>From: "Marion Brady" <[email protected]> >> ... the greatest obstacle to effective study of "the immediate >> and the local" is the assumption that the academic >> disciplines ... are the optimum tools to bring to bear on the >> task of description and analysis. ... That assumption is so >> deeply imbedded few homeschoolers can let go ... [snip]

BE: While fully agreeing with Marion's thesis that academic disciplines are barriers to true learning, I also agree with Elizabeth and Terri that the immediate and the local are sources for learning. I think it was Blake who said we can "see a world in a grain of sand, or a heaven in a wildflower."

That suggests, as I believe, that we don't need to study a culture to understand a culture nor critical thinking to be a critical tinker. We do need a mind set to take advantage of every thing we do, read or think is a learning sense. We need to learn more than is on the surface.

True as E&T say, there are more learning opportunities in any community than we could possibly use up. This does not mean that we, our families and whole community, should not consciously improve, use, create and make available more. When we speak of "Learning Communities" we are suggesting that learning should be one of our bottom lines topping jobs and ecology.

This is particularly true of the family. I recall some of our most succesful an enjoyable learning experiences. We chllenged each of our 4 childrea (the 5 to 15) to choose two events and places in the USA they'd like to visit. We spent each meal for the winter discussing in the whole familly their choices, and each visit to the library finding more books on them. Come spring we had each one stick two pins in map of their final choices. And drew a string from our home, Washington, to the west coast. It was a fun as well as a learning summer.

The mission of this list is still: How do we make CommunityLearning recognized as the force it should be ?

BillEllis