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?I've done it in person, about medieval virtues, and it worked great. ?I've done it in discussion groups, and gotten some wild and hateful responses.

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Why was I surprised, and what happened? ?[Anyone new to unschooling, and anyone who doesn't like me anyway, or doesn't like side stories, should feel easy and free about closing or deleting this e-mail, for reals, and Merry Christmas]

Those virtues discussions ("philosophy practice," we used to call them, thirty years ago, when they were new) would have ten to thirty people, it was clearly my discussion, there were guidelines about not naming names in a negative way (you could praise a particular person, but not badmouth one), and it's hard to discuss virtues successfully while not being mindful of virtue. ?

So it wasn't online.

And most of the participants were male.

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When I was a kid, I usually had more male friends than female, for various coincidental reasons. ?I always had a best friend, who was female. ?When I was 14, 15, I hung out in an interesting group of eight girls—we at lunch together every day, and stayed friends. ?I'm still in contact with half of them. ?It was four dyads—four sets of best friends, in a way. ?So if things were socially weird with me, for instance, they could appeal to DiAna, my counterpart. ?Most of those girls were musicians, and most were artists (some were both). ?All were good students, and though some were a bit into fashion (shoes, skirts, that were upcoming), none did much about hair and make-up. ?Not extreme girly-girls, not nasty girls, not hateful girls. ? Still, all girls, and that was the first experience I had. ?And it was different.

Parallel to that, I still had my male friends to do music with, to discuss ideas with, to talk about families and other places and how machinery and tools worked, and just whatever came up—connections, and odd topics, did not faze the male friends. ?The girls could be impatient or baffled by off-the-wall connections. ?

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Time passed and the next large group of mostly-female friends was after I had a baby and joined La Leche League. ?Where I lived, there was a lot of social life connected to that, and I was also invited to join a babysitting co-op (with one monthly gathering of full families, and one weekly park day of stay-at-home parent and kids, so there were a dad or two sometimes, but not usually). ?

I remembered, then the difference in social and intellectual interaction with "all girl bands." ?I wasn't as good at it as I was with discussing things with men, and by that time I was in my 30s and had had MANY long sessions of discussion history and philosophy, religion, literature, crafts projects (tents, furniture)... usually with guys. ?

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So unschooling came along and the first online forum I found was a user group (e-mail, and a rough/early form of forum, though it was just one long record of the e-mails, hard to parse or sort). ?Of the 80 regular participants, I'd guess 20 were men. ?Two of them came to a stat homeschooling convention in New Mexico, partly to meet me. ?One was from Texas and is deceased, years ago (Jim Jackson) and one was from Minnesota, and I'm still friends with on Facebook (Karl Bunday).

Sometimes when I've become friends with an unschooling couple of family, I end up closer with the dad than with the mom, or at least someone the dad can talk to. ?I'm not the sort of person to be (or even seem) a threat to another relationship.

ALL OF THAT is said as background to saying this:

Unschooling discussions are FULL of women. ?I suppose male participants are .5%. ?

The tone could be very much as many women's discussions become—the dog's name, the cat is sick, what's for dinner, badmouthing their kids and partners.* They really surprised me at first. :-) ?But the unschooling discussions were always about learning, and topics, and laws, and that was good. ?

* If there is anyone who has never been in such a group, that's good.

As the groups became international, I didn't want to talk about laws anymore. ?I only wanted to discuss things that were of interest to most of the members, and that would be useful to people who found the archives later. ?Future readers nearly became my primary target. ?So it was also good to keep the topics general, and not "timely" (about current events, or about upcoming or recent gatherings that only a few members attended). ?I wanted the discussions to be general and philosophical.

A core group of people who had been involved since the days of AOL (mid-1990s) had already proven that women could discuss education, parenting, pop-culture, child development, integrity, psychology, in pointed and useful ways. ?That group was expanded, and more and more came along who GOT that, who understood what was needed, to help parents understand enough about unschooling to get started, and we gradually and steadily learned more and more about how to introduce topics, and to see mis-steps and problems.

When ideas are dumped out on the table and those around point at the good parts, and see what's broken, and what parts don't even go with unschooling, and can be discarded, or painted silver and hung in a tree as a bell, or whatever.... EVERYONE who's "in the room"—everyone who reads it can learn from the analysis of the data / artifacts / stories.

Sandra