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)
The context of our home life is our foundation. I question my motives daily. I question my actions daily. I question life's unfolding patterns daily. This keeps me living as balanced as I can, looking for ways to improve this balance, increasing my perceptive abilities and awareness.
If you bring a child up to value asking questions then you bring a child up in intelligence. This brings with it a deep respect and understanding for diversity. This begins by respecting the child's own point of view, by teaching children to question why they think the way they do, and then by allowing them to question why we, their parents, think the way we do. Gradually the children become confident to question all the people that come into their life. This is a very natural process, and ensures the building of tolerance and respect for all views. Learning to value questioning, and taking the time and patience to answer, with clarity, is one of the greatest learning tools parents can give their children. I do not feel guilty for protecting my children from the opinions of others, where I feel the need to. I am very comfortable with exposing them first and foremost to my values and points of view before that of others. Only as they grow and exhibit readiness for other opinions and viewpoints do I encourage social contact. And this flows with, and reflects, the child's overall development, with their socialisation process intimately derived from his or her own need, not society's. I take my cue for social development from the children. Being protective of children is a crucial and important part of parenting, and I take it very seriously as a personal responsibility, one not to be lightly delegated to others. Society has an unhappy addiction to judging good from bad, and to setting up everyone in competition with each other. What constitutes a good parent, a bad one, a coping one, a non-coping one? And who stands in judgement, what criteria do they use, and what standards, and how were these standards devised, and are they inclusive of diversity? Too often parents put themselves and their parenting abilities down, give up before they really give themselves or their children a chance, because they have been brainwashed by intolerant, exclusive attitudes.
When we look at homeschooling, and homeschooling children, we are looking at something quite different, something unique in our western, modern society. We forget that all western children were reared like this pre-industrial times. We forget the social and political reasons schools were invented and adopted en masse. We forget that millions of children around the world still grow and develop into healthy, well balanced, respectable and useful citizens without any formal schooling at all. And what do these 'uneducated' children do all day? Would we describe their lives as full of 'doing nothing', simply because there are no curriculums, no desks full of books and texts, no tests or exams? Are modern, western children so different? Are we really a different species - modern, civilised human? No. There is little difference even between current human beings and
those that lived 100,000 years ago.
John Holt advocated that parents listen to their children and keep an open mind on which resources and approaches to use - and for parents to acknowledge the true reasons for choosing them. He talked about flexibility, the ability to change, the ability to meet the child half way... he talked about truly listening to the needs of growing children, and families growing in the great parenting and educating adventure. He didn't set any hard or fast approaches or methods, but encouraged people to find their own way, their own voices. He challenged us to challenge the old beliefs and myths in our heads, and to truly honour our children. He didn't prescribe structure versus non structure, knowing that such definitions are meaningless.
Parenting is an adventure for which we have no preparation in this culture, unfortunately. Tribal life and extended families have gone, replaced by the nuclear family, with devastating results that schooling cannot hope to fix. Listening to our inner voices, rather than the voices of others, whether they be out there in the real world or conditioned into our memories, is the only way to go. Listening to the voices of our children, because they are so close to their truthful innocence and are more sensitive to their instinctive survival needs. This is the surest way for us to learn how to be better parents.
And choosing to remain flexible, open minded, rejecting dogma, and always, always questioning... It takes time to do all this - time I often hear myself describing as 'doing nothing'...
 previous page |
Page 18 |
Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
