Unschooling and Changing the World

Written by
Jenny Lantz

Jenny is an unschooling, knitting, crocheting, reading, gardening, homemaking feminist activist, and mother of three living in the Baltic Sea archipelago. She keeps busy reading and learning new stuff with her boys, cooking, running the family business, volunteering at her local second-hand shop, and finding out what else can be made instead of bought to keep her ecological footprint as small as she can. She also blogs about her unschooling life at www.nattugglorokattguld.blogspot.fi and sells handmade products at www.etsy.com/shop/OfeliasPond.

Really, it started so many years ago. I was seven years old. It was a hot day in the beginning of June. School was about to end; summer was coming. I wore a jumper, far too warm for the weather, and all around me the boys in my class took off their t-shirts to cool down. And well, I did too. Because I was warm. And because I didn´t really know about gender differences at the time. I thought we were all just...kids. My teacher was of another opinion and I learned that day that even though I was a little girl with a child’s body, very similar to the boys’ bodies around me, I had to keep my jumper on and stand the heat. This my friends, was my first meeting with gender injustice. This was the birth of a feminist. The birth of an activist.

I could write a whole article about stupid things I´ve been told as a young woman, a grown up, a mother, just because I am a woman. But I won´t. I want to write about the thing that started ticking inside me that very day in the warm classroom. About all the good stuff that it would lead me to. I want to write about activism. Being part of bigger changes. Being part of doing good things for other people, for the environment. Being the change I´d like to see in the world. And I want to write about how unschooling my kids is a great part of that change.

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