Friday, February 24, 2017

Take 2.26 minutes and listen to this trailer for the movie InnSaei. Hit play and close your eyes.

Every sentence in this trailer --- every sentence --- relates directly to the principles of unschooling.

 

In terms of unschooling, I've left off with stories about my children. But the power of unschooling runs through me like blue lightning. Never mind the ubiquitous pedagogical research, I read emerging neuro-science that points to it again and again without awareness that unschooling exists. Schooling parents complain to me about their children and I listen, as much as possible, with a calm quiet heart while the ghost of unschooling blows through them, and they can not seem to feel it. Other parents call me for unschooling support and in those conversations I can be fully open and speak my mind, but what they need is access to the feeling of unschooling -- they need intuitive access. Just yesterday I said to a worried mother sitting on my couch that I could see her doubt and if I could give her the feeling of the thing, we wouldn't need to say much else. Then I talked a while, trying to find words to say something ineffable about the power of unschooling. Finally she said, "Well fuck it, this is what I'm going to do and I don't care what anyone else thinks." And I put my fist in the air and shouted There it is, that's the light I'm talking about! And we laughed. 

As InnSaei tells us in so many different ways, society needs the message of unschooling. The lack of it has infected business, religion, science, art, ecology and our environment, and families, as well as the way we raise and educate children. All the revolutions we seem to be rushing toward work in tandem with unschooling. But for the most part, unschooling is unheard of, mostly untold. And generally disbelieved when a flash of it is glimpsed rushing from the earth upwards to overwhelming positive charge.

In our society we do not see children clearly, we do not hear them fully, we do not allow them their right to their selves. (We do not allow them -- let that sink in.) They are unheard of, mostly untold at this point, having been silenced for so long. We don't love them right. Maybe that is the most radical message in unschooling. Failure to love well is what's wrong with society. And that's why it's so hard to hear about unschooling.

I'm not saying my kids have been loved perfectly, by the way. My failings are glaring. But that doesn't shut off the urgency of what I've learned. All parents have a very limited amount of time to love their little children well, to say yes, to hear them, to see them, to enjoy them. How would society be different if every baby were handed to their mother with one instruction: Enjoy them as fully as possible -- very little else matters. It shouldn't need to be said. But parenting is so far divorced from intuition at this point, and I think we might have cultivated oxytocin blindness? That instruction is the essence of an unschooling parent's job.

post script: For the record, I realize what I've written here makes unschooling sound like a cult and positions myself as some kind of cult leader -- it sounds pretty creepy, actually. I don't know what to say. Unschooling is not a cult and has no leaders and I am not leading anything. I mean everything I've said here -- even as I acknowledge it sounds pretty ridiculous. *shrugs*

1 comment:

  1. cult leader? no. woman with a voice, experience, and a gift to share with the world? that's it. and being with you, feeling your presence of calm and faith and courage, is one way you pass the gift on, to others, as you do to me. Your Aunt Katherine may be in the mix - you come from bold, courageous stock. In the most loving way, it feels at times to me like a cow. Now I do know you love cows, so I risk little calling you one here. But imagine, that cow in the middle of the road. Oh how they honk, bang their hands ont eh steering wheel, yell and start again, and the only part that's smart is their smarting hand. That cow, she blithely looks at them. She breathes. The air is nice, the road solid compared to that slippery clay, and it would all be fine except for the racket coming from the metal thing. So, fine, maybe if she walks away and ignores them they will move on, and she can enjoy her day. Maybe?

    I say, there are days when stopping traffic might be entertaining.

    Perhaps even rare days when a driver will actually stop and get out and connect with the bovine miracle facing them. That's when she bats her lashes and imparts her wisdom: slow down, breathe, nourish your babies, soak up the sun, find solid ground under your feet and stop making so much racket!

    Teach on wise healer...

    ReplyDelete