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)
Freedom? No-one is really free. But you can achieve a lot of freedom with the right frame of mind. It is an attitudinal thing. If you believe you are trapped, then you are. We have a lot of freedom in our home, because we simply believe we have. That is the way we look at life.
We are trying to live a life in balance with nature, and here my learnings about permaculture have really helped, and I can heartily recommend any of Bill Mollison's books. By working within the patterns nature lies down for us, and which are beautifully obvious once you go looking, there is never any undisciplined chaos - rather life becomes a series of interwoven, magical paradoxes - life is independent and interdependent. It is exciting and dynamic, ever changing, always decaying and always growing. Life and death are closely intermingled in every moment and are totally interdependent. Chaos and order are the flip sides of the same coin - life. Focus on one and you throw yourself out of balance. Its a kind of yin-yang thing. Finding the right point of balance to suit each moment of the day.
Often children damaged by too much fertiliser (over stimulation by well meaning parents or others, paranoid that their young children will not make the grade and be accepted into university in a decade hence!), display symptomatic signs of steady poisoning of self esteem - an inability to be comfortable and happy within the company of one's self. This is otherwise known as addiction to peers. It takes time to work poison out of the system, sometimes we wait weeks, months or years to regain our health. It is the same for these poor children. I always advise new home educating parents to have patience as their children adjust. Often this can take months, sometimes even a year or more.
Unfortunately most parents fall victim to popular and usually commercially motivated advice, encouraging the purchase of more and more resources and 'edutainment', relics to stimulate the minds of young children. Nature provides all that is needed in her garden, with never a worry of over fertilising those young minds. Give a toddler a beach... or a sandpit, albeit a poor substitute, and sit back and watch. It is amazing.
I have often found an hour of playing with my children, of being with them in a very conscientious and honest way, will fulfil most of their requirements to be with me, leaving me the rest of the day to do as I please. They quite happily go about doing their own thing. But I have to play with them on their terms, joining in as an equal, playing like a child in accordance with the spirit of compromise and co-operation we foster amongst us. This can be difficult at first, but is very enjoyable. And immensely satisfying on a deeply psychological level!
 previous page |
Page 16 |
Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
Always Learning Books
Beverley and Robin wish to thank everyone for their patience as they convert most of the Always Learning Book titles to e-book format. As each booklet becomes available it will be listed on this website.
If you wish to be informed about new listings as well as news regarding Always Learning Books please join our mailing list.
