I have something to help stir up ideas here.  It's a questionnaire I made for a talk I gave in Albuquerque in 1997.  It was passed out as people came into the room, and we didn't talk about it specifically, but just answering the questions takes a person one giant step closer to not needing to think so much about learning.  

There's a great irony, from that day, and that is that I said (in nervousness, I hope, or habit) that "Kirby taught himself to read."  DOH!  So I stepped everyone back a couple of baby steps.  Still, the giant step...

The full set of seven question is at this link, but if you want to, just answer one by one as I bring them here.  Either way might be fun.  If you want to print a couple out and go through it with a husband or grown kid or friend...  https://sandradodd.com/learning.JPG

First question:

List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.

(If you can't think of five, list what you can think of. I'll come back tomorrow and share my own list.)

Sandra

Does ‘outside of school’ mean outside sll formal learning? Shoujd we count things we learned on courses/from teachers we volunteered for or paid for? Or are we asking what we learned ourselves without formal ‘learning’ structures?

I was thinking without formal instruction.

There are three people I have credited with having taught me guitar, recorder, and calligraphy—all learned long before I was a mom.  Every one of my proclaimed "teachers" goes all flustery when I say it, insisting they didn't teach me.  

But each one showed me something that got me over the hump of being mystified.  One session with each, and seeing how they held the... hand to fingerpick, the recorder to balance it when all the holes were open, the pen's angle to the paper, and how far into the ink to dip—those and maybe another couple of pointers, and then I went home and DID IT, and got better gradually, picking up tricks by watching others, asking questions, reading up, practicing.

None was a person I paid to keep at me methodically until they declared that I knew the skill. :-)

So "zero instruction" doesn't need to be a cut-off, but paying for a full course of instruction, that's probably too far.  

The benefit is in the thinking about it, though.  No one will be disqualified from participation for a "bad answer."  :-)

Sandra

Sarah, I love the added " useful and pleasant, and I have used in the past week:"

Someone on facebook put up a question about things we learned in school that we had never used since. I thought a while, and there's nothing. I thought of saying "clarinet," but that applied very directly to recorder, which I played seriously during the Renaissance music craze of the 1970's. :-) I've done Telemann, in performance, full speed. :-) I've played with a harpsichord and a real viol da gamba. COOL! And those were in a university class, but I couldn't have gotten into that class if I wasn't already reading music and playing recorder well, which I did on my own, as an extension of other music I knew.

Connections! And one thing leading to another, in that case. But there are other things I've learned as an adult that had little to do with anything else. Maybe, though, the older I get, cooking is like home repair or painting, in a way—generailzations come along. Principles. There are tools, and methods, and timing, and some physics, and some engineering, and some logic about planning ahead not to make a mess—cleaning up as I go, for safety, and for efficiency, and aesthetics.

Sandra

Keelia, I've learned from your list about trash pumps and cyanobacteria.

Trash pumps don't pump trash, and cyanobacteria are not the color cyan (which I know from printer inks—four-color separation, and dot-matrix printers both).

"Trash pumps are designed to pump large amounts of water that contains hard and soft solids such as mud, leaves, twigs, sand, and sludge. Most devices are portable, heavy-duty centrifugal pumps that feature deeper impeller vanes and larger discharge openings than other pumps"

I LOVE the internet.

Trash pumps are as to water pumps as shop vacs are to vacuum cleaners (I think—correct me if that's wrong.

And the code for that in logical notation might be trash pump : water pump :: shop vac : vacuum cleaner

I learned that notation in school but not FROM school.  I remember it from standardized tests, and I took more of those than most people, not knowing it wasn't normal.  Turns out our school was part of somebody's study, for a few years, and from about 4th grade to 9th, we were tested every year, where as others in our state who weren't in our part of that test study were only tested in twice in that time.  Anyway, one section of the long battery of tests we had was analogies of all sorts—numbers, words, physical forms.  I LOVED THOSE—shapes, and puzzly-looking widgets.

Nice list, Keelia.  Things I can't do.

Sandra

most usefully, how to build a washing up station from bamboo and string!

-=-most usefully, how to build a washing up station from bamboo and string!-=-

I know how to do that!  I didn't have bamboo, but I know how to lash a table between two trees, If I have two long branches, a whole bunch of sticks, and twine.  

I could probably do it with two yardsticks, plastic drinking straws and yarn.  :-)  :-)  

In India, I saw people build scaffolding of bamboo and twine, many stories high.  One building had modern pipe-and-boards scaffolding on one face, and bamboo on the side next to it.

Sandra

List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.

List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.

1. Guitar.  My mom played, so I had heard her tuning, and when I got a guitar, at 14, could tune it well right away. :-) My mom used a pick and I wanted to fingerpick, and my friend Ymelda showed me the basics, which is top three strings for thumb; bottom three for fingers 2,3,4; little finger is not involved, but can be used to brace if necessary, or for resting the hand without touching strings.  She showed me how to alternate the bass note within a chord so it was thumb/bass - pluck, bass, pluck... throughout the song.  "The Banks of the Ohio" was the first song I learned.  It could be done with three chords at first and the addition of a 7th chord after a few days. :-)  I WAS SO EXCITED!  Within a week, I was doing three variations in the finger picking, and I was OFF after that, copying things from Donovan records, Joan Baez, anything I could find.

2. Recorder.  I didn't own one, but saw that a free class was being offered, either beginning or intermediate.  The beginners class was advertised for those who knew nothing and couldn't read music, and that was no good. So I borrowed my friend's recorder and fingering chart so I could get into intermediate.  Woohoo!  Several notes were just like clarinet, and when I started learning the cross-fingerings, I figured out what all those keys and distant little holes on saxophones and clarinets and modern flutes were for!  When I "half-holed" with my thumb, I fully understood the "octave key" on all those modern woodwinds.  It was a huge series of epiphanies.  I did almost nothing else for a week but explore that alto recorder.  When I got to the class, I was too good for the others, so just started playing in an ensemble with the teacher for a few years. :-)   

I still remember the joyous enthusiasm of learning those two instruments.  I was 14 and 17.

3. To drive a big van or big pickup.  It's not rocket science, but spatial reasoning isn't one of my good skills, so it took more conscious thought and mental trickery than some people need, and I'm also a weakling so just getting up into the vehicle and wrestling with a big stick shift was sometimes taxing.  Nowadays the only big vehicle we have is a Ram club-cab pickup, and it has an automatic transmission and air conditioning.  So wimpy, for a big truck. :-)  I'm still not good with trailers, and try to avoid that when I can. 

4. Sewing with or without patterns.  Fancy seams, so that the inside of the garment is as finished as the outside.  Faced facings.  Picked those tricks up one at a time.  I've created some designs myself, and have copied some other pieces.  I can do zippers (and invisible zippers, when those were in fashion), and button holes, but I much prefer things that are nothing but cloth, that pull over, or wrap, because I like the elegance and long life of garments without fasteners.  A friend let me borrow a skirt pattern she had, when I was 14, and told me what the markings on the seams meant, and how to pin the paper to the cloth.  That was one lesson.  My grandmother helped me make a skirt to her exacting specifications, and that was frustrating but ultimately helpful.  I still have it.  Holly wore it for a few years. :-)

5. Calligraphy.  I'm best at blackletter, but can do some other hands.  I used dip pens, not cartridge pens, though I've owned and used cartridge pens and just used my regular handwriting, with a calligraphy nib, which is pretty fun.  I taught a few calligraphy workshops, when I was in my 20s, one for a continuing ed program and that was fun.  

First question:

List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school. 

...
I was thinking ‘almost everything’ so I decided to work backwards. Here are five things I’ve learned just in the past week:

Here are five things I’ve learned just in the past week: