Archive for homeschooling

The Future

November 5, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, relationships

As hazily anticipated, this trip is prompting some contemplation about my future life.  Previous long term holidays have resulted in decisions to complete my degree, and to return home to marry P, who by his absence revealed himself to be Mr Right. 

At present my thoughts hinge around a possible return to the workforce.  This was initially prompted by my financial fears as this trip is costing *way* more than I ever thought it would, and the only solution I could see was to return to Perth and get cracking earning some money.  I raised this with P in the context of perhaps I should enrol to finish my MBA and look for some type of professional employment.  To my surprise P was quite positive about this, as his own ponderings had led him to think that *he* might like a change, and some house husbandry is very appealing.

Since then, I’ve returned to thinking that maybe I should take a wild chance and instead study to be a yoga teacher.   This woud be a far more scary option, as I don’t know if I could do it, plus it doesn’t come with the same financial security as the first option.  Importantly, this also  narrows P’s choices as he would then be required to have a steady income which was supplemented by me, rather than the other way around.  And he has already diligently supported the family for six years.

In some ways it’s like a choice between two completely different lifestyles.   To return to professional employment eases my financial fears, and also probably my ’educational fears’, in that it is much more likely that my kids will go to school (so I outsource the responsibility) as that would be the 9 – 5 type lifestyle that the family would have – as I don’t know how confident P would be to continue to be the parent responsible for home ed, as the kids got older.

The second choice means I am out of my comfort zone, doing something I haven’t done before and  committing to a way of life that doesn’t offer me the same financial security or educational “options”.  In particular, if I had a job that required me to work early mornings and/or evenings, I would be really unlikely to send my kids to school -  as then I’d never see them!

Of course the other option is P’s preferred choice which is to go bush somewhere, and thereby release ourselves from the need to pay for shelter in the (expensive)  Perth metro area.  Sigh – we already tried to downsize once and that turned out to be a disaster.

P has no family in Perth (not that he seems to consider them a factor anyway) and feels confident that he can make friends in a new place.  I wish I had that confidence.  I know I can meet new people - but will they be soul mates??  I feel like a weirdo already… if I didn’t have some people around to make me realise that I’m not completely alone I would find life a lot harder….  and after almost 40 years, I’ve realised that soul mates are not easily found.  You have to really cherish the ones you’ve got.

I’ve also been playing a mindgame with myself, whereby I “give” P the next five years and he sets the agenda and makes all the decisions for the family (testing my attachment to control, and opening myself to participating in an adventure not of my own making – as per previous post).  You have no idea the anxiety this exercise produces in me!  When I mentioned this to P, he thought this was funny – I’d either be pissed off that “nothing was happening” or pissed off that something *was* happening  – that I didn’t want.    Arrgghh – why do I have a life partner that can shoot so accurately?

In the meantime we muddle along.  That reference to “40 years” does give me a sense of urgency though.  T was worried the other day that he didn’t know what he was going to be when he grows up.  I advised that I didn’t either – but at least he has time on his side.

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Kids Food (and other stuff)

November 5, 2009 · Filed under cooking, feminism, health, homeschooling, parenting, politics

My kids don’t eat enough veges.  Of more accurately – they hardly eat any.  This is my most on-going area of parental anxiety (well, equal to my fear that the joys and freedoms of homeschooling will at some point be outweighed by my kids lack of academic achievement).   Even knowing I am riddling them with food issues doesn’t stop me from constantly fretting about it in front of them.  T ate everything until he was 2.5, and then gradually retreated into a bland carbohydrate diet.  J is somewhat better, but his need to “have what T is having” doesn’t help.

My dad used to tell the story of how in his family he had to eat everything on his plate.  One night he sat there, not eating his (disgusting) veges.  When everyone else left the table , he got up and (secretly, he thought) threw his food out into the yard.  His mum scraped it back onto his plate, and he had to eat it, dirt and all.

I remember my childhood meals of meat and three veg.  I literally gagged at the prospect of eating boiled peas and I pushed them around the plate trying to make the pile look smaller.

Given that P and I (now) eat a lot of veges, and they are always available, I just hope that eventually the kids will gravitate to a healthful diet.  T “knows” what a healthful diet is, and will often say he would like veges for dinner (to watch my face glow with happiness) but when they are served, his face crumples in despair.  “If only they tasted nice mum!”   He happily eats avocadoes, carrots, the peas shelled from fresh snow peas, and will nibble on a leaf.  Sigh.

Recent reading on kids’ health threw up the finding that parents are poor judges of how healthy their kids are, as they confuse happiness and healthiness.  So even though we might *know* our kids’ diet is inadequate, or they have too little exercise or too much screen time, we *think* we are getting away with it:  “Look, they’re healthy!” when in actual fact they’re ‘just’ happy.

Another snippet from the same book.  In the UK, school canteens are shifting to ‘healthy’ menus (thank you Jamie).  At one school, an entrepreneurial 13yo opened a rival canteen, selling the stuff that the school canteen used to sell.  He was doing very well, and his customers included the teaching staff, when the school closed him down as he was ‘undermining their healthy eating message’.   He was pissed off – he wasn’t doing anything illegal.

I like this story as I can’t decide what I think.  Obviously I am committed to the “healthy eating message”, but I *really* feel for this kid!  The injustice!  I take it they didn’t close down the local Maccas as it was ‘undermining the healthy eating message’.  The most amazing learning experience he probably ever had on those premises, and just shut down.  What’s he learnt now? – the little guy can’t win.

Sorry to bore those of you who have heard my experience of being arbitrarily “shut down” by school authorities because my activities didn’t suit them, but I can *still* seethe with the injustice of it!  In primary school, when I was in Year 6, the school decided that girls were not allowed on the school oval to play during lunch and recess (yes, the 1980’s – not quite the dark ages).  A friend and I started “Girls Lib”, a movement to allow girls back on to the oval.  Our initiatives included large posters advertising all the games girls used to enjoy on the oval, and a petition.  When you signed the petition, you receive an handmade badge – “Girls Lib!”  Unfortunately, the boys took this as some sort of gender war, and started ripping them off girls’ shirts – meaning my friend and I were in full scale production of the badges, to replace those lost to the neanderthal boys.

The librarian asked us to move the petition out of the library, so we relocated to near the canteen.  Then after a week or so, my classroom teacher advised that the principal had advised him that we had to stop Girls Lib, because it was too disruptive.  No boy was advised that they should stop grabbing at girls tops and ripping off their badge.  We still weren’t allowed on the oval.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT????????  Not a single teacher –  or parent – including my own – was prepared to step up and support our cause.  Just shut down for causing a disturbance.   That was the high & low point of my career as an activist.  A  just cause, and no one in authority cared about anything, except the quiet life.   Maybe it was at this point that I decided that school was a series of lessons in compliance and control.  He’s probably dead now, but the principal’s name was Mr Colvin, and unfortunately I have never bumped into him as an adult to give him the serve that ALL THE OTHER ADULTS SHOULD HAVE AT THE TIME.  GGGRRRRRRR.

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Ruminations – post school outcomes

November 5, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, politics, society

A newspaper reported that the OECD Report on Intergenerational Social Mobility found Australia’s education system was the third worst in the developed world for contributing to social mobility.  This fed into my biases about the ineffectiveness of school.  School’s on-going reputation as  *the* mechanism for social justice, creating “equal opportunity”, is baffling, when all around we see it doing such a brilliant job of perpetuating the status quo.  Surprise surprise, doctor’s kids have a good chance of becoming doctors, and Centrelink kids don’t.

The problem here is the flawed belief that an institution can function as a change agent.  It can’t.  The only change agent out there is another person- and in some cases an heroic teacher can be that person.  But here, the institution of school works against any developing mentor relationships, as at the end of the year, you get another teacher.  And on the side of the coin, this structure itself can preclude teachers making major investments in their relationships with the children in their class, as they know that the end of the relationship is already proscribed. 

Anyway, I pulled up the report and have to confess that I struggled with it because it’s full of economic jargon and tables that are too small to read on my PC.  But I got enough to realise that the journo at the Oz had got it wrong, and that Australia’s system is comparatively good at facilitating social mobility – comparatively, not in absolutes –  because the UK, USA and southern Europe have virtually no social mobility (even though everyone goes to school).

This research supports *early* intervention/care/education as the best way to overcome social disadvantage.  So this is not news.  Everything you read says that if you want to make a difference in kid’s lives you have to get in there early (80 – 90% of the brain synapse connections are made from age 0 – 3)  Policy makers just can’t seem to come up with wholistic ways to do this.  They continue to direct their efforts at school – starting at kindy when the kids turns 4!  If you believed they had the nous to be that organised, you’d think it was a deliberate plot *not* to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children.

Further, it confirms my view that school is designed for and by the middle classes/elites.  It serves their children well – it’s obviously designed as a neat continuum from a middle class infancy, and if you didn’t get that, well, you struggle.  And I note that the good economists at the OECD recommend investment in early intervention for disadvantaged groups rather than re-designing school to work for non-elites.   I mean, we wouldn’t want to change what is working is working perfectly well for us, would we?  Worse, we don’t seem to have the imagination to know that it could even *be* different.

 The report finds that in many cases, it is the average socio-economic standing of the school’s parent group, rather than the socio-economic standing of the individual child’s parents, that is the key to a child’s own socio-economic outcomes after school.   This one’s pretty interesting, and I guess is behind the push for aboriginal kids to go to flash boarding schools….. but obviously this is only ever going to be the solution for a minority of disadvantaged kids, as it’s a numbers game.  If a whole bunch of disadvantaged kids rock up to Geelong Grammar, then they are bringing down the average.   I gather that this is also the argument for a school voucher system…  if you can’t afford to buy a house in a rich area and thereby get your kids into the local state school where the other rich neighbourhood kids go, you should be able to buy your way into these schools with your vouchers. 

Anyway, I guess that makes it clear what you are actually buying when you spend money on a private school…. and the more money you spend the more you are putting your child into an environment where chances are all the parents are filthy rich, and somehow – by osmosis – but the best I can think of (and I couldn’t find analysis in the report as to *why* this finding holds) is that if most of the parents are uni-educated and rich, then this is the value system that the child is being exposed to and so they work hard to fit in with that peer group.  Is it that the dominant value system of the school community is a key driver of individual outcomes?

This makes sense, and is supported by all the research that says that in our society teenagers are more influenced by their peers than their parents – and the main reason for this is that they spend far more time with the former than the latter.  That is actually the community within which they have to function, rather than the community of parents/adults.

And is the reason for the high academic results (though I haven’t seen any research on subsequent adult socio-economic outcomes) achieved by some of the charter schools in the US working with disadvantaged groups?  That the seeming inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm of the (young) individual principals/teachers involved is able to oust the general malaise?

On a related topic, I see that in her quest to have more students from low socio-economic backgrounds get to university, Julia Gillard is starting to try to break the link between school results (TER & similar) and university entrance.  (An acknowledgement that the school system can’t  deliver equitable outcomes?)  In Victoria they are are trialling new ways of offering university places – focusing on aptitude tests and interviews and portfolios of work. ( All good news for people who don’t bother to go to school by the way)  I see that the President of the Australian Secondary School Association (of something like that) is all in favour of this, as he feels that the focus on university entrance severely limits the “meanings” of post-compulsory education.  Unfortunately the only other “meaning” he mentioned in the interview was vocational training.

Well, this is all half-baked I’m afraid.  I’ve had it sitting in draft thinking I’ll have time to clear my thinking, but I have just seen that Noel Pearson has pipped me to the post in the latest Quarterly Essay - on “Education and Equality in Australia”. (!!)  The title?  “Radical Hope”.  Anyway, I’m off to find a decent newsagent & I’m hoping to be inspired!

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Ruminations

October 1, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, parenting, politics, society

Halls Creek was a weird kind of apartheid arrangement, where all the white “service” people (police/teachers/public servants) had nice houses at one end of the town, and the local aboriginal people lived in the seeming ghetto -  at the other end of town.  I can understand that if the community doesn’t have enough skilled people to take up local positions then you have to attract them from somewhere else, and that probably includes access to a reasonable house.  But why is the urgency and outcome there for one end of town and not the other?  Why are there ”ends”?   How is it that decent housing has been achieved in only half the town?  I read in the paper that the Fed Govt SIHIP (strategic indigenous housing initiative program – or something like that) for the NT has spent $45 million dollars and haven’t yet built a single house.  Where the money went seems unreported.

Speaking of the lack of investigative journalism – another article in the Oz the other week…..  Lightening Ridge, a community in NSW.  Many of the children have been removed by DoCS.  The mothers claim there has been no abuse; that the DoCs workers view their lifestyle through a white middle class prism and don’t approve, and remove the children citing “neglect”.  Presumably the families have gone through the relevant DoCS/govt processes and got nowhere, so contacted the fourth estate.  The relevant journalists managed to get the official line from DoCS, that the childrens’ removal had been appropriate, and nothing else.  Any 15 year old could do that.  Where is the investigation?  If my children were removed because my lifestyle  didn’t fit with govt official values and I was desperate and contacted a journalist and their “investigation”  comprised a phone call to the relevant govt dept and writing down the official line….. I don’t know what I’d do.   That seems more like what you would expect in China, rather than Australia.  

Anyway, this was an interesting article for me on another issue as well. When they visited Lightening Ridge, the journo interviewed a white middle class woman who had lived there for many years in an abandoned bus with no running water and homeschooled her children (I know this as the journo reported these astonishing facts)    It seems there is no school there.  This mother was waxing lyrical about the fab childhood her kids had had, learning about the bush and cars and cooking etc…. and that this was the childhood that all the kids (black & white) were having…..  anyway her kids had “made good” (more astonishment) one doing postgrad studies in Canada, and the other a public servant with the Vic state govt (you can see where the journo got sidetracked….)  Anyway, obviously I appreciated the h/ed kids “success” stories, but I wondered whether the aboriginal children were seeking/sourcing similar opportunities from this childhood – not so much that these are the only type of outcomes that are “good” in my view, but did the white middle class mum in that environment continue to express/espouse those middle class values of “the world is your oyster”  “you can do anything” ” what will you study at uni?” etc etc… and it was actully her input at this level that made a difference?? 

Anyway, I have no knowledge of the potential ”successful” outcomes achieved by the aboriginal children of the community as the article didn’t go there.

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Back in the virtual world

May 22, 2009 · Filed under The Big Lap, homeschooling, voluntary simplicity

Sorry for my absence dear reader.  Further PC problems came to haunt us.  It’s like technology can recognise a luddite at 100 paces, and enjoys playing with our minds.  Come the rise of the machines, we’ll be the first to die.

Which segues neatly to the topic du jour:  Gadgets, Gizmos and Gazingus Pins.

We leave in 5 days.  Gasp.  After a recent farewell picnic, a friend noted a phenomenon that has become so commonplace that I had stopped noticing.  Namely, that in the context of the trip, everyone has an idea for a “must buy” item.   More often than not, they are gadgets (eg GPS, EPIRB, IPOD).   None of which we own, and most of which we probably couldn’t operate.  My favourite suggestion was from one friend who obviously has a part handle on us.  He queried whether we were deliberately setting ourselves the challenge of going around Australia using only paper maps.  If this was the case, he recommended that we purchase a GPS –  just kept in its box – in case we really needed it.  I was able to stun other friends with the revelation that we had purchased a “CD case” rather than an Ipod.  Truly retro.

I must confess that I did investigate a SAT phone – only to baulk at the price.  This involved one lovely conversation with a Telstra employee – an even greater luddite than us – who advised that there was no such thing.   Another employee recognised a potential cash cow, and recommended that we upgrade our regular mobile phone to a “rural and regional model” on a monthly “plan”.  Further investigation revealed that the plan did not cover the purchase price of the phone – $1100!!!!!!  Come on!  Is *anyone* paying that??

I would like to suggest a modernisation of one of my favourite quotes from E M Forster:  “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”.  In the book it was written on a wardrobe, and in a previous life I painted it onto my own wardrobe… a suitable reminder that I could just wear something I already owned.

So I propose:  “Beware of all enterprises that require new gadgets”.   Code:  you don’t need them.

But just in case you think I’ve gone completely monastic, I *have* discovered something new to spend money on.  A whole new world of *audio* has opened up to me.  So far I have bought Barack Obama’s “Dreams of my Father”,  Helen Garner’s “The Spare Room” and “The Greatest Speeches in History”.  Can’t wait!!  For the kids, I also have the complete collection of Frog and Toad, some Roald Dahl and am awaiting delivery of the complete Susan Wise Bauer history of the world for children.  

Apparantly there is a book around called “Homeschooling in the Car”.  I’ve never come across it, but it may be that at the end of the trip I’ll be able to write my own version.

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Creating Space

May 1, 2009 · Filed under The Big Lap, homeschooling, voluntary simplicity

Sorry to bore you all with ongoing discussions on the joy of getting rid of stuff.  BUT.  The clear out continues.  I’m being  far more ruthless than I ever would have thought to be if this was just a ‘business as usual’ sort out.  And I am finding that I am genuinely creating space for new things.

Exhibit A.  Now, when a housekeeping moment strikes, I am able to do cleaning, rather than tidying up.   Normally, by the time I have tidied up in order to clean, the moment has well and truly gone before any cleaning actually occurs.  Now, I am wiping things that I don’t think have ever actually been wiped before.  Grotty corners have been discovered and dispatched!

Exhibit B.  As I have systematically got rid of kids paraphernalia, they have not enquired about anything, AT ALL. Play continues to occur at the same rate, but am *I* imagining *more* imagination??

Exhibit C.  I bought myself a jigsaw puzzle.   I had thought that I *might* be able to do some jigsaws while we away.  (I haven’t actually used one of those roll up jigsaw mats before, so cannot yet vouch for their effectiveness.)  Anyway, once I had it, I couldn’t wait to do it, so used some *space* on the dining table, and some *time* found by not having to do so much tidying.   I really enjoy jigsaws.  I had thought that I would get back into them when the kids were older.  As a fun family project (if they were into it) and also as a way to really explore art works.  There’s nothing like a jigsaw to help you study and appreciate the details in a work of art.  Plus, after all the effort of putting it together, you tend to spend quite a bit of time appreciating the whole work!

I thought the kids were currently too young – and they were too young to help with the pieces.  But surprisingly they were quite into the project as a whole, and quite excited about my progress.   I was experiencing the John Holt phenomena (the example when he sat writing numbers sequentially on a long piece of paper.  The children would come up every now and then to engage with him/see how he was doing, and there was a palpable excitement in the air when he got close to 100.)  Joe often asked to have boobie “at the puzzle”.  Once complete, they really did want to closely look at the picture.  Tom also initiated ”I spy”.  This was an extension of an idea we got from a children’s book where you play I spy in a work of art.

Like any holiday, there’s always that “getting ready” time when it feels like so much work to go, you wonder why you’re bothering.  And I guess as we’re going on a *long* holiday, we seem to be having a *lot* of getting ready.  But the main reason I like to travel remains the same.  The different perspective you get on your normal life is literally life-giving.  I’m loving it already.  Bring it on!

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Civil Disobedience

April 23, 2009 · Filed under ethics, homeschooling, politics, society, voluntary simplicity

T is now officially in Year 1.   By law in Western Australia, I am supposed to register him with the education department as being home educated.   This would involve a “moderator” visiting me about once a year to discuss our progress (or lack thereof).  Well, stuff that.  I figure this is a crap system.   I mean, come on.  Either attend school 30 hours a week for approximately 40 weeks (1200 hours), or they come *one* hour a year…..  to offer what, exactly?

I’m not a Ronald Reagan fan, but I understand his point, when he said the nine most frightening words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.    The ideology of schooling is such that it is a *compulsory* government service.  Along with gaol and being committed into a mental institution.  Hmmm. 

I am deliberately rejecting their service…  so I am obliged to notify them of same, and welcome them into my home so they can moderate us against their service’s benchmarks?  No thanks.  The only legitimate reason I can think of for the government to want to do this would be as some kind of child welfare check.  Which it demonstrably *isn’t* as

1) they don’t turn up till the child is 6; and

2) under their own rules they can’t insist on actually interacting with the child.

A few months ago I was getting riled up about this bad law, and started looking into civil disobedience, as I was intending to deliberately break this law.  And who should turn out to be the father of civil disobedience….  inspiration to both Ghandi and Mandela?  None other than Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and inspiration for the whole voluntary simplicity movement!  I love this guy!  I confess I find the old fashioned style of writing somewhat turgid, but when he writes that it is the *duty* of every thinking (wo)man to disobey bad laws, I’m reading him loud and clear!

If the education department ever tracks me down (sirens might start sounding at their HQ when I press “post” on this) I’ll be

a) suitably impressed by their big-brother capabilities, and

b) interested to see what they actually do. 

I’ll also be interested to see whether I am more or less welcome than outlaw bikie gangs down at the Australian Council for Civil Liberties.  I’m not yet saving the world, but I’m staking a claim on our own space in the world.

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Preparations

March 27, 2009 · Filed under The Big Lap, homeschooling, relationships, voluntary simplicity

Incredibly, I am *still* sorting stuff out.   P has confirmed his last day of work (12 May) and this has given us a real deadline to work towards.  We have come to the realisation that our original plan to put our stuff into the granny flat and rent the rest of the house may be a bit limiting, so we’re now thinking that we will *store* our stuff while we’re away.  Paying for storage is the ultimate test of how much you actually like something….. there is not much I am prepared to pay to store.  So the sort goes on.  Ruthless sorting through “memorabilia”.  We’ve done a huge photo cull (from the days before digital) we’ve thrown out our wedding cards, and cards that were given to us when the boys where born.   Hard to make that decision, but surprisingly easy to live with…. I mean really, do the boys want these?  No.   My next task is all the stuff I kept from before I met P.  AARRGGHHH!  I should have done this years ago! (like 20!)

Another book cull is on the cards……  I do this reasonably regularly, and I am always astonished that 12 months later there is a whole pile that I no longer want….. but must have decided to keep 12 months ago.  Weird.  I’ve done the clothes – again if I’m not taking it with me, it will have to be an amazing piece of clothing to be worth “storing”.  So far I have put to one side a motorbike jacket, two long coats and an evening dress.   Items that I never wear, but pertain to some dream life where I *might* need to wear them. 

My preparations also include trying to dump some psychological baggage.  Our financial situation shifted underneath us, and we are now going on a wing and a prayer, with unresolved business left behind.  Let go!  Let go!   In discussion with a friend I disclosed my secret hope that T would start reading while we were away.  While sympathetic to my angst, she felt I was probably aiming a bit low.   She suggested an alternative purpose for the trip:  to build an amazing strong family bond that can never be broken.

Thank you, thank you friends for keeping me focused on the big picture.  She’s right of course.  Why do we live this “alternative” life of homeschooling?  Of course it’s easy to poke holes in the education system.  But our aspirations are *much* larger than just providing a better educational option.    We want to be together.   How’s that for alternative?

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Dispatches from the Literacy Wars

March 24, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, unschooling

You may be unsurprised to learn that in that heated battle between phonics and whole language, I am on the whole language team.  (I have previously confessed to being progressive after all).  In my view,  phonics is not useful… in particular when the language you work with is not phonetic.  Also, I’m biased, as I learnt to read using the whole language approach (before I even knew I was a progressive!) and was subsequently bored to tears/frustrated beyond measure when they went through phonics at school.  Evidence of my confusion was apparant to my friends when I became older and started verbalising words that I had never heard – only read.  I could spell them and use them in context….. but I couldn’t actually pronounce them correctly.   Didn’t matter of course.  One correction and I had the pronunciation for life.

So subsequently I am yet again inflicting my world view on my poor deprived children.  Now normally you wouldn’t find me writing about any of my kids so-called “achievements”.   That is the last thing I would like to inflict on anyone because a) it’s mainly uninteresting to anyone but P & I, b) I really dislike the often competitive nature of parenting, schooling, and (I am coming to realise) homeschooling, c) I don’t subscribe to developmental timelines  and d) worst of all, I don’t want to send anyone into a panic that my child is doing something that their child is not……

However for the purposes of sharing my discoveries on this topic you will need to bear with me.  To alleviate any mounting anxieties, let me say up front that T is not yet reading.   But the unfolding process is really interesting.  I have not initiated any “teaching”.  I read aloud and I write down things as requested for T to copy.  (I think I maybe the only school where the first written words include poo, fart and penis.)   Developments to date include several phonic-related understandings.   T uses me as a “checker” for his understanding.  Eg.  He will point to a written word and ask me what it is/say it out loud – look for confirmation from me.   In drawing his many superheroes he will check with me he has the correct letter to draw on their costume (eg, “R” for Rocketeer).  And more recently, somehow I Spy has graduated from “I spy something red” to “I spy something beginning with B”…… and more often than not correct!!

Now, let me wallow for a moment and say that my child is amazing!!  The great thing is, of course, that all children are amazing…. and when you let them be, be prepared to be amazed.

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My life as an anarchist

February 24, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, politics, society, unschooling

Trash the system baby.  I didn’t realise I was an anarchist until recently.  For someone who follows politics like a blood sport, I am remarkably naive.  I finally understand that when I announce I am a homeschooler, people respond as though I have announced I am an anarchist.  And actually, they’re right.  I reject it all.  I reject the false premise that everyone has to know the same things. I reject the whole idea that people should be “graded”.  I reject using childhood as a training ground for adult economic participation.   I reject educational and work achievements as sources of meaning or identity.

Birth, parenting, education.  I didn’t realise that these were political acts.  I thought they were personal decisions, but they have the capacity to deeply challenge people’s assumptions, and that pisses people off.   They don’t want to know that you can birth at home, that babies don’t need nappies, that you don’t have to go to school. 

Education is so politicised, it’s frightening.  Far from being a stable anchor of society, it is at the frontline of the culture wars, where people battle for the supremacy of their ideas in order to shape our kids into their storm troopers of the future.    When government are constantly forming committees to develop the “perfect curriculum”, can’t people see that this is the ultimate propaganda vehicle?  When even *how* children should learn to read (phonics versus whole language) can become a battleground between conservative and progressive forces, you know it’s about competing world views.   What about being guided by the individual needs and preferences of the child?  That would be the absolutely last approach that any instrument of the state would take.   Despite individual efforts from some teachers (hats off to them) they have no chance.   Basically, any teacher that doesn’t ultimately succumb to a belief in authoritarianism is doomed to a life of cognitive dissonance, not to say multiple personality disorder.

You can read about school failures any day of the week, but everyone wants to tweak around the edges of the system – or better yet - syphon those individuals who are “failing” into a group together where they can’t interrupt the induction of the compliant (quiet) majority.  And then blame those individuals for their own dumbness.  That’s good, because maybe if they get that message clearly enough they’ll eventually shut up, find some ghetto, and obediently fail in the adult economic competition as well.  

I love the black humour involved when schooling doesn’t work.  Invariably, the answer is…… more school!  A different curriculum, longer hours, after hours courses, more homework etc etc.  Or another favourite – school as the answer to social problems.  Want to solve the “aboriginal problem”?  Get those kids to attend school everyday.  Haven’t they been socialised to quietly accept hours of meaningless activities?  I’d fine the parents – they’re doing a bad job. (That’s sarcastic, in case you don’t know me.)   It’s the ultimate test that no school would ever set for itself.  Make its program voluntary, and see how many students turn up.   A real education revolution.

I can’t yell it loudly enough:  SCHOOL IS NOT THE ANSWER!!!!   And that applies to pretty much any question you might be asking, other than the one in which you are plotting to take over the world.  My retreat into anarchy seems to be the logical resting place for my schizophrenic political beliefs.  A social progressive who doesn’t really believe in government services any more.

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