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Editor of Editor
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Radio Free School
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Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - July, 2006 September University – July 24, 2006 Is it the Bullying or the Drugs? – July 23, 2006 Maybe it was supposed to be irony. Or maybe the guy
is an articulate (albeit macho) ostrich. I can’t imagine he’s a caring parent…or
else why would he want to expose his children to the bullying, violence,
competition, drug dealing and otherwise general mean-spirited and
negative “socialization” that occurs on playgrounds, let alone what
goes on in many classrooms? His reasoning appears to be that “These
children will then lack social interactions once they leave the home,
furthering their educations in university and/or college.” Aha! Life
is violent, competitive, mean-spirited and boring, so we need to expose
our children to those things from an early age in order to prepare them.
Nonsense. Even if one agrees that life is that awful, the best
preparation for a bad adult experience is a good childhood one. One like
that experienced by most life learners – rich in contacts with people
of all ages, full of meaningful interactions in their communities and
grounded in trust and respect for their humanity.
And gosh, what about trying to change that awful life?? Is that not one of the purposes of good
socialization? There may be valid reasons for parents to send
their kids to school, but socialization isn’t one of them. That
homeschooled children are poorly socialized is a dead argument,
slaughtered a long time ago by generations of superbly well-socialized
adults who learned without attending school and buried by the ongoing
socialization problems in public schools. Freedom and Self-Knowledge – July
19, 2006 As my children were growing up, I saw the benefit of being able to figure out who they were first, on their own and within their supportive family environment, before moving away from the family setting and on to collaborative learning in larger groups. There are varying opinions on the appropriate age for this to happen, but I trusted that they would find their own speed and path. And they did. (Their choices eventually involved regular school, choices I respected but did not agree with.) And that leads to the choice part. I’ve always felt that the biggest problem with the concept of school is compulsory attendance. While there may be some schools for children that are voluntary, they are rare. Even the much-lauded Sudbury Valley model forces students to make an attendance commitment. And maybe the infrastructure involved – building, staff, materials, meetings – needs the stability of a somewhat dependable group of regular participants. But is a school truly democratic if attendance is compulsory…even if it’s run democratically on every other level? Or, to put it another way, does it rank the freedom of children lower than its own health or survival? In response to my July 6 post on this subject, Jessica Kiley wrote: “I think it was John Holt who shared this perspective on schools –the ingredient that is missing from every school, even the ‘free schools’ that were experimented with years back, is that attendance is required, not a choice. Even if a child has complete freedom to choose the lessons, or to choose an activity other than participating in the lessons, the choice is generally not included to leave the school altogether or to attend by personal motivation alone.” In fact, as Life Learning columnist Sandy Lubert
shared in the May/June issue, in Instead of Education, Holt “used
spelling creatively in order to distinguish between S-chools, where
educators ‘get and hold their students by the threat of jail or
uselessness or poverty’ and s-schools, ‘which help people explore
the world as they choose.” An interesting concept, but I think we’d
be better off designing some new language to describe learning that is
truly non-coercive, rather than using creative spelling or appending
prefixes like “home”, “un” or “de” to the “s” word. A
democratic school is better than an undemocratic one, but
it’s still a school. I
don’t mind leaving schools of all stripes to those who want them, but
my work involves changing the whole paradigm to reflect the fact that
people do not have to be forced to learn. Nor do they have to attend special places to do it. Getting Bored – July 18, 2006 Usually an efficient multi-tasker, I’m not good at being bored, typically trying to fill up the empty moments with work or random activity, to speed up the slower pace. So on this vacation, I’m going to try to dilute the adrenaline, to let go of my to-do list, to practice doing nothing for awhile, to try and get bored. I guess the process is a bit like learning to meditate – being patient with yourself until it becomes second nature. I am not sure why I’m so careful to avoid
boredom, although I suspect it has something to do with all those
earnest clichés I heard as a child, which turned me into a doer rather
than a “be-er” (which, in itself, isn’t such a bad thing.) Like
idle hands being the devil’s playground and an idle mind being the
devil’s workshop (or was it vice versa?) and the need to make hay
while the sun shines. But as an adult, I know that the word “bore”
has another definition that involves tunneling through something, so
I’m using that analogy to get to the other side of my dedication to
work and to find that elusive peace of mind. Gotta get back to work now. 30 Years of History – July 16, 2006 For Natural Life magazine’s birthday, I have been
putting together a retrospective of the last 30 years. In doing so, I
recently came across an editorial that I wrote in 1979 sharing a bad
experience we’d had with a truant officer
– he’d entered our
home by means of a lie, then threatened us with the removal of our 5-1/2-
and 7-year-old daughters if we didn't enroll them in a public school
within two hours. That, of course, was not the correct procedure (to put it mildly!) and he
found out that we knew more about our rights than he did
(again, to put it mildly.)
As a result
of that experience, I decided there was a need to organize homeschooling
families. So my editorial also announced that I was
founding a pioneering homeschool support and advocacy organization. Our
daughters have grown up, the movement has grown up and our business has
matured with the addition of Life Learning magazine almost five years
ago. It’s been an exciting journey, and we look forward to more
adventures and more progress towards a better society. Ranking Educational Alternatives – July 6, 2006 I wrote five fast pages in my journal this morning
about these questions and their answers. I feel another
book…or at least an article…coming on. Feedback, as always, is
welcome. Kids Can Claim Age
Discrimination – July 1, 2006 The tribunal’s decision
is not law unless/until it is adopted or cited by the courts, but it is good news
for the families in the autism case who are now free to proceed in court
with their argument that the government is discriminating against them
on the basis of age, as well as disability. But it could also be very
good news for all children, who may now be able to complain that they
are being discriminated against in other aspects of life. Hmmmm. Wonder
that could mean for compulsory education laws? Return
to current weblog copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2007 |
Topics & Passions: natural learning ~ What I'm Reading: The Self-Completing Tree,
poems by Dorothy Livesay (1999, Beach Holme Publishing) ~ What
I'm Listening To:
Where We Live - A Benefit CD for EarthJustice
(Higher Octave Music, 2003) ~
Fav
Bookmarks:
Positive News ~ Fav Quotes:
Art, Writing, Creativity
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