Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Thoughts on Educational Experience
Thomas went to school from the age of eighteen months to five years - he participated in his siblings' school life in an alternative open age classroom because I went to school with my children everyday. I really regret exposing him to this experience, but it was a great learning time for me. I'd given up home educating April, and needed to see for myself what school could offer. This class was a good compromise, sort of like homeschool at school.
Thomas didn't seem to mind at the time, but by age five he knew the place was not a child friendly environment. It was somewhere children experience total overload - physical, emotional and intellectual. He rejected school in a big way, and still hates it seven years later. It is the word and place 'school', and the way school children often behave, that Thomas hates - not a good thing in our family where his sister chooses school over home!
Thomas didn't experience a lot of 'school work' first hand - the class focussed more on play with a minimum of ‘lessons’ or project work. But the pressures were still there, and what was offered generally reflected a total lack of personally meaningful activity. Quite often destructive behaviour resulted, both physically and psychologically.
I find that because Thomas wasn't inundated with a lot of meaningless book work I can get him to 'play the game' and do some school type projects and subjects now and then, when I need some reassurance the natural learning lifestyle we have adopted does actually work! This has been so important in our home educating odyssey, for all three of my children. It took me nearly ten years to be fully convinced of John Holt's message, and even now I get twinges of doubt!
However, there are times when playing 'school at home' that Thomas suddenly becomes totally deaf. Completely switched off. Reluctant to continue to play the game, even for my benefit, in order to boost my confidence, which he acknowledges along with me as the main motive for schoolish activities. He knows learning doesn't have to happen with books.
I actually love the way he does this - and the way in which other children do this! I have seen it so often in home educating families. I think it is one of the only ways children have of asserting their right to protect themselves from things that might harm them in any way - an instinctive response. Many people think it is disobedience and arrogance, stubbornness or laziness. I respect the ‘turn off’ and see it as a warning I am on the wrong track - time to see things from the child's perspective!
As a homeschooler Thomas, like his brother and sister before him, suffers considerably from the tendency of people to turn every little question or passing comment into a full blown and complete history, geography, science, maths or English lesson. I see this happening in two ways - small tests to determine whether my children are keeping up to ‘standard’, whatever that means, or well meant, but unsolicited, attempts at helping me educate my children. I abandoned such behaviour as futile and falling on ‘deaf ears’ within a few years.
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
