Leaders like Del and Sam are showing the way forward.
I hope and pray enough people listen and understand and join in the efforts to save humanity.
https://thehighwire.com/videos/schools-out-with-sam-sorbo/
While by no means a pioneer of the modern home education movement, I did find myself a fellow pilgrim during the late-early phase, beginning in 1988. At the time we began our journey, my oldest child attended full-day kindergarten at a private school.
Though our dear little one seemed happy enough and we received good reports from the teacher, I began noticing concerning changes in her behavior. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she began angering easily at the end of the school day, to the point of lashing out harshly at her younger sibling.
Ironically, at the end of the school year, she received a special award, one created just for her, Most Courteous. I later learned she had dedicated herself to keeping peace among all of the children in the class, an exhausting task—no wonder she struggled to control herself at the end of the day.
I also learned the teacher insisted my daughter meet certain milestones before permitting her to even dabble in more advanced areas of a subject, effectively stunting her progress.
Before attending kindergarten, my child had already learned how to read and calculate small sums. Her curious nature led her to try many things with enthusiasm, and I had always encouraged her interests rather than dampen them by imposing unnecessary preconditions.
What I observed in her led me to thinking about my own childhood, during which I had been quite happy at home but often bored and unhappy at school, even though I earned excellent grades.
As I thought about it, I wondered why my daughter could not continue learning at home as she had been, and then I recalled seeing an advertisement in “Smithsonian Magazine,” for the Calvert School.
In my mind I had always assumed families living in remote locations or children unable to attend school used this program, and it had not occurred to me families with access to school could also use it. Remember, these are the days before the average family had access to the internet. I had never heard of the “homeschooling” movement.
Based upon these thoughts and after talking things over with my husband at the time, we decided to have our daughter learn at home the following year. I purchased the appropriate curriculum and materials from The Calvert School. It was from these, I believe, I learned about a newsletter called Growing Without Schooling (GWS), to which I gladly subscribed. The amazing John Holt founded this publication and really the modern home education movement.
From GWS, we learned all sorts of ways to approach learning and life, and we gradually freed ourselves from the school-at-home paradigm, moving towards unschooling—i.e., avoiding feeling trapped into any particular curriculum or approach to learning, which is exactly what we had been doing before my eldest entered kindergarten.
From GWS, we learned about many amazing books, which we ordered and read, and projects, which we tried, and we expanded our minds and deepened our knowledge. We also began actively participating in the community as part of life learning. We had many wonderful days full of books and philosophical talks and nature walks and cooking and gardening and music and movies and creative endeavors and volunteering.
I could see for myself how the intelligence and sensibilities and knowledge of my children expanded each day. I also could observe for myself their eager engagement with life and their sense of a warm companionship with themselves and the people and animals and other elements of the world around them. I felt so fortunate to have been able to give them the gift of freedom and oneness with the gentle rhythms of life.
The difficult side of all of this were the outside demands—even at the grocery store. Children seen in a store during school hours made a big impact in those days. “Why aren't you in school?” people would often say. When an explanation was offered, some would proceed to say things such as: How will they learn to read? How will they learn their times tables? I tried my best to answer politely, though I would move away quickly from anyone who began quizzing them: “Okay, so, quick, what's 3x3?”
After we moved from the country to the city, neighbors became the problem. One told my children their parents were going to jail for not sending them to school. Social workers showed up a few days later, asking for “papers.”
Before we moved to town, I had sent the required documents to the school board but they did not seem to be in the official files. (Later I learned through the local paper an office worker there, derelict in duty, had stuffed a closet full of unprocessed correspondence. I always imagined my precious manila envelope in the middle of one of the heaps.)
Fortunately, I had enrolled my kids in a home education support program called Clonlara, and the director was able to call and resolve the problem right away. But as you may imagine, the whole experience was unsettling, to say the least.
It was clear for all who would look to see my children had good care and plenty of educational experiences. Why should we be treated as though we had committed a criminal offense?
I hope this personal anecdote illustrates for you the psychological burden falling upon those who step outside “normal” boundaries, even for benevolent reasons, and even when showing favorable results.
The scrutiny applied by those living the “norm” to those living outside it seems to be more intense and far less forgiving—at the individual and at the societal level.
At times, among some, there seems to be intentional Schadenfreude.
While criticisms and questions can certainly be borne with integrity and humility and forgiveness, they do have a “whittling” effect over the years, carving away at confidence developed through actual experience.
A form of self-doubt may take hold of people otherwise pleased with their lives.
The norms instilled within others as immutable become a mallet seeking nothing more than to drive all protruding spikes back into their proper holes.
Sometimes the spikes grow up and actively seek to be driven down. They've had enough of “sticking out.” It's too exhausting to be different in this major respect, and many of the significant higher values learned through their unique experiences seem to drift away into the ether. At this point, society has won, and the internal narratives change. This is NOT the fault of the child. This is the power of societal pressure.
Perhaps one internal narrative during pleasant years went something like this:
“My parents go out of their way to make sure I have a good education, and I feel so grateful for how much they respect who I am as a person. I love my life.”
After sufficient social pressure has been applied, the narrative could become more akin to:
“What kind of ignorant and arrogant person would force their child to stand out like a sore thumb by keeping them out of school? Why do these imbeciles think they're smarter than thousands of teachers? These perverted people have ruined my life. If they had loved me, they never could have done this to me.”
Supportive community helps lessen the likelihood of this happening but it's not always sufficient. In my experience it will simply not be powerful enough to counter the constant negative societal chatter directed towards “homeschoolers.”
As recently as two years ago, Before Corona (BC), I encountered an “enlightened” library manager who said, referring to a group of kids who had participated in an event: “You know how homeschoolers are. They tend to need more supervision.”
Oh, really? Hmm. “Not in my experience,” I wanted to say.
I kept my mouth shut but felt disheartened. Forty-plus years of evidence demonstrating the great successes of children actively involved in learning at home and in the community, and this is the sort of comment a library professional permits herself to make?
Something else has always been needed for a broad societal shift to occur in the way people understand how true education happens. What's required may be eloquent and outspoken leaders who publicly counter the “immutable norm,” in a way which invites excited participation.
Of course, some outstanding individuals have stepped forward over the years to speak up for a different way: John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, Manfred Smith, Nancy Wallace, and many others. But they simply could not reach a wide-enough audience. Or, perhaps, times were just not ripe.
Our society, our world, has been subjected to cruel totalitarian management for almost two years now. Much has changed for the worse. A few things may have changed for the better, for some. Overall, great harm has been done and continues to be done to an enormous number of people. Crimes against humanity have been committed and are being committed.
The good news is many who never before understood the deep corruption within governments, now comprehend. We have a rare opportunity to come together and fix many problems at the grassroots level.
In watching Del Bigtree's program, “The Highwire,” Episode 241: Sins of Science, I felt so pleased to discover a segment on home education—and I say home education, not homeschooling, because “schooling” has a distinct cultural meaning, including conformity to a set of behavioral and curricular norms, while “education” retains its broader inclusive meaning. For this reason, I have always preferred the term home education and later, life learning.
If you cannot let go of the idea of a physical school, please consider the possibilities:
https://sudburyvalley.org/theory
Episode 241 features Sam Sorbo, host of a program called “School's Out.” Confident and superbly articulate, Sam seems to be exactly the type of leader who will make it possible for profoundly beneficial changes to occur in the way MOST people view education. I hope so. I want my children and my grandchildren and all of my loved ones to have a beautiful future.
While I recommend the entire episode, with its focus on current events surrounding COVID-19 and the toxic injections, the segment I reference begins at approximately 1:21:
https://thehighwire.com/videos/episode-241-sins-of-science/
Leaders like Del and Sam are showing the way forward. I hope and pray enough people listen and understand and join in the efforts to save humanity.
This is The Work of Happiness!
Kindred spirits, please share this far and wide.
What an empowering and beautiful reflection on your experience with homeschooling! If I had kids, NO WAY would I permit them to endure the brainwashing and dumbing-down that occurs in institutions of so-called learning. And I imagine it would be an extraordinary experience to spend all of that precious time with your child, forging memories and reading life-changing books together. What an amazing gift to your children both in the present and years to come!