There is a wonderful conversation happening on our local homeschooling loop. A bunch of moms are listing all the educational curricula that can be fulfilled by playing with Legos. Here's a quote that sums up the gist and consensus of our group pretty succinctly:

"Just sayin' - my son is having little or no trouble keeping up with 3 AP courses and 4 other challenging high school courses, and all we ever did with Legos was PLAY. But I amused/comforted myself in those years with lots of theories and discussions (thank you, Sarah and lots of others in our group - it really was helpful!). So for anyone who wants to take comfort from knowing our story: one slack almost-unschooling Mom who did very few structured or academic activities with her son is glad she did it that way. Hooray for loads and loads of play time!"

I love unschooling. My kids love unschooling. And it seems to work really well. Sometimes life is great.

Have so said and in the name of keeping it real, I'm pushing Dear Girl to take this semester's Spanish class. We can't really call that unschooling. (We'll have to call it coercion if we're really keeping it real.) The classes she elects do count as unschooling. The Spanish is more like a favor to me. She's trying it. And she's not loving it. But she is trying.

We'll see how that goes. All the pushing I've ever done in the past has backfired fairly resoundingly. Why is it so difficult for me to learn that this method of teaching --pushing them to do what they have no interest in doing-- usually gives mixed results at best? Maybe because sometimes it can work wonders. But more likely because its very difficult to completely release my old educational indoctrination. Yeah, probably that. I admit to a certain smug feeling when I can reply, "What are we doing this year? Well, studying Spanish for one thing." Studying Spanish just has such a nice academic ring to it, don'tcha think? Wow, how much is done to children in the name of Adult Ego?