A River Between

This weekend I am in Madison, WI, where I attended the 2nd annual Unschooling Conference, sponsored by H.O.M.E. All I can say is “What a conference!” Coming to meet so many wonderful people has been a great re-charge of my spirit. Unschooling has many forms, but can generally be characterized as the development of complete autodidactic, or self-directed learning. Unschoolers reject “schools” and imposed curriculum and structures, to allow students and people to learn from their own interests, goals, and passions.

The Village School of Northfield was an “unschool” where children were free to study what they wanted, when they wanted, and how they wanted. Here’s a link to a previous posting about The Village School.

At the Unschooling Conference I was able to meet some very wonderfully creative and passionate people - many of whom were parents who unschool their own children.

Here is a general summary of my experience:

I was so glad to meet Manish Jain, the coordinator and co-founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, in Udaipu, India. One of the concepts that most resonated with me was that of a “local learning commons” where learning is shared, and given the space to be gifted (given for free), within a community of all ages and backgrounds.

I also picked up a booklet entitled Healing ourselves from the Diploma Disease, which spoke to me deeply! Basically, this publication, along with so much of the conference itself, was a clear voice in the vast wilderness, that our methods of education, certification, curriculum, and imposed literacy programs serve to separate us, devalue us, and fragment us all as a “world people.”

I also had the pleasure of sitting down at lunch with Bradford Hansen-Smith. Brad, as he introduced himself to me, is an artist and mathematician, who has spent the last 18 years of his life “folding paper plates.”

More seriously, Bradford, who travels extensively to give seminars, workshops, and to work with children, told me of his work with circles and spheres.

A circle is a ‘whole’ shape. It is not fragmented. When you carry it out and fold it to its logical end, you come up with a sphere. A sphere is both whole and functions as parts. When I have children fold circles, I ask them what they observe. Within this process, you can begin to see how people learn about relationships, points, shapes, fragments, and their relation to the whole.

Bradford uses the mathematics of spheres, their fragments, negative space, shapes, and relationships to the whole as a metaphor for wholeness in our larger lives. The folding of circles facilitates a self-learning process where we explore wholeness in ways we may not have thought about before.

In all however, the most important lesson I took away from the conference was that of our own need to “unschool our very lives” and to undergo a healing process within ourselves, so that we can fully embrace and empower children and adults to unschool, and to transform the world.

I’ll be back next year!

Click here for photos from the Unschooling Conference.

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