Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
A Day in the Life of a Child 'Damaged' by the Modern World
(continued)
I think this background parental supervision is the key. We are available to answer questions, help facilitate projects, find resources. Things we do very readily. We are here to help sort out sibling disputes, bandage and kiss cut knees, celebrate new skills and understandings. We stop what we are doing upon request to 'be there' for our children. Perhaps that is what makes the difference. We haven't abandoned our children. We are just busy people, keeping busy beside our children. Offering examples for them to emulate.
'Doing nothing' for us means just getting on with whatever we want to do, when we want to do it, provided it doesn't upset or interfere with others. So we are all very busy people. Just not doing the 'traditional' educational things. Or doing them in non-traditional ways. It is all very exciting and each day encourages us further along on this path. The children demonstrate that we don't have to jump through hoops to entertain or educate them. Day by day their knowledge and skills grow, they grow in confidence and self esteem, they know themselves, are happy with themselves. Oh, how I wish I felt like that at their age, especially in the adolescent years!
I seldom worry that I am depriving my children of ‘better’ lives they might have had if we had chosen another path. I trust that we are doing the best we can, that we have selected the right path for ourselves. I know we are not perfect, but then only an arrogant person would seek to reach that goal... In fact, I think that my children do have an amazing life! The future is their responsibility - I make that abundantly clear to them every day. They are in control of their own decision making processes. I am only here to guide them away from hurting themselves and others...
Neither do I worry excessively about the future - beyond the next few months. Living for the future is a fool's paradise. Really rather stupid when you think about it. John Lennon had something to say about that... life is what happens when you are busy making plans, something like that. I worked hard to stop making plans for myself, and for my children. None of them ever work out and I am left with disappointment and self doubt. I don't have time or room in my life for an excess of those feelings....
Do children need direct stimulation? In order to learn, that is? Do they need someone feeding them excitement and enticing activities and knowledge? I believe that, without trying, every day is full of stimulation. Humans are genetically programmed to stimulate growth in their offspring; all animals are. It is a survival instinct. Much of this instinct has been buried beneath complex and overly sophisticated rituals, some so sophisticated we don't recognise the basic motivation for our actions.
School is such a ritual in human society - a complex ‘rites of passage’ lasting well over a decade in the life of the initiate. The trouble with school, and the many, many 'educational' rituals attached to it, is that only a privileged few get to call the shots. These are usually white, middle classed males, sitting remote from the white, middle class female dominated domain of the classroom where lofty, and often irrelevant to children's individual developmental needs, educational policies and curriculums are deployed. The basic tools needed to survive as individuals and as communities are made so complex that only well initiated individuals are allowed into this small circle of policy makers. Mass education is designed to dumb down whole populations, to retain that power base, and it does so by narrowly defining what education is, what learning is, and how and when, and in what metered doses, it shall be delivered to individuals of all ages.
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
