…it’s not so easy to just NOT post.   Turns out I really enjoy writing this blog, and the act of writing it gets my creative juices flowing.   Which they were not doing earlier, as I sat in my living room writing in stream of consciousness fashion about “What is Unschooling”.   It got so bad that I finally tossed it aside with a sound that may have strongly resembled a snort.

The thing is that a lot of people have written thoughtfully and  eloquently about unschooling and what it is and isn’t.   John Holt, Pat Farenga, Sandra Dodd, Dayna Martin and Peter Gray, just to name a few.  Even I have written (in my own humble opinion) some pretty good stuff about unschooling, but when I read over this evening’s effort, it was dry as driftwood – like the textbook version of what someone should say when asked about unschooling.

Yuck.

Then I thought, “This is going to be MY website, dammit! And my website should make people feel good,  full of fun and joy and NOT like they have stumbled upon a textbook!”   So I trashed everything I’d written and thought of Hemingway.   Hemingway, who in his magnificent book A Moveable Feast said, “Write the truest sentence you know.”

Unschooling is freedom.

There.  That’s the truest sentence I can write about unschooling.  Freedom.  Freedom, baby!   Real freedom – the kind that make you want to run around and whoop because it is so much fun and you are so grateful for it.    Not license, mind you.  License is something very different that has no place in unschooling.   License is a lack of mindfulness, respect and gratitude, and unschooling is all about gratitude and respect;  for ourselves, others and the world.   Love of learning.  Fun.

Doesn’t that make you want to know more?

“What is unschooling?”

“Unschooling is FREEDOM.”

Yeah man, that’s the stuff.