takes a remedial math course at a community college, which is like a, an a another government provided educational level.

[00:27:45] Sandra Dodd: So he goes into this math class, it, he's like a musician who's really good musician, professional musician, who goes to a place where you have to read music and he can't read music. So that was the thing. It's not that he didn't [00:28:00] understand how to manipulate the world in numbers, he just didn't know how to see it written down.

[00:28:07] Sandra Dodd: So I, as I'm walking him out to the car the first day, I said, oh, and also time, sometimes times isn't written with an X, it's written with a line over, or it's written with a dot. And he's mom, leave me alone. So I was teaching him math on the way to his first math class. and he didn't want me to.

[00:28:24] Sandra Dodd: So he get in, he got in there and he was confused and he asked me and his dad for help. And we tried to help him and it frustrated him. He couldn't hear it from us. It was bugging him. So then he asked another friend of his who had gone to school and that he could listen to him. So somehow that kid was a better math teacher.

[00:28:39] Sandra Dodd: That's fine. and he started off baffled and behind and a little frustrated. And then he got the highest grade in the class. So in the time that it took a few months for them to review everything that kids learn in school, 'cause they're trying to get them up to the point that they can take math 1 0 1 at, [00:29:00] you at the college level.

[00:29:03] Sandra Dodd: In the time that he did that, he learned all of the notation that he would've learned in school in 12 years, 13 years. So at the time that was happening, I was telling stories. He also was driving himself to class and he said, there's a woman, I'm gonna make up a name 'cause I don't remember her name.

[00:29:21] Sandra Dodd: Julie, maybe he said, I, saw a woman who was walking and she, like, seemed like she needed help. She, wasn't walking very fast, so I picked her up and gave her a ride and she lives up Tramway and so it's he knows where she's gonna be coming from. And he said, I told her I'd take her, I'd give her a ride every day.

[00:29:38] Sandra Dodd: And I was always assuming it was somebody in her twenties or thirties, but it was an older woman and he gave her a ride back and forth every day. So that I never knew until after the class was over. She got the second, she got the highest test score and he got the highest grade in the class, I think. So they were both, helpful to each other, but they were also both taking remedial math course and she was an older person.

[00:29:59] Sandra Dodd: So when I was [00:30:00] telling these stories in an unschooling discussion, which I thought would be interesting to the other unschoolers, one woman said, it must not work very well because your son's in remedial math. And I said, like she wasn't even reading the stories I was telling and I said he was in a remedial math course with 30 other people.

[00:30:20] Sandra Dodd: He was the only one who had not gone to school. So they went to school all those years and only tested into remedial math. He didn't touch math all those years and did as well as they did. So what are you saying? I think it was Marty or. I think Marty did not, Marty tested it out regularly, but Marty was the mathies of them all.

[00:30:41] Sandra Dodd: And Holly took the highest remedial math class maybe. Pam Ian's kids decided they went in younger, 15 or 16. I think they were going to take college classes, mostly just for fun things like singing in pottery. But they all, or at least one of 'em I know, went and took all five of those math classes from the beginning to the [00:31:00] end just because she knew she hadn't done school math and she liked going to that college and hanging out with those people.

[00:31:06] Sandra Dodd: So she just started at, she probably would've tested into the third or fourth out of five, but she started at one and took all five. so it's not, it, depending where you are, there may or may not be free. Government provided remedial math courses, but because, my kids didn't fear or avoid math when it came along, it wasn't scary to them at all.

[00:31:29] Sandra Dodd: It was fun. It was just learning a new system, a new way to write something, a notation, a picture of what those numbers could look like. And they had played a lot of cards. They had the calculations of adding and subtracting and multiplying were very standard for their lives because they had played things like magic, the gather, the gathering, done a lot of d and d where you're doing things with dice and math and points.

[00:31:59] Sandra Dodd: And Kirby had [00:32:00] worked at a gaming shop from the time he was 14 to 18 and. One time they sent him to run a magic tournament at a hotel, and so he's in charge of their table. Oh, I take it back. He wasn't running it that day. He had, he did run some, but that day he was running a table for the store, selling cards and dice or whatever people need for that game.

[00:32:20] Sandra Dodd: So he has a little shop display on a folding table and people are coming by and buying from that store because he had worked at the store with a cash register that was a computer-based cash register. He just knew, he just remembered if somebody buys one pack of cards or three or five, he knew how much it was with New Mexico tax.

[00:32:39] Sandra Dodd: And he would tell 'em and they would give him cash. He's keeping the cash in a cracker box. And I know all this because I went to pick him up. He called me and said, mom, I have too much cash here. I need to take it back to the store. Can you come and take me to the store real quick and get me some food and bring me back for the afternoon?

[00:32:53] Sandra Dodd: I said, sure. So I said, the danger of putting cash in a cracker box is someone might throw it away, maybe get a cash box. I took him [00:33:00] a metal, a little metal box, and, he said things were going well there. And then about mid-morning someone brought him a tax chart. He said, I didn't know there was such a thing, mom.

[00:33:10] Sandra Dodd: So they brought him a calculator and a tax chart, but the first couple of hours he didn't have it, and he was fine. 'cause he could figure it out in his head. And I think tax was 7.45 or something like that, but he's, they don't, they didn't mind, he's averaging it or whatever. But he was probably right because he just remembered what it cost from the store and he wasn't selling the whole huge array of stuff.

[00:33:30] Sandra Dodd: It was just a few items. And so he was so happy that he had tools that he had this tax chart and a calculator, but he didn't think in the morning to say, a lot of people would've said, oh, I cannot do this without a calculator in a tax chart. How do you expect me to work under these conditions?

[00:33:47] Sandra Dodd: Because he had no idea. So I loved stories like that. It was just cute because he was tossed into a weird situation where he did well, he was fine and then he found out there was a better way. [00:34:00] So I love that story. Okay. Now you guys, can I 

[00:34:03] Sue Elvis: respond? Can I respond to a couple of things you said there, Sandra?

[00:34:07] Sue Elvis: Right back at the beginning you said something about, kids learn to hate math. I don't when it's, they can learn to hate maths. And that was the exact reason that we let go of, I let go of forcing my kids to do formal maths courses because they were saying things like, I hate maths. And I was, it was so sad that something that I found fa fascinating that I was.

[00:34:40] Sue Elvis: The way that mass was being presented to them and not as part of the bigger world, was making them hate it. And I thought, perhaps if they see how mass is being used in the world and see what a fascinating language it is, they might change their minds. That was a turning point for [00:35:00] me as far as being an unschooler except for maths.

[00:35:04] Sue Elvis: I thought, look, if we go along this pathway, it's not going, it's not going to be advantageous to my children anyway, because they're all gonna say, I hate maths. I can't do it. And so forcing them didn't seem to have any advantages, but if we just looked at maths as part of the world and something that was potentially very interesting, they might gain from it.

[00:35:28] Sue Elvis: And so that's what we did. But the other point you made, Sandra, about notation, made me think of, my youngest child who encountered maths in the world. I love all your stories there and I have similar ones, but if I asked my youngest daughter to sit down and write a maths equation out, how could you describe that with numbers and all the usual notations?

[00:35:53] Sue Elvis: She would've had no idea. And, the notation I don't think [00:36:00] is that important as far, isn't as far as understanding that it's much better to be able to understand. The problem that you are trying to work out. And my, my, my daughter was very good at working out things that I had no idea how she got the answer that she didn't use conventional, memorized formula or anything like that.

[00:36:24] Sue Elvis: She just sat there and thought about it, came up with the correct answer for herself, but she couldn't write it down in a nice, this plus and then this fraction. And she had no idea about stuff like denominator and numerator and, oh, all these math court wanted to drill all these words, all these math vocabulary, into the kids.

[00:36:50] Sue Elvis: And I thought, is it really important that we know what a denominator is, or a numerator? as long as you know which number it is and what you're doing with it, [00:37:00] and if it's important to you. So when she was about 14, she suddenly said to me one day, mom, I think it's, I think that I'd like to know the notation so I can talk about this with other people, in a language that they know.

[00:37:16] Sue Elvis: So she, I asked her how she wanted to do this, and she said, I think I might go look for a course online. So she ended up on Khan Academy and then she. Decided herself where she was gonna slot in. And I was wondering at 14, where would she slot in not having done any formal myths? And I think she slotted in about six months younger than she should have done.

[00:37:44] Sue Elvis: And I thought, wow, it's, amazing what she has picked up and learned, just by encountering the world and thinking about the things and encountering problems in her own life that needed, that she [00:38:00] wanted to solve. And, the Khan Academy lasted about, I don't know, six or nine months, and she decided she'd had enough and she moved on from that.

[00:38:11] Sue Elvis: But what was really interesting was later on she came in con had friends at that came outta school and she worked with people that were in school. And her math skills were much better than the kids that came outta school. And she hadn't done all this formal stuff. And, which reminds me of another story that when my, son got into university, to study a bachelor of nursing, he didn't do all the formal subjects, like you said, separate this subject out from that subject.

[00:38:47] Sue Elvis: But he did do a couple of university units on. I think he did one on critical thinking, one on writing. Maybe I, can't remember. He did well on them and he got into [00:39:00] university easy, but his friend who'd gone all the way through school didn't get into the course that she wanted. And her mother was so angry with me.

[00:39:11] Sue Elvis: She said to me, your son, didn't go to uni work at school. He didn't do all the work that my daughter has done. He just, he just lived life and stayed home. And, she didn't think he'd done much and he got into university. It's just not fair. And I thought, it's not that it's not fair. I could see how frustrated she was, but her putting her faith in a system, and expecting it to give the results that my son had yeah, that was very interesting how people can, they can tell you that you are, you're doing nothing at home with your kids and all that. But when the exam was not exam results, 'cause he never did any exams, [00:40:00] but when things like he got this university place no problem whatsoever. yeah, it wasn't fair.

[00:40:09] Sue Elvis: He should have done, he should have worked hard for that. I guess he did work hard, but he worked hard at living. 

[00:40:17] Sandra Dodd: there is something about playing goes beyond math, but if kids just play, with all kinds of things, whatever they wanna play, however they wanna play with words, play with things, play with their food, I don't care, play, explore by messing with stuff, they are then prepared for a lot of school subjects that if they had tried to teach those to kids who hadn't played a lot, it wouldn't make sense.

[00:40:46] Sandra Dodd: And one of 'em is physics. I was talking to my, I have a teenage granddaughter, she's about to turn 16. she was talking about how she's noticing the differences. She's noticing in boys and girls her age and that the girls, there are things that the girls have known for a few [00:41:00] years that the boys are just discovering about interpersonals and emotions.

[00:41:03] Sandra Dodd: And there are things that, and I said, yes, but there are things that the boys have been doing for years that you might never do. And one is crashing toy cars and building towers of blocks and knocking 'em down. I didn't say, but that's what kids start when they're really little. How hard do you have to hit something to break it?

[00:41:20] Sandra Dodd: boys, especially boys, not my daughter was a skateboarder too, but boys, very often are the ones who will build a ramp to jump a bike off or go to skateboard parks and do the dangerous stuff. When those kids who have wrecked blocks, wrecked toy cars, jumped their physical bodies on wheels at various speeds to see what happens when they go to a physics class and the physics teacher starts talking about vector and speed and angle.

[00:41:45] Sandra Dodd: They're like, okay, keep talking. I know what you're talking about. And some of the girls, like I was, like, what vector of what? Speed? Of what? I still wanted to see a thing, what are you talking about? And the boys who had played so [00:42:00] hard out in the yard and risked their legs in their lives went, okay, we know what they're talking about.

[00:42:07] Sandra Dodd: the, the angle makes a difference. The speed makes a difference. And so it's like that with math. what my daughter was doing with spatial reasoning and rearranging furniture. That's geometry, but didn't have any numbers really except the number of squares on the graph paper.

[00:42:25] Sandra Dodd: And when my husband said, I, when I told him what we're gonna talk about, he said, remind them that driving a car is calculus. And I said, okay. And I, said, is the skateboard and bike stuff calculus? And he said, no, that's physics. So, I will tell you on behalf of my Matthew husband that, what it takes to drive a car, or like your son Sue, is driving a mining truck.

[00:42:48] Sandra Dodd: That's even more if you can drive, if you, or if you can back up those, the grocery trucks back to a loading dock at the grocery store, man. So that's calculus, backing up a trailer [00:43:00] and hitting that bumper very gently with the trailer lined up so that they can walk from the platform to the trailer.

[00:43:06] Sandra Dodd: Yeah, that's something that, that very few people can do. It's pretty tricky, 

[00:43:11] Cecilie Conrad: so I definitely cannot do it. 

[00:43:13] Sandra Dodd: And a lot of record. I wouldn't even wanna try. I've pulled a trailer a couple times, scared me to death. 

[00:43:20] Cecilie Conrad: I can't even back out my own car from the driveway. 

[00:43:25] Sandra Dodd: So all of the things that kids play with, games, there's all kinds of, all the whole world in there.

[00:43:32] Sandra Dodd: And so then when you come to any sort of formal discussion or notation or terminology, then you'll be prepared to understand it because you'll have many hooks to hang it on. many examples of what, what's going fast, like somebody on a skateboard. there's a, so what we are 

[00:43:49] Sue Elvis: saying here is that even though sometimes that kids look, like they're just playing, just like we were saying last time, Cecilia, about looks like we're just [00:44:00] drinking coffee.

[00:44:00] Sue Elvis: When we are chatting, our kids are actually learning. And there's more than one way of assessing how, our kids don't have to be assessed by exams and grading to determine that they're learning. And one of the questions we were talking about, before we actually started recording is how do we know our kids are learning?

[00:44:27] Sue Elvis: Which seems self-evident to us, but that's a popular question that comes up. And I've been asked that in interviews before. How do your kids, how do you know your kids are learning? And my ki my Couple of my daughters when they were teenagers were interviewed and they were asked that as well. And we just look at each other and think, it sounds like a stupid question, but do we, need to talk about that or have we covered that?

[00:44:56] Sue Elvis: I think 

[00:44:56] Sandra Dodd: that's our next topic. Next, next discussion. Because 

[00:44:59] Sue Elvis: next, [00:45:00] time. Is it, this 

[00:45:00] Cecilie Conrad: is, it's episode nine. You're skipping? Yes. Oh, sorry. No, that's fine. That's fine. So math there something 

[00:45:08] Sue Elvis: Sandra said let math No. Can talk about, because we're 

[00:45:13] Sandra Dodd: talking about how do you see math? How do you see math?

[00:45:16] Sandra Dodd: How do you see that a child is learning math? This, do we know that our kids are learning math? Oh, math. It'll help very much for the parents to go off on the side with other parents and discuss it without discussing it with the kids. Like instead of coming to your children and saying, I'm so glad you were riding your skateboard today, because that will lead to a greater understanding of physics in the future.

[00:45:35] Sandra Dodd: Oh, hush. so that was a very cool trick. you need new knee pads. Are your pads still good? I'm worried about your, because that's what moms really ought to be worrying about. Not physics, but are the kids, do they have good equipment? Do they need new wheels? so when enough unschooling parents are in communication with each other that they see a lot of stories, not just their own kids, but other people's kids, then they can calmly have the [00:46:00] confidence that if the kids are busy playing, laughing, smiling, interacting with other people, they're learning.

[00:46:06] Sandra Dodd: That's what it looks like. And then another thing that pa that a lot of parents don't know and don't want to know because it's because they don't wanna learn because they were told once you get outta school, you don't have to learn anything else is what math looks like, what math looks like. In the absence of numbers, it looks like playing with patterns.

[00:46:24] Sandra Dodd: It looks like planning a trip to another town that involves time, cost, gasoline, what equipment you need, all of that sort of logic and strategy. All of the things that people do to plan a camping trip where you need also food and water. I live where you have to take your own water if you go camping.

[00:46:44] Sandra Dodd: Some people live where water comes outta the ground and is clean or there's a faucet, but not, New Mexico. so whatever you need to know where you are to do some things you might wanna do, even to just go to the museum. Do you need snacks? How much money is it gonna cost? [00:47:00] Is it cold air? Is it warm there?

[00:47:01] Sandra Dodd: What do you need? That's math. But don't tell them, but tell other parents. Tell yourself. So parents should see that the things that math is made of is patterns and strategy and logic. Deductive reasoning. If you can find something you lost, think of all the places. I hung my keys on a twig on a tree one time and I could not find my car keys.

[00:47:24] Sandra Dodd: And I told my husband, I remember when I hung them up. This is not a good place to put 'em, but it was. It was a hook. So we're looking at hooks in the house. And then one day I was just out there feeding the birds and there it was right in front of my face. So I had put it there so I could, we have a bird feeder on a pulley.

[00:47:40] Sandra Dodd: I had to put that down 'cause I needed two, two hands for the pulley. So I pulled, I went out there to feed. So that's how long it lasted, the time it took the birds to empty that, the finch feeder. And I went out and there were my keys hanging in the front yard 10 feet from my car with the house key. So luckily I found them.

[00:47:59] Sandra Dodd: No one else, [00:48:00] but yes. But, now that's another checklist. So you have the checklist of mistakes you've made before. Check the trash. If you haven't taken the trash out, if you overthrew your keys in the trash, stuff like that, could be modeled in a mathematical way. It could be described in technical terms, but why, if you can do it in normal thought, in normal language, in normal, in envisioning you're setting up grids and patterns and methods and it's a strategy.

[00:48:35] Sandra Dodd: You have a strategy for finding things. 

[00:48:37] Cecilie Conrad: There's a thing I've been wanting to talk about, and I think it comes up in, in many areas around unschooling actually. And I've seen it in my own children and also in other children I've known who are unschooled, how the things that. School [00:49:00] systems push for and they push from the kids who are maybe four years old for them to learn specific things.

[00:49:09] Cecilie Conrad: If you wait, which is part of your slogan, Sandra, if you just wait at some point, these things make sense for the kids to learn and it might be very much later than, you can handle as a parent because you were from the system of pushing and you want to see results and you're afraid you're ruining their lives.

[00:49:34] Cecilie Conrad: And that whole story that we need to talk more about the whole deschooling and how do we hold our, so that's not for today, but if you wait, just leave them be and let them do what makes sense for them. It could be skateboarding, watching enemy drawing, playing, looking at bird, whatever. But they're not doing structured math.

[00:49:58] Cecilie Conrad: They're not studying [00:50:00] history. Maybe they're not interested in World War ii. Maybe you cannot see it. Even however hard you look, you cannot see it. The schooly stuff, if you wait at some point, it's like the way the mind works of the young person. In my experience, they are. At least 13 when this shift happens, they suddenly become more academic.

[00:50:33] Cecilie Conrad: They become more structured in the things they do. And it might not be math. It might never be math, it might be sewing, might be something else, but it be, it goes from this playful unserious kind of thing going everywhere that's life into something where it's as if there is [00:51:00] more, of a specific, it's as if they understand the value and understand I, oh, I don't even have the good language for it, as if working for it makes sense.

[00:51:15] Cecilie Conrad: I'll try and I'll try again and I'll try once more. And I need to figure this out. I have just seen it, and this is baffling for me. It's not math. I have just seen it. One of my children is very talented with music and we've always known it's in, we can just, it's the whole way he's around music.

[00:51:37] Cecilie Conrad: We can see that he hears more than we hear. We, he enjoys it differently. He understand. He talks about things. He finds things and we, we have always thought he needs to learn to play. Not one, but five instruments because he's got so much and he needs to have an outlet. But you need to learn. I was taught by a German piano teacher when I was a child.[00:52:00] 

[00:52:02] Cecilie Conrad: muscle memory. You have to rehearse the chords. You have to sit there for an hour a day. You have to do it perfectly three times in a row or you keep going. All these things you have to do. The 10,000 hours. We've all heard these things and it, I, it's been, I've failed. It's been so hard to not push him that I failed.

[00:52:24] Cecilie Conrad: I've pushed him and I've failed because he's stronger than me, so I cannot push him. But I've tried because I couldn't stop, I couldn't help myself. I kept going. You need to learn to play an instrument. You need to have an outlet for this. You're so talented. It will make you 

[00:52:42] Sandra Dodd: happy. wait, Why are you pushing him at a certain age though? Because school pushes. Because they want to give their music teacher something to do because they want to take credit for your child learning. Because I know because they only have until the kids. I push him 

[00:52:55] Cecilie Conrad: because I want him to be happy. But I didn't make him happy by [00:53:00] pushing you.

[00:53:00] Cecilie Conrad: I can't guarantee you I failed. I'm not proud of it, but at least I'm honest. So I'm learning to not push over my now what, 10, 15 years of unschooling. And the more I learn, the more success I have with my unschooling. And what I've just seen with this is my youngest, he's 13, is that now he's picking up instruments and he's playing like a dream.

[00:53:30] Cecilie Conrad: I just saw, just before I sat down to do this recording, he sat with the piano with his eyes closed and played music that I just, I had to stop what I was doing to just listen to it because it was Can 

[00:53:42] Sandra Dodd: he read music? 

[00:53:43] Cecilie Conrad: No, 

[00:53:44] Sandra Dodd: it's not a requirement. Paul McCartney is doing fine and he is reading music.

[00:53:48] Sandra Dodd: Yeah. he tried, he tried to learn enough music to write like a, like an or orchestral piece one time. And I think he went ahead and wrote it without successfully having learned all the music. I used to think he'd learned it. I knew he had started. [00:54:00] it, music and musical notation are no more the same thing than mathematical concepts and numbers.

[00:54:10] Sandra Dodd: People can be great musicians without reading music. People can read music and not be musical at all. They don't know any more than to mechanically hit the right keys on the piano for what they see on paper. They can't hear it. They don't know what it is. They, even if they memorize it, they don't know how to play it except mechanically.

[00:54:29] Sandra Dodd: And so there are two different things. 

[00:54:31] Cecilie Conrad: I think it's a good example, this thing, how I got it wrong with my idea of, you have to play a musical instrument for a year before it becomes fun because you need to learn all the blah, blah, blah, all of that. I. This whole story around learning and what I've learned about unschooling, the waiting game, the, you know what, let go of it.

[00:54:54] Cecilie Conrad: Maybe they will never learn, but the things they will learn when they pick them up, they [00:55:00] will learn them quickly. They will learn them with, passion. They will learn them enjoying the process. They will learn because they, can't help themselves. They just wanna keep going. And, you will have these proficient, happy people when they are at the other end of the young years, let's say early twenties.

[00:55:21] Cecilie Conrad: They have all these skills, all these things they learned and they learned on a meta level that it's fun to learn, that it's voluntary, to learn that you can learn something really quickly if you want to, because you can. And the same thing goes for math. And I think we need to have a discussion on this podcast, maybe even today about, because both of you talked about how your children eventually learned math, how they took the community college.

[00:55:52] Cecilie Conrad: I know you don't mean this, but I just wanna, Do you say in English? Bend. Bend it in Neon. Say that in [00:56:00] Danish. remember the neon signs from the eighties and seventies, how that would be the commercial. So we say in Danish, you bend things in neon, for everyone to understand. Maybe they don't need to learn math.

[00:56:12] Cecilie Conrad: Why do we need to learn math? Do everyone need 

[00:56:14] Sandra Dodd: to learn math? You've, just used the word learn about 15 times. Oh, sorry. About learning, music, learning. And I know we're talking about learning. We're talking about learning math. We're talking about math. I understand. But there is a problem, especially when you're talking about something like music or playing or games, that you didn't need to learn music.

[00:56:30] Sandra Dodd: He needed to play music. He was playing music. Yes. Right away he picked up those instruments and he played. So, if you can back up a level and not use the word learn so much about it. He was actually doing it. Our kids were doing math. Our kids were using mathematical tools without learning to use them.

[00:56:48] Sandra Dodd: They just picked them up, figured 'em out, did it. they were using math while they were playing games. There was a game at our house called Bazaar, B-A-Z-A-A-R. It's out of print, but it involved [00:57:00] little glass, those little glass flat beads that they used for markers a lot. And then, years back and there were cards and you're trying to trade for another color.

[00:57:09] Sandra Dodd: So it's like a market trading game. and at the beginning of the game, you pick one of the gaming cards, you set it down in the middle and it says one red costs three blues. One blue costs two greens. So you don't need to memorize it at all. You just, when you want to get, you're trying to fill out a card that has a pattern on it.

[00:57:28] Sandra Dodd: So if you need a green one, you look over there, you need to buy a green with whatever it costs. So you look at the chart and it's kinda like market or, stock market kinda stuff. It's 'cause the next time you play the game, don't even bother to learn this. 'cause the next time you play the game, it's gonna be different.

[00:57:46] Sandra Dodd: And that was super mathematical without a single number except to say, two for one or something like that. But it wasn't adding up. It was just patterns built out of patterns that you had to fulfill in some, in a temporary way [00:58:00] and the condition of the moment. And it was a fun game and it was a pretty game, which helped.

[00:58:05] Sandra Dodd: It was artsy looking and not mathematical, overtly and nothing but math at another level. So we never said that to the kids. We just played that game with them. There's a video game that came out maybe in the nineties, probably in the nineties, called Zoom Beanies. I'm gonna spell it because it has been released again as an iPad game or as tablet games, not just iPads.

[00:58:28] Sandra Dodd: Z-O-O-M-B-I-N-I-S. No numbers, all patterns, all deductive reasoning. It's cute. It's these little creatures that you're taking on a journey. And first, the first thing is let them sit. But they, have to sit by somebody who has one thing in common with them, and they're like six attributes. They can have hair, glasses or not glasses.

[00:58:52] Sandra Dodd: What kind of shoes, what color, nose, stuff like that. So they have to all get on a raft, but no one can sit next to someone who has nothing in [00:59:00] common with them. So you have to keep rearranging 'em until you have 'em. And then you go to the next place, and then there's a puzzle. They have to, there's an adventure.

[00:59:06] Sandra Dodd: An adventure they're doing. And it's a puzzle. Sort them this way, that way. And 

[00:59:12] Cecilie Conrad: it's, you sold it to me. I wanna play it now. It's cute. 

[00:59:15] Sandra Dodd: Yeah. 

[00:59:16] Cecilie Conrad: I think I'll look for that. 

[00:59:18] Sandra Dodd: used to be a disc and it only played on older computers. And so as people's computers would die, the last computer, they, the last, the desktop computer that would play Zoom beanies.

[00:59:27] Sandra Dodd: Everybody like Zoom beanies died. And I can play Zoom beanies and, but a lot of us who of kids, my kids age, who were born in the eighties, learned a lot of math with that. And without knowing it. Without knowing they'd learned anything. 

[00:59:43] Sue Elvis: And that's the thing, isn't it, that there are a lot of math schemes, that parents tempt their kids with so that they learn math.

[00:59:54] Sue Elvis: I always thought of games as maths games as two, two different sorts. There's the games that [01:00:00] are designed to teach our kids maths. There's the games that use math, as part. That's not the main thing, but you are using myths as you're playing the game. And I always remember my youngest daughter, we tried out lots of different games and she would get so fed up with these ones, like you have to two times two equals four.

[01:00:24] Sue Elvis: If you don't get the right answer before the parachute comes down, a big flash comes on the screen, it says you failed. And I, and she would get so upset about this and I thought, what a message we're sending our kids. You failed. and in the end she said, I said to her, she was playing this game. I'm not sure what it was.

[01:00:46] Sue Elvis: And she wasn't getting anywhere. She just said, mom, this is boring. And I said, all right, give me a go. So I sat down and after five minutes I turned to her and said, yeah, it's boring. It's kids aren't [01:01:00] stupid. That they underst understand when we are trying to force learning into them and using maybe, as I tried in the early years ago about using attractive methods.

[01:01:16] Sue Elvis: To force learning into kids. And you think it's sugarcoated or in this case, a video coated or these interactive things and you think, oh, the kids are gonna love this. But they can see right through that to what you are doing. You are forcing, trying to force them to learn a particular concept or whatever.

[01:01:39] Sue Elvis: And my children wouldn't cooperate. they weren't like all children. They're not silly and they protested. And so when people say things like, oh, they can learn maths through games. I like the sound of your ones, Sandra, but we tried an awful lot of [01:02:00] games that were horrible. 

[01:02:03] Sandra Dodd: Zinis doesn't say this is an educational math game at all.

[01:02:06] Sue Elvis: No. 

[01:02:07] Sandra Dodd: And, but there's a, like a secret place you can go to look online. I think you, I don't even think it's inside the game that the parents can go and look things up. Used to be, it used to be, if you looked it up, there were things for parents. But I What, when was your, this is a personal question, but when was your oldest born?

[01:02:23] Sandra Dodd: What year? 

[01:02:25] Sue Elvis: 87. 

[01:02:26] Sandra Dodd: Oh, okay. maybe about the same age. So video games were new. In those days there weren't that many of them. And they mostly worked on desktop computers. We had a few, we had a set by a German company I think, or maybe Scandinavian of some sort. Broderbund. Where were they from? I don't know where.

[01:02:43] Sandra Dodd: Somewhere in your, old neighborhood, Cecilia? there was a Sounds German to me, 

[01:02:48] Cecilie Conrad: but I don't know, 

[01:02:49] Sandra Dodd: it had a cross through the O so that, Oh, that 

[01:02:52] Cecilie Conrad: sounds So how do you spell it? 

[01:02:54] Sandra Dodd: DRO with a cross. D-E-R-B-U with an Umla. Umla. 

[01:02:59] Cecilie Conrad: [01:03:00] MDDU with an umla. Just, 

[01:03:03] Sandra Dodd: it could just be a, name that they made up. It could have just been a cool kid.

[01:03:05] Sandra Dodd: Yeah, because 

[01:03:06] Cecilie Conrad: the Umla is not in my language. That's true. Yeah. I don't know. 

[01:03:09] Sandra Dodd: I don't know. I, we can look it up later, but it's not, but at the time they had three games out that were really cute. They were called Playroom Backyard, and I forget the other one. But they were just little ki little kids games, mouse click games.

[01:03:23] Sandra Dodd: But they were about math and, art colors and music mostly. And it, it was just like a cat walking on boards that are, have different tones and you can point, click it and the cat will jump, but it's making music, stuff like that. And so we just got it. And my kids would just play it if they wanted to.

[01:03:44] Sandra Dodd: It was an option to do if they wanted to. And so we knew what they could be potentially learning, but they didn't and didn't matter. And then there was another American set called Treasure Mass. Storm Treasure, mountain Treasure something, a set of three math really mathy. And they're called Treasure Math Storm.[01:04:00] 

[01:04:00] Sandra Dodd: this says math. But we didn't make them do it. We just put it there. It was like, do you wanna leave? Do this? And there was, there were some games in there that the kids really liked, but you're like on a train and you come to a place where you have to mine for some crystals or whatever, or you have to name a number that's, in hundreds and tens and fives.

[01:04:18] Sandra Dodd: You don't, they don't time you. But, sometimes there would be something that was hard for them and they couldn't get past a certain point. So sometimes at night when they were asleep, I would go in and I would set it to a higher level, do some of the multiplication, the higher stuff that they couldn't do yet, get them some points, get them some gold or whatever it was in the game, and pile up some money for them to have more thing, more options.

[01:04:40] Sandra Dodd: And then I would put it back to the easy level wherever they had been. That was fun. But I, that reminds me, sorry, continue. Oh, some of the, same pattern things that people were learning from those games, which were 50 or $60, and that's all they did. They only did what they did. There was no upgrade coming, there was no playing with other people [01:05:00] unless, two kids are sitting there playing together.

[01:05:02] Sandra Dodd: So there are many things now from which you can get those same benefits. One is just playing with Lego. Lego itself is awesome. and that's 

[01:05:10] Cecilie Conrad: my neighborhood. 

[01:05:12] Sandra Dodd: yeah. but, the things that are like Lego are, like Minecraft or some of the games where you're creating something. And they, those are grid or block or however base, kinda like Lego.

[01:05:27] Sandra Dodd: I wanted, I was in Target the other day with my granddaughter. She has a mechanical baby from school that they had to take home. It's like a robot baby that cries and maybe feeding. It will work and maybe you have to, burp it or bounce it. So she didn't wanna go to the store. Part of the assignment was go to the store and take pictures of this baby with baby clothes and their price with food and its price with diapers and wipes.

[01:05:52] Sandra Dodd: So then they gave them a sheet to go to the store. I said, I'll take you to the store when the time comes. And then her baby's battery died on a Sunday afternoon. So she said, let's [01:06:00] go to the store quick. She didn't want the baby to cry in public. she's, and so we went to the store and we're looking, so the instruction sheet that she has to take these photos to turn in at school are, your grandmother gave you $20.

[01:06:16] Sandra Dodd: You need to buy some food and some clothes, food and clothes for the baby. So she found some clothes and food she could afford and took pictures of them. Then we went to, it was like a bottle and some formula or something. And then, you have $50 to get diapers. So we're doing this. But when we're in target, we were talking about target.

[01:06:36] Sandra Dodd: the things that, it's a big store. It's a big thing that has food and clothes and school supplies and jewelry and cameras. It's got, big department store. Marty worked at one when he was in his late teens,

[01:06:51] Sandra Dodd: sorry. So sorry. And It's alright. So one of his jobs was to reset the store. when another season [01:07:00] comes, like Christmas is over now it's gonna be Valentine's Day, now it's gonna be Mother's Day, and then school starts, whatever it's gonna be. they rearranged things and they would get a pamphlet, a booklet from the company that said, you're getting this many like big cardboard displays.

[01:07:15] Sandra Dodd: You have to put this, So he had to figure out what, he had to arrange where sometimes you have to rearrange the shelves, take some ins off of shelves or something. It is physical, big physical. And he said, what's very cool mom, is that the directions are written like Lego, like a Lego pamphlet, like Lego Directions.

[01:07:35] Sandra Dodd: and he said, so it was really easy, I could just get it right away. I told that story when I was speaking in Minnesota, which is the headquarters of Leg of not Lego target stores. and I mentioned that and one of the people told me afterwards, she said, my son works there in that department where they make those, those supplies for other stores.

[01:07:55] Sandra Dodd: And she said they consciously did make it like Lego. [01:08:00] So all the time that Marty spent playing with Lego prepared him to have that position at Target where he resets the shelves seasonally. 

[01:08:08] Sue Elvis: Ta-da ta. I just wanted to say that, you were saying about their games and they had the word math in them and it reminded me that Yeah, we didn't.

[01:08:22] Sue Elvis: Just the kids did sometimes play games, that were described that way because they like to dip into, this is a few years ago now. Cool math. is it called Cool, the cool math site? they used to play it on the, the desktop version and they used to, it wasn't so much, some of it was numbers and learning things like Times Table, but a lot of it was, patterns.

[01:08:51] Sue Elvis: And, you were saying earlier, Sandra, that I'm not sure if it was just when we were talking privately that mass isn't just numbers. [01:09:00] And this site had so many interesting games and it probably still does if people wanna go look cool math. But my kids did like playing that. But they'd play it in, that I say they would play it like they would play a video game.

[01:09:16] Sue Elvis: Now I'm gonna go off and, relaxed by playing a video game. They would go to that site and play some. But there was one particular game there that I, we really enjoyed together and I think there's a lot of these games around. Lemonade stand and there was one about the coffee shop. And then you've got so many hours to make a profit and should, you've got this much money to start with and you've gotta buy your supplies and do you buy more of the lemons or more of the sugar and that type of thing.

[01:09:47] Sue Elvis: And that was really a lot of fun. But you are using a lot of math, numbers and a lot of thinking skills and estimation, things like that. But, so [01:10:00] I guess I just wanted to say that, do I make out that we never did played games that were specifically maths orientated or, but I think it was the type of game, obviously all these on-call myths of the website were designed to teach kids maths, but a lot of them were more than that, that they were fun in themselves.

[01:10:27] Sandra Dodd: There was a game, called Zoo Tycoon. And I think as game theory goes, as game terminology goes, it was a farming game, meaning you have to gather stuff up and farming games are farming games. But there's another broader class of farming games where you're gathering points or gold so that you can build a town or build something.

[01:10:48] Sandra Dodd: So there was one about a zoo, but there was something that was, I don't know what it was called, but it was like an amusement park tycoon game, but I don't remember the name of it. And those were. You're building something, you play the little puzzles [01:11:00] maybe, or whatever you do to get the gold to get to buy a new, a tilted world or a Ferris wheel or whatever you're buying for your park or another animal for the zoo.

[01:11:08] Sandra Dodd: And it was like that too. I think that it was. how much did they have to eat? Holly loved a game. All the kids played it, but Holly stayed with it for years. And it was called Harvest Moon. It was Japanese and it was a literal farming game where your grandfather has retired and left the farm to you and he wants you to make a profit, not let the farm die.

[01:11:29] Sandra Dodd: And you have to meet the neighbors. And to get your own horse, you go and volunteer to brush some horses or cows or something in the neighbors, clean them. And then they give you a horse and you have chickens and you have plant things and harvest them. But one of the most interesting things was that it was Japanese and so there were some Japanese aspects, but they were trying to have it set in America.

[01:11:52] Sandra Dodd: So there was a church that they didn't know much about how to run and there. And [01:12:00] Holly would just mess with this game. She would play with the game. She knew how to play the game, but then she started playing with the game. She took her chicken to church. It became invisible. I don't think they didn't plan it.

[01:12:10] Sandra Dodd: I don't think they planned to. I don't think the, designer said, okay. And then what happens if they take a chicken to church? Who's gonna take a chicken to church? Just holly dod. So that invisible chicken stayed at the church. It still laid eggs. Okay. I think that's what it was, but she, watered some chickens with a watering can maybe, and they became invisible.

[01:12:30] Sandra Dodd: I don't, maybe the chicken in church, she couldn't take it out. Something, but there are these things that she would try. what if? But the game was set up with some weirdness, it's Thanksgiving, make a cake. We don't make a cake on Thanksgiving, but, it's close enough for Japan.

[01:12:45] Sandra Dodd: And so she learned a lot about that too, about the sort of cultural things that don't translate, that don't make sense in other places, but they just made an American looking thing like, okay, they're gonna bake a cake, an American looking cake. All righty. so [01:13:00] she, before she could read, she was playing that game and I had made her some charts of how you, have to combine some plants to make some foods and some medicines and stuff like that.

[01:13:09] Sandra Dodd: And so I, once in a while, I've still come across that chart that I made her. It's, it was sweet. And so she was just playing with quotation marks, but she was learning all kinds of things and thinking all kinds of thoughts. We were having lots of conversations and the conversations let me know what she was learning and she was asking questions that led to all sorts of other topics.

[01:13:33] Sandra Dodd: I loved it. I loved that game. 

[01:13:37] Cecilie Conrad: I still want to circle back to. The question, and I know maybe I shouldn't use the word learn so much and teach, we definitely moved away from teaching, but I think we have the idea that [01:14:00] everyone need math and maybe need more math than you would absorb by just, and this is quotation marks again, just playing, just living that math is some sort of key or it gives you an advantage to know these things in life.

[01:14:23] Cecilie Conrad: This is the thing that we have been taught in school. You need to learn this math because then you will understand things better than people can't cheat you. Then whatever you need it for the other, you need it for physics and, chemistry and biology. You need to know math. So this is a tool, this is a key.

[01:14:50] Cecilie Conrad: It will, you need it to advance in life. To progress in life. That's why we're teaching you this. This is what the story I was told and I almost [01:15:00] repeated it to my children in the beginning. I did repeat it to my children and I think moving away from that story, moving away from the idea that they need to somehow.

[01:15:13] Cecilie Conrad: Be exposed to math. I'm a little bit, I think it's great in one way, that we talk about all these ways that they absorb math through a fun and free childhood is great. But on the other hand, talking about it this way, I'm afraid that a listener would think, oh, this is how I trick them into learning.

[01:15:33] Cecilie Conrad: Because I think, at least for me personally, it's been great to let go of the idea that they all need it, that they have to somehow get a grip on this key. We've had a lot of discussions in my family about math, whether you need to learn it or not, whether you need it or not, how much of it you need, who [01:16:00] needs it, when do you need it?

[01:16:02] Cecilie Conrad: Can you learn it later on? And what I see is just that one thing is if you, if I wait it out at some point they, they hit some point where, oh, now I actually want to learn this. And if I can tell a personal story, one of my stories about math and my kids is my oldest who was in school. She was in this, it was a Hanish school.

[01:16:36] Cecilie Conrad: The philosopher behind it is French. and the idea is very much like a democratic school. the kids are very self-organized. the teachers are not really teaching, they're just facilitating. The kids are more like teaching themselves. They make up their own projects. They, work in an age integrated group.

[01:16:59] Cecilie Conrad: It's in [01:17:00] many ways very great, very freestyle. she was in that kind of school, but over the years, the parents were pushing more and more for formal structural learning, and the school became more and more closer to a normal school. like there was this agenda moving in. One good thing was that, you're not, that it's a homework for school.

[01:17:29] Cecilie Conrad: So they were not even kind, allowed to do school stuff at home. The idea was when you go home, it's your time. You do home stuff, and in school you do school stuff. So they didn't bring homework home once a year. We had a conversation, we had a sit down with, the teachers, to just talk about the progress and, she was there and it was, that was how it worked.

[01:17:55] Cecilie Conrad: And every year. They would tell me that she was not [01:18:00] doing enough math. And every year I would tell them, A, I don't care. B, it's your problem. CI don't care. And they would be, but she has potential, but she needs to do it, but she could do it and she's doing other stuff. And I would say, I will kindly remind you of A, B, and C.

[01:18:26] Cecilie Conrad: And they kept saying it so at, when she was in fifth grade, because they also said, I, she couldn't do it at home. So I was like, it, really is your problem because this is the concept, you're not allowing her to do it at home, so why are you telling me it's not my problem? and if she comes out of school at this point, I told you the story before about the whole journey to unschooling.

[01:18:53] Cecilie Conrad: At this point. I knew about unschooling and I was unschooling my other kids. and, [01:19:00] and I was clear if she comes out of school, out of the nine years I'm paying for here at this private school and she can do zero math, I don't care. Because she's here voluntarily. She's here because she wants to be here.

[01:19:14] Cecilie Conrad: And what she's telling me is she likes to read novels in the good chair in the corner. She likes to play guitar with the guy, with the boys in the breaks. And she likes to play ball. That's what she likes to do. And she likes her friends. That's why she's here. And I don't care about the other stuff.

[01:19:33] Cecilie Conrad: At some point, they pushed me so much that I said, okay, then I'll teach her at home. And they said, you can't do that. And I said, you know what? I can do whatever I want in my own home. So I bought, school books and I taught her for about three days. And then I told her, this doesn't make any sense.

[01:19:51] Cecilie Conrad: You don't wanna do it, and I don't care if you do it. if you don't wanna do it, don't do it. So we stopped again. [01:20:00] And fast forward when she arrived at ninth grade, which is the last mandatory year of schooling in the Danish system, she, changed from this private school to a public school because she realized that all of her friends were in the same class at the same school.

[01:20:24] Cecilie Conrad: Most, a lot of her friends. And, she skipped eighth grade. So she skipped a year to be with her friends at a public school. She'd never done any real math. She'd never on, she wasn't passionate about, she didn't care. But now she was in a normal school with classroom books, homework bells that rang, teachers, blackboards, the whole thing.

[01:20:48] Cecilie Conrad: She'd never done it before. And, she re she realized. that she really liked. Biology. Biology was really interesting. Math was still not [01:21:00] interesting, but biology was really interesting. And her lack of knowledge of math was getting in the way. She couldn't understand the things in the biology class because she didn't have the math skills.

[01:21:11] Cecilie Conrad: So now she sat down and said, okay, I need to learn this now. And she learned it all. She learned it all. This is eight years of not doing anything with this thing except for reading novels, playing guitar and ball. and she, I don't know. I always tell the story as if she got a great grade at the final exams. I'm not sure she did. I don't know actually. She's not like a math genius at this point. She's a writer. She's an artist. so she's not, it's never her passion, but she did learn all the things so that she got good grades and, understood all the biology she wanted to understand.[01:22:00] 

[01:22:00] Cecilie Conrad: So the point of this story is, a, she didn't need it until she needed it. And when she needed it, it wasn't hard to learn it. And BI learned to not push for it. It was hard. It was hard work for me to say, I don't care. Because do, we really not care? Can, do we, can we risk to not give our children this key?

[01:22:29] Cecilie Conrad: Will it ruin things for them? That's the worry that we can sit back with and I think we need to let go of that worry. Yes, math is a key and sometimes it will give you some insights that you knew the math beforehand and then you saw some things and then you got it fast because you knew the math. But what if you had spent your time learning something else, being passionate about something else we don't all need?

[01:22:56] Sandra Dodd: Maybe then maybe you don't, you will never need it. And [01:23:00] maybe when you do need it like your daughter, then you can learn it quickly. 

[01:23:02] Cecilie Conrad: Yes. Instead of suffering your whole childhood, doing something that makes no sense 

[01:23:10] Sandra Dodd: or being turned against that topic and being afraid of it. 

[01:23:14] Cecilie Conrad: Just learning that you're stupid.

[01:23:15] Cecilie Conrad: Another private story I have on my list, which is two point list, so I'm almost done here, is my stepdad. He was a high school teacher in math, and so he got received, the children when they were about 15. And this is a three year education, in our system. And he was a high school teacher in math and he said that he would actually prefer that the students had learned no math in the public school in the mandatory school of the nine years before that because he said they're broken.

[01:23:51] Cecilie Conrad: Most of my students are broken. Either they are so afraid of math and they believe that they can, they will never understand it and they [01:24:00] hate it. And there's so much emotion going on that I can't get to them with the fascination of the logic and the fun part and the patterns, or they learn some weird systems and ways to survive math.

[01:24:15] Cecilie Conrad: That is like if I do this technique, I might, in 85% of the cases, arrive at the right thing that gives me a check, not a, red mark. And, but they don't get the math, but they think it's math. So I have to uninstall all of that before I can start teaching them. So I spent the first six months uninstalling everything that they learned, either the fear or the wrong, not math.

[01:24:44] Cecilie Conrad: Math, pseudo math. 

[01:24:47] Sandra Dodd: I had a ninth grade algebra teacher.

[01:24:53] Sandra Dodd: I was going to skip ninth grade, but I didn't. So in the summer after eighth grade, I took out algebra class and a [01:25:00] typing class. My dad said, I'll pay for summer school if you take typing so you'll have something to fall back on. I was really angry. I said, daddy, I'm not gonna be a secretary. I'm so happy now that of course, that I'm a touch typist.

[01:25:09] Sandra Dodd: But, so I took algebra. It was just a short summer school thing. It was for mostly kids who had taken algebra and failed it the year before. But I was new to it. The teacher was young, cute, smelled good, so I was into it. and he explained it really clearly. He was just outta college, real new teacher and was careful.

[01:25:27] Sandra Dodd: He liked math. He thought it was fun. He thought we might think it was fun. And that's, I didn't know until that year that having a teacher who really likes the thing that they're teaching makes a huge difference. So I understood it completely from him. Then I decided, I don't want, I don't wanna go to high school by myself and I wanna go back where my friends are.

[01:25:46] Sandra Dodd: So I went back and I said, how now? What am I gonna do? The counselor said, great. Now you already took algebra. and I said, fact is I didn't need that credit because I understood the laws, the requirement. And I said, [01:26:00] it won't hurt me to take it again. Because that was, I just took it a short one.

[01:26:02] Sandra Dodd: I just wanna be with my friends. So I go In that class, the teacher had a Texas accent, and she had a magic way to teach algebra. It was magic. Instead of saying, you subtract from both sides. To keep the equation balanced. She said she had this rule, I remember her, she had a big sparkly ring and a piece of chalk, and she's up at the chalkboard and she says, class when a plus sign crosses the minus sign and becomes a negative sign, when a minus sign crosses the equal sign and becomes a plus sign.

[01:26:35] Sandra Dodd: I'm like, what? And she had something for, reversing the fractions too. Some little magic trick. And so friends of mine that I'd gone to school with already at that point for eight or nine years, are sitting there, we're in the top math class, we're grouped in that school. And they're like, what?

[01:26:56] Sandra Dodd: Because they knew there was no such thing as a minus sign [01:27:00] crossing, an equal sign, and becoming a plus sign. So, I'm whispering on the side? No, she subtracted it from both sides. That's where that came from. Yeah. 

[01:27:06] Cecilie Conrad: And 

[01:27:08] Sandra Dodd: so I'm showing them, and then she talks a while more, and then I'm over there writing, like writing it, showing that they subtracted.

[01:27:15] Sandra Dodd: And she got really mad. She gave me a, she gave me a little speech. She already knew me. and she said, Sandra. I have been teaching math for 20 years and she goes on this sort of a and I said, they didn't understand it. I wasn't afraid of her that because I'd already had, I already had an algebra credit.

[01:27:36] Sandra Dodd: She could throw me out. I just kept on helping them after class and they learned it the way I had learned it and they did it the way she said because it didn't matter. But that's one of the things that guy would've had to undo because when he first started telling a story, I couldn't think of an example and I thought, ah, Mrs.

[01:27:51] Sandra Dodd: Groff and her minus sign her magic equal sign. That's crazy. But a lot of college professors have reported a lot of [01:28:00] unschooling. Parents have reported that. The professors said, I've never had a child like this in my class. When an unschooler would show up to take a college math class or any class, they would say, I've never had anyone come to my class.

[01:28:12] Sandra Dodd: So open to learning. So enthusiastic, so quick to pick things up, asking good questions because they hadn't been trained not to, because the kids who go through school learn if you wanna get along with the other kids, you don't do well. You don't ask good questions. You say, oh, we didn't have that last year.

[01:28:32] Sandra Dodd: You do all of the dumbing down moves that make the teacher have to repeat the things you already know instead of actually challenge you. And that's a group way to slow school down. And it's a long, longstanding tradition. The teachers know it because they did it. The kids know it because they learned it from the other kids.

[01:28:50] Sandra Dodd: And unschool kids never learn it. They never learn to shirk and dodge and to lie, but they're not the only ones who lie. I have a note here. [01:29:00] When a Sue, you are talking about the terms numerator and denominator. I learned those when I was eight and I thought, wow, I learned some new words. That's very cool.

[01:29:10] Sandra Dodd: When I was nine, I started being really interested in the history of words, and I bought myself a book about the history of English, and I bought myself a dictionary with my meager allowance. I bought those things and I started looking at words and at the Latin roots of words. I don't know if you've looked very closely lately at denominator or en numerator.

[01:29:28] Sandra Dodd: Numerator means, it made a number and denominator means it named it. It named a thing. So those words seem important, but they are not important. They don't say anything. It's just a way to make up terminology so that it seems like you're teaching something very high level, very important, very technical, and that is in English called obfuscation, or in simpler English, baffling them with bullshit.

[01:29:59] Sue Elvis: [01:30:00] Well, I. My daughter might not have been interested in denominator or numerator, but she was really interested in collected words, like excruciating, words that she could like. That came from. First time she heard that was Anna Green Gables and she couldn't wait to use it. And I remember, but she used it in a math 

[01:30:21] Sandra Dodd: class.

[01:30:22] Sandra Dodd: Was math where she used it? Was it in a math class that she used? Excruciating. I'm joking maybe. 

[01:30:30] Sue Elvis: But I just remember one day she hurt my daughter, hurt herself. She might have fallen over while we were running. And she gets up and she says, oh, the pain is excruciating. And I said, oh, is it that bad? She says, no, not really, mom.

[01:30:46] Sue Elvis: I just wanted to use that word. She says, I've been looking for an opportunity to use it. But there was another thing there talking about words and, unlearning ways of doing things. [01:31:00] maybe think of essay writing and how people might be, parents might be concerned about their kids learning maths so that they can go on and do particular university degrees, maybe.

[01:31:14] Sue Elvis: But also the other one that goes along with that is essay writing. If I don't teach my child how to write an essay, what is gonna happen when they get to university? my kids never learned to write essays as such. They wrote blog posts. Oh, that. Other things that they wrote, they did a lot of writing, but we didn't go anywhere near an essay as such.

[01:31:39] Sue Elvis: But when they went to university, I remem they came home and they said, mom, the tutor says that it doesn't, that, said to the class or said to the, group, All those people who have learn how to write a school essay will have to forget everything they learn. [01:32:00] University essays are nothing like school essays, so you're gonna have to start again.

[01:32:06] Sue Elvis: And my children thought, oh, that's all right. We don't know how to write a school essay. We are ready to learn how to write a university essay. And that one made me smile. I thought that was one where parents, my first kids to learn things that the parent thinks is valuable, but they didn't turn out to be valuable at all, that were a bit of a waste of time.

[01:32:31] Sue Elvis: Write something that's more interesting. Like a blog post or a letter or, yeah, something else. 

[01:32:39] Sandra Dodd: I taught one of my children to write an essay in about 30 seconds, and that was because Marty was about to take a GED test so he could get a state diploma. It's a equivalency test. And I said, okay, here it is. If they say three paragraphs.

[01:32:54] Sandra Dodd: They're gonna say, write a three paragraph or a five paragraph. One of those is what they're gonna say. If it's a three [01:33:00] paragraph, first paragraph is tell them what you're going to say in the middle. You tell them how you know. And the last paragraph is, tell them what you just said. And he said, really? And I said, I'm serious.

[01:33:12] Sandra Dodd: I used to teach English. And he went and did a three paragraph essay and they gave him an A or whatever, he passed. So that's how long it took to teach him an essay, because he already knew how to write. He had written lots of things online, reviews, reports, directions for games. A lot of the games that they did in those days were written online.

[01:33:32] Sandra Dodd: It was like, a d and d game, but they were all in chat rooms. So he was good at writing and it, and that was, it's 

[01:33:40] Sue Elvis: just learning the structure. Yeah. and essay has a particular structure. Once you're clued into what that structure is, it's not difficult. Oh, he also knew a 

[01:33:50] Sandra Dodd: lot of comedy, and I said, it's like a, it's like a comedy routine, like Eddie Izard, whatever, wherever you start, end up there too, bring that back in at the end.

[01:33:59] Sandra Dodd: [01:34:00] So he's okay. he was a big comedy fan, and so that was another way he could see that essay writing as like a comedy routine. 

[01:34:07] Sue Elvis: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I think about is, sometimes parents worry about testing and my kids talking about myths. and having a school teacher as a husband, I had one of these stupid ideas when they were in primary school that if they did the maths appropriate, the age appropriate tests for maths that he gave to his class.

[01:34:32] Sue Elvis: I think that these tests that are, given every two years. all the students in Australia, in our state have to do them. it's the same test for every school. And my husband had copies of them. He was giving them to his students. I had this stupid idea like, bring those kids home. I'll give them to my, our kids and they can do them.

[01:34:55] Sue Elvis: They're the right age. They, that will prove they have maths age [01:35:00] appropriate math skills, despite them not doing what you are teaching at school. And that will satisfy the homeschool registration people. And then we can just forget about it. the only thing I forgot about was that you gotta learn how to take a test.

[01:35:18] Sue Elvis: You don't, having the math. Skills isn't the whole story. My husband was drilling the, the maths into his students a couple of weeks beforehand, and he was giving them all these hints about how you would fill it all in. And there was a time constraint and his students knew the drill, how you did a test and they'd been prepare prepared for it.

[01:35:42] Sue Elvis: I just whipped out the, test morning. One morning. My husband had given them to me the night before and I said, do you wanna do a mass test? And because they're adventurous, they said, oh yeah, we'll do a mass test. So they sat down, oh, we had tears. It was terrible. First of [01:36:00] all, they didn't like the time and then they figured they got it wrong.

[01:36:04] Sue Elvis: They didn't like the fact I wasn't letting them go back and try again. and I had two very unhappy girls. But the surprising thing was they both did well. they just weren't happy with their performance because who wants to be marked and graded? isn't it more important to know how to do what you want to do and have a reason for doing it and getting the right answer?

[01:36:37] Sue Elvis: One of my children did look just like getting the right answers, like I do, its like puzzles, but, she was so frustrated. That she wasn't allowed a second go. Nobody was interested. I said, it's too late now. this is the grade. And she says, but I could try again. I says, that's the way Tess go.[01:37:00] 

[01:37:01] Sue Elvis: yeah, I think sometimes we can think that our kids don't have skills when what they don't have is haven't got experience with doing the test. It's not that they don't know the subject matter, it's, they just have no clue about what they're doing in schools, the revision, all the other, the time constraints, whatever.

[01:37:27] Sue Elvis: They just haven't been drilled in test taking. So I don't think it's an accurate comparison between our children and school children. They did well anyway. 

[01:37:38] Sandra Dodd: So a lot of parents, a lot of parents don't know, don't realize that a lot of part, a lot of parts of school are not natural on the planet that they only exist in and because of school.

[01:37:50] Sandra Dodd: And so those parents get frustrated when they start to think about homeschooling. They think they're still thi they still have that whole overlay about sessions, units, [01:38:00] semesters or trimesters, school year tests levels. What's their reading level? Doesn't matter. Reading is reading. They'll get better gradually as they go.

[01:38:09] Sandra Dodd: And if they're not being compared and they're not having to be sorted into different groups, then it doesn't matter. But that's, why deschooling is so important for unschoolers because you have to shuck that away, get it away. Every bit of it that you save is gonna mess you up every little bit that you save.

[01:38:24] Sandra Dodd: Like the assumption that testing is normal, that testing is natural, it's not. And, I remember being told, make a guess, glance over the, choices they gave you. Pick the best two. Can you figure out which one's better? If not, come back to it. They're timing you. It wasn't about knowing the information, it was about bam, filling in those little holes.

[01:38:44] Sandra Dodd: Cecilia, are you worried that the stories that we're telling are going to cause people to think that they need to press their children to play games or all the things that we're naming 

[01:38:52] Cecilie Conrad: No, not any longer. I just really needed to say because, this is my opinion and I'm not even sure [01:39:00] I'm clear enough because.

[01:39:02] Cecilie Conrad: I really need to speak more concise. but no, I think it's great. I think,

[01:39:13] Cecilie Conrad: I just think we need to question the question. How do we know they're learning math? If that's the question, I think we need to ask the question, but do they need to learn math? And in what form format are we talking about math? What kind of math? Now we're talking about testing. Do they need to learn math in a way that they could pass an age appropriate test?

[01:39:40] Cecilie Conrad: Do we buy into that? 

[01:39:42] Sandra Dodd: Some do and some don't. And when they do, then, you might be able to just tell 'em in just a few minutes. Yeah. But do they all need to learn? 

[01:39:49] Cecilie Conrad: I think that's a very important question as well, because math is something that's taught in schools to everyone, and there's this assumption that you need to, and when you're [01:40:00] 10, you know this, and when you're 11, you know there's more and whatever.

[01:40:03] Cecilie Conrad: and we can test you and you can get a grade of some sort and we know if you're good or not. and that's the whole concept of the school bullshit, that I'm not buying into it any longer. I love math. I think math is great and I think it's fun and we've had a lot of fun with math in my family. We still do.

[01:40:23] Cecilie Conrad: Some of us and others. I am just not into that kind of thing. The girl I talked about before, she did do the biology thing and she's still very passionate now. She's 25 and she was just here and she can tell me what all the little things, all the little weeds growing, what they are and which one can be eaten and why they have the name they have and she's curious in another country, I don't know, that tree and all the things are still interesting.

[01:40:54] Cecilie Conrad: She couldn't care less about formal math. And then I have a son whom I've [01:41:00] talked about a few times, the oldest one, he sits with an A level math book, IGCZ thing. Like the English system for funsies. Yeah. Because he likes it and my husband would, yeah. But I don't mind, I do weird stuff. he likes it and he does it, and I feel like I'm losing myself again.

[01:41:22] Cecilie Conrad: I think we need to ask the question, why is it that we think, maybe not we, but a lot of people think that everyone need to learn this and that it would be such a catastrophe to 

[01:41:38] Sandra Dodd: un 'cause school because school says. School has two, two issues. They wanna keep the parents happy because tax money is going towards schools.

[01:41:46] Sandra Dodd: And parents can, in some situations, change schools, depending how small your town is, where you are. they want, they wanna keep people happy. They wanna justify their own salaries, and they don't wanna get sued at the end because they didn't prepare every [01:42:00] child for the po possibility of college. They don't wanna, maybe only Americans worry about getting sued.

[01:42:05] Sandra Dodd: It's possible, but they want to make sure that they're not in trouble because some kids were ignored and let, let to life fallow left to just mark time until they were old enough to get outta school. So they try to push all those kids to be ready for university. And it's a shame because some kids have no interest in university.

[01:42:24] Sandra Dodd: But that's, where that comes from, is from the requirements and the habits and the justifications of school and the school funding. And I think schools are getting better these days than they used to be in the fifties, sixties, seventies. That's great. But, Whether to defend school or not. If parents want to unschool, they need to step away from it.

[01:42:45] Sandra Dodd: They need to start sorting out what is natural earth world and what is school world and not bring school, world home. Turn away from it. When you hear yourself thinking in those terms, stop. And one of 'em is, everybody has to know everything. 'cause nobody, it's never happened. [01:43:00] It's never worked. It's never worked yet.

[01:43:01] Sandra Dodd: And it's not going to work. What they do is they, frustrate people. And I know I was talking about, oh yeah, when I was little, I learned this and that because I wanted to, I loved English and the people who hate English, because they went to school and somebody made 'em hate English, they probably thought that was terrible.

[01:43:15] Sandra Dodd: Why would I, at the age of nine in fourth grade, be wasting my time doing something that was painful and stupid? and what was the word, Sue? Excruciating. for me it was fun. So when kids love math and numbers, they should run with that. And when kids don't, they should do what they're doing.

[01:43:31] Sandra Dodd: And I, we forgot. We're almost out of time, so I'm, that's why I'm talking faster. We forgot. Oh. But we can go on. Who's, busy? We got one big area. No, you, no, you said two hours. Oh. But I'm not, I don't, okay. we forgot one big area probably because we're, girls, but sports people who do competitive sports, whether it's hockey, soccer, football, lacrosse.

[01:43:57] Sandra Dodd: What are they playing in India all the time? Cricket. [01:44:00] All of those sort of field and team games, whether it's balls or balls and sticks or anything, a ton of math that may turn to physics, that may turn to, I don't know, calculus, I don't know. But they're not, that doesn't come with words. And a lot of people who listen to this might, if they were sports people, be able to use that example better than video games and table games that I was talking about or working in a store.

[01:44:29] Sandra Dodd: and not just something to add there. Not just the game itself and the field, but the sports stats, the scoring, the stats of players, the stats of teams. That's, statistics, statistic statistics and probability can be learned from that or playing poker, but there are a lot of games, a lot of the gambling games have to do with statistics and probability.

[01:44:52] Sandra Dodd: Okay. So a lot 

[01:44:54] Sue Elvis: of, I just, it doesn't even have to be a, team game because we did a [01:45:00] lot of running together and we kept our, stats for our runs and we collected them, from, we had, GPS watches days before Apple. And we all had Garmin watches and we used to record our distances at speed, our, the best days, worst days, all sorts of, and also have the graphs and the maps and the cord coordinates and the temperature of what, when we were running it, did that affect our times?

[01:45:34] Sue Elvis: But what I discovered was that when we were running, we would do things mentally. I've run 3.78, I can see I've run 3.78 kilometers. I wanna run five today. How far do I have to go now if I run another loop of around the clubhouse and around the playing field that's approximately this amount of this distance, how many times will [01:46:00] I need to do that if I want to get to my goal?

[01:46:03] Sue Elvis: And we were constantly doing mental mess as we were running along, but then when I came to sitting down with my youngest daughter and looking at the math syllabus that we were supposed to be following, and I was thinking, have we done all these, what was it called when you got 3.25? the, that digital place there, the value.

[01:46:27] Sue Elvis: And if I sat down and tried to explain it all as a mouse problem with notation, oh, she'd go and she would put that wall up, freeze, but. I thought, look, there's not much point in me doing this. She's already doing it in her head. She's already told me that she ran. She was more likely, she ran, she usually ran 10 k, not I was the 5K runner.

[01:46:52] Sue Elvis: but she knew all that from running and it was amazing how much mass was involved in that. But then as you [01:47:00] were saying to Sandra about team sports, we didn't do team sports, but what we did do was the girls entered fun runs and they would run five or 10 K in a fun run. And then you have other people's scores as well added into the mix.

[01:47:15] Sue Elvis: And where do you, where they come? were they the fastest in their age group or how did they do overall as far as all the women or how did they do as far as all of the competitors? And then there were more graphs, there were more past results, future. and then in the future there would say they wanted to be this and that was just pure mess.

[01:47:39] Sue Elvis: And, but it wasn't really, it was an interest. It was the way they love to spend time. But the, there was one other thing. There not, there to do with that, but one we haven't talked about and sincerely you were saying about why kids have to learn. why should we force kids to learn maths if that's not their sort [01:48:00] of interest?

[01:48:01] Sue Elvis: But one thing I did do was I was constantly stirring maths for my kids because I. Of the way they'd picked up what mess was. And I thought, meth is not necessarily what everybody else says it is. Perhaps if I present meth in a different way that they don't even recognize this mess. They might take an interest in it.

[01:48:23] Sue Elvis: And of this was during pure invitation. It wasn't forcing them, but I would, we explored all sorts of things like auctions for art. we watched all these documentaries about the world's most expensive paintings. And there was all sorts of other things that involve maths. But you don't necessarily think of it at the, it's, not, if you were stewing a math thing, you might say, I'm gonna stew this video about how to learn to multiply, but this isn't that what, that they weren't the things that I was stewing, [01:49:00] I was suggesting.

[01:49:01] Sue Elvis: How about this video? About, I don't know the size of the universe and the planets and what actually happens in an auction and who owns the most famous painting in the world? All those sort of interesting things. And they picked up a lot of mess from that. But yeah, but obviously, even saying that, Cecilia invitations and even if, some kids just aren't interested anyway, regardless, but I dunno, I just had this idea that I.

[01:49:37] Sue Elvis: Schools can flatten kids' interest in math, make them hate it. And it was like a mission to see if I could undo some of that and show at least my kids, that math is just part of the world. And it's, a interesting subject in its own right, but it's linked to so many things in the world. We [01:50:00] really can't go anywhere without, masks are just everywhere.

[01:50:05] Sue Elvis: I just think it's the language of our world and how interesting it is when you think about it in those terms. But as you could probably get there, I'm one of the myth lovers. So 

[01:50:18] Cecilie Conrad: my kids, so am I. So am I'm just trying to not, try, I'm working hard to not have the agenda that they need to learn something specific or in a specific way.

[01:50:31] Cecilie Conrad: and there will be no testing. And I don't care if they cannot do anything. Anyone else recognizes math as long as they can solve the problems they meet, and sometimes solving a problem that looks like meth can be calling someone who knows how to solve it. But you know what I do that if my car breakdown, I don't know how to fix it, I'll call a mechanic.

[01:50:52] Cecilie Conrad: So if one of them has the strategy, oh, I'll call my uncle who's a math genius. [01:51:00] If I need to solve this knitting problem that I have, they can totally do that. If they have a way, only, if not having the key keep an important door locked for you, you need to work on the key. And the fact that I like the key and the key for me is play doesn't mean that key makes any sense for them.

[01:51:25] Cecilie Conrad: And the fact that I look at the key in a specific way and think a key is something like with a, with an A round thing and a hook and the other end. And, I think that's a key. They have a different, they might have a different idea about what that key is or how to use it and what even, what kind of door it will open.

[01:51:46] Cecilie Conrad: I've been pretty baffled by how they solve math e problems and how they arrive at their conclusions and how close they can get and how different strategies they have. [01:52:00] And, I don't care if they ask me something, I'll help them. But if they don't really have the problem, then I don't see why I would push it because I'm sure that they could learn if they wanted to.

[01:52:17] Cecilie Conrad: So that's one thing. The other thing is sometimes math becomes very relevant. Something that looks like math, sometimes it becomes fun. and one of one other thing we've talked about games, sport games, computer games, sports. I touched upon knitting. We avoided cooking. Well done on us. It's the classic thing.

[01:52:45] Cecilie Conrad: But obviously, working in shops, money, all these things, there will be met tax. Another thing, we have, and, now you mentioned Art Sue. And we have [01:53:00] been very fascinated with Islamic art, which is very often based on geometry. And, we've had our, what do you call it in English, compass and ruler and visited when we first time visited the RA in, the south of Spain.

[01:53:19] Cecilie Conrad: There's this beautiful Moore castle. I bought a book about, Islamic art and how to create it with a compass and a ruler. And we, did a deep dive into playing with that. It's really fun. My husband made a, website for a guy working with 3D models of. Math structures that are behind nature and how they become fascinating when you move them.

[01:53:50] Cecilie Conrad: And we had a whole thing with that, that was art as well. And now we're doing the history of art and there's a lot about, what do you call it, the gold, the [01:54:00] golden, I don't know The ratio. Ratio. Yeah. I didn't know the English term. so when it becomes relevant and stands out and looks like math, it's,

[01:54:17] Cecilie Conrad: then it is relevant. And for some of them, for some of my children, it's been a deep dive into a very specific thing that makes a lot of sense at the time. And I just have to not go buy 10 math books on geometry just because we like Islamic art for two months or two years. 

[01:54:40] Sandra Dodd: I don't know if I can show you a picture.

[01:54:41] Sandra Dodd: Can you see this? My granddaughter was here yesterday, I don't know where to put it. And she had her hair put up and I said, have you seen your hair? And she said, no. And I took a picture and I said, it's like the golden ratio. 

[01:54:50] Sue Elvis: Yes.

[01:54:54] Sue Elvis: Maybe there's another factor which, worries parents about myths. And that [01:55:00] is in our case, homeschool registration that yes. That if you have to prove your, provide evidence that your kids are learning maths, and not only are they learning it, they're learning what they, kids at school are learning, then that complicates things.

[01:55:17] Sue Elvis: Yes. 'cause you've gotta continually be looking for the maths and writing it down and translating everything they're doing into the right language to satisfy the educational department. Otherwise you don't get your registration. And that's ano that. Yeah. I had a lot of that to do, a lot of behind the scenes work.

[01:55:43] Sue Elvis: yeah. Because I knew my kids were learning the math, but it's, they're not learning it in a conventional way. With all the workbooks and all the ticks and all the tests that I could just present over to the educational department and say, look, here's the [01:56:00] evidence. It took a lot more work to, to, get that evidence and then to translate it into a form that was acceptable.

[01:56:11] Sue Elvis: I did it, but, I think mess sometimes is at the back of people's minds because of homeschool registration. I can never quite relax about have needing evidence. And I think the trick is not to impose that on your kids, but to, for example, after we've been running and we've all enjoyed the experience, then to quietly sit down and write down all the mess that my daughter was doing and say, she's covered this, and this.

[01:56:43] Sue Elvis: but not to say, you've gotta go run and you've gotta do this because I need the evidence. But to actually find the evidence in what they were doing. And also, I guess hardest stewing is also introducing them, [01:57:00] kids to experiences that they could enjoy, but also the schools to expect kids to learn with the understanding, as you were saying, right at the, be right at the beginning, Sandra, we can't force kids to learn anything.

[01:57:18] Sue Elvis: learning's a passive, an active activity. We can't force learning into anybody, but we can always invite kids to learn. So I used to learn, I, I learned how to offer and then not worry if my invitations weren't accepted because I think a, the trick with homeschool registration is it's not proving your kids have learned anything.

[01:57:43] Sue Elvis: It's providing evidence really, that the parent has provided an opportunity for learning. And if the child says, Hey, I'm not interested like yours, some of yours have done Cecilia, then that's quite all right. And so as a lot of work for the parent, [01:58:00] but this means 

[01:58:01] Cecilie Conrad: you've done the deconstruction, Sue. So you know why you are pushing or not pushing, why you're stewing, why you're inviting, and why it's important.

[01:58:10] Cecilie Conrad: It's not because your kids' lives will fail if they cannot do math. It's because, and do math in the way that school thinks math looks like. It's because you have, a legal problem. 

[01:58:28] Sue Elvis: Yeah. That's basically, but the thing was, I was always prepared to say, they haven't got these skills, but I offered them.

[01:58:38] Sue Elvis: It's up to, and then explain that my kids, I come first learning in. It's just not the way it works, but, and they will, if they need this, they'll learn it when they need to learn it. But the funny thing was they never had any trouble, convincing our authorized person that they [01:59:00] had all the necess, all the skills that she came to make sure they were learning.

[01:59:04] Sue Elvis: That unschooling is just so rich that all I had to do was be alert. To what they were learning and be prepared to write it down. And she ended up saying something like, oh, your kids are getting such a rich education here at home. And I'm sure that she was not su was surprised 'cause she w she, she worked with a lot of homeschooled children, but she'd also worked in the school system and I think she could see that, we weren't doing nothing at home or we are not always at home.

[01:59:40] Sue Elvis: I think, did you have a clip about that recently, Cecilia? That homeschooling is not necessarily the way right way to describe it 'cause we're never home. yeah, true. But, out of school, not in school, our kids are [02:00:00] coming into contact with so much richness and they're curious people. Why do we worry that they'll not learn?

[02:00:10] Sue Elvis: Of course they will. I 

[02:00:12] Cecilie Conrad: think we need to, I used the word deconstruct before, to just separate different things. If we're talking about the registration and the legal element and, the whole checkup system that works in different ways in different countries, where we have to convince someone that it's good enough.

[02:00:35] Cecilie Conrad: And also sometimes it's the same when we have to or feel, we have to defend ourselves against people asking questions. Why are you doing this? And how does it make sense? And will they ever learn any math? It's as if you will forgive a school for inviting, providing books, doing the [02:01:00] teaching, and then maybe 10 or 15, 20% of the students fail.

[02:01:06] Cecilie Conrad: They never learn. They fail. That's all right. You're not shutting down the school. The school is good enough, but some of the kids failed. But in a homeschool context, it's as if all the kids have to succeed. So when I was talking, I only did it once actually talking with the checkup system back when I lived in Denmark, I had to clarify and I did it.

[02:01:37] Cecilie Conrad: It was risky, but I actually did it. I said, you need to know that you're checking my homeschool as a school. It's not fair that my kids have to all succeed and outperform the top of every class. In the public school, you administer a public school with 700 children. They do not all [02:02:00] succeed. Some of them.

[02:02:01] Cecilie Conrad: Graduate after nine years of schooling and they can hardly read, lots of them fail the final math test. You can check my school if I'm providing the option to learn. You are not, and I didn't allow them to ever see my children. You can not check my children what they can perform because that's not fair.

[02:02:26] Cecilie Conrad: That's not what you're checking. I'm giving them a school at home. You can check me, you can check what I'm providing. You cannot check my kids. And I think we need to also understand that in our own minds we are giving the option, but they don't all have to be super interested in all of the things that we consider subjects or do you call it subjects like, you have the history class and the geometry class and the math class.

[02:02:57] Cecilie Conrad: They don't all have to love all of that and, [02:03:00] outperform everything. Some kids finish, they, suffer through 10 years of basic schooling and most of the things they were supposed to learn, they didn't learn, but they become very good friends and very good at playing football and, maybe they went fishing with their granddad in the weekends.

[02:03:15] Cecilie Conrad: And that made a lot of sense. That's, life can unfold in many different ways and it's not fair that the unschooled children have to be outstanding in everything they do. I. 

[02:03:32] Sandra Dodd: It doesn't matter in a way. And I really liked that speech. I would've loved to have heard it, back in the years. but things are different, places.

[02:03:41] Sandra Dodd: Sue in Australia, are the homeschooling laws by federal or state are, the states different? 

[02:03:49] Sue Elvis: Yeah. State? 

[02:03:50] Sandra Dodd: that's the way it is in the United States. 50 different states and in Canada, 10 different provinces. So it's hard to just say, this is how it is in one country, but [02:04:00] some don't check anything ever.

[02:04:02] Sandra Dodd: A lot of states, and some wanna check each kid every year with tests, but that's another topic that's not about how people learn math or, stay around swim in math until they, get it. But 

[02:04:16] Sue Elvis: I just thought it was a possible reason why people get unschoolers, get concerned about it, and feel reluctant to let go of it.

[02:04:31] Sue Elvis: And having been in that situation myself, that's the, yeah, we could have a whole other topic about that, but it was just a reason and maybe a bit of empathy with people who are in a system like ours where. it's not always easy to let kids do what they want to do, but I think from our experience and we had quite strict, laws in our state that we had to [02:05:00] follow, it is quite possible to not compromise what we did with our kids and still satisfy the education department.

[02:05:08] Sue Elvis: It just needed a lot of creative thinking, a lot of confidence in our own knowledge of our children and being willing, to stand up for them like you did Cecilia and not to, yeah, not to get frightened of the education department. We know our kids better than anybody else, and we know a lot about the way kids learn.

[02:05:31] Sue Elvis: And I used to always think about, I'm talking to a fellow, somebody else who's passionate about learning. I'm not talking to this person as the expert and I'm the parent. I'm talking to her on a level. And we can share our own experiences, which are different about how kids learn. And I think 

[02:05:54] Sandra Dodd: is New South Wales is New South Wales, the strictest of the states there.

[02:05:58] Sue Elvis: one time it did. Yes. I [02:06:00] wouldn't know what the current, because we've been outta the system a few years now. my youngest is 21 and kids have to be registered till they're 17. So that was four years ago. I dunno what the current laws are, but in our state it has changed over the years. But we did, they, they weren't easy at times.

[02:06:22] Cecilie Conrad: We call it speaking education ease in our family. So we translate what we're doing into what can be understood by a traditional education system. And that's fair. I'm speaking English right now, so that we can communicate. Though it's not my native tongue and if I'm speaking to an education system about what I'm doing and what we are doing in our family, I will translate what I'm doing into what they understand as an education that makes total sense.

[02:06:51] Cecilie Conrad: And, as an unschooling family, it makes sense to make that translation. I did a lot of work before I gave that speech that day, [02:07:00] of translating, writing examples, doing all the re the things that needed to be done to make it something that would be understood as education for someone not knowing anything about unschooling.

[02:07:17] Cecilie Conrad: And it's only fair if we have to do it if we live in a state with, a control system. And we want to stay there. We want to keep living there. I think we should obey the rules and find a way to, to work together with that system. And, if that means, if it, even if it means we have to teach math, then I've, had that conversation with people living in countries where it's so hard to avoid that.

[02:07:48] Cecilie Conrad: The better option is actually, okay, tell your child you want to unschool, but it's illegal. You're gonna have to pass this test. I can't even remember [02:08:00] where it was. someone I spoke to lived in a country where the homeschool children have to take a test every year, like the test you handed out once.

[02:08:11] Cecilie Conrad: And if they have to do that, and if they don't pass it, you're not allowed to homeschool well. 

[02:08:19] Sandra Dodd: Then it's unschool, not unschooling, will not work in every situation. And, people have been mad at me. They say, I have the right to unschool. What, are you talking about? if it won't work where you live, then don't do it.

[02:08:31] Sandra Dodd: Then don't beat yourself up and say, I wanna unschool. Just do what, do the most you can do. Take what you like from it and leave the rest. But don't call it unschooling, if you're really having to teach the tests and stuff, it won't help people who do want to unschool to hear that compromise situation called unschooling.

[02:08:47] Sandra Dodd: But no one really has the right to do anything like that. It's weird. So any government like Germany that says, no, just go to school and stop talking about it, to stop arguing with us. Everybody's gonna school. The, United States has had situations like that in [02:09:00] the past when they finally did get schools.

[02:09:02] Sandra Dodd: They didn't want it to be an option. But I think that's why the, way Sue's saying they have particular requirements and, you have to figure out how to get around them or how to educationally ease them so that you've worded it in such a way that it fulfills their requirement. That's why I'm always telling people, get friends in your own state.

[02:09:23] Sandra Dodd: Find people who are in the same jurisdiction you are and figure out how they did it. And they're like, yeah, but the law says this. I'm going, I laws always say something, but people have successfully lived with and around those laws and you need to ask them how they did it. Don't ask me because in New Mexico we didn't have to do that.

[02:09:42] Sandra Dodd: so it's, that's a really important thing. If you're advising other unschoolers or if you're new to, if you're listening to this and you're new to unschooling, find some locals. Even if you have to join what seems like it doesn't match your philosophy, it might be a religious or a non-religious or a crazy hippie farmer group, but find some group of [02:10:00] people who live there and, ask them to help you figure out how.

[02:10:04] Sandra Dodd: But people need to deschool. I have a section on my site about, how to word unschooling as a curriculum. If you have to turn in a curriculum, here's how you can word unschooling. And there are several examples and there, a lot of it is, that application of educational ease. But I don't send people there early only if they really need it, because I don't want people to find that early and go, oh yeah, this sounds good.

[02:10:28] Sandra Dodd: No, this sounds like one foot in school. So if you, if unschooling doesn't flow fast like that, and if people use that, I don't want 'em to share it with the kids. If you have to turn this into the state, do it at night. Do it quietly. Don't share it with your kids. Don't say class, here's what we have to do this year.

[02:10:46] Sandra Dodd: Because you just, you're, you went back to homeschooling. Now you're back to school at home. So that, so my personal concern has always been how people learn, how humans learn. Not even about school, but [02:11:00] how do, Hunter gatherers learn? How do older people learn if they're gonna move to another country and have to learn all the money and time differences and everything?

[02:11:08] Sandra Dodd: Like in England, I don't even, I don't even know what they're telling me about what time. 'cause they use a 24 hour clock a lot and they say it's 15 of, it's of which side. I don't, it's just, it's foreign. It's wrong. It's wrong. It's 

[02:11:21] Cecilie Conrad: very hard. It's very hard. 

[02:11:24] Sandra Dodd: People change 

[02:11:24] Cecilie Conrad: it. I've gonna quit say half seven.

[02:11:26] Cecilie Conrad: And what does that even mean? Three hour? 

[02:11:29] Sue Elvis: I know if it's 10 minutes past four here, we'll sometime we'll say 10 past four. You don't say that. 

[02:11:39] Sandra Dodd: We say 10 till or 10 after 

[02:11:41] Sue Elvis: 10. 10 past, we'll say ten two, ten past, or we'll say, but you said it's gone. It's gone. Four o'clock if we don't wanna be precise.

[02:11:51] Sue Elvis: I'm sorry. Oh look, it's gone four o'clock. No. 

[02:11:57] Sandra Dodd: Does that mean past? It's past four o'clock, four o'clock's gone. [02:12:00] 

[02:12:00] Sue Elvis: Oh, that's cute. Four o'clock's gone. It's gone for 

[02:12:02] Sandra Dodd: I didn't understand it. 

[02:12:03] Sue Elvis: Isn't it amazing how things that you use every day and people around you use them all and you just think it's normal and then it's normal. 

[02:12:13] Cecilie Conrad: That's what normal means. It's normal 

[02:12:14] Sue Elvis: for us, but it's not necessarily normal for everybody else. It's normal, but not, I find that interesting. 

[02:12:21] Sandra Dodd: Me too. Me too. I love those things. So just seeing how people would do that if they suddenly have to move to another country. There are a lot of things to learn that we don't think about.

[02:12:29] Sandra Dodd: It's not just language, it's all sorts of little courtesies and, all kinds, everything. You have to learn everything. 

[02:12:38] Cecilie Conrad: Culture is going to be another topic for this podcast because it's way too big. Which Cecilia? 

[02:12:46] Sue Elvis: I missed that. Its gone 

[02:12:48] Cecilie Conrad: 11 at my end. I'm not taking up a big, huge one. I have one little story.

[02:12:56] Cecilie Conrad: Oh, we can, I told a story 

[02:12:57] Sandra Dodd: a couple of episodes ago. I told about Holly getting a [02:13:00] job at a flower shop because I had asked the flower shop owner if she could come down there and learn some things, if I could pay the flower shop to let her help in May, which is a big flower season in the United States. and the woman hired her.

[02:13:13] Sandra Dodd: but I didn't think that's the story I told the other day, when we were speaking. But there's a lot of math in that. It turns out that working at a flower shop. Is not only the sort of, planning and reasoning things that we've talked about today, but it's also plain old money. If somebody is gonna spend $50 on an arrangement, you can't put all the most expensive flowers in there.

[02:13:36] Sandra Dodd: You have to know the person who's making the arrangement needs to know the price of those flowers, which ones are cheap and which ones are expensive. And I wouldn't have thought that, when I go to a flower shop, I know some are expensive and some are inexpensive, but I always thought that was because of the skill of the artistry.

[02:13:52] Sandra Dodd: But it's not just artistry. And when they do the flower prep and they're sorting flowers and putting 'em into the refrigerators and stuff, when they just first come off the [02:14:00] truck, there's time involved, which flowers need to go in first because they really need refrigeration. Which ones need a lot of attention?

[02:14:06] Sandra Dodd: the roses need the thorns off. You have to plan that because you have to have it done by the time the store opens or whatever it is. And so there was all kinds of stuff in that job that I thought was going to be art that turned out to be the things that Holly was really good at, which was spatial reasoning, planning, a project with her hands, like the efficiency of handling objects.

[02:14:27] Sandra Dodd: Holly was good at that. And so it turned out I had no idea how good that job was a match for her at the time. And then there was also running cash register and charging people. And so anyway, there, there's math in flower shops. That's all. 

[02:14:43] Sue Elvis: Have you had your dinner, Cecilia? It must be getting very late where you are.

[02:14:47] Sue Elvis: Oh, 

[02:14:47] Cecilie Conrad: dinner. Yeah, I had that before we started at my nine and now it's 1122. Does that notation time make sense to you guys? Yes. It's [02:15:00] late. It's late. I'm enjoying this conversation a lot though, but I think I might have to wrap it up. we talked a lot about math and maybe if we wrap it up, math will be actually the headline of this and we will take up another subject, next time and I can go to bed.

[02:15:21] Cecilie Conrad: I'm driving some people to the airport in the morning, so I need a little bit. Okay. Leap as well. This was 

[02:15:27] Sandra Dodd: fun. I liked this one. 

[02:15:29] Cecilie Conrad: it's been an interesting conversation. Made me think. 

[02:15:32] Sandra Dodd: And I should have said not, you don't have to play sports, just an interest in sports, being a sports fan. Same, the same benefits as to the mathematical aspects.

[02:15:41] Sue Elvis: Oh, it's just probably my, none of my kids played team sports and people will say what you should, your kids should have played team sports. I have a been, maybe I'm just getting defensive. I don't know. I've really enjoyed talking with you both. It's been, [02:16:00] highlight of my week.

[02:16:02]Cecilie Conrad: Thank you. Yeah, I, enjoy these conversations as well. And now I think we should say goodbye for today. It's been great. Next time. Next time. Thank you.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE