#strewing

A New Kind of Strewing

This year we set Hanna up with her own email account. It started so she could keep in touch with her old PS friends, which is an important part of the transition from public school to homeschool, but it quickly become so much more. Her email address has become this fantastic communication tool. 🙂 (Imagine that lol). There are so many times when I come across something interesting, or fun, a video…

The Secret Method of How to Teach Your Child Was Hidden in the Bible

He won’t do his work again. He’s just sitting there; head down on the table looking at the paper as if the work will just magically be completed if he looks long enough. It’s another frustrating day teaching English. You don’t blame him. You hated English in school, too. Except when they played movies. SchoolHouse Rock ROCKED! It’s the only reason you know what a conjunction is AND its function!…

Continued in part two: i also believe that strewing can be a form of non-verbal dialogue. who's to say that the child cannot also "strew" the parent back? why is this inherently a one-way exchange?

I hope it's okay that I'm answering this publicly, and thanks for writing to me about it!

I think the question of "why is strewing inherently one-sided?" really holds one of the main reasons I'm not a huge fan of the concept. It IS one sided. It's one-sided because children do not have the autonomy, income, or privilege to buy things to put around the house for their parents, since parents are usually with children, and children don't have their own incomes. It's not a conversation, it's a lecture.

I think the idea of making an interesting, creative, inspiration packed living and learning environment is awesome. Firstly, I don't think it needs a fancy word, but more importantly, "strewing" is a lot more forced than simply creating a great environment for your kids. After writing my original post I looked into it a little more and found out that it has a second aspect, a sort of "teachable moments" thing. Parents specifically looking for moments in life to teach their children about this or that. I guess for me personally, I feel that one of the beautiful things about unschooling is that it is organic. Turning it into a contrived "teachable moments" experience seems to take away some of that freedom. Of course, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with explaining things to your children can textually, but I guess I don't like turning life learning into a series of educational sounding terms.I was recently on an unschooling Facebook page where I saw a lot of moms expressing concern that they weren't strewing properly. That's another place where I think the problem is. Unschooling is intuitive, and "strewing" is making parents feel like they aren't doing enough for their kids.

inky-thoughts, this is for you, too, to answer your question.

So, my understanding of strewing is pretty much this: if your unschooling child shows interest in a subject, say, seems to really like taking pictures on your smart phone, you might buy some books on photography, and casually leave them lying on the coffee table. Or if they are interested in knitting, may be buy some needles and yarn, leave it in their bedroom, and sign up for a knitting magazine. “Strewing” items that could be of interest around the house.

This is why I think strewing is ridiculous for any child who is old enough/able to communicate:

1) It does not foster communication. If an adult shows interest in a subject, we talk to them about it, see where their interests lie, and go from there, we don’t run out to the store, buy some tangentially related junk, and leave it on their filing cabinet. One of the great things about unschooling is that it helps young people develop their ability to communicate not only their basic needs, but their interests, hopes, and desires. So let them communicate, don’t rob them of the opportunity to express themselves.

2) It takes control, personal involvement, and motivation away from young people. And why would you want to do that? Unschooling, to me, is about carving my own life path, and deciding what interests me. I wouldn’t have liked it very much if my mom had signed me up for dance classes the moment I loved DDR. I wanted to make those decisions on my own time, and in my own way.

3) “We bought you a guitar and you never used it” syndrome. Once you buy something for someone (especially a kid), once you spend your money on it, you expect them to use it, or at least care about it. Strewing seems like a really good way to end up with a lot of stuff that your child never asked for and never actually wanted. Maybe you thought it was an interest in photography, but it was actually an interest in colors, and now you have all these photography books and a kid who doesn’t care about them.