Friday, October 10, 2008

Interested in everything?


Yep, I guess I am.

Living is learning and when kids [ and adults] are living fully and energetically and happily they are learning a lot, even if we don't always know what it is.
John Holt ~ in a letter to Joan Pitkin, October 22, 1971 From: "A Life Worth Living, Selected Letters of John Holt", Edited by Susannah Sheffer

Someone said something very nice to me today.

I was cleaning out the fridge at the parish office, as part of the preparation for this weekend's parish celebration and barbecue . I was curious about how the fridge shelves, bits and pieces, came apart and how these were put back together.

I know, little things amuse small minds! lol!

And I was told that I really do live what I write - about learning being everywhere, life being learning, everything being interesting and part of homeschoolling.

Wow. To me, that is a great compliment. Almost as good as being told I look thin or young! ( Laughs!).

It is true, everything is connected and everything counts towards learning.

The good times, the sucky ones. The cleaning and the partying. The reading and the talking. The writing and the singing. Doing maths and cooking dinner. Praying and laughing. Crying and fighting. Sharing.

What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent - in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgement, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.
~John Holt~ Teach Your Own


4 comments:

Greg said...

That reminds me of one of my previous bosses (also incidentally one of the nicest people I've ever known). Dean Brown. I was waiting with him in a cab rank at Adelaide Airport and the queue was long. I was standing around boiling away and mentally swearing at the delay. Then he started talking about ways to improve the service, how the ranks could be better organised...he was constantly thinking about how things worked and could be improved.
So there you are. You and a former SA Premier have something in common :)

Leonie said...

Wow and woo hoo!

Anonymous said...

Oh me too. Now if all the info I manage to gather would just go to the dc via osmosis....

Leonie said...

lol! Maybe via strewing and discussion?