S3E5 | Unschooling and Learning Languages

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

S3E5 | Ladies Fixing the World

Cecilie Conrad: 00:00
Good morning and good evening and good afternoon. This is the fun opening of having a conversation with three continents at the same time. I'm with Sandra Dodd, as usual. Welcome, Sandra. Hello. I'm glad to be here. And Sue Wilvis. Hi. Hi, it's Celia. Hi, Sandra. It's so nice to talk to you.

Sandra Dodd: 00:20
I just realized all of our names start with sss one way or another. And it's it would be more confusing if we didn't have three different accents. So I'm glad for the accents, especially for people who are listening and not watching.

Cecilie Conrad: 00:32
Yeah, yeah, it's fun. Do you think there are anyone who have problems with that? With telling voices apart? No, but the I think I spoke to one listener who actually had, okay, I can do many different accents in English, but three at the same time.

Sandra Dodd: 00:50
Oh, she was having a hard time understanding it?

Cecilie Conrad: 00:52
Yeah, I mean, we're not all native. I actually am not native. So yeah, I was just thinking, maybe it confuses. This is a good challenge.

Sue Elvis: 01:03
It'd be interesting to see this transcription whether AI is able to get out each of our accents perfect. I haven't looked at the transcription, but neither have I.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:18
Too much to do to look at the transcriptions. It's on the bus sprout version, I think. The whole transcription is there for everyone to enjoy.

Sandra Dodd: 01:27
But today we're talking about language and learning language. Yes. When I was a teacher a long time ago, when I was young, I taught English and it was always my favorite subject in school, or maybe not favorite, but easiest. And so I wanted to say that. If some people hear this and start off and they go, oh my gosh, I don't want to think about that, that scares me. If when that person was younger and maybe in school, if reading, writing, spelling, history of words, whatever they were studying, if that seemed yucky and scary and stupid and nonsensical, I understand that. I was kind of like that about math as I got older. It's like, why? I don't care about square roots. What are you talking about? Stop. And so I was really happy when I was older and started unschooling to read about Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Because in school they measure what they call intelligent is you're good at math, you're good at language arts. That's it. There's nothing else. And so someone can have a low IQ. You know, they can say, Oh, you're not very smart, are you? And they can be the greatest athlete, the greatest musician, the most compassionate understanding of other people. You know, and so all of those things were not counted in and still in some people's minds and some people's testing, it's not counted. But what Howard Gardner said is there are seven or eight intelligences, and it's just as important, just as big in your brain, in your life, if you're really good at kinesthetics, which comes out as sports and dance and movement. If someone's if someone does American Sign Language and they do it really elegantly, really pretty, and you know, there's an artistry to the way they're doing it. That's a kinesthetic thing, movement. And I'm pretty good at music. I have a lot of musical intelligence because it's just easy for me. I understand it instinctively. And when people explain things to me, I'm like, okay, tell me more. You know, I get it right away. Quickly, tell me some more, more, more. And I could, but everybody's life's different. I could read music before I could read English. So it's just some things are easy for some people. And so if people like language and they like words, then this might be entertaining for them. But I was hoping, even for someone, even for an unschooling mom who uh is wounded in that area, embarrassed, frustrated, not feeling adequate, I just want to reassure them that there are ways to see what kids can do with language to learn and make their own connections and to be facile, to have a facility with moving the parts of language around easily that don't involve any study or any books or any curriculum or any even terminology. They can figure it out on their own. And so I have I am full of confidence about that. So if you guys have any stories or questions, I can probably come up with some examples or reassurances. Did you have fears?

Cecilie Conrad: 04:19
I personally didn't. I was not well, there's the whole reading, the mechanics of reading, it's always an issue for the unschoolers, and it was so for me to some extent in the beginning, but I think I've shared that story so many times, and it's just the entry point. I I want to say I love that it's called language arts in American English. I've never heard the terminology before, but it's just so nice because it's that's exactly what it's about. All the arts that happen with language inside language. But is it though? When it's studied in school, there's a lot of grammar, correct spelling.

Sandra Dodd: 05:04
The general terminology for all of what they call, you know, English classes, and where I've grew up, they always always called it English, but the general term for all of that is language arts. Because when you're a little kid, it's spelling and reading and rhyming and uh seeing synonyms, homonyms, you know, playing with opposites and different meanings or like how many things can you call a dog? Um, there are all sorts of terms with all sorts of values. So that's what you start off with, but as people get older, it turns into poetry and theater and speech making and debate, you know, to think on your feet, to be logical, to be to say what you want to say in a sh in a brief and powerful way. So at that part, at that point, it's it becomes an art. You can play with it, you can do sort of avant-garde art, abstract art with words, you can do song lyrics that can make people cry or laugh. You can so it that's where I think the arts really come in. Although with little kids, sometimes they just write words and turn them into animals and things like that. So there's that by playing with words, the words become less frightening and more a part of a person's brain, mind, memory. So it becomes a tool you're good at with anything, with paints and brushes or hammers and nails or a pan, you know, pans and fire, whatever your interest is, you just get good at it after a while. It's really hard the first time you ever make cookies, maybe, you know, because you have to really read the recipe and measure and worry and ah, forgot the baking soda or whatever it might be. And the 50th time you make cookies, you're not going to make that mistake. And you don't have to measure everything so carefully, and you know if it looks right or doesn't look right. So it becomes like that with language too. If you play with it, if you use it. And so I want to reassure the parents that they don't have to learn the terminology or worry about what their kids are doing if there's enough activity and exposure and opportunity.

Sue Elvis: 07:09
I was always very interested in English at school and literature. And I think I've already spoken about how I did a science degree, but really I would have loved to have gone and done an arts degree, English literature, whatever. But I explored on my blog years ago the question, I don't know the answer to it, so maybe you can help, Sandra, whether my children who are very interested in words and who have always enjoyed writing and performing and you know, plays and such like, who have not found words formidable at all, have they inherited my genes? Am I a writer to their writers, or can parents nurture a child's uh ability to enjoy writing and other associated things? Is it if a parent is scared of writing, say, will she pass or he pass that on to the kids? And if we foster um an environment in our home where everybody enjoys language arts, just like everybody enjoys reading, uh it's part of uh language arts, of course, but will the children be more inclined to enjoy things like writing? Because writing is one of those big things I've had a lot of questions about. How do I get my kids to write? And so I've thought, well, why do my kids write? Or why did well they still do, but why as they were growing up, why did they just naturally write? Was it because they had my genes, or is it because I loved writing and shared that with them? And they grew up thinking that writing, like writing novels, writing blog posts, writing whatever, was just a natural thing to do. So what do you think, Sandra?

Sandra Dodd: 09:11
I think both. I think that a parent who's really afraid of something can send some of that fear down the line. And there are probably some kids who have one parent who writes and one who doesn't. And then some of those, if those people have a sufficient number of children, some of them might not be interested in writing. They might be like that parent. I think that some things are there, there's the idea of something being genetic, and then there's a heritable trait, which is less there's somewhat genetic, but they're still looking at those. I think that's more about personality. And writing might be a personality thing too. Would you rather talk or write? I like to write myself, although I doesn't seem to make me shut up. But I but my favorite thing is writing. And I was thinking I had taught about these talks, about these podcasts, I had said I don't like it because I can't correct mistakes, and I don't like not having an outline. And then I thought, well, that's I'm just wrong because it's less organized, it's less script, it's not scripted, right? So that's what made me nervous. But when I spoke at conferences, I didn't write down what I was gonna say and read it. And I don't like it when people do, it bugs me. I could have read it faster than they can read it. I want them to just talk. So what I did was I would just make an outline, a list of the things I wanted to talk about, and then I would talk. So that's the same thing that we're doing now, only we're bouncing off each other. So I take back my objection to these, if anybody ever heard that and remembered me saying that. Because I thought that's how I spoke at conferences anyway. And I always liked the conversations that we would have if I would sort of pimp myself out by I would just if somebody would buy me dinner, I would talk to them through the whole dinner. You know, you want to talk to me some more? I haven't had lunch. So I those were totally unscripted. I had no idea what they were gonna ask about or where they were gonna go. In India, I got a couple of meals out of going to talk to people's parents, like the the unschooling parent people had parents who they couldn't under explain unschooling to. So I'd get a meal and see another house and meet some more people, and I didn't know what they were gonna ask me. But I was confident. Someone asked me one time, who would you be afraid of? And I think she was thinking about in-laws. I was gonna say something like in-laws are my grandmother or something like that. But I said, um, nobody. And so I came to what about the little bit like the cowardly lion scene in the old Wizard of Oz. It's like, not nobody, not know-how. I just so I thought, do you mean like the head of education of some country? And she said, yeah. And I said, No. Because I'm because I was not making anything up. I was really confident I'd seen it work, not just at my family, but a lot of families. So there wasn't anybody who knew something I didn't know about how education works or how people learn. It's like I wasn't, I don't think school is the worst thing in the world. I think for some people, school is harsh. I think for some people school is great. So I think school should just be where it's being and not feel like they own everybody's kids. And I think families should see that they have an option. And if the option that's good for them and their kids is school, that should be it. But if people want to unschool, if they want to learn more about unschooling, I want to help them do that. I want to help them see that you really, truly, honestly can just by playing around, visiting museums, watching movies, you know, joking, listening to comedians who play with words, who are like athletically playing with words. It's like going to a basketball game or something, watching people who are really good at something. Comedians are fast and they've thought about how to bring this thing into this thing. And comedy is not something that people study much in school at all. I took a class in in college, had a very elderly professor. He started in about eight, he was talking about the history of American humor, and he started around 1820, and then was going through newspapers and magazines that had humor columnists and stuff, and he never really got to the 20th century. So that was odd for me. It was interesting. But if I if somebody started asking me about humor, I would probably talk about radio shows up to TV shows to comedians who went on tours to YouTube comedians, you know, and I would never get too past that, you know. I don't know. But there's a lot that people don't consider that. I don't think a lot of parents are gonna consider that humor is studying language. But it could be an appreciation of someone who is excellent at it. I know that when I was a kid, there were there would be lists of books. These are the books that everyone should read, but that was because about the only input people had, especially people my grandparents' age who were there before radio and television, they didn't have any other way to get stories into them, except by just talking to other people or reading books. And now that's not true. Books are not the only or main way to get information. My daughter's in her 30s, and I have a granddaughter who's now 16, and so we wanted to introduce her to some cultural what's the term? Cultural, what you share, the information you share that used to be literature, and now quite a bit of it's movies and music. It's late here. Help me, Sue. What is it? Cultural literacy. So we said, okay, cultural literacy. The things that it helps if a lot of people know. If you don't, if you have no idea what they're talking about, it might help to have seen this movie or known that song or known the reference somehow.

Sue Elvis: 14:44
Are you talking about pop culture? Uh yes, I suppose.

Cecilie Conrad: 14:50
Well, we think isn't that just any kind of cultural phenomena that everyone in that culture, or like at least 85% of everyone, would know, at least know about. Everyone's heard about The Godfather, for example.

Sandra Dodd: 15:06
It used to be. Yeah. Hearing about The Godfather isn't the same as watching it. And then when I watched it, I watched a thing where they had put everything in chronological order, like a cliff's notes, like a summary. And then friends of mine went, Oh my, I can't believe you watched that. You have to watch them in the order that the films came out. I'm like, Yeah, no, I don't, because that's not my religion. Star Wars, I watched in order as they came out, which wasn't really, as it turned out, in order. You know, so if people get an interest like that, they really care more about Star Trek than Star Wars. Like Joyce Federal is not a Star Wars person, she's a Star Trek person. Holly was gonna be an au pair for a family in London for a while, years back. And the little boy was only four or five, but he loved Star Wars. That's where he lived in his head. And so before Holly went, she had to that was like the prerequisite. If you're gonna be an au pair in this house, you got no one live Star Wars for him to talk to you about it, you know. So it wouldn't do to say who, what it was like um prerequisite for that job. I thought that was really interesting. It was fun for Holly too. Was there anything you were afraid of, Sue? Because you liked language and you were as far as whether your kids would miss out on something and not be able to communicate easily. No.

Sue Elvis: 16:19
We were it was exciting, I think, the opportunities that they had. Especially when we got online and we got the internet, and that's a while ago, bitch, and we all started blogging and joining in with online uh events such as a nanoRimo and emails, I suppose, and writing our own books. And I we've talked about learning to read before, and I think the only there were I did have a few, not fears, but I I got impatient a little bit with a couple of my kids wanting them to be able to read, but that was mostly due to outside expectations. It wasn't really to do with me, it was I let myself be not afraid, but I wanted to when our registration, homeschool registration kind time came around, I just wanted it to go smoothly. But well, my kids, they didn't really have any problems, and I learnt to be patient about the reading. Yeah, but in our house, it was just something we all did. And I also have a husband who writes as well, so that helped. Every single person in the family wrote. So it was just like something we all did. Uh and as you said, it's language arts isn't just writing, reading, uh, watching movies together, singing songs, learning the lyrics, musicals were what well they still are one of the big things that we all are very passionate about. So I guess it's just that we enjoyed it. So, and when you enjoy something, it doesn't look like something you have to learn, you have to do. You learn all those skills just because you're doing something that you really enjoy. So no, I didn't really have any problems with the language arts. It was more trying to reassure people who read my blog that their kids would learn to read, write, do whatever in time.

Sandra Dodd: 18:20
I've known families who where all of the parents and all of the kids rode bicycles, swam, hiked, you know, did all that physical stuff. They never worried that their kids would not learn to climb trees or, you know, to have run you know races or whatever. They it was easy for them, it was easy for the parents, and it was easy for the kids. And so I've seen families where it was like that with math and games, where everybody was good at gaming and could play chess and you know, all of those sorts of things like that came easy for them. So I think there is an element of nurture and nature that can't be helped. It's not it's nothing to get excited about or feel guilty about one way or the other. If a family has has it easy, arts, if both of the parents are artists, and so the kids can pick up clay or paints and do something beautiful or fun or serviceable or practical with it, that's natural and that's fun. And if in another family they don't do it that much, that's okay too. But I it might help maybe one of the best things we can do today is help parents see that if they're worried about 12 or 13 school years of teaching English or teaching whatever native language they're dealing in, that they can be calm. Encouraging discussions. We've talked about the value of discussions between parents and children or children and other you know adults, but the idea of just observing children communicating with other children, whether it's in writing, email, messenger, um, or online if they're doing Skype, Zoom games where they're talking with other people, that's worth looking at as a language art situation, also. Is can they express themselves, can they understand clearly what the other people are saying so that they can keep this conversation or project or teamwork going in a situation like that? And that's if the parents feel like checklisting what that's good for in the real world is really good for a workplace. It's good for management, pro you know, project management.

Sue Elvis: 20:20
The uh thing my kid thing that really helped my kids uh become good writers wasn't sitting down and doing exercises and learning comprehension and all that, but it was playing and looking. I observed all my kids out in the garden playing things like little house on the prairie, and they all had a dress-up box, and they were out there all day making up stories. You're you can be Mary today, and you can be pa. And then they would you could If you could sit on the sidelines and listen to the conversations, but they're telling stories, and the stories change from day to day, but they're stories, they've got a purpose, they've got um something moves the story forward, there's conflict, there's this, there's that. They're using words, they're describing things, they're exploring their feelings in different places. And of course, we've read the books as well. They want to come in and read the books. That I think really, really got their imaginations going. My daughter, who writes novels, she's an author, fantasy and sci-fi. She always says that the foundation of her writing skills and her imagination was the play in her childhood. So there's a lot of good things about play, but especially for learning storytelling and learning to use your voice and to construct stories. But the other one was uh my kids used to have a big stack of paper. My husband used to bring home all this old computer paper. It was in those days where you had all these big sheets that were joined together with, you know, in a big stack and used to tear a piece off, and it was printed on one side and blank on the other. And he used to bring home big stacks of this paper, and we used to throw it in the cardboard box in the corner of the room, and they used to take the paper, and then up we'd have two children sitting side by side with a stack of this paper and a pencil or pen, and they would tell a story as they were drawing it, and they might be doing bunk beds that had six beds in a row. I remember that one. And I'm this character and you're that character, and as they're telling the story, we're telling the story, they added more to the drawing. So that was before they could write, or maybe they could write a bit, or maybe one could write. But this was a way, uh like a step towards writing stories in accepted languages that anyone could read. They weren't interested in that. They just wanted to tell the story. And I mean so much of storytelling is in pictures, isn't it? That we kids read comics, they make up stories about any picture they see. It's not always just uh the print words.

Sandra Dodd: 23:16
I think that the same way that if they're acting out characters, they know the characters, maybe they've seen the TV show, or maybe they've just read the books or what it heard about it from other kids, but they know that Pa has constraints. There are things that Pa can or will or won't do. And so, in a way, that's like a mathematical if-then, or like in programming, we're go along to this point, and then here are your options. Or in science, science, scientific experiment, scientific thought sets up a parameters. Like if this is true, then what? Arts sometimes do that. Like, can you paint winter trees, mountains with only three colors? What colors would they need to be? You know, forget the orange, it's white, blue, and black. I'll just tell you. Um, but there are things, there are games sort of that people play by constraining their field of availability of action somehow. So that so that's a way to play with all kinds of things. The can a conditional set of requirements. I'm not thinking of a good musical example, but I'm sure there are. There are some artistic things that if the parents are interested and know about, they could introduce gently, gradually. And I know that in English literature a few hundred years back, and in also Norse, a lot of the sagas, there's a thing called alliteration where what they thought was really beautiful and artsy was when words started with the same sound. Like they would have noticed before I did that Cecilia, Sandra, and Sue all start with the same sound. A little bit late to understand. It took me about a year, but there are some people who were writers in 1400 who would have saw it, seen it like that in an instant. So, yeah, so anyway, that's called alliteration. A-L-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-O-N. And it's only it only comes up usually in poetry anymore. But we're kids now, teens now will know it from is from comics. The names of the secret identity of superheroes are they start with the same sound, like Clark Kenton and Peter Parker. And there are dozens of those. And that's sort of a code or a tradition. That's how you know the guy's going to be a superhero, I guess, is his first and last name start with the same sound.

Sue Elvis: 25:35
Or maybe maybe that makes me a superhero. Because before I got married and became an Elvis, I won't say what my maiden name is because I want to keep it private for my family's sake. But I always call myself Susan Skellenton. Um because that's new enough. That's my alias, is Susan Skelenton. Uh, but yes, I went through my childhood as a, so I must be a superhero. But I like that idea, Sandra. But you're talking about limitations and there's limitations on games. And it reminds me of it's always fun to have a limitation uh because it expands your uh imagination, your creativity, it makes you work harder. But I was thinking about something simple like Instagram captions. Uh last time I had an account that was what 2,200 characters. That's all you have to play with. That's all you have to tell your story, because I never went over into the comments. I only allowed myself 2,200 characters and I had to tell my story properly in that. And the other one, uh, which we all did a few times, was the A to Z or A to Z uh blogging challenge, where you write 26 posts and each one has to be have a title that begins with the next letter of the alphabet, you know, like apples and bananas and carrots and whatever. And that was always a good challenge as well. And yeah, limitations are pretty good. I used to think that to be free to write whatever you like, have as I've got a blog, I can write whatever I like, as many words as I like, just keep on going. And I thought, well, yeah, you can, but it's better if you have a limit, if you make yourself be a bit more concise, as you were saying earlier, Sandra, about being able to write concisely. Nobody's gonna sit there and read a waffly, rambly blog post, they're gonna skim it. But yeah, I like limitations.

Cecilie Conrad: 27:40
I am wondering, as all three of us are passionate about literature and we're all writing, and I'm just wondering if are we giving the impression that your children can only learn these things in case you're passionate about it. I feel like we need to talk about what to do if it's not your thing. I've done it. It's been easy for me as well, and if I should just babble a little bit. I mean, I come from a family of people who read a lot of books and play with words, and and also teachers and lawyers, and you know, they work with communication, so they have to be able to be more concise than I am this early morning. And we all read books and we discuss the books we read over the dinner table. And so I grew up in a culture of and as I've shared before, uh, there was a lot of languages, so other languages make you understand your own language in new ways, and we would discuss those things and words and all of that. So I'm part of I'm like both of you. To me, this is fun and easy, and it feels like playtime to work with it. So I'm a little bit afraid that with this episode we can share all the fun ways we've done it, and I think we should, and I think it's great, but I'm a little bit afraid that what if you are an unschooler, but you're worried that your children will not get any ideas of this language arts, or not enough, or you want to do better, or and you listen to us three, and we keep talking about Shakespeare and literature and playing with words and all the things that we like doing, but it's not in your it's not so there are two layers here. One thing is, and that's a more philosophical unschool question is it okay that I have an ambition on behalf of my children? I want them to learn something specific. Is that even unschooling? And the other thing, maybe way more interesting, is can this be done even though I'm not the parent is not passionate about it and didn't grow up with it and is not used to reading books and playing with words, then what?

Sandra Dodd: 29:60
I don't think reading books should be main consideration in what we're talking about today, because that there was a time when reading books was your only option. But I started to tell the story before you needed to go do something. Holly and I decided to help this granddaughter to partly to just get her off by ourselves, you know, to hang out with her. But we thought, let's show her some movies that people make reference to a lot that if she hasn't seen them. And one was the Truman Show. And the Truman Show is very philosophical, but they don't talk about it that way. But when people see it and then take it in and discuss it and think about it, it's about relationships and truth and the meaning of life and what other people are interested in. It's just it's very it's fun, it's funny, it's deep, it's serious, it's crazy. So any any angle that a person comes to it from is still valid. You know, you don't have to stay from the outside, okay, class, we're gonna watch the Truman show, and here's what I want you to look for, and here's what I want you to take from it, and there's gonna be a test. No, no, no, no, none of that. So I think if parents who may not be very interested in English language study, I shouldn't say English because there are people who are gonna be listening to this, who are irritated that we have three accents, who are not studying English, whatever language you're dealing with, you can learn more about it and play with it.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:28
I think we've said it now. We call it studying English in this episode because we're speaking English, and it's fine. We can't use this disclaimer all the time. Obviously, half of it in our end is Danish.

Sandra Dodd: 31:41
I mean Don't call it studying if you can help it.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:44
Yeah, no, that too.

Sandra Dodd: 31:45
Goofing around with English, goofing around with whatever languages you have. So, anyway, we've watched the Truman show. She was right there, she got it, she was never lost, she never asked a question. It was great. So, after a while, something came up. There was a movie that came out last year and it starred Hugh Grant, and it was scary, it was branded horror. And I didn't think it was horror, it was about religion, but still, it was kind of horrible and scary. So I didn't know if she wanted to watch it. I thought it might be too much for her, but she had no idea who Hugh Grant is, and I'm like, okay, that's not okay. So the next time we were going to watch a movie, I picked about a boy. It's not cultural, it's not a requirement for cultural literacy. People don't have to watch that, but they have to watch some Hugh Grant movies. I'm joking. I didn't I don't want to watch any Kevin Costner movies, so people can have preferences, but my preference was for a Hugh Grant movie to be a requirement for my grandchildren. So so we're watching about a boy, and it was fun for her because it was about the relationship between a kid and parents and that same kid and other adults. And she was having some deals like that in her own life, and here in that moment, she's hanging out with her aunt and her grandmother watching a movie that maybe her parents don't even know. And so that paralleled some of the theme of the movie right there as we were sitting there, and that was it was interesting. And it has one of my favorite lines of all time, which is Hugh Grant is telling off the kid's mom in a restaurant where she's gone to accost him, and he says, You daft fucking hippie. And I thought, oh, that's some good writing. It's not polite, it's got the F-word, but still, in the context of that story, whoever wrote that captured the feeling and the emotion of what the problem was, is the mom was very controlling in a daft hippie way. And so the child was too limited by only having one parent. His he had a dad too, but the dad was a little doofus. And so it was interesting for one of the adults in the story to characterize another of the adults spot on. And they don't linger there, they move on, but it but at that moment, someone the writer caused a character to have the guts to accost another character in that very direct way. And even in the context, it's kind of funny. You know, it's it's and it's a funny line, and it stops her in her tracks too. She gets it and she turns. And so, anyway, so that that was one movie. The next movie we did was The Truman Show. That sorry, that we did that. Forrest Gump. And so after we watched Forest Gump, she said she had heard some references to the Truman Show, but after she watched Forrest Gump, she said a lot. She just noticed a lot of references or references to things that she had learned because she watched that about history. And so that there we didn't need to have a test. We just gave her this gift of I bet if you watched this, you would see it come up in other contexts. And she did.

Cecilie Conrad: 34:56
So please send me a message every time you do it.

Sandra Dodd: 34:60
Every time you didn't, she just you know, a few weeks later, she just was excited enough to tell us that it kept coming up. Yeah. And we knew it would, but it was cool to know that it had. It's been fun to share some things that we thought were exciting with her. And if she had rejected one or said, no, I think this movie's dumb, it wouldn't have crushed our feelings or anything. It was like, let's try this one, let's try this one. And that's been fun. So if parents don't aren't feeling like they have any interest in reading novels and discussing them at dinner or going to Shakespeare plays, watch movies, um, watch YouTube videos, listen to songs, notice when the lyrics have fancy rhyme schemes. Um, there's a song in Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, I'm not gonna think of it right now, but the rhyme is very fancy. It's um sorry, I wish I had see, I need an outline, I need notes. But it's just no, it's fine. I've learned so much. I drove up with this example and can't name it.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:06
Well, it's fine. It's fine. I think it's what we're trying to say. Uh what I've been another thing I've been thinking all the way through here today is it's very much about taking the time. It's something that I day to day struggle with because I just feel like I literally need another at least 50 hours every day. And they cannot be for cooking, cleaning, sleeping, doing laundry or driving. It has to be for actually communicating with my children or other people around me. Because it's about sharing some time with this, it's about having the time to stop the movie and talk about it. When we watch movies, we also we keep a movie list and everyone gets to contribute to it, and we have it like a note, shared note on the phones so that we don't have to discuss it so much when we finally have time to watch a movie, which is quite rare. And we've also done the sit down and think about what movies do we really want our children to see from the parental point of view, and we don't agree. Uh, not that I disagree with the kids seeing the movies my husband likes, I just don't like them, and I'm not even joining because I don't like the violent movies. I don't I'm I've never adjusted to that. I cannot watch violent movies, but fine, some of my kids can. So they share different songs with the two of us, and they also have, of course, universals with each other. So some kids like to do watch one kind of series with each other, and it's fine, it's all good and fine. But I think the important thing is that there is time enough to pause and stop, pause and talk about it. When we sit down to watch a movie, we make sure it's not too late when we start it. Because if we watch it really late in the evening and we're so tired when it's over that we have to sleep, then there's not that half hour to discuss what we just experienced, and that's really frustrating, like someone putting the dessert in front of me and I don't have time to eat it, or I'm too full to eat it. And so I think that the main thing is to I mean, we all enjoy culture based on language. Culture based on language is language arts. So the unschooling strategy would basically be to have enough time to stop and talk about it. And it doesn't have to come from me, like Sandra, you did a list of movies you wanted to share with your granddaughter, and like we keep a list of movies, we also keep a list of books and a list of we like lists. It's more about also about not more, it's also about being interested in what the kids enjoy culturally. So the narrative of a computer game or the lyrics of their favorite song, or like watching the same YouTube videos and see is this what is this, and try to understand the culture that they are exploring. That's also based on language. And if someone's explaining something to them, it's also based on logic or lack thereof. And we can talk about these things and find out what drives them. But it comes down to the question of time. Take the time.

Sandra Dodd: 39:33
Maybe. Um, but it doesn't have to be that organized or that shared to still be shared. If you've both seen the movie but two years apart and a reference comes up, it can be discussed then. So to reassure parents who are worried about this, it doesn't need to be that organized. And maybe if a joke is made or a reference is made to a movie and you know, two people in the family made this, haha, you know, and the third's like, I didn't get it, they could watch that movie then. Come back and say, Oh yeah, now I get what you were talking about. Because if you're with unschooling, things don't need to be done in a certain order. But if parents can be more confident that conversations and watching movies together or discussing things that you both know later, that's that is a way of learning or indicating uh knowledge of those things, literature, poetry, you know, the ideas, the concepts, different characters, different types of characters. You know, good guys, bad guys, protagonist, antagonist. You don't need to use the terms protagonist, antagonist to discuss that sometimes there's a really bad guy. And sometimes the story is about that guy being redeemed and changing himself. Sometimes it's about that guy being smashed and destroyed by the good guys. You know, it's just different. So that, but that's something that kids figure out. When my kids were little, we together watched a lot of Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. And Power Rangers was a bit like a soap opera. Sometimes you don't know what's going to happen, but you know something's gonna happen. And so I was keeping up with all of that stuff in the 90s, late 90s, you know, 2000. And so it was really easy to discuss some things. And I found out later that a lot of people who were born in the 80s, young men especially, sometimes when they're getting to know other people or they're discussing other people's personalities, they'll say, Which Power Ranger did you identify with? And I that's interesting because when I was a kid, teen, I really loved Grimm's fairy tales. And then I read Bruno Badelheim's books about that, about the analysis of fairy tales and the analysis of personality and relationship to fairy tales, what people learn from fairy tales. But he talked about psychoanalysis beginning with what fairy tale character do you identify with? And so I knew that. All these guys who were saying which ninja turtle did you identify with were doing the same thing. Which character traits do you see in yourself already? Why didn't you, why are you more like Donatello than Michelangelo? Why? And so it seems maybe silly from the outside, but it's the same thing. If there's a fairy tale that you jumped up and went, Oh, that's me, I want to be that one. Or if you're playing Little House on the Prairie and you want to be the Braddy neighbor, I forget her name, the one with the blonde curls, uh, you know, which one of those characters do you want to inhabit sometimes in your mind and act out and feel like? That's valuable too. So if unschooling moms can know, or dads, that when if they have a test or an inspection or something, a report coming up, they can see in their kids' play and in their kids' activities these things that if the kids were in school would be being called more formally poetry analysis, rhyme analysis, rhyme scheme, comparison and contrast. I want to talk about reports before we're done, but I don't want to talk about it right now. But some parents are afraid that their kids will not write a report, or somebody they think that somebody's gonna require them to show reports that their kids wrote. But I think that if the parents can see that just talking about it could be an oral report. If your kid goes to a movie that you didn't go to and they come back and tell it to you and they were able to tell the whole thing and even remember some characters' names, and as they're telling you, tell how it made them feel, and this part was scary, or then I was really sad, but then this happened, and then this happened. If they can perform a narrative, if they can speak a narrative, they don't have to have written it down for the parent to see that they understand that. You know, what was the beginning? Why? Then what happened, why what was that leading up to? They give you clues to what's gonna happen. You don't need to know the technical terminology that literature professors might use to justify their salaries. So there are a lot of times words in school technical things. When I was teaching, I used to teach kids who were 12 to 15, junior high, seventh, ninth grade. And every Friday I was young, and I what I'd been doing in my teens was learning ballads, English ballads, Scottish ballads, American ballads. And I just liked them for no good reason. But I also knew the value of those stories because all the ballads are stories, and there were ballads about outlaws and train wrecks, and there was one that was too rough, really, to sing to little kids about a guy who had who had done construction on a castle and then he didn't get paid. And he came back and murdered the wife and child. You know, that I didn't sing that to seventh graders. I didn't, but you know, there are stories of a whole range of stories, and I looked at those ballads and I went, these are like TV shows, they're like movies. In the days before there were there was any other way to convey, it's really easy to remember the details of something if it has rhyme and a melody. And so they could last. Somebody in New Mexico could be singing something in the 1970s that was at the time four or five hundred years old, and the tune would have changed and some of the words would have changed, but there also would also be some archaic phrases that didn't change because it would mess up the rhythm and the rhyme. So it's a way to preserve a fly in amber almost to have a story that needs to be told the same way every time. And so on Fridays I would say, okay, we're not gonna we're gonna just have schoolwork Monday through Thursday, and then on Friday, I'm just gonna sing you a song. And the first year I we didn't have a good way to to well for a few reasons. I would write all of the words on a chalkboard and they would write them down on a piece of paper. Partly I knew that they would see the words that way, they would have a first pass at the story, and then I would sing it to them. And they would keep all of these song words in a notebook, but immediately they all start whining. Why do we have to write it down? I said, You don't really have to write it down. I'm not even gonna check. Ah, do we have to learn this? Is it gonna be a test? Nope, you don't have to learn it. This is Friday. I'm just singing a song. Me on the side, in secret to them, I was fulfilling some of the curriculum requirements for narrative and rhyme, poetry. So I knew that, but they didn't have to know that. And so there can be things that parents know that the kids don't have to know. You don't have to, after you discuss a movie with them, go, I'm so proud of you. You show me that you know how to be an analytical and that you can, you know, share a narrative. Now, if only could write that down. You know, that unschooling parents can avoid all of that while still knowing in their heart and in their reporting if they need to report to someone that that's what was happening. Which I think is uh is a glorious freebie. It's so cheap and easy when it involves language, which we're using all the time anyway.

Sue Elvis: 46:51
We've done a lot of talking about movies that we've watched, but we don't stop the movie to discuss it. I we find if there's something that comes up in stretch. We were watching Greece the other day. We're introducing my youngest daughter to Greece. She came over, she was away for a few days, and she arrived home and said, Mom, should we watch a movie? What should we watch? Should we have a look on Netflix? And I saw Greece and I said, Well, look, Dad and I watched this years ago. Would you like to watch Greece? So we did. We didn't stop the movie while we were well, but we did uh do a little bit of talking over the movie because it has uh a lot of songs in it, and there were wonderful times to get your phone out and do a bit of uh of finding out the answers to the questions that were coming up. For example, we decided that all John Travolta and all the male characters who were supposed to be high schoolers looked far too old. So we're Googling all their ages, all the characters, we Googled why it was called Greece, and we could do that because of the songs. But we also afterwards we continue talking about it, and I don't know if you remember that the songs, all the action stops and the scenery changes for the duration of the song. It's like a someone rolls in a set and they all got different costumes on, they sing the song, and when it's over, they all go back to ordinary life. And it really, we said that reminds us of something. And it reminds us of the older movies, like maybe Singing in the Rain, uh White Christmas, that sort of uh storytelling musical was a lot uh was very popular in some of the older movies. But another movie that we watched, it was a few years ago now. I went to the cinema with my youngest daughter and we watched Emma, the uh that was probably the last production of Emma that was done maybe four years ago. Oh, it's magnificent. But the way when we talked about it, we talked about it in the car on the way home. And I didn't have any trouble getting my daughter to talk about it. She was full of observations. Did you notice, Mum, that the uh the scoundrel, maybe that's a good way, the male scoundrel, he wasn't very handsome, but the main male character who was supposed to be the good one, he was very handsome. And did you notice this and did you notice that? And when we got I got home, what I did was I wrote it all down in a blog post and I thought about it, and I thought it was spontaneous discussion on the way home in the car, just because she enjoyed the movie and she wanted to tell me all about it. But when I wrote it down, I thought, as you were saying about doing things on the sidelines, Sandra, that I had all I needed for my homeschool record keeping. She was comparing, she was analyzing, she was whatever. And I wrote it all down in a blog post. And it was, I'm I'm not sure if I was keeping homeschool records at that time, that four years ago. Maybe we're just on the brink of not having to do it anymore. But I certainly had a rich amount of a rich note, a lot of notes, if I needed to prove to the education department that she had fulfilled all these outcomes. But what was more interesting to me was seeing her experience just going to movies and talking about it, on my own experience of having to do the essay questions after reading the book. And I reckon she had more understanding, more knowledge, more skills just by enjoying the movie and talking about it than having to study the movie and give the right answers to get a good mark on a paper. And that love of just being allowed to watch and chat about it sort of gives kids that incentive, the encouragement, the joy of exploring more. Whereas when I was at school, even though I did like English very much, uh, there were certain things that I thought, well, that's over and done with now, put it in the in the cupboard, throw the book on the shelf. Now I want to go and read something that I want to read. But yeah, I you got lots of happy memories about just watching movies together.

Sandra Dodd: 51:31
When you next time Greece comes up, or if you this may you may have an excuse to bring this up, but they went to Rydell High. And that's a reference to Bobby Rydell, who was a singer in the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s.

Sue Elvis: 51:45
I I've never heard of him, so I will go look that one up. But yeah, it's uh interesting. Um people sort of say, you know, your phone, they get in the way, uh, they're always a distraction, put your phone away. But I found that being able to research things instantly while you're watching something actually adds to the conversation. Of course, sometimes people shout out, I'm trying to listen, I'm trying to listen, be quiet. And then you have to uh respect that the the sound has got a the conversation has got a bit uh loud. But what I found is that we tend to watch a lot of movies, but we tend to watch a lot over and over and over again. And you get to like Shakespeare.

Cecilie Conrad: 52:29
I have to get to Shakespeare.

Sue Elvis: 52:30
Yeah, and we've talked about Shakespeare last time. Yeah, we've resisted to this point. But like Shakespeare, and I think we've spoken about it before, that every time you read the play or what why we usually watch them, you understand a bit more, you get something more out of it, you notice something more. And I think it doesn't matter whether you're watching Disney Princesses or Shakespeare, it all happens in the same way. But there's a lot to discuss in any movie. As long as people enjoying it, there's a lot to say about it. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare, it doesn't have to be a classic. We've had loads of great conversations over the years about Disney princess movies, which used to be a passion for my girls at one time.

Sandra Dodd: 53:16
And there can be crossover. There's a there's a Barbie movie that's like um The Prince and Pauper. And so, and so sometimes you could go and follow that reference, but you don't need to. You could go find out who Bobby Rydell was, but if you miss it, that's fine. It's just another thing, another thing that's in there. And when you when you talk about, oh, there was an Australian in Greece too. And so that's kind of fun. And what that what I just had a thought of was Jesus Christ Superstar. I really like that musical from and I first knew it when it was just an album. They didn't have there was no video, it hadn't even been on stage. It was like an album first, and then they put it on stage, then they made a video. There was another video made in 2000s. That made that one was from 1973. I went to the theater and watched it twice in a row. They didn't throw you out in those days. You could just stay as long as you wanted to. None of my friends wanted to stay for a second time, and I said, Well, go on because I'm staying. And they were said, Will you be okay to walk back by yourself? So, yeah, this whole theater of people is gonna let out at the same time, and I could see my door from there. So that's fine. I so I knew it really well, and I had the album, I knew it really well. Some people were a little disturbed by the whole thing because they thought it was blasphemy to make light of Jesus and have him singing rock and roll and stuff. We're like, Yeah, well, you'll get over it. And they did. And then in 2000, another version came out. So some people were uncomfortable that Jesus was white and Judas was black. So it just so happened that Judas is the main part, and a really great singer got that part and stayed in it for a long time. And that's how it goes. But some people were like, Ah, should we be embarrassed? Should we be concerned? Is this bad? The one that came out in 2000 was made in Britain and it was set in a different setting, like it was all inside stage stuff, and they did that on purpose because it was based on a particular stage presentation design and all. And so Jesus and the disciples were like English punks of the 90s. Judas was French. They weren't saying this is England, this is France, but it doesn't matter. The thing is, there were all these Brits, very Brit, very sort of working class Brit, tough. They must have advertised in gyms to get those dancers because those guys were buff. Whereas in 1973, it'd have been a bunch of scrawny hippies. They were dancers, but they were skinny, artsy, flowy dancers, and these guys are muscle, you know, weightlifting dancers. And so the guy who plays Judas has a French accent. He's you don't have to say, is this guy French? He's French. And so knowing in context that England and France have been a little bitchy toward each other for 500 or a thousand years, that's valuable to know. So in that context, it's almost like, is that okay that Judas is French? That a French guy is coming and causing trouble for all these Brits? It's just another overlay. And if not if somebody doesn't get it or doesn't care, that's fine. But if but it's another thing to uh connect other dots to like if does this heighten the discomfort? Yeah, maybe. Is it important?

Sue Elvis: 56:21
Is that Jesus Christ Superstar? Was that is that an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical? Because I mean, we are very passionate about a lot of his musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera. That was one of his, isn't it? Phantom of the Opera.

Sandra Dodd: 56:38
I should know. I think so. I think it is where it in court.

Sue Elvis: 56:42
Yeah, it's coming to coming to Sydney next year on at the out. It's going to be performed outside on the harbour March, April next year. And my youngest daughter and I are thinking of going. It's one of our all-time favorites. But just thinking about that and how that's based on a book. And most people haven't read the book, but they've they've uh watched the musical, listened to the music, and how many other things in our culture come from Phantom of the Opera, how other people have used the ideas within that, and how that that happens all the time, doesn't it? That you have a movie and then someone takes an idea out from it and uses that with combines it with something else, and how fascinating all these uh connections are and the stories. Just sitting here, Sandra, and you telling us about some more information about Greece, you're telling some stories, as if we're sitting with our families and watching it and uh we're all enjoying the conversation. But that's what we're doing here, isn't it?

Sandra Dodd: 57:54
Making those connections just for fun ourselves?

Sue Elvis: 57:57
Yeah. That we're that what we're doing sitting here talking to each other from across the world is that we're bouncing ideas off, we're telling our favorite bits, we're saying, Did you know? Uh, we're listening to each other's extra bits of information. But it's the same sort of thing that goes on around an unschooling table or in the living room while after watching a movie or in the car as you're traveling along. We're all learning, and we all get a chance to add our little bit to the conversation.

Sandra Dodd: 58:34
You're right about Phantom of the Opera, it was 1986. So from 68 to 1993, Joseph, an amazing technical dream coat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita Katz, Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard, and then Time Passes, and then School of Rock.

Sue Elvis: 58:51
I think the West one is the sequel to Phantom of the Opera. We're all we've all got very strong opinions that that should never have been made. But that just gives another layer to this, to the discussion. Something that we get so passionate about that we hate that they do it. Was that Weber 2? Yes, it was the one um Time Passes, I think. Oh, yeah, it was it was awful.

Sandra Dodd: 59:23
Um Time Passes. I just said time passes and then School of Rock because there was a 90 from it was 20 years or so. Over 20 years. I lost my page. Sorry. Sorry. Do you like musicals, Cecilia?

Cecilie Conrad: 59:37
Not particularly, no. I don't maybe I should explore it more, but I think I don't know. It's been a few years, quite a few years now, where we have a hard time finding time to watch movies. We have a very social life. Very often with a lot of people we want to talk to at those hours of the day where we would watch a movie.

Sue Elvis: 01:00:01
Do you ever go and see outdoor performances or go to concerts together as you're traveling?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:00:07
Yeah, yeah, we do it. I mean, we do explore stories and we do explore movies and we do read books and discuss them, and very often we know. Do we I'm not a big fan of science fiction novels, which is changing, but well, it used to be so that if one person in the family had read a science fiction novel, they knew I would never read it. I'd be interested in the narrative, but I wouldn't read the book. So you can share everything about it, and you you're not spoiling uh a literature experience for me because I'm not gonna read it, anyways.

Sandra Dodd: 01:00:44
So I feel bad because I don't like science fiction.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:00:48
I don't either. Okay, yeah, but I mean, you just have your favorite genres. It's just like I can't watch a violent movie, I'm not enjoying it because the violence is just overwhelming me, and it's going to take sense to stage in my dreams for a while. And you can tell me about it, and I'll enjoy the narrative of it, but I don't want to see it.

Sandra Dodd: 01:01:09
Some of my favorite movies are not girly movies, and they are like El Cid, Spartacus, Gladiator. I like them, I've watched them a lot of times. There's a submarine movie called Crimson Tide. People who know all about submarines are like, ah, that movie's so irritating. The submarine that from the outside isn't the same as the submarine Venus. And I'm like, shh, stop, don't care. You know, from I from my imagined, this is Plato's perfect submarine. Doesn't matter. I'm not interested in the details of submarines. I'm interested in the interpersonal relationships among the characters. So that's it's just what people, even people who like science fiction, what they what different people like about it will be different. But I feel in my own personal life that some of my smartest friends love science fiction and jazz, and I don't like either one. So sometimes it makes me feel a little inferior.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:01:58
I don't know. I mean, we're all smart in different ways, didn't you start out by that? And if we want to be smarter in a specific way, it's not hard these days to go explore some extra knowledge. I think I'm lying a little bit about this. I actually read two science fiction novels this year. I read Do Android Stream of Electric Sheep, which obviously is a sci-fi movie, uh, not movie, novel, uh, behind the Blade Runner movie. And I also read The Humans by Matt Haig just recently for the second time. Um, this was one of the fun experiences where uh who was it? My husband and two of the children were reading the book at the same time, so but but we were not at the same place, so we had to all finish before we could start talking about it in order to not spoil it to each other. But that was really fun uh to be able to discuss it more like I've just read it and I'm just passionate about it right now, thinking about it. So that was fun. And and sometimes if there's a spaceship, I'm not reading it. That's like the line. I'll write about it if I read a sci-fi novel with a spaceship in it. I don't like that, but I think it's I mean, it's all good. Is there an ambition to be smarter? I'm I'm wondering. Sometimes I struggle with the language arts in our family, and I think a lot of people would think that we're very ambitious on this point. I try to read a poem to my kids every day. I fail most days, but it means we read way more poems than most people. We enjoy poetry a lot. Uh, one of them is has been deep down into the sonnets and like really complicated poems. Sometimes we read, we have some like more like fun poems, sometimes it's lyrics from songs. There's always a few collections of poetry falling around in the van or drizzled on flat surfaces where we are because we all enjoy picking up and sharing. It's a short, easy thing to do. Takes five minutes to read a quote.

Sandra Dodd: 01:04:14
Do you speak English or do you do Danish too?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:04:16
We do both. Even do French sometimes, but then only I understand it, and it becomes like more like studying the language French. I have a few, I also have a Spanish one. I have a few books where it's amazing where you have I have a Rambo with English and French next to each other. So I don't speak fluent French at all, but I do enjoy poetry in French because it's a way to engage with the language. It's really nice to have the translation right next to it. And I have the same thing with Pablo Neruda in Spanish. I have a book where I have the Spanish poem and the English version right next to each other. It helps a lot. Actually, now that I think about it, the French one is really annoying because they're not next to each other. So you have the whole thing in French and then the whole thing in English. So you have to like flip around. The Spanish one is better with the you open the book and you've got both. Do the same thing when I read Shakespeare, actually, that I have the Danish version next to the English version, just because I think for everyone, Shakespeare is hard. It's harder than reading an update on social media. It's old language, there are lots of words you don't really know, and and I suppose it's harder for me because I'm not native. It makes it so much easier to get it in two languages, because then at least one of them, I understand these old words.

Sandra Dodd: 01:05:38
Well, among natives, I will tell you, as a Protestant, if someone grew up in a church that uses the King James Bible, that was translated in the early 1600s, same days as Shakespeare. So it's not doesn't have as high a vocabulary level as Shakespeare, not so many long words, no dialect. Shakespeare does dialect, sometimes different characters speak different English. The King James Bible is simplified, it's uh it's it was intended for people to be able to read the Bible in English and not in Latin. And so it serves a purpose, but people made a religion out of that book. They said this is the only translation in English that's really inspired by God and stuff. So I grew up with it. So when I read Shakespeare, it was easier for me. I think Sue, because Catholics have other translations later on. The Catholics held out.

Sue Elvis: 01:06:31
They held out a few ones. Yep, we have loads of different versions, which I really enjoy.

Sandra Dodd: 01:06:38
None of them are as old as the King James, though. They're all later.

Sue Elvis: 01:06:42
What I really enjoy about having different translations of the Bible is because different Bibles use different words, uh, they'll say the same thing but use different words. And I love sometimes when you're reading a passage and it comes to life in a different way, in a different translation, or you notice something about a passage that you've read many times, but if you get a new version, all of a sudden you think, oh wow, I didn't realize that about that, because this word is different and it's caught my imagination or whatever. So I think there's great value in different translations.

Sandra Dodd: 01:07:21
For a while I had a, I think I've given it away, but I had a big book that was six or eight different translations of the Bible in columns. When you open a page, you're seeing several different ones. Oh, nice. It was great. My poetry books, yeah. For a while, when I I used to watch Korean dramas a lot, and for a while there were two main sources. What were they called? It doesn't matter. Um, Vicky and Drama Fever. And they had different subtitles. And so I would watch a show, and if I really liked it, I would watch it again on the other one and see the other subtitles. And I would learn so much from seeing this translated to English by two different people. You know, they're just like letting you in on the story, it's not Shakespeare on either end. But it was it was so valuable how they would translate. Because it's not gonna, it's not a code, it's not gonna translate word for word anyway. They have to take the meaning and put them put it out in another language. Um I think that's the same as having poetry in two languages on the same page. Because you you get to see what didn't translate and how close can they come. I was watching something the other day that had Spanish subtitles, and I'm like, ah, that's not no, that's not good enough. That's not, but you can't what can you do? If it if you can't be said in Spanish the way it was in English, you just have to live with what you get.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:08:40
Have you no? I think I suppose you as English speakers haven't seen that. Now I have to think for a moment. If I if we watch a Disney movie, I think I noticed it with the Disney movies, so they would be dubbed because it's for children, so it would be dubbed into Danish. It's very well done, I don't mind at all. We don't dub after we suppose it's like 12 years and older. Like the last Harry Potter movies were never translated because you suppose, I don't know, people speak English here, but for smaller kids, we dub things, and then you can choose the subtitles, and then annoyingly, the subtitles are not saying what the characters are saying, so it's not the same translation when they do the translation for the dubbing, it's one job, and when they do the subtitling, there's one they somehow thinking you're seeing it in English with Danish subtitles. That's how we usually would watch a movie in Denmark. So there also you get this discrepancy between two different translations of the same thing. We had a lot of conversations about that when my kids started reading because they wanted the subtitles, they're used to subtitles, or maybe I wanted them so we didn't have to turn the volume that far up, whatever. But it became so confusing, and that happens also. I've been watching shows in Spanish to improve my Spanish, and then same thing. They say one thing and the subtitle says another thing. It's not helping my language because it's confusing me.

Sandra Dodd: 01:10:21
But if you see it as side by side, maybe it wouldn't be as irritating. Well, it's been translated one of these two ways.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:10:29
It's one of these things that I've been thinking about. I I know a lot of people who speak only one language, and I understand, especially if that one language is English, it's very easy to just keep going with that. But one of the great advantages of speaking more than one language is you realize these things that words don't translate one-to-one. You have to go back to the meaning, and then you have to know something about the culture and who you're talking to in order to express the same thing. And that becomes more and more complicated if it's poems, and it becomes really, really complicated if those poems have to stay in a specific what's the word in English, like a structure. So they have to rhyme in a specific way, you have to have the same length of the syllables and all these things, then it becomes actually quite the art to translate something. We have just had just, I'm saying it's probably within the last 25 years, but we have a new translation of Shakespeare's into Danish, and it's just amazing. It's amazing how he did it. He translated it better than the older translations we have into a more modern Danish, using a huge enriched vocabulary, staying within the structure of how the whole the rhymes and the length of the sentences, all these things go, even down to a lot of words being very close to the same. And I just need a new Shakespeare collection now because it's amazing. It's amazing that people can do this. You really need to know a lot about your language in order to do it. And we're having quite I it I thought in a way before that it was a kind of a cheat sheet to read Shakespeare in Danish, because why would you if you speak English to the level that we do? But actually, it's just a great way to play with the meaning of the big monologues and the beauty of the language and how words sometimes simply just don't translate. There's some things you can express in English that are really hard to get the same message, the same vibe of it in another language. And that comes down to the even the beginning of learning a new language. I remember my son, my youngest one, he's the most, I don't know, when you compare, you die, so maybe I shouldn't compare. But he's very, very, very fluent in English. He dreams in English and he speaks English with his friends, even Danish friends, because he's just more comfortable speaking English. And he said, Oh, I just noticed that the word page and side are two different words in English. So you can be on the same page as someone and you can side with someone, and that in English, but in Danish it's the same word. But in Danish, there's one expression, it means the same. But we use so but the distinction between a page and a side is is very different in English, but in Danish it kind of overlaps because it's the same word. So all these little observations they come very easily, and these understandings that words are not tied to reality in a way that is one-to-one. It's always some sort of interpretation or choice, basically. You have a forest and you have wood, you have all these words around uh the material wood, uh, when you've cut a tree down, the forest, uh a smaller group of trees, the word for tree, all of these words, if you try to translate them into our Nordic languages, where one thing stops and another starts changes. It's quite interesting. And these things I suppose you would observe in in language arts and schools, but they happen all by themselves if you just try to learn another language.

Sandra Dodd: 01:14:27
And I suppose there are probably jokes that only people who know Danish and English can get.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:14:33
Yep. And we have an entire TV show. So we have a tradition here, and I I think it's mostly here. Maybe other Scandinavian countries do it. I'm not even sure. We do a TV show for Christmas, and it has a little episode every 24 days. So from the 1st to the 24th, we celebrate on the 24th, so it's over there. So there would be 24 episodes, and it's a show, and it started out being little shows for children. So the children's half-hour TV for children in the evening that we had when I was a child, that would be this in December, this show. And everyone would follow it and everyone would talk about in school, and it had little songs, and it's really nice. Mostly, most of the time, it was very well done. And then later on, people for Fun C started making it for adults as well, with more sarcasm and a different kind of context, some of them really short, like a five-minute thing on the radio, maybe instead of TV. There was a big one that came out when I was, I think, 16. And this one is so well done with the mix between the two languages, Danish and everyone speaks English here. So we all can get these jokes. And they mix the two languages in such a poetic and fun way, mixing it up even down to inside words, using half of the word in one language and half of the word in another in the other language, and it becomes hilarious. They have amazing musicians that made it, so they also made songs with this chaos of the two languages. Nice. And the thing is, we cannot share it with our English-speaking friends because they don't speak Danish. It's only funny if you speak the two, but then it is really, really funny. I am happy to share in the show notes, and those who speak only English, or at least don't speak Danish, uh, they can try and they can hear all the English, but they will not understand the other half, and it will, I suppose, not be funny at all. But if you see a Dane, they will roll around laughing.

Sue Elvis: 01:16:43
It reminds me of, um, I think I've mentioned it once before. I was watching the show, the survival show, Alone Denmark, reading the captions underneath, because I don't speak Danish. But I didn't always need the captions because I noticed that the contestants would sometimes talk in their language would change halfway through what they're saying. So they might start with English and then change to uh Danish and then finish in English. It there was a lot of English in it, but it just seemed to roll off their tongues naturally as if it was normal to speak two languages. And I don't know why they chose English or or Danish in particular sentences, but I found that very interesting as a language thing, um, just from watching a survival show.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:17:37
I think if you're used to speaking two languages, as lots of Danes are lots of Danes speak fluent English, then there are some expressions that are just nice that works in the context, and as you know, that the person you're we speak to communicate, right? So if I know the other person speaks both languages as well, there's no reason to not use that expression or sentence or metaphor or idiom that just works better for what I'm trying to say. I'm just communicating, just like when so that's why you will hear half sentences in English, or you'll hear an idiom in the middle of a Danish sentence. People just say things in English. It has also to do with some of these things, they enter in English. Maybe you watched a movie in English and some concept or some idea, something is in English, it came to you in English. Let's say it's a quote, and you use that quote in the context of what you're talking about, and we've all seen that movie, and the person in the movie is saying it in English. Why would I translate it to communicate with you? I'm just saying it. It's just like Especially if it's a quote.

Sandra Dodd: 01:18:45
Especially if it's a quote, would you say, like when he said, Yeah, I'll be back, or whatever little little phrase it is.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:18:50
But sometimes these quotes gets broke quotes get broken up, and you use them as a reference without actually talking about the movie. You're just saying a thing like you know it's become part of your language, yeah, in a way. So, in that way, a lot of English is inside the Danish language, and it's it's completely normal. Some people some people freak out about it a little bit are afraid that our language will fall apart. I I don't think it will, it will just evolve as it's always done. It's the same thing that happens inside my family when we sometimes stay in Spanish-speaking countries for a long time, especially if it's where we have friends and we hang out with Spanish-speaking people and speak Spanish with each other. We buy our food at Spanish markets, and then as we all speak some Spanish, that language just becomes part of our day to day communication. And then we have in our Danish language three languages now. We speak English inside Danish because we always did that. And then the Spanish words arrive as well, and it becomes quite chaotic, and we have to reorganize that when we communicate with other different. When we come back. But I think it's observing that, I think it's completely normal that whatever languages around you will enter your day-to-day communication. And I think also that's the reason my youngest son is speaking English all the time. He's speaking English with one of his siblings mostly. Because most of what happens in his life is in English.

Sandra Dodd: 01:20:28
I want to talk about the history of English just a little bit, although I could talk about the history of English for two hours.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:20:33
I'm not gonna, but perhaps you should talk about the report.

Sue Elvis: 01:20:42
Are you wanting to quit, Sue? Can I not talk about both? No, no, no. I'm not I'm I'm happy to sit here, but I was just remembering what you said about reports, and I thought we won't we won't forget that one. I didn't realize you had two things, but uh no, I've got plenty. I've got plenty of time.

Sandra Dodd: 01:20:59
Oh, you I thought you were gonna say I have plenty of things. You have stories?

Sue Elvis: 01:21:02
Plenty of time. I have time. No, I just reminded you about the reports because I remembered you said something about it, and I was interested to know what you were going to say. But we've got to do that.

Sandra Dodd: 01:21:15
I will tell a report story, but because of the story, because we're talking about Danish and English and Spanish, I wanted to tell a couple of stories about history of English. People complain about English having too many words, has a lot of words, tons of words. But the thing that you can do in English is then just like an artist who has unlimited colors because they know how to mix colors, you're not limited to eight colors of paint when you can mix them. And so English has borrowed and kept a ton of words. When I was in college, I read Shake, I not Shakespeare. I'm when you people are around, I think Shakespeare. Chaucer. I read Chaucer in Middle English, and it's something that I worked really hard at. Learning Middle English like another language. It doesn't sound like modern English, it doesn't look like modern English, and it has about half the vocabulary different. So I did. I studied it, I studied it, I could read it, I could understand it as I read, you know, not as fast as I can read modern English, but I didn't have to translate every phrase to myself. And so that's how I knew the Canterbury Tales. Lately, I've been listening to someone reading it. The reading's great, everything's great, but it's a modern translation. So I'm as I'm going along, going, well, this is nice. I I can follow the story better. And then sometimes I'll remember the way it was phrased in Middle English, and I'm like sad, you know, it's like, oh, but oh, they didn't say this really cool thing or make this really cool joke, or this really cool rhyme. But oh well, you can't. So then one time I was I was really interested in those days still in the Middle Ages, in medieval everything, costume, you know, literature, music, houses, architecture, bridges. So there was a I was at the I was living in Alkirken University, I was a grad student, I guess, and a movie came and it was from Iceland. It was an Icelandic, and it was a medieval story. So I'm I'm pretty excited. I didn't know what Icelandic sounded like. It had English subtitles. And so we're in there, and they they did so well on the equipment, on the boats, on the houses, the furniture. I was so excited to see this stuff, and it's set in 1200 or whatever. And here comes they have a bathhouse, and I know that the word for it is a cognate, what they call a cognate, same in both languages, pronounced different, spelled different, but it's you know, that's the same word. So I know it's they're gonna say bath husan or whatever Icelandic says, and I'm just waiting, and they said sauna. No, like they used the Finnish word instead of the medieval Norse word that I would have gotten, and it would have been the same as English. So yeah, I'm still I'm over it, right? I'm I don't think so. Um, but that's fun too when you're counting on something being the same, and then it's like, oh, they had a lot, they had other choices and they made the other choice. But English has lots of choices. So I think English subtitles will change more, even more, because there just aren't that many. Uh we're not stuck with just one word for a thing. We we have we can shade it all different colors by the choice of word. One of the one of the stories that's told frequently about French coming into English from the Norman conquest in 1066. Something English still aren't over either. The French came in with money and castles and bigger armies and set up their whole little system of defending that the part of England that they wanted to keep from mostly Norse Raiders and other Europeans from the south, Germans. So they set up a whole system. The Saxons who were there were working for the French lords, working in these castles and these estates. And so the words in English for the animals that you eat are different from the food that's on the table. And that's because once it was cleaned up and cooked and and in the house, they used the French name for it. So that's why when you eat a chicken, it becomes poultry. And when you eat a cow, it becomes beef. And you eat a pig, it becomes pork. Because those cooked words are the French words. French weren't out there cleaning up after pigs and cows, they never even had to see them. Because the Saxon servants did that. So I think that's that's one of the easiest examples of an English English history that's fun and tells why we have so many words, too.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:25:29
But it's also a story about how a language evolved with another language entering it, and that's what I'm saying about English entering Danish in a massive way these days. It's uh it's happened throughout history and it's happening now. And it will continue to happen. That language is something that evolves, and it's fun to figure out where did it come from. Obviously, I think there can be, and there have been in our family conversations held about do we want to just be a little bit aware that we also use our own language, that we go into the nuances of using different words for the same thing, that it doesn't become too flat. Um, we've had that conversation around swearing. Not that I mind swearing, I swear a lot personally, but I think expressing something in a powerful way, trying to underline the importance of one part of what I'm saying can be done in other ways than swear words, and that's actually a more rich experience for the speaker as well as the listener. So, of course, the conversation that we have in our country about how massively people are switching Danish words for English, it's a conversation to be had. It's not irrelevant, we shouldn't brush it off. It's fine as long as it doesn't become a nationalist kind of fear-based conversation, but just a conversation about how we want to communicate and how we want to express ourselves and try to understand each other and the world around us. Just like it happened a thousand years ago in England, lots of words entered the English language. Happens here again now. It's fine.

Sue Elvis: 01:27:23
We had a conversation yesterday. Uh no, it was this morning. My daughter and I we went shopping together and we were talking about how, and maybe we have talked about this before as well. Uh even though we all speak English, we have words, our own ver vocabulary, that are particular to our own countries. And there was a sign outside a shoe shop saying, join the Kix Club. I assume that kicks is an American word for some kind of footwear, but we don't use that word. We have other words. And I would we were talking about how other words, especially from America, are are taking over our own words and how our words are starting to disappear. Uh, and then I remember when I wrote a children's novel quite a few years ago, and my editor wanted me to change all the words that were different here than in America. She said, Well, you can't write trolley. You go to the supermarket and you get a trolley and you walk down the aisle. You need to use the word cart. And I thought, well, that takes away the Australian flavor of the novel. It's set in Australia. We need to keep our trolley and all the other words, I don't know, there were other ones, they're unique to us. So it's the same as language is always changing, but sometimes we have those conversations about whether this is good, that we're going to lose some of our particular language. Yeah, and I was also thinking about, you know, how words, the word of the year comes up. Every year we get new words that are put into the dictionary, and so many other words are kicked out the other end as being not so uh popular anymore. And those words are usually very representative of the culture of that particular year. And I can things like I could remember when we used to say, I gave a gift to my husband, and now people say, I gifted it. And the traditionalist in me doesn't want to use that word. I want to keep the old way of saying things. Uh, but it's again the evolution of a language, which is all very um, we were talking about some people won't be interested in Shakespeare and the classics and all that, but everybody uses language and everybody notices changes in language. We all know the latest words. Well, sometimes I don't know the latest words, and I have to ask my kids what they mean. Well, how how what does that mean? I don't really understand that, but that's a language thing that we can all share and we can all have conversations about. We hear them in movies, we hear uh new words in TV shows, in the dialogue, and they all provide a lot of um material for discussion, and they maybe lead on to what you've been talking about, Sandra, the history of the English language and where things came from and how where they're still changing, and new words are coming in, new cult uh foreign words are still being added to the English language. Yeah, so it's something that happens just naturally all the time. It's we're surrounded by language, but the conversations that we can have about it and the branching out of the information, the um the research with your phone, I wonder where that word came from, I wonder what the word of the year is, why did they choose that one, that sort of thing. Or it's all part of our language, isn't it? But it's not necessarily sitting down and studying Shakespeare, which I love to do anyway.

Sandra Dodd: 01:31:24
Lately I've been listening to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter. Americans for Americans, this is foreign expensive contraband. We cannot buy, not electronically and not physically, Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter. In 2020, when people couldn't leave the house, Audible.com put up the first book by Stephen Fry. I think the reason they were able to do that is that the first book, the first Harry Potter book, was translated into American English when they published it here. Horribly, because I was already really interested in the Middle Ages. They changed the philosopher's stone to something that's a medieval term. That's not something that that rolling made up. You know, that's a real thing. So the people who translated it were idiots, and they translated that to the Sorcerer's Stone, which makes no sense in English or in the story. And so I was embarrassed for Scholastic Books, which is a company I had respected since I was a child and bought a lot of their books and blah, blah, blah. So it's good that they published it here because they sold a ton, and then people were interested in the rest of it. The rest of the series stayed Brit English, but we were never we were never offered an opportunity to even buy the Brit English editions of the first book. So that was so irritating. So anyway, um, one of the times that I was in England, I found out that I could that it could be bought. And I think Julie Daniel bought it and sent it to me, or maybe she figured out how ordered it to her house before I left or something, but I got all of the CDs. Now it's hard to listen to CDs. So I brought those over from my old house where I I've moved to a I've moved to a flat house lately because I'm old. And so I'm bringing my things gradually from the other house where my husband is still, and my son's family's living there. So some of my stuff started I went and I said I want my Harry Potter CDs. I had to buy a new CD player because of my listened used before I died. So I have a little portable CD player I'm listening. I'm thinking this is so wonderful. The guy that who reads it here, it's like some contract for life, you know. Jim Dale reads it here. He's a good reader of American stuff, but he didn't go to an English boarding school. So there's terminology and there are just realities that Stephen Fry reading, he just has it. He knows it, that's his language. And Jim Dale will have to wonder what he's talking about. So I'm I'm enjoying it a lot, but I'm aware at every moment that it's not something that Americans can freely get. And that's an interesting limitation that we're not playing about. Um, I want to talk about Little House on the Prairie just a little bit because when I first started reading, talking, communicating with other homeschoolers, we didn't have a just a specifically unschooling place to discuss, so that it would be mixed groups. And a lot of the conservative American Christian homeschoolers were almost worshipful of Little House on the Prairie as though it were a documentary and not novels. And as though it were a way to live, a place to live, a way to be. And so some of them dressed their kids that way and idealized it. While at the same time they wouldn't have let their kids play DD because it was satanic and dangerous, and and spirits would move into your soul, and you know, a bunch of nonsense. But they were letting those spirits of some novels that were turned into a TV show move into their kids' souls and be the ideal and be like, you need to be like these kids, you need to live like this family. Yeah, the actor who played the dad was Jewish. You know, I don't think they want to know that. They just want to see it as like a sculpture of an ideal that they can emulate. It was weird. And I never saw anybody.

Sue Elvis: 01:35:09
Sorry, did you know they're remaking uh Little House on the Prairie? Netflix uh doing a news series. Uh I think they're making it at the moment. It's not been released yet. But that was something interesting that I picked up when I was browsing. Yeah, news series of Little House on the Prairie.

Sandra Dodd: 01:35:28
That show went on for so long that they were making up their own stories. They weren't taking them all out of the books anymore. And I think that just happens. You know, the new adventures of Tom Sawyer used to have Tom Sawyer and and Becky doing things that weren't in the book, but that's okay. Because otherwise you can't you can't have a longer series. But that's interesting. Are any out? Have you seen any of it? Or are they just talking about it still?

Sue Elvis: 01:35:51
I just saw an article and it just showed who the actors that were going to be playing all the parts.

Sandra Dodd: 01:35:58
Oh, okay.

Sue Elvis: 01:35:59
And the only one I could remember, I don't don't even know her name, but one of I think it's uh Laura. It's been pet played by the little girl that was in lessons in uh lessons of in chemistry that a uh Apple TV show. I don't know. I read the book. Oh, okay. But um, some of our listeners might know who I'm talking about. Lessons in Chemistry. The the star child in there is playing, I think, Laura.

Sandra Dodd: 01:36:31
Well, more connections for the people who know more. That's what happens when you the more you the more you know, the more you know, the more you can connect to other things. Yeah, I want to talk about reports. That's what a lot of parents remember from schools book reports of one sort or another. I was assigned one time to write a report on the rivers of France. I was in New Mexico, the only river I'd ever seen was the Rio Grande, really. You know, the Santa Cruz, some really tiny rivers that that Europeans would laugh at, people from Ohio would laugh at. Like you can step over that river, you can walk through that river. I'm like, yeah, but it's a river. So I'm writing a report on the rivers of France. I didn't even know for you know clearly where France was. And now that I look back, it's like, oh, that's interesting because they go in all directions because they're mountains. But at the time I didn't know what I was doing. So I wrote my report. I didn't, nobody cared. Nobody, I wasn't writing a report for anyone who needed to know about the rivers of France. It was just some sort of arbitrary thing that the teacher had chosen and you know passed these things around to kids. And so I knew my I knew myself from early on that the reports that people were doing at school were practice reports. It wasn't really a report, even a book report. Kids fake those a lot of times. They're just making stuff up, or they saw the movie or they read the back of the book and they make a report. So when I was teaching, I would more often do an oral report, not in front of the whole class, but I would just sit with the kid, you know, off in the corner somewhere and just tell me about the book, what'd you like? What about this? If it felt like they hadn't read the book, I'd find some, you know, flip through there and go, what was this business about them, you know, going down the river on a raft or whatever? And if the kid has no idea, we just laugh about it. I would go, yeah, it's better when you read the book, isn't it? I wouldn't embarrass them, I wouldn't give them an F. I would just say, read it and then let's try again. But the reports were never real reports because no one needed to know. So I used to kind of wonder about reports. What if my kids go to university or get a job where reports required? I don't know. So Kirby was 14 and he was working at a gaming shop, really an employee because it turns out that he had been voluntarily running their Pokemon tournaments on Saturdays, but it turned out that it had to be an employee of the of the store because there was money involved and there was a little if you finished the tournament, if you stayed there all day, you got a little gold bar of it, wasn't a gold bar, but it was a gold-plated thing that showed that you had played that week and people would collect those. So he one of the first things that when when he was an actual employee, they asked him to let them know what they needed to order. They needed to get enough of those things to order enough of those things to pass out to however many kids were going to be there and how many cards did they need, which cards were selling the fastest and stuff. So just could you let us know what we need to order? He wrote a real report. That was a real report, information that people needed, information that he had that the owners didn't have. How many kids are coming, how many are staying the whole time. Is that number increasing? Yes. Which cards are most popular? Buy some more of those. And so was it was he just wrote it. He wrote it, and then he showed it to me later. And I thought, my gosh, this is the first real report I've ever seen a kid write in my life. And so then I stopped worrying about any reports. If anybody asked me, I'd just tell them that story and say, unless. Unless there's something that somebody actually needs to know that your kid actually knows, there's no reporting to be done. So don't worry about it. If they're just talking and writing and it and being interested in things and being analytical and ta if you know from your conversations that they're seeing cause and effect, you know, that they could make a grocery list. Don't worry about reports. Because it's just the kind of thinking that's required to say what's going on, what does this guy need to know? What do I know? How could I find out the part I don't know? Ta-da. That's it. So if they're playing with with Google or any sort of rabbit hole online stuff, you can tell that they know those things. And another thing about reports is whether the parents, if the parents are going, well, there's nothing for any report about. I don't know. How would I know if he wrote a report? Reviews of products that you've bought online, reviews of clothes, shoes, music. When Amazon first came out, it was only books. I don't know if you guys are young enough to remember that. That Amazon started off as a bookstore, online book sales, and then it branched out to everything in the whole wide world you could imagine, including now handmade things and used things. So that's interesting. But at first, if anybody wrote on Amazon it was a book review, but now you can review all kinds of stuff. And those are reports because there are some people who would like to know how it went for you, or the company might want to know. And you put it there and it stays, and some people read it. And some people go and read those reviews, and that helps them make their decision. That's a real report. So if the parents have never done any reviews of products or books or foods, you know, people do restaurant reviews. If the parents have not written those, that's okay. But if the kids have, the parents should be aware that that qualifies as a report too, and doesn't have to be a page and a half.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:41:48
Do you think that unschooling parents? I think, I think that a worry that could be in the listeners if you're venturing into this from the beginning is something down the lines of what if they need to be able to write a coherent piece of text at some point in their life? And they've never written anything more than the 2,200 words maximum on Instagram, let's say. It's a shorter format. I've had that question a few times, and my five cents is it's not worth it to push children to do things they don't want to do that they don't find relevant and that has no real value throughout their whole childhood in order to face a situation that might arise in their life. If they need to write something longer and coherent when they are 15 or 25 or whenever, a report for an employer when you're what, 14, and it's hard, then they might have to put in a little more work at that entry point the first time it is actually relevant. But that little more work is nothing compared to how much wasted time and how much suffering that would go into pushing and forcing and enforcing and manipulating and grading and all the things. It will come up if it's if not necessarily relevant things come up if and only if they're relevant. And at that point, you can sit down and say, Okay, how do I structure my work to write five pages about this thing?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:43:35
Yeah.

Sandra Dodd: 01:43:36
Or things, or in the modern times, they can go to Chat GPT and say, here's this, here's the information I have, and they can look at that report and go, No, that doesn't sound like me. That's too weird, that's tilted, and rewrite it. Rewriting something that that AI wrote is what's happening these days. And the ones who don't rewrite it get in trouble, but it's possible to have a first pass and then now revise it into your own words, make it personal. Um, but I I have many times told parents who are saying, Well, I'm gonna make him do this because I'm too worried about it. So I say, you cannot make him learn something, but you can cause an aversion. You can't make him whole, but you can screw him up. So don't. And anybody who's afraid of English writing or of math or anything, not ever not in every case, but in many cases, it's because of school. It's because of pressure or embarrassment or shame or frustration. And so if the parents of uh of unschooled children can see that those things are a combination of a lot of little points of information that the kids can gather in any order over 10 or 15 or 20 years or 50 years, then the parents can be relaxed and calm and not have the urge to do something that actually does do damage to the possibility of the child someday calmly and hopefully writing a report. You know, doing it with hope, I mean. Not I hope they will, but that when they do it, they're like, oh, this is gonna work. This is gonna be cool. I've never done it, but I can do it.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:45:13
I've never done it, so I'm probably very good at it, as P.B. Longstocking puts it.

Sandra Dodd: 01:45:19
And if there have been enough discussions and enough narration, storytelling, then the parents can be confident that once the child can write, or, you know, and probably with a computer can do text input, that it won't be a problem. Tell this story, but tell it in writing.

Sue Elvis: 01:45:38
I think we've also spoken about how sometimes you learn things like essay writing. Parents might think that's important. And not only does it cause a lot of stress with a child who doesn't want to learn it, but it can also be a great waste of time. Because we talked about how I told the story about how my children didn't know how to write essays, but they could write novels and other things, blog posts, letters, anything else. But when they went to university, they were told that they were going to be taught how to write an essay for university. And if anybody had learned how to write a school essay, they had to forget it because university was nothing like school. And my kids were really quite uh excited or very delighted that they didn't have a skill that they had to forget, that they were going to pick it up. And we've talked about it before, haven't we? That it's not so much the skills, it's learning just a structure to put your words. Kids can know how to write, we know how to tell a story. It's just funneling it in into the particular structure that is called for so that if you understand what they want at university, how they want the essays structured, and you can already extract the information, tell a story, work it all what's relevant, you just funnel it into the new structure. Uh, I just remember my son saying to me, I'll be fine, Mum. I know how to write. I just need to know the structure to put it in. And so we there's a structure for a letter writing, a structure for an email, there's a structure for a blog post. It's all writing. It's just uh learning the particular structure for the occasion.

Sandra Dodd: 01:47:31
And because it's like a limitation in a game or a character, the the like if you're writing a business letter, the limitation is the size of the font and the size of the paper. Don't go to page two, say what you're gonna say. And that's just something that people learn from being around business communication, is keep it in the size of an email screen or of a piece of paper. Um, don't go on and on and on. And so for an essay, it's usually going to be that same length, not much longer. And for people who know a lot of comedy routines, the best kind of essay refers back to the beginning at the end, the way comedians sometimes do. They might talk for two minutes or a half an hour, but they're building, building, building, and then it ties back. And that's artistry, and that's that's another part of language arts, is seeing the beauty of that coming to a close that turns it kind of into a circle. They don't say that much in essay writing, but it's an elegant tool. They do say state what state state what you intend to say sometimes is say say what you're gonna say, then say it, and then say what you said. It's like, oh, that sounds repetitive and boring. But if you can do it with different phrases, different words, then it's not, then it becomes art again. Look for the art, I guess. That's my summary. We should stop, huh?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:48:56
Yeah, we have been talking for a while now. I think another summary point is that we're circling around two things that we've said quite a few times. One is that unschooling is is a conversation-carried format of education. It's about having all these. We talk about how we talk with our children and each other, and they talk with each other. It's a lot about talking about things and deconstructing them in the conversation, which always happens when you explore things you're interested in, you pick it apart and you look at the parts and you try to put it back together and try to understand how it's organized and and go down your rabbit holes in whichever way. Um, so to just keep that conversation going, that's why I talked about how I need about 50 hours more every day to finish all the conversations and go down all the rabbit holes. And and another thing is the question everything principle. So, whenever there's a question, whenever there's something is puzzling, that's a question. And you're questioning the maybe the premises of the movie, maybe the choice of actor for a character, maybe uh the format of the book. Sometimes you just talk about how this book was really great, but the middle part was way too long, or or this piece of logic didn't work, or this really annoyed me, or there's no right or wrong way to do it. So that's another thing we've talked about a lot of times. And then there's this part with a lot of the a lot of the traditional education is about, or at least the arguments I hear is we're trying to prepare our kids for a what-if situation. So we're pushing them to do things because they might need this skill that we're going to make them hate, but maybe have some sort of qualification in by pushing them and pushing them and pushing them. And our argument for unschooling is well, if we leave them be, if it's relevant, it will come up, and then they will learn it when they need it because they realize they need it and they know how to learn things. Like you said, I just need the structure, I need to know how I can write, I just need the structure. How do I write a poem? How do I write an email? How do I write a report? And then you learn because you need it and it's relevant and it's real in contrast to things like exercises. You write a report just to write a report. No one actually needs you to put this information together. So I think that's the wrapping up of the underlying principles of this, even though I think that maybe that's why this episode is so long. Could be because I was late, but it could also be because it's a very interesting episode. Sandra said that she can talk for two hours about the history of the English language, and I I kind of want to sit down and hear that.

Sandra Dodd: 01:51:54
Hey, Sue, I don't know that gifting will stay as a replacement for giving a gift, giving gifts. But do you have a gift for us to close this? Sorry, if you want to give. I don't think I don't know that the term gifting will stay, will stick around. It may not have eliminated its prior thing. Sometimes a word comes along and it fades away. But I just wondered if you had a summary and or if you're good with Cecilia's. Cecilia's was good.

Sue Elvis: 01:52:23
It was good. Um, you're putting me on the spot there. For somebody who I didn't take many notes today. It was just I was listening and learning and just enjoying the conversation. I guess that what I would say is that kids learn when they have a need and when they have an interest, and some kids really are interested in language arts like I am. And some kids will just pick it up because they have a need. I was also thinking about how even though some people aren't that particularly interested in Shakespeare or poetry, that you can enter language arts through your passions. It doesn't have to be a passion for English, but we all use language so that whether you're a scientist or whether you're a dancer, we all use language to some degree. There's always an angle into it, whether you're watching movies about dancing or uh science history, biography, maybe of your favorite scientist, but we all use language, don't we? It's something that we can't uh do without. So it's inevitable that our children will pick up the skills that they need to navigate life. Because who hasn't picked up language? I mean, even when you drop somebody that has no knowledge of the local language into a society, they always pick it up.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:53:56
I think I have a closing question. It could be dangerous because it's on my list here in my notes that I've made. And I just recently was speaking with a beginner unschooler, someone starting out in her own mind because the child is school age and not starting, and she wants to unschool. And she said, Is there anything I need to do? And I think from that point of view, you have small children, the oldest is now five or six or something like that. And let's keep it open and flowy. Some people have passionate, are passionate about literature and books and all these things, and it will just flow easily. But let's say maybe you're not that passionate about it. Can we come up with a little to-do list? Not a mandatory one, just uh pick from here if you feel like playing with this. What can we do? And can we like as a summary version of it?

Sue Elvis: 01:54:59
I always like the idea of what you would like your child to do, you need to be need to be prepared to do yourself. So telling a child they've got to go and write a piece of creative writing, but the parent won't write it. And sometimes I think there's great value in just doing something and letting kids observe, not they don't have to copy. But um there was that John Hart story, I think, that he when he was a teacher and he had an instrument, I don't know what it was, maybe a cello, and he got went into the classroom and sat down and without a word, he started playing the instrument, and then then the kids got all very interested in what he was doing, and they all came forward to have a look and they wanted to ask questions and find out more about the instrument and how he was playing it. But it reminded me of when I started blogging and I created my blog, and then my girls said, What are you doing, Mum? And they looked over my shoulder, and before I knew it, they were creating blogs and they were following along and they wanted to do what I was doing because it looked interesting. So maybe some starting with our own interests, being rather than making our kids do things or even just hoping our kids would do it, is find that passion for something ourselves and be enthusiastic and then about it, and then seeing if the kids want to hear about it. Can I tell you? You know, what are you doing, Mum? I'm writing, I haven't written a poem before. Do you want to come and have a look? Or I'm I'm gonna sit down and watch Shakespeare. Do you want to have a look? And quite often I think kids say, No, thank you, Mum, but then they wander in and have a look.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:56:49
I don't know if that would work, but um I think it's a very good strategy, and it's way better than what I had in mind coming up with. You can do this little exercise and you can do that kind of play, and you can make this little jar of words and pick one, whatever, all these things, because it is actually really about living a natural flow life. And if if you don't enjoy poetry, why would you read it? Then don't. Then go do something that makes you happy.

Sandra Dodd: 01:57:17
It helps if unschooling parents will look at what is happening instead of looking through a lens of what they think is not happening and should be.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:57:26
I like that, Sandra. Yeah, that's our ending point. That's beautiful. If you want to look at what's going on instead of looking for what's not going on, there you go. That's that's the thing to do. Just observe it.

Sue Elvis: 01:57:40
But of course, being me, and I guess it's anybody with a passion for something, we can't always hold back from wanting to share that with other people, can we? No. And just like our kids want to share their computer games and their comics and their passions with us, that sometimes I hear about things that other people are doing and I want to have a go as well. So that give and take is always good as well. Because you never know, it might come to something, it may not. But there's nothing quite like, I think, sharing a passion and then having somebody else who's really wants to know about it. Like just talking with you here, Sandra, about the history of the English language and how I'm thinking, wow, I don't know that. I might go find out more.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:58:26
Yeah, and I have a long list of musicals I need to sit down and watch now. So there you go. Get curious about each other's passions. But now I think we need to let Sandra go to bed because it's very, very late over there now. Thanks. And I want to thank you for this conversation. Next time I will make sure to set my alarm and make sure to that I know which day of the week it is. Thank you for joining me today. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Cecilia. Thank you, Sandra. Good night and good afternoon.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE