In May 2008 I felt compelled to write a post about my children and their education. Thoughts about this had been bubbling under the surface for weeks, but the final catalyst which made me think, ‘I have to write about this’, was reading in one sitting (about three hours) the book: “Dumbing Us Down” by John Taylor Gatto.
From a review on Amazon:
In Dumbing Us Down, Mr. Gatto gives his first person perspective on the tragic waste of human potential induced by coerced 12-year confinement of the young to the artificial and anesthetizing environment of the classroom. The book is both enlightening and frightening. Personally, I felt a sense of vindication while reading the book. It put into words my negative feelings about education resulting from my unsuccessful 15 year struggle to encourage my own children to love learning. Mr. Gatto’s writing has encouraged me to think that perhaps it was a GOOD thing that school was not able to press them into its mold! At the same time, I found it immensely disturbing that a brilliant, dedicated and award-winning teacher found it impossible to convince his own colleagues that grading, grouping, numbering and force-feeding irrelevant facts to captive children has no correlation to true learning, and does, in fact, suppress any natural curiosity they may have once had.
Thoughts on Home Schooling my two kids had been with me ever since my eldest was born. Living in France, we had no idea about the school system and happily placed her into pre-school, when she was only three years old.
In Sept 2008, Bubble would have entered proper school age six. The work load that she would have had was huge. One hour of homework every night. She would have been learning to read and write and do all the other normal subjects found in schools, apart from the creative ones. The bag she would have had to carry (with all her books in) would have probably needed wheels. The program is full-on. France prides itself in a system that is very academic, based on reasoning and the ability to analyze, dissect and discuss topics to a high level.
Anyway, I resisted buying the above book for so long because I knew it would be the ‘tipping point’ that finally made my mind up about home schooling. That it certainly did. After devouring the book, (it is one of my top-ten, life-shifting, paradigm-altering books), I had a long discussion about the state of society and education with Jules, (can you believe that he was a teacher ;)) into the night.
I didn’t sleep much that night; I kept thinking to myself – I must be totally crazy! – why do I want to even consider doing this? I will have no time to myself; the children will be with me all day, everyday (we don’t have Grannies here with us to help out). My head was banging on and on, but my heart was telling me a different tale – I just knew I had to do this, I couldn’t put my finger directly on the whys and wherefores, but I knew I had to do it. I had my critics: my mother and certainly my mother-in-law for starters was down on me like a ton of bricks, but I knew that Bubble would have to come out of school.
Searching the net the next day and coming across blogs of home-schoolers, seeing how happy and vibrant they are; sensitive and intelligent smiles gracing the pages of sites, wonderful projects, trips, poetry, writing and other stuff and more importantly the way they are learning it all, within the secure and intact family unit, gave me hope, even though the terrible doubts and fears I had about doing it continued.
After I read in ‘Dumbing Us Down’, that the first schools in 1850′s America were set up for the express purpose of separating the children from the adults so that they could be moulded into model citizens my eyes filled with tears and disgust. In fact, I cried three or four times throughout the book – something I rarely, rarely do whilst reading.
This enforced split between parents and children got me thinking……
Perhaps from being more present from moment to moment or maybe just through putting two and two together, I realized that Bubble played up precisely at the time she has to contemplate going to school or comes home from school. At other times, away from the threat of school, she was charming, intelligent, helpful and full of curiosity about the world around her and wonderful with her younger sister – a delight in fact. Of course, it was so simple! She had told me herself that she didn’t want to be away from me and she couldn’t understand why I sent her to school, why she had to go. You know what? I was separating myself from her at time when she needed me more than ever. I came to understand that Bubble admires and covets me like no one else; sometimes it is hard to just stop and realise this fact.
My head said I was crazy to keep my kids at home to teach them about Life, but my heart told me that if I wanted to keep my beautiful relationship with my daughter(s) intact, this was the one thing I HAD to do.
It is now 2012 and I am still doing it, it has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
