The School Year Begins, Unschooling Goes on as Usual

Spike would be heading off to school this year if we were a schooling family. Instead he's teaching himself to read and write, playing cricket, and gardening. We just got home from a holiday with fishing, canoeing, much sight seeing, wildlife everywhere, swimming, and lots of precious family time. Seeing him doing the stuff he does just makes me so certain that unschooling is the way forward. There's no way I could take him somewhere full of strangers, wearing strange clothes, wave him goodbye and leave him there. It wouldn't feel right.

I remember when Stylish started school I felt wretched. It felt wrong on so many levels but I couldn't have begun to understand why. I wasn't an attachment parent - although I tried hard to be gentle and thoughtful I didn't understand attachment - and everyone I knew sent their kids to school. My parents were teachers my partner's parents were teachers, school was normal and expected. It was a new stage in life to be embraced. But I never really embraced it, I just kept forcing myself to keep sending her, denying the rumblings from every fibre in myself.

Now I've been unschooling for over three years I just squirm when I hear about children crying on their first days at school and mothers with broken hearts waving bravely from the gate. How have we come to deny our feelings to such an extent that we ignore primal instincts to protect our small children? Why do we believe that forcing children so small and helpless to be independent of us is the only way they will ever learn independence? I understand that children adjust to schooling and it becomes their way of life, but that still doesn't make it right.

My heart really goes out to those mamas and babies who have no choice but to school. I am painfully aware that I'm extremely lucky to own my own house and have no debt that would require me to seek employment for money. I work from home and earn a small amount of money that I hope will one day be a little more generous but I've chosen to go without financial glory because being rich doesn't mean my life is enriched whereas unschooling, vegetable gardening, living slowly, does make me richer!

I really hope that all the children who have just started school will enjoy their years within the institution, and I hope that the mothers of unhappy schooled children will find their way home ... to unschooling.

Ebb and Flow

I get about the online unschooling traps a bit, and one of the things I notice is a certain level of guilt about not facilitating consistently at all times. I know that I've felt it too! So lately I've been dissecting it a bit and I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.

First off let's compare unschooling with school for just a moment. When children attend school there are holidays and weekends, and schooling parents don't feel guilty that their children aren't learning during those times (well some might, but we can't cover all bases). Also, schooled children take mental breaks throughout the day, every day they attend school! After all who can sit in a room being talked to non stop and not zone out, at least occasionally? So it's probably safe to compare the ebb periods with week ends or holidays or just plain daydreaming. There's nothing wrong with daydreaming! I bet some of the greatest inventions, novels, scientific theories etc were dreamed up when their creator was tuning out. 

Unschooling parents are most commonly schooled parents. I can make that assumption because the overwhelming majority of people in our society attend the institution for their education. To that end, we tend to have ingrained ideas of what education and learning should look like, and deschooling ourselves is a complicated and ongoing process that I suspect takes longer than we know, and may not ever be truly completed, although we may come close. (actually I think deschooling ebbs and flows too, but that's another post). Sometimes our kids are hell bent on extracting every bit of knowledge they can possibly attain through all manner of sources, and in those times we feel involved, virtuous, we feel as though our choice to unschool is paying off because we can measure their progress. But when they hit that brick wall and the ebb stage take over, us parents often feel a bit wobbly about it all. But you know what? It's impossible to live in a state of "nil learning". IMPOSSIBLE! Even though what they're learning may not outwardly appear educational, or it might not appear at all, they are still learning stuff. They really are!

School analogy: A kid may go to school all day and learn "nothing" (many of us have asked a schooled child what they learnt only to be told "nothing") But on the bus on the way home they learn about bus route, bus fare, reading timetables, it's just that the schooling parent might not notice that and assign it any value, but the unschooling parent does. Using public transport to navigate your way around the world is a really useful and worthy skill.

Right now we're on an ebb period. Sometimes I feel like I should go and razz the kids up, get them off their computer games and make them do something that my previously institutionalised, schooled self deems appropriate. And sometimes in the past I have done just that. But this time I'm not doing anything. I'm not standing in their way, I'm not banning them from Mario Brothers, I'm not telling them to go outside and play, and I'm certainly not handing them text books and expecting them to complete set exercises. Why? Well strike the text books off first, simply by saying that they voluntarily complete work in text books when they feel like it, if I go and force them to do it they won't enjoy the books anymore and they won't learn from them if they're just using them to get me off their case. As for going outside and playing, well they do that every day anyway. They walk the dog, they play chasings, they sometimes play a ball game and most days they engage is some loud wrestling match that disturbs the overall peace of the household significantly. 

I have a feeling we'll soon get flowing again.

the ebb, sleeping near Mario Brothers

School made me feel dumb

But I'm not!

When school started failing my daughter I started to see that I had been brainwashed, and what was worse? I was participating in the brainwashing of my daughter. I believed that the only way to succeed in life was to finish school and get good marks ... but I hadn't finished school and I was still alive! And my partner hadn't finished school, and he was still alive, and most of my friends had either not finished school or hadn't done very well, but they were all smart people who were doing well in their lives.

So why did we all leave school? I left because I was afraid to fail. I knew I was smart enough to do really well if I applied myself ... but therein lies the truth of it. I wanted to enjoy life! I was young and having fun, and school wasn't fun, it was anti social and boring. And my friends who quit had all quit for the same reasons, and those who stayed and didn't do well had failed for the same reasons. Schools aren't for everyone, some people will do very well within the system, but others need to get out and experience life in order to discover their authentic selves. Schools glorify certain subjects (maths and english) but completely devalue others like art, drama, and music. My friends were all smart kids but they preferred and even excelled at humanities, and the institution simply loses those children between the cracks. How sad.

So, back to the subject at hand, and why I believed I was dumb. I went to a school to learn all the things deemed crucial for modern life but I hadn't really learnt much - or so I thought. I was literate, I was perfectly competent numerically, and I had all the skills necessary to acquire any further knowledge I needed, but I hadn't learnt anything about myself or what I was good at. I had also had my literate and numeric abilities completely undermined by all the institutional measurements. But the things I had never learnt, or had forgotten had never caused me a moment's grief. After having a good look at all this I concluded that the emphasis schools placed on many subjects was not proportionate to it's usefulness in real life.

So if I'd gone to school to learn all that stuff, and hadn't learnt it, what was going to make it different for my daughter or my sons? What would ensure that they came out of school with a healthy self awareness of their abilities? There just weren't any answers for those questions, and so there was really only one course of action I could take. I began unschooling my eldest daughter after almost six years of institutionalised learning, and I will always unschool the youngest two.

I know that when they reach adulthood they will have a good and functional level of literacy and numeracy, and they will have a really solid wealth of knowledge on a multitude of other subjects too. Those subjects won't always be neatly divided into categories like maths, english, science, history and geography, but that won't make their knowledge any less valuable.

As a teenager (and even as a child) I thought learning was boring, and when I was reading a book about dinosaurs or animals and learning really interesting stuff, I didn't realise I was learning, because no one had graded this knowledge on a scale of worthiness. No one tested me on it, no one valued what I learnt unless it was taught to me by a teacher. I used to see adults learning and envy them because clearly they enjoyed learning. What didn't occur to me was that they only studied the subjects they were interested in. And they only retained their knowledge because their memory was fueled by interest and practicality. The same goes for children. That is why children forget long division but remember the names of dinosaurs.

But not knowing how to do long division isn't an insurmountable obstacle! You are never too old to acquire new knowledge or skills, and in the mean time there are calculators and the internet and libraries and many other sources where one can obtain the necessary information for living. If not learning stuff at school and not passing exams means that for the rest of our lives we are destined to fail then there are some pretty big problems with society!

When I was a schooling mother I couldn't keep up with the institution in a way that it approved of, I felt like I was forever striving and falling short of the ideals. Neat tidy children, perfectly completed homework, perfect lunch boxes, and so on. I just didn't have the same values, I wanted a happy family and I didn't see how forcing my kids to learn about completely useless and uninteresting things was going to make them happy fulfilled adults. I didn't see how fighting about homework was beneficial to education. I didn't see how any of it was actually going to work as a long term plan because it didn't inspire any internal motivation it was all external coercion and valuation - or devaluation.

So if school left you feeling confused, like you were a failure, like you were dumb or left you with no idea what you wanted out of life, maybe you would have done better unschooling. If your kids are struggling with maths but brilliant at computers, or they can't spell but they are excellent at painting or sculpting, maybe your kids would be better unschooled too! You know the expression "don't put all your eggs in one basket"? Schooling has been used as the only basket for far too long.

An Anniversary Slipped By ....

I just realised that we've been unschooling for two years! Two years and and about three weeks, not that I'm counting.

In that two years I can't tell you how much our lives and our world has transformed, and how I now feel there is real hope for my kids, not just hope that they'll survive the system and come out edumacated and with direction.

When we started, we were on shaky ground, fearful and unsure we were making the right decision. My daughter had to unschool and so did I, and I think I probably struggled with it more than she did. For a while there we took two steps forwards and one back, but then it smoothed out. Then periodically I'd encounter another stage of parental unschooling and have to wrestle it out mentally, usually blogging about it.

What are the best things about unschooling for us?

• knowing our kids are happy, safe, and interested in what they do.
• knowing our kid will learn REAL life skills
• seeing them pursue their own interests
• knowing they are only competing against themselves so they always try their hardest
• seeing them become themselves!

What would I change?

• NOTHING!!!!!!! Except I would start sooner.

School - Teaching Dependent Thinking

Since the fall of the World Trade Centres we have heard time and time again how Westernised education teaches children to think for themselves, whereas schooling where "our enemies" are from teaches children by rote, without provoking independent thought or an ability / desire to question the powers that be, and read between the lines. The reason they question our system of government is because they are not free thinking ... apparently.

However, I can't comment on any style of education outside that which I have been exposed to.

In Westernised countries children are supposedly being taught to think for themselves, however I really don't see much evidence of that. Take the adults we encounter daily - those who were schooled for between 11 and 13 years in our free thinking system. How many of them are totally horrified at the state of education within the institution, complain about it, can see how unhappy many children are, and yet feel that my choice to homeschool is a purely rebellious and dangerous act that disadvantages my children!?

It's the same with hospital birth. One can spend hours bemoaning the state of our hospitals, how people are dying from anti-biotic resistant super bugs, they are understaffed, staff are over tired and make mistakes (like amputating the WRONG LIMB!), cesareans are all to often performed for no good reason, equipment is old and out dated, and yet my home birth is crazy and dangerous?

Why is it that [almost] an entire society of people, who have reportedly learnt to think for themselves, and question the status quo, fail to see the irony?

Possibly because it's impossible to teach people to think. Thinking is a natural ability that everyone has. However the institution judges individual thoughts and grades them according to a list of criteria that don't necessarily support real thinking. Given that a criteria must be set, in order to judge pupils evenly, it's impossible to include all the realms of possibility in that critique. So some thoughts are judged to be valid, and some fall outside the criteria and are deemed to be a failure.

It's also possible that the peer pressure in schooling means that children actually spend more time learning to question what THEY are thinking, and deciding whether or not to voice that idea, than learning to confidently consider the personal truths behind their ideas.

Another very real possibility is that schools teach children that some things are not up for question, only certain things warrant deconstruction, and they will be laid out in front of students neatly - with pre-packaged plans for class discussion and the rest will stay in the closet. For example if a student questions part of the curriculum. That is NOT up for discussion. The teacher knows best, the curriculum has been designed with the students best interests at heart, and as such ... it is not up for discussion. Another example would be that any decision a teacher makes about punishment is final, no discussion will be entered into - any discussion will result in further punishment.

So there are permissible subjects, and illegal subjects of discussion within the institution. That must definitely sway a child's ability to question the powers that be. A group of kids sitting in the playground mumbling about how irrelevant a particular subject is to them, or how unjust a teacher has been, feel like little rebels. Not Free thinking, valid, smart, aware people! By the time that same group of little rebels hit adulthood they have most likely been brainwashed into believing that their free thoughts were no more than the quibbles of insignificant children - personally I find that very disturbing!

There is so little room for freedom within any given institution that it is impossible for them to cater to each individuals needs. And the people that are given the responsibility of raising functional humans, humans to populate the work force, and re-populate the education system , are mere products of that institution! Drones! And one of the greatest lessons they learnt in school is that they are living in a free thinking country, surrounded by free thinking, FREE, citizens.

Dissent is silenced in our culture - something we are very fast to criticise other countries for! But the truth is that people are put in prison for expressing some views, they are chalked up as loonies, and laughed at by the wider community. For example, those who believe that the World Trade Centre attack was actually a government plan. Regardless of the merits of such an idea, the people who have used their free thinking skills to research and document their arguments are labelled as dangerous dissenters, little more than crack pots. Journalists who have reported - or attempted to report - these views are fired depending on the light in which they air this angle.

But surely, if we live in such a free thinking, free speech generating society, these ideas shouldn't be so threatening! They should receive the polite respect due to each individual when they express their opinion, shouldn't they?

I used to believe that schools were the only way to educate children - but I knew their limitations, I used to think that hospitals were the only safe place to give birth - but I knew how dangerous they were! I wasn't thinking for myself when I sent my child to school, or when I gave birth to her in a hospital. I didn't know there were alternatives! Our free society hadn't informed me that I had any choices in either matter. I used to think that terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into big buildings, killing thousands of innocent people. I still think that, but I now question whether or not there was government involvement behind the plot. The US Government would not be the first government to do something that harmed its' citizens in order to sway political direction.

In order for children to receive a full, free thinking education, in order to make them genuinely free individuals who can raise more free thinking individuals, we must give children BOTH sides of the argument, and allow them to discuss freely their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. For this to happen, schools must operate on a democratic system - something our country is unable to do. We must allow children the right to be children, allowing them complete bodily integrity (eat when hungry, pee when the need arises without seeking permission, seek comfort when necessary etc etc) allowing them to voice their views, follow their own interests, learn at their own pace, be judged against themselves and not other students, and most of all children must grow to understand and meet their own needs at a time that suits them. No institution can offer that, the fact that they claim to is worrying.

At home my children live in a far left wing, secular environment, but we openly discuss the views of the middle left, right, and far right. We not only discuss them, we try to imagine why these people hold their views so closely - the same way we do. We discuss religion and validate the rights of all people to choose and follow a religion. We allow our children to research subjects that interest them without telling them that any subject is not worthy of their interest (although I struggle with the monster truck as a worthy interest) or suggesting other subjects that society may consider more valid and useful.

My children will learn to think for themselves. They will epitomise everything our society is meant to foster .... their views will likely differ from the views of the state, and other schooled children but, for that I am glad! My children will be free thinking individuals! Unfortunately they will reside in a society that views it's greatest attribute to be one that it is not even in possession of - FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH.

old school .....

We've been going swimming at the local pool late in the afternoon. Two days ago we ran into a lovely girl that used to go to all Stylish's parties and whatnot. They swapped numbers and email addresses, so hopefully they'll catch up for a play soon.

Then today we went to the pool again and ran into a different child. She told Stylish that one of the girls they used to play with is pregnant. She is 12yrs old and pregnant. Now, the truth is that we don't know if that's reality or not, but either way it's terrible. If it's not true, it's sad because kids are spreading such shocking rumours about each other, if it's true, well what more do I need to say.

One of the reasons I pulled my daughter out of school was to protect her from the trouble she was starting to get into. One day she and the girl from the pool, the one who is reportedly pregnant, and another girl left the school. They went to the pregnant girl's house, played at their neighbour's house (they climbed through a hole in the fence), were fed fried chicken from a well known source, and black fizzy drink from another well known source. The mother then told them it was the end of lunch and that they could go back to school if they wanted. My daughter did want to, and was caught by a teacher, re-entering the school.

The girl's were nearly suspended over this event. They were put on what the prison politely terms "withdrawal suspension" where they had to go to another classroom for two days. My daughter was sent to the classroom of one of the most ridiculously "strict" teachers in the school. He made her spend two days facing the back of the classroom and told her off for turning around at any stage. The girls were also banned from playing at recess and lunch and had to sit in a classroom in silence, writing out the school rules.

I pointed out the the principal that these girls were old enough to know the school rules already, and that perhaps the school would be better off to work out WHY they had broken them. But that's just how schools do things apparently, and those are the rules. The fact is that my daughter was happy to leave the playground because several of the boys were relentlessly teasing her ... and getting away with it. The boys in question were putting sexual letters in our letter box, and prank calling us until midnight on Saturday nights. And when I reported this to the school? they informed me that they couldn't do anything about it because it wasn't happening in school time, or on school property.

Personally I believe the parent who allowed the girls to play in THE NEIGHBOUR'S YARD and fed them CRAP should have been bloody well charged with something or another, because her actions were wildly inappropriate.

And furthermore, how schools can claim to deal with bullying "HEAD ON" bewilders me, but it's whole other topic, I just thought it was a question worth posing at this stage of my rant.

So that explains some of the reasons I removed my child from the institution. But I didn't "know" when I did it that it was the right decision, I made that decision on impulse when I was dealing with massive grief (I lost a son and a very close friend within 6 months). It was a knee jerk reaction to a very bad, untenable, position, but it turned out to be the best one I ever made for my kids! Interestingly enough, as the last 18 months have progressed I've thought of more and more reasons to un-school them! I realised that removing her from that particular school wouldn't fix the problem, because when you take a child who is bullied from one school and put them in another school .... the cycle of abuse and bullying continues. I figured she'd find the same old kids in the new school, just wearing a different uniform.

It makes me very sad to think of a 12yr old child in such an environment that she is sexually active already. This whole situation makes me brutally aware of how I can only save one child, and that child is my own. If I manage to do that then I can be glad, but I will always wonder what became of the other girls who left school one lunch hour and triggered our un-schooling journey .....

what do you mean you're not a teacher?

I often get asked if I'm a teacher when I say that my children don't attend the institution for their "schooling". No, I'm not, but they learnt to walk and talk from me, and they were pretty important things!

I went to school for twelve years, and I don't fondly remember much of it as "social". I also don't remember much that I learnt in maths, science, history etc etc ... but these days there's this funky little place of reference called THE LIBRARY. There is also the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY aka the Internet, should we need to hone our skills on anything long forgotten - or never learnt. 

If school failed to teach me  grammar and spelling, complicated maths, or USEFUL maths for that matter, why will it now (when it's more under funded and classes are larger and teachers are more inexperienced ...) succeed in teaching my children those skills? 

Society has some very strong ideas about the education system. I fail to understand how on one hand we criticise so much of it (discipline, bullying, values, basic skills, playground safety, teaching skills etc) and on the other hand send all our kids there without batting an eyelid!  It's very similar to the way we view hospitals as unsafe, understaffed, dirty places .. and yet insist they're the only safe place for women to give birth. Our society has many contradictions running rampant and un-questioned. And it seems to me that as an "advanced" civilisation where the population is receiving such "excellent education" there really isn't much analysis being undertaken. 

I'm not a teacher, I don't do much teaching though ... the idea of removing the kids from school was to totally and radically alter the mode of their learning as compared to their schooled peers. I can't live without questioning things, as a thinking woman I can't avoid it,  as a media student I learnt to really deconstruct the status quo and one of the things I have totally deconstructed since those skills were imparted upon me, is the institutionalised method of educating children. 

Thus I find myself answering the same question over and over ... "no, I'm not a teacher, but I don't need to be one to home school". "No, I don't think my kids are missing out on anything, I think they're getting MORE from their day actually". "My children design their own curriculum, I don't follow one set by the state". "Yes, home school is legal". 

I hope that goes some way to answering some of the more pressing questions. Now I'd like to pose some to those who are so convinced that institutionalised learning is working for their kids.

• Do you know what your child did all day today? (I know what mine did)
  
• Do you know what your child learnt today? (I know)
  
• How well do you know and trust all the adults that are in charge of your child 5 days a week? (my answer would be 100%)
  
• How many life skills did your children learn today? (mine did life skills all day)
  
• How interested in what they did were your kids? (mine were 95% - washing up is boring, but a useful skill nonetheless)
  
• How intact is your child's self esteem after a day of constant comparisons to other children and bullying? (without the comparisons and bullying - pretty good thanks)
  
• If your kids had a choice would they learn maths every morning or only when they needed it? (only as they need it here)
  
• Have your kids finished their homework? (mine do maths for pleasure at 10pm Sunday night ... but they don't do homework)
  

Diff'rent folks, same strokes

As I process and displace my long held attachment to the institutionalised method of education, I think of more and more questions about the lifetime of belief systems that I have accrued surrounding what constitutes "a good education". The schooling system is the unquestioned expert in the field of children's tuition, and yet there are so many complaints about how it operates, from funding, to discipline, to what children should be taught and by whom. There is more and more empahsis on "learning" and the age of children who are supposed to BE learning is shrinking every day. It can't really shrink further than in the womb can it, and there are products available that are designed to help babies in the womb learn!

http://www.babyplus.com/

What a total waste of money right? it's obvious that this is a crock. But parents are so fearful of their child not being able to compete in the education system that they buy this product, and they are sold countless other TOYS under the guise of them being educational. What is wrong with children simply playing, and why don't we view play as a learning opportunity on it's own without having to empahsise the learning properties of plastic toys!?

Which brings me to the point of my gripe. As a beginner unschooling parent, I sometimes questioned whether or not my child would learn the same stuff as all the other children who went to school. I worried that her ability to do fractions, multiplication, spelling and grammar would be somehow dash her hopes of attending university and pursuing the career of her choice. After all, we were unschooling, and we did not spend 6 hours a day doing structured lessons, I did not lesson plan (or I did not intend to continue lesson planing anyway). What if my daughter were at some hideous disadvantage from not learning exactly the same thing that the other millions of children around the state are learning?

It's odd how ingrained this totally unrealistic ideal of the educations system has become in our culture! We pride ourselves as a multi cultural, all encompassing, difference celebrating, culture, the way of life we live is apparently full of freedom and it all begins with our education institution. The very same education system which children hate. The very same one that makes children so competitive they commit suicide in large numbers if they feel they are not going to achieve the marks they want, the system that so many children simply drop out of because it isn't working for them. This is the way of education that states all children are wonderful and different, and that they strive to be inclusive of all cultures, varying ability, and both sexes, and then insists that the children all learn, and be constantly compared to one another, and tested on exactly the same stuff.

Wouldn't recognising children as individuals mean that children had more control over what they learn? Wouldn't it mean that comparing the children to one another, creating either fierce competition or "drop outs" was obsolete? Wouldn't it mean that children were graded on individual achievments not a set level of achievements that is often too low, or too high for many of them?

So, based on the importance of all the children learning all the same stuff, surely when they leave school they will have all the same requirments and opportunities? Ahhh. No. That's not how it works!  Why? BECAUSE ALL CHILDREN ARE INDIVIDUALS!!! Some are good at maths, some are good at English, some are bilingual, some are artistic, some are historians, some are scientists, and the last thirteen years have done little to help them discover and explore their true calling in life. 

Bring in the un-schoolers! 

My daughter hated maths. And maths is one of the most ridiculously over emphasised subjects taught in schools. Maths teachers have tickets on themselves, and yet children across the board hate them and their classes. In reality, schools aren't really doing a great job of teaching the even the most basic maths skills, the most useful maths is the stuff that we use every day in our fast paced society. Fast calculations, times tables, estimation, some fractions and percentages, and time and graph reading are crucial skills. Un-schooled children may not be using calculus or trigonometry but they can read a bus time table. And to them, maths isn't a chore, it's just life. What an interesting approach! Maths is JUST PART OF LIFE! What a shame the maths syllabus seems to have missed the boat on the true importance, and genuine usefulness, of the subject. What a shame they've made children feel inferior to others, and most children hate it!

My daughter is learning about frogs. That's what she's interested in, and it's what she actively researches. But she's also learning to manage a house - from cleaning the toilet to budgeting the weekly shopping, how to get around in the city she lives in, current affairs - and expressing her views on them, growing her own food, cooking it, saving the planet, and lets not forget USEFUL MATHS!  

Sheesh. I hope she didn't miss anything good in school today that she can forget next week. I hope the life skills that school children learnt today .... oh, they didn't DO life skills did they ... well I hope they learn lots about REAL LIFE over the xmas holidays, coz they need to be prepared for life when it starts, and they need to be able to compete with kids who have been LIVING LIFE instead of learning useless stuff and forgetting it. They need to begin to learn about their chosen career path, whereas the un-schooled children have most likely spent the last eighteen years immersing themselves in the same stuff. 

Well I know I feel a little bit more de-schooled! What about you?