Homeschooling? What’s that?

Sometimes things happen fast around here.

For years now, we've been dedicated unschoolers, basing our educational philosophy on the work of John Holt, Alfie Kohn, John Taylor Gatto, and Marshall Rosenberg. Unschooling has its challenges, of course, but we made the sacrifices necessary to accommodate them gladly, and everything went well. Sam reads way above grade level. Trin's knows science stuff that most adults don't know. The boys' friends trotted off to their various schools a week or two back, and it seemed we were all set for another year of homeschooling.

Then, last week, Kristin told me that she desired more structure in our lives, including in regards to their unschooling.

Be careful what you ask for. Desire is prayer.

Tuesday, I came home to find Kristin and the boys in deep discussion. Sam had asked to go to school.

Well, our intent in unschooling was to give the boys the best education we could, without coercion. We've told them from the start that they could go to school if they want to, but so far, they've resisted – particularly Trinidad, who did NOT enjoy Waldorf kindergarten. Not that we could afford private school, anyway.

Wednesday, I came home and before she even greeted me, Kristin said, "Come here, look at this!" and showed me the Family School website. It's one of our groovy local alternative public charter schools, and shares much of our educational philosophy: Multi-age classrooms. A cooperative, child-centered learning environment. A garden. Parents are integrated into the school, and can participate as much as they want. It's one of few local schools that composts its food waste. Of course, there are downsides, like the idiotic standardized testing they'll have to endure, and getting up early, but there are downsides to unschooling, too. Besides, as I mentioned, it's also one of our groovy schools that always has a long waiting list; the chances of getting in this year are slim, and the lottery for school choice ended way back in March or something and won't happen again until next year. Still, Kristin and I agreed that she should visit the school and check it out.

Thursday evening, as we sat down to dinner, my ears filled with the story of Kristin's and the boys' visit to the school. They liked what they saw. Even Trin wanted to go. The teachers had mentioned that they were looking to add a couple students, but didn't know what grade level they were looking for – they'd have to meet and decide. The discussion wandered to getting on the waiting list, and wondering how long it was, but both of us felt completely unworried. We both knew that if it was the right thing, they'd get in – if not, no way – regardless of evidence. Then the phone rang. Strange number, so we almost didn't answer, but at the last moment Kristin picked up the phone.

It was the head teacher at the Family School. They'd met. They offered the boys a spot. Both of them, different classes.

Like that.

The boys start their new educational adventure Monday. My homeschooling co-worker is going to be shocked. Shocked! I thought back to my post from just a few weeks ago, and I laughed. "I have to blog about this!"

Eating crow?

Nah. Just sliding along on the path of least resistance. No way is unschooling off the plate. Their educations are still in the boys' hands.

Because nobody can take responsibility for your education, except yourself.

Thoughts on Homeschool Curriculum

We got a letter from the local ESD (Education Service District) recently. They used paper, envelope, postage, and about 250 words to say "Please tell us if you move your homeschooled kid out of the district or enroll him in school." An email would have sufficed, and saved the district a buck or two and us the recycling. I asked Trinidad if he wants to go to school. "NO!"

The other day the kids got to wondering how long a blue whale is. So Kristin and they found a tape measure and went out to the street to measure. It was only a 25' tape, so they learned how to add the measurements together to get the whole. It stretched from the fire hydrant at the corner across our neighbor's lot and almost all of ours. Then they measured how high they climb in the willow tree (25') and how high the treehouse is (10').

We practice a form of homeschooling called "unschooling," which operates without any curriculum at all. It's a system pioneered by John Holt, author of How Children Fail, How Children Learn, and Learning All the Time – books which were influential in developing our homeschool style. As unschoolers, the boys are not involved with any homeschool group – there is at least one local group, which offers some classes and gatherings – and they are perfectly happy to be outside the school system. Instead they have a remarkable amount of freedom, and with it, a remarkable amount of opportunity.

But without curriculum, how do they learn what they need to know?

It does create some disjointed learning processes. For instance, the boys really got into math last winter. They printed out blanks, and then filled in times tables. They got some math workbooks, and spent hours doing the problems, from simple addition to some basic division. Then, as summer harvest and the house addition began to absorb our time, and their friends started summer vacation, math fell by the wayside. The kids were too busy playing with their friends in the kid-pack that floats from house-to-house up and down our street, Kristin too busy harvesting, me too busy building. Last night, as they played Scrabble, I noticed that they'd forgotten a lot of their addition. I helped them out for awhile. When I got tired, they still wanted help with the math, so I found an addition workbook and said they could add up the score on the margins. They got distracted and started working on the problems in the book while I went to bed. And rapidly regained what they had lost.

I got to thinking about it.

How do we, as adults, learn what we need to know?

We learn when we are ready, when we need to know. Nobody tells us we have to – the need is there, it stimulates the desire, we seek the knowledge, and we learn. I didn't learn much in school. I was interested in history and geography, and read books like Bruce Catton's Civil War, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that enabled me to frequently spot the inaccuracies in my school textbooks. High school history was so pointless that I used to hide novels inside my textbook and read them during class. I learned nothing about carpentry – I learned that on the job. I didn't learn to tie knots, splice line, sew web, maintain diesel engines, or start a fresh-water maker in school – I learned that working on a fishing boat. I learned nothing about design and architecture, my chosen field – I went to college, and followed it up with on-the-job training. I didn't learn to run a business until I started one. When I started work as a building official, I knew almost nothing about building code – now I can cite probably hundreds of code regulations.

Kids are no different. When Sam was five years old, he loved Magic Treehouse books. When his parents didn't have time to read to him, he needed to learn to read. He taught himself, with help from us. Now, at six, he reads at the 8^th or 9^th grade level.

But what if he had been in school? The demand to learn would be there, but the need might not. Or, he might have been too busy studying things he wasn't interested in (science?) to teach himself to read. I suspect he would have learned to read anyway. The need to learn is intrinsic to our human curiosity. If we aren't interested in something, if it doesn't have meaning in our lives, we won't learn it – or at least, not very well. If we are interested in it, if it has meaning in our lives, we will learn – and almost nothing can hold us back.

Feminism is the philosophy that women are people, too. Unschooling is the philosophy that kids are people, too.

School curricula, by removing the learning from the context, the readiness to learn it, the need for it and the meaning behind it, lowers the intrinsic motivation to learn. It is destructive. The best curriculum is to follow your heart.

How Beautiful My Children Are!

There is this thing – two, actually – that give me such joy in my life. They are my sons, and every morning when they arise they light my day. In fact, Trin is in my lap right now, helping me write this.

Studying
One of the many advantages of unschooling at home is that kids can choose their own desks and learn in comfort!

Reading
Sometimes Sam reads to me. At 6 1/2 years old, he reads at the 8th or 9th grade level. Another advantage to unschooling!

Working
Trin helping with the remodel. The boys are here every day, helping when they can, watching, learning the processes of construction. They're learning all the time. We could send them to school, I suppose, but I really don't want to slow them down that much.

Well, I started this post planning on just talking about how much I love my kids, how much joy they give me, how much meaning they give to my life, and so on, and it somehow turned into a celebration of unschooling! But then, I guess they really are connnected.

Why Do We Homeschool?**

This video interview of John Taylor Gatto gets at the reasons our kids don't go to compulsory schooling. It's about ½ hour long, and the link is through a site that appears to be Libertarian in nature. I don't endorse Libertarianism, which tends to empower corporations over people. I wish I could have figured out how to embed this vid in my blog, but it's not YouTube, and so it goes.

I've blogged on Gatto a bit before. He's a former teacher of the year who wrote some books like "The Underground History of American Education," which made sense of the misery of my own experience with compulsory schooling (beyond the confusion and subsequent peer harassment of gender dissonance).

To sum up, the reason school reform never works for long is because school does what it's really meant to do very well. Compulsory school (public and private) is very successful at the job to which it is set by our cultural elite – the corporate puppetmasters who create the consumerist economy. That job is to produce a compliant, predictable workforce that lacks meaning, purpose, and initiative, and is blindly subservient to authority.

Reforming education within the current system is a hopeless task. Bad as Bush's bipartisan "No Child Left Behind" policy is, tweaking it to mitigate some of the worst aspects won't do much. The problem is the system of compulsory schooling this country has adopted, and the solution cannot be found within that system at all. It can only be found in dismantling the system – in giving children options, in making school a choice, in trusting our children to learn what they need to learn in order to navigate in our high tech society and natural world.

Imagine if we unleashed the creative force of our children and adolescents, allowing them to explore the world with wide open eyes, to channel their energy into their passions, instead of squelching that energy in the barren institutions of our schools and channeling it into despair, rebellion, and subservience to authority.

Of course, you can't imagine – because the results would be completely unpredictable. That's what happened in America back in 1776. That's the whole point of compulsory schooling. Our corporate puppetmasters* don't want a repeat.

 

*Worth noting that the descent of our nation out of democracy and freedom, and into fascism, was really enabled and made inevitable by both compulsory schooling and the 1886 Supreme Court decision of Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, which was used to establish the legal idiocy that corporations are persons protected by the 14^th Amendment, even though the ruling did not say that. The abuse of that ruling enabled the rise of a corporate elite – further empowered by the methods Edward Bernays advocated in his book, "Propaganda" – which gradually insinuated itself into government, and ended up basically taking full control of government under Ronald Reagan. We've been a fully functional fascist society since 1981, if not earlier, and it doesn't matter whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, that's the way it's been since.

 

**This post was inspired by my recent conversation with Pearl, a conservative "marriage defender" who's probably further on the right side of the aisle than I am on the left. I'm a queer liberal Democrat anti-religious pro-marriage-equality trans woman, she's a conservative Republican (I assume) LDS anti-gay-marriage cis woman, yet on this we can agree.

Up All Night

Yesterday was Sam's birthday. He turned six, and his desire was to have fun all day, and then stay up all night and play. He got his wish. I went to bed – I choose to work today – but Kristin and the boys stayed up. They watched Star Wars Episode 1 and The Black Stallion Returns. They turned the Eagles on loud and danced. The played Pokemon. And that's just the stuff I know about. It wasn't the most restful night I've experienced.

He did it, but just barely. When I got up at 5 a.m., Sam was starting to fade. Kristin said she felt like she was in an airport. Trin, on the other hand, had gained his second wind and said he was wide awake. As Kristin carried Sam into the bedroom to watch the Making of Star Wars, he said, "Wake me up when we get in there."

Homeschooling is an incredible gift we give our children. Perhaps the most valuable gift we give them. We have no curriculum. We prioritize dreaming, following our interests, domestic arts, respect for self and others, fun and play outdoors, exploration, community service, natural and social sciences, reading and math, and music. The math they learn is meaningful, connected to what they're doing. The reading is, too, and mostly they teach themselves. They help us grow our own food and preserve it. They are an integrated part of our economic unit as a family. Their childhood is embodied freedom and responsibility, and they are thriving.

And one of the side effects is that a six-year-old boy can have his birthday wish and stay up all night, without losing a single minute of school.

Learning the Dictionary

Yesterday the boys were in the living room, learning to use the dictionary and trying to find the word, 'cat.' Kristin was in the kitchen, washing dishes.

K. - Where are you in the dictionary now, Sam?

Sam - Crocodile!

K. - Oh, you're already in the 'C's - great!

Trin - No, it's an Alligator.

K. - Well, keep going 'til you find the 'B'.

Sam - Billygoat!

Trin - No, it's an Alpaca.

Homeschooling. I feel so blessed that we are able to provide this for our children, because we're also providing it for ourselves. There's a price, of course. It's tough to make it on one income nowadays, at the tail end of 28 years of Republican economic policy, which favors the uber-wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Days like this make it worth it.