Cecilie Conrad: 0:14

All right. So welcome to episode eight of the Ladies Fixing the World, season two. As in the other episodes, I have with me Sandra Dodd from the US. Welcome, hello, hi and Sue Elwes, whom I can't see because my little things on my screen keep moving here you are Hi Cecilia, hi Sandra and you're in the future because you're in australia, so you're in.

Sue Elvis: 0:43

We've already started out the 20. Well, the day after you, and it happens to be our last day of summer, oh, summer, so this would be my last day of what spring, I don't know. I think I think everybody else around the world calculates the seasons differently from us. We have a nice system of exactly three months for each of the seasons, starting on the first of each month and ending on the last day of a month. So it's really easy to remember day of the month. So it's really easy to easy to remember.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:24

But I think that'll come in very handy, that fact, with what we're going to be talking about today, if we get on to a little bit of mess and uh well, we all yeah, we always have a little headline, a little thing we plan to talk about, and sometimes we actually talk about it for most of the podcast and sometimes it seems like something else is more important.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:43

But today we have the big bad wolf going on. Today we have the question of math and it's one of the questions that comes up, just like the toothbrush and the social life and how do they learn to read? One of the big ones, the big worry for many parents and the big well, where the eyebrows go behind the hairline for many people is when we say we don't teach any math and they don't get it. They don't. It's like a do not compute situation. It's like how do we handle not forcing children to learn math? There's a big then what question mark in the room once we say this and I think a lot of worry and a lot of beginner unschoolers. That's where they struggle. I've heard a lot of people say I unschool except for math, which is another strange question.

Sue Elvis: 2:55

it's a strange statement, isn it? I've been asked that question. Can I unschool, except for math? I'm going to be saying maths. I'm sorry, cecilia and Sandra, maths rolls off my tongue and you'll be saying math. It's just the custom of our countries.

Cecilie Conrad: 3:14

I think we're allowed to speak our own languages. Here I speak my version of English. I think we're allowed to speak our own languages.

Sue Elvis: 3:19

here I speak my version of English. Yeah well, somebody once said to me who wasn't familiar with the idea that different countries have different customs, and once said to me that I was wrong and why was I saying maths, and she had no idea that quite a bit of the world does use the word maths and math isn't universal. So that was a bit of the world does use the word maths and math isn't universal. So that was a bit of a learning moment.

Sandra Dodd: 3:46

I think I forgot it makes sense if it's an abbreviation for mathematics. It's a plural noun. But we just don't. I don't think Canada does either, but I know that the UK and a lot of other colonies do, other former colonies they do in India maths.

Sue Elvis: 4:03

I just thought I'd say that because sometimes people get annoyed by something somebody's saying or the way they're saying it and they concentrate on that more than what we're saying. So I just thought I'd explain that first before we got going. But what I'm interested in is, Cecilia, from what you were just saying, kids can learn maths and all sorts of other things without any formal instruction. But did you ever sit down with a formal course, a workbook, with any of your children? Did you learn as you went that that wasn't the right way? Or did you always approach maths differently with all your children?

Cecilie Conrad: 4:50

So my personal story to become an unschooler is not starting with the concept of unschooling. It's starting with not one of my children did not want to go to school and so we started with the concept of homeschooling in our minds. I was not very aware of the different nuances, I just knew he was not going to be in the school setting and we had to do something else, and I had to. Also, I've shared this story several times so I'll just do it briefly, but I had a cancer disease when our second child was child was four. I want to say Our third child was a baby. Our first child was about 10 or 11. And when I was done with treatment and we were hoping and praying, we had our fourth child, who was a miracle child.

Cecilie Conrad: 6:03

I was not supposed to be able to have any more children and we took the two youngest out of the kindergarten situation because we didn't know if I would survive and I had just been away for six months and it was clearly the only thing I wanted to do was to be around my kids and obviously they needed it a lot and we only. Clearly the only thing I wanted to do was to be around my kids and and obviously they needed it a lot and we only we only knew we had four weeks. Every time I had a blood test, that was clear. We knew I had another four weeks, so we just that was a very easy choice. It was not motivated by philosophy, or I mean, I liked the idea, I wanted it on a higher level as well, and I'd wanted it for a while, but the real motivation was very urgent at the moment when it happened. And then I got pregnant and we expected the fourth one and I kept having the tests and I kept surviving and the statistics were you know, for every day I survived, the statistics got better. After a year it was really good. I was down to, I think, a relapse risk of about 20% at that point and we started breathing again.

Cecilie Conrad: 7:12

And that's when he was supposed to start school, or slightly before, and he didn't want to and I didn't want him to and I had a neighbor who wanted to unschool, so I had heard about the concept. It's really random that I had that, because at the time we were maybe 20 families in Denmark home educating at all in total. So the fact that there was someone in my street was just, yeah, amazing and she wanted to unschool. She knew one of the three unschooling families in the country and I met them and so I knew about the idea and I liked the idea.

Cecilie Conrad: 7:52

I offered my oldest child, who was in a alternative, democratic kind of school, to choose to quit. She wanted to continue. The second child didn't want to go to school and but my husband didn't, didn't agree, he didn't like the plan, he didn't like the idea for me. He said you need a career, you need to be able to breathe. You can't just stay at home, be mom all the time and we're taking something away from the child. He just you know all the things. And I'm trying to be brief and I'm not sorry.

Sandra Dodd: 8:27

It's interesting Go ahead.

Cecilie Conrad: 8:31

So I knew that I couldn't homeschool under any form if my husband didn't agree. So I had to work with him. My son is. This is my oldest son, who is now 19. He's a very, very gentle person. I always say he's my sweetest and nicest child. It's not polite to say, but he really is, because that's his nature. He's very sweet and nice and he never aggressively threw any tantrums or anything. He just said nicely, I don't think school is for me. It might be for everyone else, but I don't think it's for me. And we brushed it off and we were like but you'll be in school with this.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:18

The school was an age integrated school, so he would be studying with his seven year older sister, would be a very safe environment in many ways. And we tried to convince him. And then at some point he said he sat us down. This is a six year old. He sat us down and he said mom and dad, at what point are you going to listen to me when I'm telling you that school is not for me and that one hurt? And still I said so we talked about it, my husband and I, and I said I think it's fine, I'll home educate him. I was home already. I had a newborn, I had a three-year-old and I liked having my son around. I didn't need him to go to any school and I said I liked the idea. My husband was not sure. He said why don't we try so he knows what he says no to? And so we tried and tried and my veto was I'm not going to drop him off, I will take him to school and I will stay with him until he says it's all right, you can go home. And so we negotiated that with the school. I went three days a week Tuesday, wednesday, thursday in the morning. And when he said I can't take it anymore, I want to go home, we went home. So we did that for a few weeks, a few hours, three times a week.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:48

And he's sweet and nice and polite and he did his best to adjust and he did not like it. His whole system shut down. He became very tired. He became very tired. He became very overwhelmed. He just didn't like the concept of it. He tried. He made a friend that he still has. I mean, it wasn't like he would sit in a corner refusing. He really tried.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:09

Um, after a few weeks the school said to me that the child was too attached to me, that it was a too close and too strong attachment, which is we all know this it doesn't exist. You cannot have a too strong and too good attachment to your primary caretaker. So, but this was what the school thought and I thought that was bullshit, but I didn't say it. They also said that all kids go from paradise to some version of a stressful environment than when they start school. And he just had to learn to cope with it. And I was like why? Why is he not supposed to be happy every day? I mean, if he's not happy, why is he here? But I didn't say much. And then they said their preposition was why don't we try it where the dad comes with the child every morning, because we think you're the problem or the relationship between you and your son is the problem. So I thought about that for about two and a half seconds and I thought that's a great idea, because it's my husband who wants him here, so why don't he take that one and I can stay at home at the time.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:23

So we had a newborn or he was six, eight months old, and in Denmark you have about 10 months of maternity leave, but that can be transferred to the dad in two cases if the mom is dead or if the mom has a deadly disease. And I had a deadly disease technically, because I was still actually a cancer patient. I just didn't relapse. So my husband had the maternity leave. I was also too weak to do it alone at the time. I was just out of the cancer situation when I had a baby. So he had the time he went, or he didn't, but he agreed I went home. I told him you're going to have to do it. The school was not, will not work with me any longer, and it's also actually your idea. I don't think this is going to work.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:12

This is a Thursday and the next school day is the following Tuesday. But on the Saturday I get a phone call that a friend of mine died and she died of the disease that I was surviving. You make a lot of friends. I made a lot of friends in the hospital. You get pretty close when you get chemotherapy together and she died and she was a great woman. So we went to the funeral on the Monday and going back from that funeral which was, you know, it's quite confronting to be the one who didn't die I hardly had hair at the time and her children was, you know, carrying out a casket and my children could drive back in the car with me, and that was a very clear and eye-opening moment for all of us.

Cecilie Conrad: 14:09

And on that car ride back from the funeral, my husband said I don't know what we're thinking. Why would we force him to go to school? So this was a not short version of how we started. And so here he realized, of course we wouldn't do this, but still he wanted me to teach. He was still afraid of the situation, he was afraid of what everyone else around us would say and he was afraid that we would ruin our son's life by not giving him an education. And he was afraid oh, he was afraid of all the classic things, and so was I, in a way. And he also started by saying you can teach him at home for a year, or maybe only set six months, and then we'll see how it goes, but only if you teach him what they learn in schools. So this is a very long answer to your question.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:07

Yes, I sat down with school books. I felt I had to. Um, I did that for about. I don't know. I tried to do it for about I don't know. I tried to do it for about, I would say, a year and a half before I fully let go and and transited into unschooling. Um, but I didn't do it. I just lived a life feeling guilty of not doing it, feeling I should do it but it didn't make sense to do it, so I didn't do it. But I've I had.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:44

I was afraid my husband wouldn't keep agreeing with the homeschooling he he actually learned about. He was able to let go much faster than me once he realized what unschooling was. And I was still afraid for a while. And then I realized I'm doing something every day, or trying to do it or feeling guilty. I'm not doing it to my children, who are the most precious people in my life, because I'm afraid of what? What am I afraid of really? And if I am that afraid of the state, the government coming to check me, should that be my kids problem or should I? You know I'm the adult. I should figure that out. I should hack that problem and solve it without pushing my kids to do things they don't want to do yeah, yeah, I was, um, one of those people that said we were unschoolers but we didn't do maths.

Sue Elvis: 17:29

And because this was years ago with my last two children, and because I felt a little bit uneasy about being an unschooling blogger and you know I did I could, I call myself an unschooler, an unschooling blogger. I sort of made out and I think we can what's the word? Not lie to ourselves, but we can deceive ourselves. My kids loved maths. This is what I told everybody, and we were all like because I like maths and I thought they're just like me. They love maths, we do our maths every day, but, um, yeah, that went by the wayside after a while. So I do have, um, very, a lot of empathy with people who say, uh, we're unschoolers but we can't let go of maths. But I want to know your story, sandra. Have, um, what, when you start with maths in in particular, was there a time where you had to let go of it or were you happy to unschool completely? You didn't make any separations between areas of learning that your kids were experiencing.

Sandra Dodd: 18:47

I have a couple of stories I want to tell to set the trajectory, and then I can come back and tell other stories in the holes. But there are two that are moments, points on the line. I knew from the beginning why not to teach it. I understood the problems with teaching it Because, cecilia, earlier you said that schools force kids to learn math. They don't. They pretty much force most kids to hate math and fear it and to avoid it. You cannot force a child to learn anything. I don't care how much aversion and electroshock stuff you set up, they'll just learn that they hate you, that the thing is stupid to get away from you.

Sandra Dodd: 19:29

So when parents try to force kids to do things at home, it works against the success of unschooling, maybe gradually, maybe largely, maybe quickly. That's different in every situation, but I knew not to, and when my oldest was six, five, I consciously did not use those school terms for subjects. I didn't use the terms math or science or history. If he was interested in cowboys, that was cowboys. If he was interested in rocks, that was rocks. A lot of parents do the sing-songy sort of voice oh, oh, you like this, you like World War II. That's history and that's geography, you know. And then that's like what are they talking about? So they've changed the subject. The kid wants to talk about World War II and the parents are totally dismissing it in a way, minimalizing it in a way. So I knew not to do that and I was careful not to do that when Marty my kids in order are Kirby, and then, two and a half years later, marty, and then three years later, holly, so they're within about five years, and Marty and Kirby wanted to go walk down to the convenience store and get a soda. So Marty said, oh, I guess Kirby had some money, marty didn't, or something like that. So Marty said what can I do, mom, to earn some money? And I said, well, you want to do this.

Sandra Dodd: 20:52

And I drew a times tables. I just like drew one to nine across the top and one to 10 down the side, one to nine down the side. And I said I'll show you how to fill this in. And I showed him, like just the first couple, what's two times two. And he knew and he wrote it down. I think he was seven, maybe, and so Kirby would have been nine. So he said, oh yeah, cause I knew he would like it. He liked numbers, he liked counting by threes, counting by fives. So I had never said, but that's math and but that be. And I said it'll be what this is. And I pointed where nine times nine would be, and he messed with it just in his head for a little. And it's just me 91. So I just left him to it and I said if you fill this in, I'll give you money.

Sandra Dodd: 21:35

And then I thought that was so dumb that I went nine to nine. I did that because that's what they taught us in school. So I went and put tens so he'd have a dollar anyway. So Kirby said well, what's he doing? And I and I showed him and he said well, I want to do that. And so I made Kirby one. That was one to twelve.

Sandra Dodd: 21:50

And then they're just sitting there like they're bubbling, bubbling, helping each other, talking about it. How cool, seeing patterns. And I thought, well, I understand, they're going to discover some stuff on their own. That will be exciting. They'll be way better than if they had done it with a bunch of other kids around who are going. I don't get it. What is this? It's dumb, because they were both excited. So I gave them some money and they walked and got a soda and that was over.

Sandra Dodd: 22:11

I told my husband you know it was a fun story for us. Oh, I'm going to tell you three stories because I just remembered which room we were in at the time. There was a time, before my husband and I were married, before we had kids, I was at his house visiting and I'm sitting in a room he's sitting around the corner, he's on the toilet, but anyway, you know, we don't see each other and we're talking. And I said he's a mathy guy, very math, was working on a math degree. Everything's easy for him. He would help his friends with calculus and I was just like I finished Algebra 1, geometry 1. That was great. When we got to Algebra 2 and they start doing squares and cubes, I'm like can you explain this to me? And they didn't do it well enough. I was baffled so I dropped out of math in those days.

Sandra Dodd: 22:55

I took one math course in college. It was called Math for Non-Majors and it was a book with every chapter, all words. It was all in English. It wasn't in math and it wasn't in numbers. It wasn't math. But I didn't know that. So I told Keith this day. I said I liked math in school. Okay, I got it for a long time, until I was about 15. I said but the question, the only questions I really liked, were the word problems. I didn't like the number problems and this voice comes from across the wall. The word problems are the only math in there. The rest of it, the rest of them, are the answers to unstated word problems, without the calculations. And I just sat there I couldn't say anything All my life.

Sandra Dodd: 23:41

I liked math because the part that was math was what if you have this situation and you have to figure out? I liked that. I didn't like when they said here are 30 sets of numbers for you to do something about and for us to mark and read and give you a score. And I did well in those too. I could do them. I could do it. I just thought it was stupid. Turns out it was so. That's what calculators are for. So if on a piece of paper it says what's 24 minus eight? It's like 24. What? Where are those eight going? What's going on? It's like that's not the question, that's not what you're supposed to be thinking about, and so that's just counting on your fingers. That's monkey math. That's not even considered math.

Sandra Dodd: 24:24

When people talk about math at a higher level, that's considered arithmetic, that doesn't lead anywhere but to bookkeeping, which is not considered math. Bookkeeping is clerical work. So parents, most parents whose kids go to school, don't know that, they don't care about that. They think that all of the addition, subtraction, multiplication, that that's higher mathematics, but it isn't. You need to know some of those if you're going to do algebra or anything physics, anything that has formulas involved with formulas. So yeah, you're going to need some of that eventually if you go into mathematics. But that itself is not mathematics, which was really interesting to me.

Sandra Dodd: 25:02

So after that I followed Keith around about math ideas you know like, and what about this? What about this? He said, since he was a little kid, he thought in patterns, I didn't, I thought in words and I thought in language and I thought in emotions. So he didn't, he didn't think in emotions, he didn't even consider emotions, didn't care about emotions, and I was all about who feels, how and what can we do about that? Which two people need to hang out together because of the emotions in this group, in this school group of kids, other kids and my husband didn't consider that he was good at sports and math, so that's that was interesting for me to know as my kids were coming along too. I don't, we don't know what they're going to be interested in, and it didn't go by gender either, it didn't there were.

Sandra Dodd: 25:52

Holly was great at math and she's great at spatial reasoning. One of the another kid's story is Holly loved to change rooms in our house. She had four or five of these rooms as her one, two, three, four, five, six different rooms as her bedroom different times. So she would just like trade me my office for to let it be her bedroom or whatever or what. Her brother moved out for a year. We saved it for him and it was a gaming room, and then he told her I'm going to stay in Texas so you can have it. When she would move from one room to another, she and her dad would get graph paper and she would measure all of her pieces of furniture and they would cut them out so that they were proportional with graph paper and then she would rearrange those on another piece of graph paper and then she would tell her dad. She would show it to her dad, this is how I want my furniture and he would go and move it. When we bought her a house when she was grown, she did the same thing. She was making models of her furniture and trying it in different rooms. I would have never thought to do that. I would maybe at most go in with a measuring tape and say it'll fit here, bring it in here. But that was a habit and a hobby between her and her dad since she was a little kid.

Sandra Dodd: 27:08

When my oldest was a teen and he was 18 or 19, he went to the community college. He and another unschooler the other kid needed to go because he needed 15 hours of college credit to join the Marines, because he didn't have a high school diploma and he wanted to be a Marine because his daddy had been a Marine. So they said, okay, well, you need to take at least. So what would that have been? Five classes. He needed to take five college classes and they didn't care what they were. So the two of these kids went up to the community college, which is pretty close to our house, and they signed up for some classes and one of them was oh, to get to sign up for any classes, you take a test so that they know what you can place into. So they were taking a college prep class like how to study. It was a class about how to do well as a student and neither one of them had been to school at all and they were loving that class no-transcript and how to keep a notebook. And all of the other kids are like, oh, I've heard it a hundred times. And the teacher's like yeah, but you haven't done it yet. And these boys were like I'm doing it, they just loved that class.

Sandra Dodd: 28:25

So meanwhile Kirby tested into the middle of the three math levels Of remedial math there's doesn't have a clue, almost gets it in the middle. So he's in the middle and he takes a remedial math course at a community college which is like another government provided educational level. So he goes into this math class. He's like a musician who's a really good musician, professional musician, who goes to a place where you have to read music and he can't read music. So that was the thing. It's not that he didn't understand how to manipulate the world and numbers, he just didn't know how to see it written down. So as I'm walking him out to the car the first day, I said oh, and also, sometimes times isn't written with an X, it's written with a line over or it's written with a dot and he's like mom, leave me alone.

Sandra Dodd: 29:19

So I was teaching him math on the way to his first math class and he didn't want me to. So he got in there and he was confused and he asked me and his dad for help and we tried to help him and it frustrated him. He couldn't hear it from us, it was bugging him. So then he asked another friend of his who had gone to school and that he could listen to him. So somehow that kid was a better math teacher. That's fine. And he started off baffled and behind and a little frustrated and then he got the highest grade in the class. So in the time that it took a few months for them to review everything that kids learn in school, because they're trying to get them up to the point that they can take Math 101 at the college level. In the time that he did that he learned all of the notation that he would have learned in school in 12 years, 13 years.

Sandra Dodd: 30:12

So at the time that that was happening I was telling stories. He also was driving himself to class and he said there's a woman I'm going to make up a name, because I don't remember her name, julie, maybe. He said I saw a woman who was walking and she seemed like she needed help. She wasn't walking very fast, so I picked her up and gave her a ride and she lives up Tramway and so it's kind of you know, he knows where she's going to be coming from. And he said I told her I'd take her, I'd give her a ride every day, and I was always assuming it was somebody in her 20s or 30s, but it was an older woman and he gave her a ride back and forth every day so that I never knew until after the class was over. She got the second, she got the highest test score and he got the highest grade in the class, I think. So they were both helpful to each other. But they were also both taking remedial math course and she was an older person.

Sandra Dodd: 31:10

So when I was telling these stories in an unschooling discussion, which I thought would be interesting to the other unschoolers, one woman said well, it must not work very well because your son's in remedial math. And I said you know, like she wasn't even reading the stories I was telling, and I said he was in a remedial math course with 30 other people. He was the only one who had not gone to school. So they went to school all those years and only tested into remedial math. He didn't touch math all those years and did as well as they did. So what are you saying? I think it was Marty, or I think Marty did not. Marty tested it out regularly but Marty was the mathiest of them all and Holly took the highest remedial math class.

Sandra Dodd: 31:43

Maybe Pam Sarushian's kids decided they went in younger 15 or 16, I think they were going to take college classes, mostly just for fun, things like singing and pottery but they all or at least one of them I know went and took all five of those math classes from the beginning to the end, just because she knew she hadn't done school math and she liked going to that college and hanging out with those people. So she just started at. She probably would have tested into the third or fourth out of five, but she started at one and took all five. So it's not depending where you are. There may or may not be free government provided remedial math courses. But because my kids didn't fear or avoid math when it came along, it wasn't scary to them at all, it was fun. It was just learning a new system, a new way to write something, a notation, a picture of what those numbers could look like. And they had played a lot of cards. The calculations of adding and subtracting and multiplying were very standard for their lives because they had played things like Magic the Gathering, done a lot of D&D, where you're doing things with dice and math and points.

Sandra Dodd: 32:59

And Kirby had worked at a gaming shop from the time he was 14 to 18. And one time they sent him to run a magic tournament at a hotel and so he's in charge of their table. Oh, I take it back, he wasn't running it that day. He did run some, but that day he was running a table for the store selling cards and dice or whatever people need for that game. So he has a little shop display on a folding table and people are coming by and buying from that store. Because he had worked at the store with a cash register that was kind of a computer-based cash register.

Sandra Dodd: 33:33

He just knew. He just remembered If somebody buys one pack of cards or three or five, he knew how much it was with New Mexico tax and he would tell them and they would give him cash. He's keeping the cash in a cracker box. And I know all this because I went to pick him up. He called me and said Mom, I have too much cash here, I need to take it back to the store. Can you come and take me to the store real quick and get me some food and bring me back for the afternoon? I said sure. So I said the danger of putting cash in a cracker box is someone might said things were going well there.

Sandra Dodd: 33:58

And then about mid-morning someone brought him a tax chart. He said I didn't know there was such a thing, mom. So they brought him a calculator and a tax chart. But the first couple of hours he didn't have it and he was fine because he could figure it out in his head and I think tax was 7.45 or something like that. But know, but he's, they don't, they didn't mind, he's averaging it or whatever. But he was probably right because he just remembered what it cost from the store and he wasn't selling the whole huge array of stuff, just a few items.

Sandra Dodd: 34:31

And so he was so happy that he that he had tools, that he had this tax chart and a calculator. But he didn't think in the morning to say, like a lot of people would have said, oh, I cannot do this without a calculator and a tax chart. How do you expect me to work under these conditions? Because he had no idea. I loved stories like that. It was just cute because he was tossed into a weird situation where he did well, he was fine, and then he found out there was a better way. So I love that story. Okay, now you guys.

Sue Elvis: 35:04

Can I respond to a couple of things you said there, sandra? Right back at the beginning you said something about kids learn to hate maths. They can learn to hate maths, and that was the exact reason that we let go of well, I let go of forcing my kids to do formal maths courses because they were saying things like I hate maths. And it was so sad that something that I found fascinating, that the way that maths was being presented to them and not as part of the bigger world was making them hate it. And I thought, well, perhaps if they see how maths is being used in the world and see what a fascinating language it is, they might change their minds. That was a turning point for me as far as being an unschooler. Except for maths, I thought, look, if we go along this pathway, it's not going to be advantageous to my children anyway, because they're all going to say I hate maths, I can't do it, and so forcing them didn't seem to have any advantages. But if we just looked at maths as part of the world and something that was potentially very interesting, they might gain from it, and so that's what we did. But the other point you made, sandra, about notation made me think of my youngest child who encountered maths in the world. I love all your stories there and I have similar ones. But if I asked my youngest daughter to sit down and write a maths equation out, how could you describe that, with numbers and all the usual notation? She would have had no idea and the notation, I don't think, is that important as far as well isn't as far as understanding that it's much better to be able to understand the problem that you're trying to work out. And my daughter was very good at working out things that I had no idea how she got the answer, that she didn't use conventional memorized formula or anything like that. She just sat there and thought about it, came up with the correct answer for herself, but she couldn't write it down in a nice you know this plus, this plus and then this fraction, and she had no idea about stuff like denominator and numerator. And all these maths courses wanted to drill all these words, all these maths vocabulary into the kids and I thought is it really important that we know what a denominator is or a numerator, as long as you know which number it is and what you're doing with it and if it's important to you.

Sue Elvis: 38:02

So when she was about 14, she suddenly said to me one day mom, I think that I'd like to know the notation so I can talk about maths with other people in a language that they know. So I asked her how she wanted to do this and she said I think I might go look for a course online. So she ended up on Khan Academy and then she decided herself where she was going to slot in, and I was wondering, at 14, where would she slot in, not having done any formal maths? And I think she slotted in about six months younger than she should have done and I thought, wow, it's amazing what she has picked up and learned just by encountering the world and thinking about the things and encountering problems in her own life that she wanted to solve. And well, the Khan Academy lasted about I don't know six or nine months and she decided she'd had enough and she moved on from that.

Sue Elvis: 39:11

But what was really interesting was later on she came and had friends that came out of school and she worked with people that were in school and her math skills were much better than the kids that came out of school and she hadn't done all this formal stuff, and which reminds me of another story that when my son got into university to study a Bachelor of Nursing, he didn't do all the formal subjects like you said, you know, separate this subject out from that subject. But he did do a couple of university units on. I think he did one on critical thinking, one on writing, maybe I can't remember. He did well on them and he got into university easy.

Sue Elvis: 40:02

But his friend who'd gone all the way through school didn't get into the course that she wanted and her mother was so angry with me. She said to me your son didn't go to work at school, he didn't do all the work that my daughter has done, he just lived life and stayed home and he shouldn't think he'd done much and he got into university. She said it's just not fair and I thought it's not that it's not fair. I could see how frustrated she was, but her putting her faith in a system and expecting it to give the results that my son had had. Yeah, that was very interesting, how people can tell you that you're doing nothing at home with your kids and all that, but when the exam results not exam results, because he never did any exams, but when things like he got this university place no problem whatsoever. Uh, yeah, it wasn't fair. He should have done. He should have worked hard for that. Um, I guess he did work hard, but he worked hard at living.

Sandra Dodd: 41:15

Um there is something about playing goes beyond math. But if kids just play, play, play with all kinds of things, whatever they want to play, however they want to play, play with words, play with things, play with their food, I don't care, you know play, you know explore by messing with stuff. They are then prepared for a lot of school subjects that if they had tried to teach those to kids who hadn't played a lot, it wouldn't make sense, and one of them is physics. I was talking to my I have a teenage granddaughter. She's about to turn 16. She she was talking about how she's noticing the differences. She's noticing in boys and girls, her age, and that the girls. There are things that the girls have known for a few years, that the boys are just discovering about interpersonals and emotions, and there are things that and I said, yes, but there are things that the boys have been doing for years that you might never do, and one is crashing toy cars and building towers of blocks and knocking them down. I didn't say, but that's what kids start when they're really little. You know how hard do you have to hit something to break it.

Sandra Dodd: 42:21

Boys, especially boys not my, my daughter was skateboarder too, but boys, uh, very often are the ones who will build a ramp to jump a bike off or go to skateboard parks and do the dangerous stuff. When those kids who have wrecked blocks, wrecked toy cars, jumped their physical bodies on wheels at various speeds to see what happens when they go to a physics class and the physics teacher starts talking about vector and speed and angle, they're like, okay, keep talking, I know what you're talking about. And some of the girls, like I kind of was, it was like what vector of what speed of what? I still wanted to see a thing. You know what are you talking about. And the boys who had played so hard out in the yard and risk their, their legs and their lives went, okay, we know what they're talking about. The angle makes a difference, the speed makes a difference. And so it's like that with math, what my daughter was doing with spatial reasoning and rearranging furniture, that's geometry. But didn't have any numbers really, except the number of, of squares on the graph paper.

Sandra Dodd: 43:25

And when my husband said I, when I told him what we're going to talk about, he said remind them that driving a car is calculus. And I said, uh, okay, and I and I said is the skateboard and bike stuff. Calculus. He said, no, that's physics. So so I will tell you, on behalf of my matthew husband, that what it takes to drive a car or, like your son, sue, is driving a mining truck, that's even more. Or if you can back up the grocery trucks back to a loading dock at the grocery store, man, so that's calculus. Backing up a trailer and hitting that bumper very gently, with the trailer lined up so that they can walk from the platform to the trailer, yeah, that's something that that very few people can do.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:09

It's pretty tricky I definitely cannot do it and a lot of record.

Sandra Dodd: 44:16

I wouldn't even want to try. I've I've pulled a trailer a couple of times.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:18

Scared me to death I can't even back out my own car from the driveway.

Sandra Dodd: 44:26

So all of the things that kids play with games games there's all kinds of all the whole world in there, and so then when you come to any sort of formal discussion or notation or terminology, then you'll be prepared to understand it, because you will have many, many hooks to hang it on.

Sue Elvis: 44:42

Many, many examples of what like, what's going fast, like somebody on a skateboard so what we're saying here is that, even though sometimes our kids look like they're just playing just like we were saying last time, cecilia, about looks like we're just drinking coffee when we're chatting our kids are actually learning like we're just drinking coffee when we're chatting. Our kids are actually learning, and there's more than one way of assessing how like our kids don't have to be assessed by exams and grading to determine that they're learning. And one of the questions we were talking about before we actually started recording is how do we know our kids are learning, which seems self-evident to us, but that's a popular question that comes up and I've been asked that in interviews before. How do your kids, how do you know your kids are learning? And my couple of my daughters, when they were teenagers, were interviewed and they were asked that as well, and we just sort of look at each other and think, um, it sounds like a stupid question, but do we do we need to talk about that, or have we?

Sandra Dodd: 45:55

covered that. That's our next topic, next, next discussion, because next, next time is it, it's episode nine, you're skipping, oh sorry, no, that's fine, that's fine. Just something.

Sue Elvis: 46:08

Sandra said no, no, no, no, we can talk about whatever, it's just funny.

Sandra Dodd: 46:13

Because we're talking about how do you see math? How do you see math? How do you see that a child is learning math? All right.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:19

How do we know?

Sandra Dodd: 46:20

that our kids are learning math. It will help very much for the parents to go off on the side with other parents and discuss it without discussing it with the kids, like, instead of coming to your children and saying, I'm so glad you were riding your skateboard today because that will lead to a greater understanding of physics in the future, oh hush, you know so. That was a very cool trick. You need new knee pads. Are your pads still good? I'm worried about your, you know, because that's what moms really ought to be worrying about, not physics, but are the kids, do they have good equipment? Do they need new wheels? So when enough unschooling parents are in communication with each other, that they see a lot of stories, not just their own kids but other people's kids then they can calmly have the confidence that if the kids are busy playing, laughing, smiling, interacting with other people, they're learning. That's what it looks like. And then another thing that a lot of parents don't know and don't want to know, because they don't want to learn, because they were told once you get out of school you don't have to learn anything else, is what math looks like. What math looks like in the absence of numbers. It looks like playing with patterns. It looks like planning a trip to another town. That involves time, cost, gasoline, what equipment you need, all of that sort of logic and strategy, all the things that people do to plan a camping trip, where you need also food and water. Well, I live where you have to take your own water if you go camping. Some people live where water comes out of the ground and it's clean or there's a faucet, but not New Mexico. So, whatever you need to know where you are to do some things you might want to do, even to just go to the museum. Do you need snacks? How much money is it going to cost? Is it cold there? Is it warm there? What do you need? That's math. But don't tell them, but tell other parents, tell yourself. So parents should should see that the things that math is made of is patterns and strategy and logic, deductive reasoning.

Sandra Dodd: 48:18

If you can find something you lost, think of all the places. I hung my keys on a twig on a tree one time and I could not find my car keys, and I told my husband. I remember when I hung them keys on a twig on a tree one time and I could not find my car keys and I told my husband I remember when I hung them up this is not a good place to put them, but it was. It was a hook, so we're looking at hooks in the house.

Sandra Dodd: 48:33

And then one day I was just out there feeding the birds and there it was right in front of my face. So I had put it there so I could we have a bird feeder on a pulley. I had to put that down because I needed two hands for the pulley, so I pulled, I went out there to feed, so that's how long it lasted the time it took the birds to empty that, the finch feeder and I went out and there were my keys hanging in the front yard 10 feet from my car, with the house key. So luckily I found them. No one else.

Sandra Dodd: 49:29

But now that's another checklist. So you have the checklist of mistakes you've made before. Check the trash if you haven't taken the trash out, if you overthrew your keys in the trash, stuff like that. That could be modeled in a mathematical way. It could be described in technical terms. But why? In normal thought, in normal language, in normal envisioning, you're setting up grids and patterns and methods and it's a strategy. You have a strategy for finding things.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:06

There's a thing I've been wanting to talk about and I think it comes up in in many areas around unschooling. Actually and I've seen it in my own children and also in other children I've known who are unschooled how the things that school systems push for and they push from the kids that are maybe four years old for them to learn specific things. If you wait which is part of your slogan, sandra if you just wait at some point these things make sense for the kids to learn and it might be very much later than you can handle as a parent, because you were from the system of pushing and you want to see results and you're afraid you're ruining their lives and that whole story that we need to talk more about, the whole de-schooling and how do we hold her. So that's not for today. But if you wait, just leave them be and let them do what makes sense for them. It could be skateboarding, watching anime, drawing, playing, looking at birds, whatever. But they're not doing structured math, they're not studying history, maybe they're not interested in World War II, maybe you cannot see it, even however hard you look, you cannot see it, the schooly stuff. If you wait at some point. It's like the way the mind works of the young person. In my experience they are at least 13 when this shift happens. They suddenly become more academic, they become more structured in the things they do. And it might not be math, it might never be math, it never be math. It might be sewing, might be something else, but it it goes from this playful, unserious kind of thing going everywhere that that's life into something where it's as if there is more, more a specific. It's kind of as if they understand the value and understand I don't even have the good language for it as if working for it makes sense. I'll try and I'll try again and I'll try once more. And I need to figure this out. I have just seen it and this is baffling for me. It's not math, I have just seen it.

Cecilie Conrad: 52:55

One of my children is very, very talented with music and we've always known it's in. We can just it's the whole way he's around music. We can see that he hears more than we hear we. He enjoys it differently, he understands, he talks about things, he finds things and we have always thought he needs to learn to play not one but five instruments because he's got so much and he needs to have an outlet, but you need to learn.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:24

I was taught by a German piano teacher when I was a child piano teacher when I was a child. You know muscle memory. You have to rehearse the chords, you have to sit there for an hour a day. You have to do it perfectly three times in a row or you keep going all these things. You have to do the 10,000 hours. We've all heard these things and it's been. I've failed. It's been so hard to not push him that I failed. I've pushed him and I failed because he's stronger than me, so I cannot push him, but I've tried because I couldn't stop. I couldn't help myself. I kept going. You need to learn to play an instrument. You need to have an outlet for this. You're so talented. It will make you happy, wait, wait. You happy, wait, wait wait, wait.

Sandra Dodd: 54:12

Why are you pushing him at a certain age, though? Because school pushes, because they want to give their, their music teacher, something to do, because they want to take credit for your child learning, because I know I push him because I want him to be happy, but I didn't make him happy by pushing him.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:28

I cannot guarantee you, guarantee you, I failed. I'm not proud of it, but at least I'm honest. So I'm learning to not push over my now. What 10, 15 years of unschooling and the more I learn, the more success I have with my unschooling and what I've just seen with this. This is my youngest he's 13. Is my youngest he's 13? Is that now he's picking up instruments and he's playing? Like a dream. I just so, just before I sat down to do this recording, he sat with the piano with his eyes closed and played music that I just I had to stop what I was doing to just listen to it. Can he read music?

Sandra Dodd: 55:11

No, it's not a requirement. You know Paul McCartney is doing fine. He doesn't read music. He tried to learn enough music to write an orchestral piece one time and I think he went ahead and wrote it without successfully having learned all the music. I used to think he'd learned it. I knew he had started. Music and musical notation are no more the same thing than mathematical concepts and numbers. People can be great musicians without reading music. People can read music and not be musical at all. They don't know any more than to mechanically hit the right keys on the piano for what they see on paper. They can't hear it, they don't know what it is. They, even if they memorize it, they don't know how to play it except mechanically.

Cecilie Conrad: 55:57

And so there are two different things I think it's a good example, this thing, how I got it wrong with my idea of you know you have to play a musical instrument for a year before it becomes fun because you need to learn all the blah, blah, blah, all of that, this whole story around learning, and what I've learned about unschooling, the waiting game, the you know what. Let go of it. Maybe they will never learn, but the things they will learn when they pick them up. They will learn them quickly. They will learn them with passion. They will learn them quickly. They will learn them with passion. They will learn them enjoying the process. They will learn because they can't help themselves. They just want to keep going. And you will have these proficient, happy people when they are at the other end of the young years, let's say early 20s. They have all these skills, all these things they learned, and they learned on a meta level that it's fun to learn, that it's voluntary to learn, that you can learn something really quickly if you want to, because you can. And the same thing goes for math.

Cecilie Conrad: 57:06

Have a discussion on this podcast, maybe even today, about, because both of you talked about how your children eventually learned math, how you, you know they took the community college. I know you don't mean this, but I just want to. You know, do you say in English, bend, bend it in neon. Say that in Danish. You know, remember the neon signs from the 80s and 70s, how that would be the commercial. So we say in danish you bend things in neon. You know, for everyone to understand, maybe they don't need to learn math. Why do we need to learn math? Do everyone need to learn math?

Sandra Dodd: 57:44

you've just used the word learn about 15 times. Oh sorry, about learning music learning. I know we're talking about learning. We're talking about learning. We're talking about learning math. We're talking about math. I understand, but there is a problem, especially when you're talking about something like music or playing or games. You didn't need to learn music, you needed to play music. He was playing music. Yes, right away. He picked up those instruments and he played. So if you can back up a level and not use the word learn so much about it, he was actually doing it. Our kids were doing math. Our kids were using mathematical tools without learning to use them. They just picked them up, figured them out, did it? They were using math while they were playing games.

Sandra Dodd: 58:23

There was a game at our house called Bazaar B-A-Z-A-A-R. It's out of print, but it involved little glass. You know those little glass flat beads that they use for markers a lot in the years back. And there were cards and you're trying to trade for another color. So it's like a market trading game. And at the beginning of the game you pick one of the gaming cards, you set it down in the middle and it says one red costs three blues, one blue costs two greens. So you don't need to memorize it at all. You just when you want to get you're trying to fill out a card that has a pattern on it. So if you need a green one, you look over there. You need to buy a green with whatever it costs. So you look at the chart and it's kind of like market or stock market kind of stuff. It's like because the next time you play the game don't even bother to learn this, because the next time you play the game it's going to be different. And that was super mathematical, without a single number except to say two for one or something like that. But it wasn't adding up, it was just patterns built out of patterns that you had to fulfill in a temporary way, the condition of the moment. And it was a fun game and it was a pretty game which helped. It was artsy looking and not mathematical overtly and nothing but math at another level. So we never said that to the kids, we just played that game with them.

Sandra Dodd: 59:46

There's a video game that came out, maybe in the nineties, probably in the nineties, called Zoom Beanies. I'm going to spell it because it has been released again as an iPad game or as tablet games, not just iPads. Z-o-o-m-b-i-n-i-s. No numbers, all patterns, all deductive reasoning. It's cute, it's these little creatures that you're taking on a journey, and first the first thing is let them sit, but they have to sit by somebody who has one thing in common with them, and they're like six attributes. They can have hair, glasses or not glasses, what kind of shoes, what color, nose, stuff like that. So they have to all get on a raft, but no one can sit next to someone who has nothing in common with them. So you have to keep rearranging them until you have them, and then you go to the next place. And then there's a puzzle they have to. There's an adventure, adventure they're doing, and it's a puzzle. Sort them this way, that way, and sold it to me.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:00:41

I want to play it now it's cute, yeah, I think I might look for.

Sandra Dodd: 1:00:46

That used to used to be a disc and it only played on older computers. And so, as people's computers would die, the last computer, the last desktop computer that would play Zumbini's, everybody would be like Zumbini's died. And I can't play Zumbini's, but a lot of us of kids my kid's age who were born in the 80s, learned a lot of math with that and without knowing it, without knowing they'd learned anything.

Sue Elvis: 1:01:17

And that's the thing't it that there are a lot of math schemes, uh, that parents tempt their kids with so that they learn maths, uh, I, I always thought of games as math games, as two different sorts. There's the games that are designed to teach our kids maths. There's the games that use maths as part of what that's not the main thing, but you're using maths as you're playing the game. And I always remember my youngest daughter. We tried out lots of different games and she would get so fed up with these ones. You know, like you have to, two times two equals four. If you don't get the right answer before the parachute comes down, a big flash comes on the screen. It says you failed, and she would get so upset about this and I thought what a message we're sending our kids. You failed. And in the end she said I said to her she was playing this game. I'm not sure what it was and she wasn't getting anywhere. She just said, mom, this is boring. And I said, all right, give me a go. So I sat down and after five minutes I turned to her and said, yeah, it's boring.

Sue Elvis: 1:02:27

Kids aren't stupid that they understand when we're trying to force learning into them and using, maybe, as I tried in the early years ago, about using attractive methods to force learning into kids, and you think it's like sugar-coated or, in this case, a video-coated all these interactive things, and you think, oh, the kids are going to love this, but they can see right through that to what you're doing. You're forcing, trying to force them to learn a particular concept or whatever, and my children wouldn't cooperate they weren't like all children, they're not silly and they protested. And so when people say things like, oh, they can learn maths through games, I like the sound of your one, sandra, but we tried an awful lot of games that were horrible Zumbini's doesn't say this is an educational math game at all no.

Sandra Dodd: 1:03:36

But there's like a secret place you can go to look online. I think I don't even think it's inside the game that the parents can go and look things up. It used to be. If you looked it up, there were things for parents. But when was your? This is a personal question. But when was your oldest born? What year? 87. Oh, ok, well, maybe about the same age. So video games were new in those days. There weren't that many of them, and they mostly worked on desktop computers. We had a few. We had a set by a German company, I think, or maybe Scandinavian of some sort Broderbund. Where were they from? I don't know? We're somewhere, I think, or maybe Scandinavian of some sort, broderbund. Where were they from? I don't know where? Somewhere in your old neighborhood.

Sandra Dodd: 1:04:15

Cecilia Sounds German to me, but I don't know. It had a cross through the O, so that might be it.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:04:20

Oh, that sounds.

Sandra Dodd: 1:04:21

So how do you spell it? D-r-o with a cross, d-e-r-b-u with an umlaut in D, d-u with an umlaut. It could just be, a name that they made up. It could have just been a cool looking name.

Sandra Dodd: 1:04:34

Yeah, because the umlaut is not in my language, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, we can look it up later, but at the time they had three games out that were really cute. They were called Playroom Backyard and I forget the other one, but they were just little, little kids games, you know, mouse click games, but they were math and art, colors and music mostly, and it was just like a cat walking on boards that have different tones and you can point, you know, click it and the cat will jump, but it's making music, stuff like that, and so we just got it and my kids would just play it if they wanted to. It was an option to do if they wanted to, and so we knew what they could be potentially learning, but they didn't. It didn't matter.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:18

And then there was another American set called Treasure Math Storm, treasure Mountain, treasure, something, a set of three math, really mathy, and they're called Treasure Math Storm. You know this says math, but we didn't make them do it, we just put it there. It's like, do you want to do this? And there was, there were some games in there that the kids really liked, but you're like on a train and you come to a place where you have to mine for some crystals or whatever, or you have to name a number, that's that's in hundreds and tens and fives.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:47

You don't, they don't time, you, but um, sometimes there would be something that was hard for them and they couldn't get past a certain point. So sometimes at night, when they were asleep, I would go in and I would set it to a higher level, do some of the multiplication, the higher stuff that they couldn't do yet, get them some points, get them some gold or whatever it was in the game, and pile up some money for them to have more things, you know, more options, and then I would put it back to the easy level, wherever they had been. That was fun.

Sue Elvis: 1:06:14

That reminds me, sorry, continue.

Sandra Dodd: 1:06:18

Oh, some of the same pattern, things that people were learning from those games which were $50 or $60. And that's all they did. They only did what they did. There was no upgrade coming. There was no playing with other people, unless two kids are sitting there playing together. So there are many things now from which you can get those same benefits. One is just playing with lego. Lego itself is awesome, um, and that's my neighborhood, yeah, yeah, um. But but the things that are like lego are, um, like minecraft or some of the, some of the games where you're creating something and they're and they those are grid or block or however base kind of like Lego.

Sandra Dodd: 1:06:57

I was in Target the other day with my granddaughter. She has a mechanical baby from school that they had to take home. It's like a robot baby that cries and maybe feeding it will work and maybe you have to burp it or bounce it. So she didn't want to go to the store. Part of the assignment was go to the store and take pictures of this baby with baby clothes and their price with food and its price with diapers and wipes. So then they gave them a sheet to go to the store. I said I'll take you to the store when the time comes. And then her baby's battery died on a Sunday afternoon so she said let's go to the store quick. She didn't want the baby to cry in public Um, she's uh and so. So we went to the store and we're looking. So the the instruction sheet that she has to take these photos to turn in at school are your grandmother gave you $20. You need to buy some food and some clothes. You know food and clothes for the baby. So she found some clothes and food she could afford and took pictures of them. Then we went to it was like a bottle and some formula or something and then you have $50 to get diapers. So we're doing this.

Sandra Dodd: 1:08:02

But when we're in Target we were talking about Target, the things that it's a big store. It's a big thing that has food and clothes and school supplies and jewelry and cameras. It's got a big department store. Marty worked at one when he was in his late teens Sorry, so sorry and one of his jobs was to reset the store when another season comes, like Christmas is over, now it's going to be Valentine's Day, now it's going to be Mother's Day, and then school starts. Whatever it's going to be.

Sandra Dodd: 1:08:34

You know, they rearrange things and they would get a pamphlet, a booklet from the company that said you're getting this many like big cardboard displays. You have to put this, this, this. So he had to figure out what he had to arrange, where Sometimes you have to rearrange the shelves, take some ends off of shelves or something. It's physical, big, physical. And he said what's very cool, mom, is that the directions are written like Lego, like a Lego pamphlet, like Lego directions. And he said so it was really easy, I could just get it right away. I told that story when I was speaking in Minnesota, which is the headquarters of not Lego Target stores, and I mentioned that and one of the people told me afterwards. She said my son works there in that department where they make those supplies for other stores, and she said they consciously did make it like Lego, lego. So all the time marty spent playing with lego prepared him to have that position at target where he resets the shelves seasonally ta-da, ta-da I.

Sue Elvis: 1:09:40

I just wanted to say that you know you were saying about their games and they had the word meth in them and it reminded me that, yeah, we didn't. Just the kids did sometimes play games that were described that way because they like to dip into. This is a few years ago now Cool Math, is it called the Cool Math site. They used to play it on the, uh, the desktop version, and they used to. It wasn't so much. Well, some of it was numbers and learning things like times table, but a lot of it was patterns and, uh, you were saying earlier, sandra, that I'm not sure if it was just when we were talking privately that maths isn't just numbers and this site had so many interesting games and it probably still does if people want to go look cool math.

Sue Elvis: 1:10:36

But my kids did like playing that, but they'd play it.

Sue Elvis: 1:10:39

In that I say they would play it like they would play a video game.

Sue Elvis: 1:10:44

Now I'm going to go off and relax by playing a video game. They would go to that site and play some, but there was one particular game there that we really enjoyed together and I think there's a lot of these games around the Lemonade Stand and there was one about the coffee shop, and then you've got so many hours to make a profit and you've got this much money to start with and you've got to buy your supplies and do you buy more of the lemons or more of the sugar and that type of thing, and that was really a lot of fun, but you are using a lot of math, numbers and a lot of thinking skills and estimation things like that. But so I guess I just wanted to say that don't want to make out that we never did played games that were specifically maths orientated, or but I think it was the type of game. Um, obviously, all these encore maths of the website were designed to teach kids maths, but a lot of them were more than that that. They were fun in themselves.

Sandra Dodd: 1:11:55

There was a game called Zoo Tycoon and I think, as game theory goes, as game terminology goes, it was a farming game, meaning you have to gather stuff up, and farming games are farming games. But there's another, broader class of farming games where you're gathering points or gold so that you can build a town or build something. So there was one about a zoo, but there was something that was. I don't know what it was called, but it was like an amusement park tycoon game, but I don't remember the name of it. And those were you're building something, you play the little puzzles maybe, or whatever you do to get the gold, to get to buy a new, a Tilt-A-Whirl or a Ferris wheel or whatever you're buying for your park or another animal for the zoo, and it was like that too. I think that it was. How much did they have to eat? Holly loved a game. All the kids played it, but Holly stayed with it for years and it was called Harvest Moon. It was Japanese and it was. It was a literal farming game where your grandfather has retired and left the farm to you and he wants you to make a profit, not let the farm die, and you have to meet the neighbors and to get your own horse. You go and volunteer to brush some horses or cows or something and the neighbors clean them and then they give you a horse and you have chickens and you have plant things and harvest them. But one of the most interesting things was that it was Japanese and so there were some Japanese aspects, but they were trying to have it set in America. So there was a church that they didn't know much about how to run and Holly would just mess with this game. She would play with the game. She knew how to play the game, but then she started playing with the game. She took her chicken to church. It became invisible. I don't think they didn't plan it. I don't think they planned to. You know, like I don't think the designer said okay, and then what happens? If they take a chicken to church? Who's going to take a chicken to church? Just Holly Dodd. So that invisible chicken stayed at the church. It still laid eggs Okay, I think that's what it was, you know. But she watered some chickens with a watering can, maybe, and they became invisible. Maybe the chicken in church. She couldn't take it out, something, you know. But there are these things that she would try. What, if, what, if, what, if? But we don't make a cake on Thanksgiving, but you know it's close enough for Japan, and so she learned a lot about that too, about the sort of cultural things that don't translate, that don't make sense in other places. But they just made an American looking thing, like, okay, they're going to bake a cake, an American looking cake, all right.

Sandra Dodd: 1:15:06

So she, before she could read, she was playing that game and I had made her some charts of how you, you have to combine some plants to make some foods and some medicines and stuff like that. And so once in a while I've still come across that chart that I made her. It was sweet, and so she was just playing with quotation marks, but she was learning all kinds of things and thinking all kinds of thoughts. We were having lots of conversations and the conversations, let me know. But she was learning all kinds of things and thinking all kinds of thoughts. We were having lots of conversations and the conversations, let me know what she was learning, and she was asking questions that led to all sorts of other topics. I loved it. I loved that game.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:15:45

I still want to circle back to the question, and I know maybe I shouldn't use the word learn so much and teach. We definitely moved away from teaching, but I think we have the idea that everyone need math and maybe need more math than you would absorb by just and this is quotation marks again just playing, just living. That math is some sort of key or it gives you an advantage to know these things in life. This is the thing that we have been taught in school. You need to learn this math because then you will understand things better, then people can't cheat you, then, whatever you needed for the other you needed for physics and chemistry and biology you need to know math. So this is a tool, this is a key. You need it to kind of advance in life, to progress in life. That's why we're teaching you this. This is what the story I was told and I almost repeated it to my children in the beginning. I did repeat it to my children and I think moving away from that story, moving away from the idea that they absorb math through a fun and free childhood, is great, but on the other hand, talking about it this way, I'm afraid that a listener would think, oh, this is how I trick them into learning, because I think, at least for me personally, it's been great to let go of the idea that they all need it, that they have to somehow get a grip on this key. We've had a lot of discussions in in my family about math whether you need to learn it or not, whether you need it or not, how much of it you need, who needs it? Uh, when do you need it? Can you learn it later on? And what I see is just that one thing is if you, if, if I wait it out at some point, they, they hit some point where, oh, now I actually want to learn this. And if I can tell a personal story, one of my stories about math and my kids is my oldest, who was in school.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:18:40

She was in this. It was a frennish school, the philosopher behind it is french and and the idea is very much like a democratic school the. The kids are very self-organized. The teachers are not really teaching, they're just facilitating. The kids are more like teaching themselves. They make up their own projects, they work in an age-integrated group. It's in many ways very great, very freestyle.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:19:10

Um, she was in that kind of school, but over the years, uh, the parents were pushing more and more for formal structural learning and the school became more and more closer to a normal school like that. There was this agendas kind of moving in. One good thing was that um, you're not that, it's a homework free school. So they were not even kind sort of allowed to do school stuff at home. The idea was when you go home, it's your time, you do home stuff and in school you do school stuff. So they didn't bring homework home.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:19:51

Once a year we had a conversation, we had like a sit down with the teachers, uh, to just talk about the progress, and and she was there and it was that was how enough math. And every year I would tell them a I don't care. B it's your problem, c I don't care, and they would be. But she has potential, but she needs to do it, but she could do it and she's doing other stuff. And I would say I will kindly remind you of A, b and C and they kept saying it. So when she was in fifth grade, because they also said she couldn't do it at home. So I was like it really is your problem, because this is the concept, you know, you're not allowing her to do it at home. So why are you telling me that's not my problem? Um, and, if she comes out of school?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:20:55

At this point, I told you the story before about the whole journey to unschooling. At this point I knew about unschooling and I was unschooling my other kids and and uh, and I was clear if she comes out of school out of the nine years I'm paying for here at this private school and she can do zero math, I don't care, because she's here voluntarily. She's here because she wants to be here, and what she's telling me is she likes to read novels in the good chair in the corner. She likes to play guitar with the boys in the breaks and she likes to play ball. That's what she likes to do and she likes her friends. That's why she's here and I don't care about the other stuff. At some point they pushed me so much that I said okay, then I'll teach her at home. And they said you can't do that and you know what. I can do whatever I want in my own home. So I bought school books and I taught her for about three days and then I told her you know, this doesn't make any sense, you don't want to do it and I don't care if you do it. I mean, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. So we stopped again and fast forward.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:22:08

When she arrived at ninth grade, which is the last mandatory year of schooling in the Danish system, she changed from this private school to a public school because she realized that all of her friends were in the same class at the same school a lot of her friends and she skipped eighth grade. So she skipped a year to be with her friends at a public school. She'd never done any real math. She wasn't passionate about it, she didn't care. But now she was in a normal school with classroom books, homework, bells that rang teachers, blackboards, the whole thing. She'd never done it before and she realized that she really liked biology. Biology was really interesting.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:23:05

Math was still not interesting, but biology was really interesting and her lack of knowledge of math was getting in the way. She couldn't understand the things in the biology class because she didn't have the math skills. So now she sat down and said, okay, I need to learn this now and she learned it all. She learned it all. This is eight years of not doing anything with this thing, except for reading novels, playing guitar and ball. Um, and she, she, I don't know, I I always tell the story as if she, she, got a great grade at the final exams. I'm not sure she did. I don't actually. She's not like a math genius at this point. She's a writer, she's an artist. So she's not, it's never her passion, but she did learn all the things so that she got good grades and understood all the biology she wanted to understand.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:24:16

So the point of this story is a she didn't need it until she needed it, and when she needed it, it wasn't hard to learn it. And b I learned to not push, for it was hard, it was hard work for me to say I don't care, because do we really not care? Do we? Can we risk to not give our children this key? Will it ruin things for them? That's the worry that we can sit back with, and I think we need to Let go of that worry. Yes, math is a key and sometimes it will give you some insights that you knew the math beforehand and then you saw some things and then you got it fast because you knew the math. But what if you had spent your time learning something else, being passionate about something else?

Sandra Dodd: 1:25:03

we don't all need, then maybe you don't, you will never need it, and maybe when you do need it, like your daughter, then you can learn it quickly.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:25:11

Yes, Instead of suffering your whole childhood doing something that makes no sense.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:25:20

Or being turned against that topic and being afraid of it. Just learning that you're stupid. Another private story I have on my list, which is two point list, so I'm almost done. Here is my stepdad. He was a high school teacher in math and so he got received the children when they were about 15. And this is a three year education in our system. And he was a high school teacher in math and he said that he would actually prefer that the students had learned no math in the public school, in the mandatory school of the nine years before that, because he said they're broken.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:25:58

Most of my students are broken. Either they are so afraid of math and they believe that they will never understand it and they hate it, and there's so much emotion going on that I can't get to them with the fascination of the logic and the fun part and the patterns, or they learn some weird systems and ways to survive math. That is like kind of you know, if I do this technique, I might in 85 of the cases, arrive at the right thing that gives me a check, not a red mark, but they don't get the math, but they think it's math. So I have to uninstall all of that before I can start teaching them. So I spent the first six months uninstalling everything that they learned, either the fear or the wrong, not math, math, pseudomath.

Sandra Dodd: 1:26:54

I had a ninth grade algebra teacher. I was going to skip ninth grade but I didn't. So in the summer after eighth grade I took out algebra class and a typing class. My dad said I'll pay for summer school if you take typing, so you'll have something to fall back on. I was really angry. I said, daddy, I'm not going to be a secretary. I'm so happy now that of course that I'm a touch typist. But so I took algebra. It was just a short summer school thing. It was for mostly kids who had taken algebra and failed it the year before.

Sandra Dodd: 1:27:23

But I was into it and he explained it really clearly. He was just out of college, real new teacher, and was careful. He liked math, he thought it was fun. He thought we might think it was fun and that's. I didn't know until that year that having a teacher who really likes the thing that they're teaching makes a huge difference. So I understood it completely from him. Then I decided I don't want to go to high school by myself and I want to go back where my friends are. So I went back and I said now, what am I going to do? The counselor said great, now you already took algebra. So and I said well, fact is I didn't need that credit because I understood the laws, the requirement, and I said it won't hurt me to take it again, right, because that was. I just took it a short one. I just want to be with my friends, so I go in the class.

Sandra Dodd: 1:28:12

The teacher had a Texas accent and she had a magic way to teach algebra. It was magic Instead of saying you subtract from both sides to keep the equation balanced, she said she had this rule. I remember her. She had a big sparkly ring and a piece of chalk and she's up at the chalkboard and she says class, when a plus sign crosses the minus sign, it becomes a negative sign. When a minus sign crosses the equal sign, it becomes a plus sign. I'm like what? And she had something for reversing the fractions too, some little magic trick. And so friends of mine that I'd gone to school with already at that point for eight or nine years, are sitting there. We're in the top math class, we're grouped in that school. And they're like what? Because they knew there was no such thing as a minus sign crossing an equal sign and becoming a plus sign. So I'm whispering on the side no, she subtracted it from both sides. That's where that came from yeah so I'm showing them.

Sandra Dodd: 1:29:15

And then she talks a while more and then I'm over there writing like writing it, showing that they subtracted, and she got really mad. She gave me a, she gave me a little speech. She already knew me and she said Sandra, I have been teaching math for 20 years and she goes on this sort of and I said, well, they didn't understand it. I wasn't afraid of her because I'd already had an algebra credit. She could throw me out. So I just kept on helping them after class and they learned it the way I had learned it and they did it the way she said, because it didn't matter.

Sandra Dodd: 1:29:52

But that's one of the things that that guy would have had to undo. When he first started telling a story. I couldn't think of an example and I thought, ah, professor said I've never had a child like this in my class. When an unschooler would show up to take a college math class or any class, they would say I've never had anyone come to my class so open to learning, so enthusiastic, so quick to pick things up, asking good questions, because they hadn't been trained not to. Because the kids who go through school learn if you want to get along with the other kids you don't do well, you don't ask good questions, you say, oh, we didn't have that last year. You do all of the dumbing down moves that make the teacher have to repeat the things you already know instead of actually challenge you, and that's a group way to slow school down and it's a long, longstanding tradition. The teachers know it because they did it. The kids know it because they learned it from the other kids and unschooled kids never learn it. They never learn to shirk and dodge and to lie. But they're not the only ones who lie.

Sandra Dodd: 1:31:04

I have a note here. When, sue, you were talking about the terms numerator and denominator, I learned those when I was eight. When, sue, you were talking about the terms numerator and denominator, I learned those when I was eight and I thought, wow, I learned some new words. That's very cool. When I was nine, I started being really interested in the history of words and I bought myself a book about the history of English and I bought myself a dictionary With my meager allowance. I bought those things and I started looking at words and at the Latin roots of words. I don't know if you've looked very closely lately at denominator or numerator. Numerator means it made a number, and denominator means it named it, it named a thing. So those words seem important, but they are not important. They don't say anything. It's just a way to make up terminology so that it seems like you're teaching something very high level, very important, very technical, and that is in English called obfuscation or, in simpler English, baffling them with bullshit.

Sue Elvis: 1:32:06

Well, my daughter might not have been interested in denominator or numerator, but she was really interested in collected words like excruciating, uh, words that she could like. That came from the first time she heard that was anna green gables and she couldn't wait to use it and I remember she she fell over?

Sandra Dodd: 1:32:31

Was it in a math class that she used excruciating? I'm joking, maybe.

Sue Elvis: 1:32:37

I just remember one day my daughter hurt herself she might have fallen over while we were running and she gets up and she says, oh, the pain is excruciating. And I said, oh, is it that bad? She says no, no, not really, mom, I just wanted to use that word. She says I've been looking for an opportunity to use it. But there was another thing there. Talking about words and unlearning ways of doing things made me think of essay writing and how people might be.

Sue Elvis: 1:33:13

Parents might be concerned about their kids learning maths so that they can go on and do particular university degrees, maybe, but also the other one that goes along with that is essay writing. If I don't teach my child how to write an essay, what is going to happen when they get to university? Well, my kids never learned to write essays as such. They wrote blog posts, other things that they wrote. They did a lot of writing, but we didn't go anywhere near an essay as such.

Sue Elvis: 1:33:46

But when they went to university, I remember they came home and they said Mom, the tutor says that it doesn't. That said to the class or said to the group. Right, all those people who have learned how to write a school essay will have to forget everything they learned. University essays are nothing like school essays, so you're going to have to start again. And my children thought oh, that's all right, we don't know how to write a school essay, we're ready to learn how to write a university essay. And that one made me smile. I thought that was one where parents might force kids to learn things that the parent thinks is valuable. But they didn't turn out to be valuable at all. They were a bit of a waste of time. Write something that's more interesting, like a blog post or a letter or something else.

Sandra Dodd: 1:34:47

I taught one of my children to write an essay in about 30 seconds and that was because Marty was about to take a GED test so he could get a state diploma. It's an equivalency test and I said, okay, here it is. If they say three paragraphs, they're going to say write a three paragraph or a five paragraph. One of those is what they're going to say If it's a three paragraph. First paragraph is tell them what you're going to say In the middle. You tell them how you know. And the last paragraph is tell them what you just said.

Sandra Dodd: 1:35:17

And he said really, and I said I'm serious, I used to teach english and he went and did a three paragraph essay and they gave him an a or whatever. You know he passed. So that's how long it took to teach him an essay, because he already knew how to write. He had written lots of things online. You know reviews, reports, directions for games. A lot of the games that they did in those days were written online. It was like a dnd game, but they were all in chat rooms. So he was good at writing and it's just learning the structure.

Sue Elvis: 1:35:49

An essay has a particular structure. Once you're clued into what that structure is, it's not difficult.

Sandra Dodd: 1:35:57

Oh, and he also knew a lot of comedy and I said it's like a comedy routine like Eddie Izzard, wherever you start, end up there too, like bring that back in at the end. So he's like, okay, he was a big comedy fan and so that was another way he could see that essay writing as like a comedy routine.

Sue Elvis: 1:36:14

Yeah, yeah. The other thing I think about is sometimes parents worry about testing and my kids talking about maths and having a schoolteacher. As a husband, I had one of these stupid ideas when they were in primary school that if they did the maths appropriate, the age appropriate tests for maths that he gave to his class. I think that these tests are given every two years. Uh, all the students in a straight, well on that state have to do them. Uh, it's the same test for every school. And my husband had copies of them. He was giving them to his students. I had this stupid idea like, bring those tests home, I'll give them to our kids and they can do them. They're the right age. That will prove they have age-appropriate math skills despite them not doing what you're teaching at school, and that will satisfy the homeschool registration people. And then we can just forget about it. Well, the only thing I forgot about was that you've got to learn how to take a test. You don't having the math skills. Isn't the whole story?

Sue Elvis: 1:37:29

My husband was drilling the math into his students a couple of weeks beforehand and he was giving them all these hints about how you would fill it all in and there was a time constraint and his students knew the drill how you did a test and they'd been prepared for it. Well, I just whipped out the tests one morning my husband had given them to me the night before and I said do you want to do a mass test? And because they're adventurous, they said, oh yeah, we'll do a mass test. So they sat down. Oh, we had tears. It was terrible. First of all, they didn't like the time and then they got it wrong. They didn't like the fact I wasn't letting them go back and try again and and I had two very unhappy girls. But the surprising thing was they both did well. Um, they just weren't happy with their performance. Because who wants to be marked and graded? Isn't it more important to know how to do what you want to do and have a reason for doing it and getting the right answer?

Sue Elvis: 1:38:44

One of my children did just like getting the right answers, like I do, like puzzles, like getting the right answers, like I do. It's like puzzles. But she was so frustrated that she was wasn't allowed a second go. Nobody was interested. Um, I said, well, it's too late now. Um, this is the grade. And she said, but I could try again. I said that's the way tests go. So yeah, I think sometimes we can think that our kids don't have skills, when what they don't have is having got experience with doing the test. It's not that they don't know the subject matter, they just have no clue about what they're doing in schools the revision all the other time, constraints, whatever. They just haven't been drilled in test-taking. So I don't think it's an accurate comparison between children and school children.

Sandra Dodd: 1:39:43

But they did well anyway. A lot of parents don't know, don't realise that a lot of parts of school are not natural on the planet, that they only exist in and because of school. And so those parents get frustrated when they start to think about homeschooling. They still have that whole overlay about sessions, units, semesters or trimesters, school year tests, levels, what's their reading level Doesn't matter. Reading is reading. They'll get better gradually as they go and if they're not being compared and they're not having to be sorted into different groups, then it doesn't matter. But that's why de-schooling is so important for unschoolers, because you have to shuck that away, get it away. Every bit of it that you save is going to mess you up. Every little bit that you save, like the assumption that testing is normal, that testing is natural.

Sandra Dodd: 1:40:35

It's not, and I remember being told make a guess, glance over the choices they gave you, pick the best two. Can you figure out which one's better? If not, come back to it. They're timing you. It wasn't about knowing. The information it was about was about bam, bam, filling in those little holes. Um, cecilia, are you worried that the stories that we're telling are going to cause people to think that they need to press their children to play games or all the things that we're naming. No, not any longer.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:41:00

I just really needed to say because because this is my opinion and I'm not even sure I'm clear enough, because I really need to speak more concise, but no, I think it's great. I think I just think we need to question the question how do we know they're learning math? If that's the question, I think we need to ask the question. But do they need to learn math, and in what form and format are we talking about math? What kind of math? Now we're talking about testing. Do they need to learn math in a way that they could pass an age-appropriate test? Do we buy into?

Sandra Dodd: 1:41:48

that some do and some don't, and when they do, then then you might be able to just tell them in just a few minutes. Yeah, but do they?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:41:55

all need to learn. I think that's a very important question as well, because math is something that's taught in schools to everyone and there's this assumption that you need to, and when you're 10 you know this, and when you're 11 you know this more and whatever, and and we can test you and you can get a grade of some sort and we know if you're good or not, and that's the whole concept of the school bullshit that I'm not buying into it any longer. I love math, I think math is great and I think it's fun, and we've had a lot of fun with math in my family. We still do, some of us, and others are just not into that kind of thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:42:37

The girl I talked about before she did do the biology thing and she's still very passionate. Now she's 25 and she was just here and she can tell me what, all the little things, all the little weeds growing, what they are and which one can be eaten and why they have the name they have. And she's curious in another country I don't know that tree and all the things are still interesting. She couldn't care less about formal math. And then I have a son whom I've talked about a few times, the oldest one. He sits with an a-level math book, igcse thing, like the english system for funsies, because he likes it and yeah, yeah. But I mean, I don't mind, I do weird stuff, he, he likes it and he does it, and I feel like I'm losing myself again. I think we need to ask the question why is it that we think maybe not we, but a lot of people think that everyone need to learn this and that it would be such a catastrophe to understand?

Sandra Dodd: 1:43:45

because school says school has two, two issues. They want to keep the parents happy because tax money is going towards schools and parents can, in some situations, change schools depending on how small your town is, where you are. They want to keep people happy, they want to justify their own salaries and they don't want to get sued at the end because they didn't prepare every child for the possibility of college. They didn't prepare every child for the possibility of college. Maybe only Americans worry about getting sued it's possible but they want to make sure that they're not in trouble because some kids were ignored and let to lie fallow, left to just mark time until they were old enough to get out of school. So they try to push all those kids to be ready for university and it's a shame because some kids have no interest in university. But that's where that comes from is from the requirements and the habits and the justifications of school and the school funding. And I think schools are getting better these days than they used to be in the 50s, 60s, 70s. That's great. But whether to defend school or not, if parents want to unschool, they need to step away from it. They need to start sorting out what is natural earth world and what is school world, and not bring school world home, turn away from it. When you hear yourself thinking in those terms, stop. And one of them is everybody has to know everything, because nobody, it's never happened, it's never worked. It's never worked yet it's not going to work. What they do is they? They? They frustrate people.

Sandra Dodd: 1:45:12

And I know I was talking about, oh yeah, when I was little. I learned this and that because I wanted to. I loved English, and the people who hate English because they went to school and somebody made them hate English, they probably thought that was terrible. Why would I, at the age of nine and fourth grade, be wasting my time doing something that was painful and stupid and and what was the word Sue? Excruciating, but you know, for me it was fun. So when kids love math and numbers, they should run with that, and when kids don't, they should do what they're doing. And I, we forgot. We're almost out of time, so that's why I'm talking faster. We can go on who's busy.

Sandra Dodd: 1:45:46

No, you know, you said two hours, oh, but I'm not. I mean, I don't, okay. Okay, well, we forgot one big area, probably because we're girls, but sports People who do competitive sports, whether it's hockey, soccer, football, lacrosse what are they playing in India all the time? Cricket, all of those sort of field and team games, whether it's balls or balls and sticks or anything, a ton of math that may turn to physics, that may turn to, I don't know, calculus. I don't know, but they're not. That doesn't come with words, and a lot of people who listen to this might, if they were sports people, be able to use that example better than video games and table games that I was talking about, or working in a store, and not just the game itself and the field, but the sports stats, the scoring, the stats of players, the stats of teams. That's statistics. Statistics and probability can be learned from that. Or playing poker, you know. But there are a lot of games. A lot of the gambling games have to do with statistics and probability.

Sue Elvis: 1:46:59

Okay, so a lot of. Just, it doesn't even have to be a team game, because we did a lot of running together and we kept our, our stats for our runs and we collected them um from. You know, we had um gps watches days before apple and we all had garmin watches and we used to record our distances, our speed, our um, the days, worst days, all sorts of, and also have the graphs and the maps and the coordinates and the temperature of when we were running. Did that affect our times? But what I discovered was that when we were running we would do things mentally. I've run 3.78. I can see I've run 3.78 kilometers. I want to run five today. How far do I have to go Now if I run another loop of around the clubhouse and around the playing field? That's approximately this amount of this distance. How many times will I need to do that if I want to get to my goal?

Sue Elvis: 1:48:10

And we were constantly doing mental maths as we were running along. But then, when I came to sitting down with my youngest daughter and looking at the maths syllabus that we were supposed to be following and I was thinking have we done all these? What was it called when you got 3.25? Um, that digital place there the value, and if I sat down and tried to explain it all as a math problem with notation, oh you know she'd go and she would put that wall up, uh freeze. But I thought, well, look, it's not much point me doing this, she's already doing it in her head. She's already told me that she ran. She was more likely, she usually ran 10K, not, I was a 5K runner, but she knew all that from running and it was amazing how much maths was involved in that.

Sue Elvis: 1:49:06

But then, as you were saying to Sandra about team sports, we didn't do team sports. But what we did do was the girls entered fun runs and they would run 5 or 10K in a fun run. And then you have other people's, overall as far as all the women, or how did they do as far as all of the competitors. And then there were more graphs. There were more past results, future, um, and then in the future they would say they wanted to be this and that and that was just pure mess, and but it wasn't really. It was an interest, it was the way they love to spend time. But the there was one other thing there not not there to do with that, but one we haven't talked about.

Sue Elvis: 1:49:59

And, cecilia, you were saying about why kids have to learn. You know, why should we force kids to learn maths if that's not their sort of interest? But one thing I did do was I was constantly strewing mess for my kids because of the way they'd picked up what mess was and I thought, well, mess is not necessarily what everybody else says it is. Perhaps if I present mess in a different way that they don't even recognize as mess, they might take an interest in it. Don't even recognize this mess, they might take an interest in it. And this is the best during pure invitation. It wasn't forcing them, but I would.

Sue Elvis: 1:50:35

We explored all sorts of things like auctions for art. Uh, we watched all these documentaries about the world's most expensive paintings and uh, there was all sorts of other things that involve maths. But you don't necessarily think of it as it's not. If you were doing a maths thing, you might say well, I'm going to do this video about how to learn to multiply, but this isn't that. They weren't the things that I was doing.

Sue Elvis: 1:51:07

I was suggesting how about this video about I don't know the size of the universe and the planets and what actually happens in an auction and who owns the most famous painting in the world, all those sort of interesting things, and they picked up a lot of mess from that. But yeah, so, um, but obviously, even saying that, um, cecilia, invitations, and even if, um, some kids just aren't interested anyway regardless, but I don't know. I just had this idea that schools can flatten kids interest in maths, make them hate it, and it was sort of like a mission to see if I could undo some of that and show at least my kids that maths is just part of the world and it's an interesting subject in its own right, but it's linked to so many things in the world. We really can't go anywhere without maths messages everywhere. I just think it's the language of our world and how interesting it is when you think about it in those terms. But, as you can probably gather, I'm one of the mess lovers. So well, so am I so am.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:52:27

I. I'm just trying to not not try. I'm working hard to not have the agenda that they need to learn something specific or in a specific way, and there will be no testing and I don't care if they cannot do anything anyone else recognizes math as long as they can solve the problems they meet. And sometimes solving a problem that looks like math can be calling someone who knows how to solve it. But you know what I do, that if my car break down I don't know how to fix it, I'll call a mechanic. So if one of them has the strategy, or I'll call my uncle who's a math genius if I need to solve this knitting problem that I have, they can totally do that if they have a way.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:53:13

Only if not having the key keep an important door locked for you. You need to work on the key, and the fact that I like the key and the key for me is play Doesn't mean that that key makes any sense for them. And the fact that I look at the key in a specific way and think a key is something like with a, with a round thing and a hook and the other end, and you know, I think that's a key. They have a different, might have a different idea about what that key is or how to use it and what, even what kind of door it will open. I've been pretty baffled by how they solve math E problems and how they arrive at their conclusions and how close they can get and how different strategies they have and I don't. They have and and I don't care. If they ask me something, I'll help them, but if they don't really have the problem, then I don't see why I would push it, because I I'm sure that they could learn if they wanted to. So that's one thing. The other thing is sometimes math becomes very relevant, something that looks like math, sometimes it becomes fun. And one other thing we've talked about games, board games, computer games, sports. I touched upon knitting. We avoided cooking. Well done on us, it's the classic thing, obviously. Uh, working in shops, money, all these things. There will be math tax.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:55:00

Another thing um, we have and now you mentioned art so, and we have been very fascinated with Islamic art, which is very often based on geometry, and we've had our what do you call it in English compass and ruler and visited, when we first time visited, the Alhambra in the south of Spain. There's this beautiful, beautiful Moor Castle of Spain. There's this beautiful, beautiful Moor Castle. I bought a book about Islamic art and how to create it with a compass and a ruler and we we did a deep dive into playing with that. It's really fun.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:55:44

My husband made a website for a guy working with 3d models of math structures that are behind nature and how they become fascinating when you move them, and we had a whole thing with that. That was art as well, and now we're doing the history of art and there's a lot about what do you call it? The, the golden? I don't know the ratio. Yeah, I didn't know the English term. So when it becomes relevant and stands out and looks like math, it, it, it's then it is relevant and for some of them, for some of my children, it's been a deep dive into a very specific thing. That makes a lot of sense at the time and I just have to not go buy 10 math books on geometry just because we like Islamic art for two months or two years.

Sandra Dodd: 1:56:47

I don't know if I can show you a picture. Can you see this? My granddaughter was here yesterday. I don't know if I can show you a picture. Can you see this? My granddaughter was here yesterday I don't know where to put it and she had her hair put up and I said have you seen your hair? And she said no, and I took a picture and I said it's like the golden ratio.

Sue Elvis: 1:56:57

Yes, Maybe there's another factor which worries parents about myths and that is, in our case, homeschool registration about maths. And that is, in our case, homeschool registration, that that if you have to prove your, provide evidence that your kids are learning maths and not only are they learning it, they're learning what they are kids at school are learning then that complicates things because you've got to continually be looking for the maths and writing it down and translating everything they're doing into the right language to satisfy the educational department, otherwise you don't get your registration. And that's another that, yeah, I had a lot of that to do, a lot of behind the scenes work. Um, yeah, because I knew my kids were learning the maths, but it's they're not learning it in a conventional way with all the workbooks and all the ticks and all the tests that I could just sort of present over to the educational department and say, look, here's the evidence. It took a lot more work to uh, to to get that evidence and then to translate it into a form that was acceptable. I did it, but, um, I think meth sometimes is at the back of people's minds because of homeschool registration.

Sue Elvis: 1:58:28

I could, can never quite relax about needing evidence and I think the trick is not to impose that on your kids but to, for example, after we've been running and we've all enjoyed the experience, then to quietly sit down and write down all the mess that my daughter was doing and say, well, she's covered this, this, this and this. But not to say, well, you've got to go run and you've got to covered this, this, this and this. Uh, but not to say, well, you've got to go run and you've got to do this because I need the evidence. But to actually find the evidence in what they were doing and also, I guess, how the strewing is also introducing them, our kids, to experiences that they could enjoy. But also the schools do expect kids to learn with the understanding, as you were saying right at the beginning, sandra.

Sue Elvis: 1:59:22

We can't force kids to learn anything. I mean, learning is an active activity. We can't force learning into anybody, but we can always invite kids to learn. So I used to learn. I learned how to offer and then not worry if my invitations weren't accepted, because I think the trick with homeschool registration is it's not proving your kids have learned anything, it's providing evidence, really, that the parent has provided an opportunity for learning and if the child says, hey, I'm not interested like yours. Some of yours have done.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:00:01

Cecilia, then that's quite all right, and so it's a lot of work for the parent, but this means you've done the deconstruction, sue, so you know why you're pushing, sue, so you know why you're pushing or not pushing, why you're strewing, why you're inviting and why it's important. It's not because your kids lives will fail if they cannot do math. It's because and do math in the way that school thinks math looks like it's because you know you have a legal problem.

Sue Elvis: 2:00:36

Yeah, but the thing was I was always prepared to say, well, they haven't got these skills, but I offered them it's up to, and then sort of explain that my kids I can't force learning in, it's just not the way it works. But and they will, if they need this, they will learn it when they need to learn it. But the funny thing was they never had any trouble convincing our authorized person that they had all the skills that she came to make sure they were learning. That unschooling is just so rich that all I had to do was be alert to what they were learning and be prepared to write it down. And she ended up saying something like oh, your kids are getting such a rich education here at home.

Sue Elvis: 2:01:36

And I'm sure that she was not surprised because she worked with a lot of homeschooled children, but she'd also worked in the school system and I think she could see that we weren't doing nothing at home or we're not always at home. I think did you have a clip about that recently, cecilia? We're not always at home. I think did you have a clip about that recently, cecilia? That homeschooling is not necessarily the right way to describe it because we're never home. Yeah, true, but out of school, not in school. Our kids are coming into contact with so much richness and they're curious people. Why do we worry that they'll not learn? Of course they will, I think we need to to.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:02:21

You know I use the word deconstruct before like to just separate different things. If we're talking about the registration and the legal element and and the whole checkup system, that works in different ways in different countries where we have to convince someone that it's good enough, and also sometimes it's the same when we have to or feel we have to defend ourselves against people asking questions why are you doing this and how does it make sense? And will they ever learn any math? It's as if you will forgive a school for inviting, providing books, doing the teaching and then maybe 10 or 15, 20% of the students fail. They never learn. They fail. That's all right. You're not shutting down the school. The school is good enough, but some of the kids failed.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:03:23

But in a homeschool context, it's as if all the kids have to succeed. It's as if all the kids have to succeed. So when I was talking I only did it once, actually talking with the checkup system back when I lived in Denmark I had to clarify and I did it. It was risky but I actually did it. I said you need to know that you're checking my homeschool as a school. It's not fair that my kids have to all succeed and outperform the top of every class in the public school. You administer a public school with 700 children. They do not all succeed. Some of them graduate after nine years of schooling and they can hardly read. Lots of them fail the final math test.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:04:18

You can check my school if I'm providing the option to learn. You are not and I didn't allow them to ever see my children. You cannot check my children what they can perform, because that's not fair. That's not where you're checking. I'm giving them a school at home. You can check me. You can check what I'm providing. You cannot check my kids and I think we need to also understand that in our own minds.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:04:48

We're giving the option, but they don't all have to be super interested in all of the things that we consider subjects or or you call it subjects. Like you know, you have the history class and the geometry class and the math class. They don't all have to love all of that and outperform everything. Some kids finish. They suffer through 10 years of basic schooling and most of the things they were supposed to learn they didn't learn. But they become very good friends and very good at playing football and maybe they went fishing with their granddad in the weekends and that made a lot of sense. That's life can unfold in many different ways and it's not fair that the unschooled children have to be outstanding in everything they do.

Sandra Dodd: 2:05:39

It doesn't matter. In a way, I really liked that speech. I would have loved to have heard it back in the years. But things are different in different places. Sue, in Australia, are the homeschooling laws by federal or state? Are the states different? Yeah, state Well, that's the way it is. In the United States, 50 different states and in Canada, 10 different provinces. So it's hard to just say this is how it is in one country. But some don't check anything ever a lot of states and some want to check each kid every year with tests. But that's kind of another topic. That's not about how people learn math or stay around, swim in math until they get it.

Sue Elvis: 2:06:23

I just thought it was a possible reason why people get unschoolers, get concerned about it and and feel reluctant to let go of of it.

Sue Elvis: 2:06:38

And, having been in that situation myself, um, that's the yeah, we could have a whole other topic about that, but it was just a reason and maybe a bit of empathy with people who are in a system like ours where it's not always easy to let kids do what they want to do.

Sue Elvis: 2:07:00

But I think from our experience we had quite strict laws in our state that we had to follow it is quite possible to not compromise what we did with our kids and still satisfy the education department. It just needed a lot of creative thinking, a lot of confidence in our own knowledge of our children and being willing to stand up for them, like you did, cecilia, and not to get frightened of the education department. We know our kids better than anybody else and we know a lot about the way kids learn, and I used to always think about I'm talking to a fellow, somebody else who's passionate about learning. I'm not talking to this person as the expert and I'm the parent. I'm talking to her on a level and we can share our own experiences, which are different, about how kids learn.

Sandra Dodd: 2:08:01

Is New South Wales, the strictest of the states there.

Sue Elvis: 2:08:04

Well, at one time it did. Yes, I wouldn't know what the current current, because we've been out of the system a few years now. My youngest is 21 and kids have to be registered till they're 17. So that was four years ago. So I don't know what the current laws are. But in our state it has changed over the years, but we did it.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:08:26

They weren't easy at times we call it speaking educationese in our family. So we translate what we're doing into what can be understood by a traditional education system, and that's fair. I'm speaking English right now so that we can communicate, though it's not my native tongue, and if I'm speaking to an education system about what I'm doing and what we're doing in our family, I will translate what I'm doing into what they understand as an education that makes total sense and as an unschooling family, it makes sense to make that translation. I did a lot of work before I gave that speech that day of translating, writing examples, doing all the things that needed to be done to make it something that would be understood as education for someone not knowing anything about unschooling. And it's only fair If we have to do it, if we live in a state with a control system and we want to do it.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:09:40

If we live in a state with a control system and we want to stay there, we want to keep living there. I think we that conversation with people living in countries where it's so hard to avoid that the better option is actually OK, tell your child you want to unschool, but it's illegal. You're going to have to pass this test. I can't even remember where it was. Someone I spoke to lived in a country where the homeschool children have to take a test every year, like the test you handed out once, and if they have to do that and if they don't pass it, you're not allowed to homeschool.

Sandra Dodd: 2:10:24

Well, then it's not. Unschooling will not work in every situation and people have been mad at me. They say, well, I have the right to unschool. What? What are you talking about? Um, if it won't work where you live, then don't do it. Then don't beat yourself up and say I want to unschool. Just do what, do the most you can do, take what you like from it and leave the rest, but don't call it unschooling. You know, if you're really having to teach the tests and stuff, it won't help people who do want to unschool to hear that compromise situation called unschooling. But no one really has the right to do anything like that. It's weird.

Sandra Dodd: 2:10:58

So any government like Germany that says no, just go to school and stop talking about it. Stop arguing with us. Everybody's going to school has had situations like that in the past. When they finally did get schools. They didn't want it to be an option. But I think that's why the way Sue's saying they have particular requirements and you have to figure out how to get around them or how to educationally ease them so that you've worded it in such a way that it fulfills their requirement. That's why I'm always telling people get friends in your own state, find people who are in the same jurisdiction you are and figure out how they did it. And they're like, yeah, but the law says this. I'm going ah, laws always say something, but people have successfully lived with and around those laws and you need to ask them how they did it. Don't ask me, because in New Mexico we didn't have to do that. So that's a really important thing.

Sandra Dodd: 2:11:51

If you're advising other unschoolers or if you're listening to this and you're new to unschooling, find some locals, even if you have to join what seems like it doesn't match your philosophy. It might be a religious or a non-religious or a crazy hippie farmer group, but find some group of people who live there and ask them to help you figure out how. But people need to de-school. I have a section on my site about how to word unschooling as a curriculum. If you have to turn in a curriculum, here's how you can word unschooling and there are several examples and there you know a lot of it is that application of educational ease. But I don't send people there early only if they really need it, because I don't send people there early only if they really need it, because I don't want people to find that early and go. Oh yeah, this sounds good. No, this sounds like one foot in school.

Sandra Dodd: 2:12:38

So if you unschooling doesn't flow fast like that and if people use that, I don't want them to share it with the kids. If you have to turn this into the state, do it at night and do it quietly. Don't share it with your kids. Don't say class, here's what we have to do this year Because you just you went back to homeschooling. Now you're back to school at home, so that. So my personal concern has always been how people learn, how humans learn, not even about school, but how do? How do? How do hunter gatherers learn? How do older people learn if they're going to move to another country and have to learn all the money and time differences and everything like in england? I don't, I don't even know what they're telling me about what time, because they use a 24 hour clock a lot and they say it's 15 of, it's like of of which side? I don't you know, it's just, it's foreign, it's wrong. It's wrong, it's very, it's very hard, it's very hard. People change it.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:13:32

And then they say half seven. And what does that even mean Exactly?

Sandra Dodd: 2:13:35

I know.

Sue Elvis: 2:13:38

If it's ten minutes past four here, we'll say ten past four. You don't say that we say ten till or ten after Ten past. We'll say 10 to 10 past or we'll say it's gone 4 o'clock, if we don't want to be, precise. Oh look, it's gone 4 o'clock no.

Sandra Dodd: 2:14:04

Does that mean past? It's past 4 o'clock. 4 o'clock's gone. Oh, that's cute, it's gone. It's gone for.

Sue Elvis: 2:14:09

I didn't understand it. Isn't it amazing how things that you use every day and people around you use them all and you just think it's normal and then you realize it's normal for us but it's not necessarily normal. For everybody else it's normal but not for us.

Sandra Dodd: 2:14:27

I find that interesting Me too, me too, I love those things. So just seeing how people would do that if they suddenly have to move to another country. There are a lot of things to learn that we don't think about. It's not just language, it's all sorts of little courtesies and everything. You have to learn everything.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:14:45

Culture is going to be another topic for this podcast, because it's way too big.

Sue Elvis: 2:14:52

Which one, Cecilia? I missed that.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:14:54

As it's 11 at my end, I'm not taking up a big, big, huge one I have one little story.

Sandra Dodd: 2:15:03

I told a story a couple of episodes ago. I told about Holly getting a job at a flower shop because I had asked the flower shop owner if she could come down there and learn some things, if I could pay the flower shop to let her help in May, which is a big flower season in the United States, and the woman hired her. But I didn't think that's the story I told the other day when we were speaking. But there's a lot of math in that. It turns out that working at a flower shop is not only the sort of planning and reasoning things that we've talked about today, but it's also plain old money.

Sandra Dodd: 2:15:38

If somebody is going to spend $50 on an arrangement, you can't put all the most expensive flowers in there. You have to know the person who's making the arrangement needs to know the price of those flowers, which ones are cheap and which ones are expensive. And I wouldn't have thought that. You know, when I go to a flower shop, I know some are expensive and some are inexpensive, but I always thought that was because of the skill of the artistry. But it's not just artistry, and when they do the flower prep and they're sorting flowers and putting them into the refrigerators and stuff when they just first come off the truck.

Sandra Dodd: 2:16:07

There's time involved. Which flowers need to go in first because they really need refrigeration, which ones need a lot of attention, like the roses need the thorns off? You have to plan that because you have to have it done by the time the store opens or whatever it is. And so there was all kinds of stuff in that job that I thought was going to be art. That turned out to be the things that Holly was really good at, which was spatial reasoning, planning a project with her hands, like the efficiency of handling objects. Holly was good at that, and so it turned out. I had no idea how good that job was a match for her at the time. And then there was also running cash register and charging people, and so, anyway, there's math in flower shops, that's all.

Sue Elvis: 2:16:50

Have you had your dinner, Cecilia? It must be getting very late where you are, oh dinner.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:16:55

Yeah, I had that before. We started at my nine, and now it's 11.22. Does that notation time make sense to you guys? Yes, it's late, it is late. I'm enjoying this conversation a lot, though, though, but I think I might have to wrap it up. Um, we talked a lot about math, and, and maybe, if we wrap it up, math will be actually the headline of this and we will take up another subject. Uh, next time, and I can go to bed, I'm driving some people to the airport in the morning, so I kind of need a little bit of sleep as well. This was fun.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:17:34

I liked this one.

Sandra Dodd: 2:17:36

It's been an interesting conversation, made me think and I should have said not, you don't have to play sports, just an interest in sports, being a sports fan, same the same benefits as to the mathematical aspects oh, it's just probably my uh.

Sue Elvis: 2:17:50

None of my kids played team sports and you know people say what you should. Your kids should have played team sports. I have a bit uh, maybe I'm just getting defensive. I don't know. I mean I've really enjoyed talking with you both, so it's been um highlight of my week.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:18:08

Thank, Thank you, I enjoy these conversations as well, and now I think we should say goodbye for today. It's been great. Next time, next time, thank you.