thinkspringblooms

Going into my local group's newsletter. Comments?

Please avert your eyes - I'm changing paradigms!


I collect quotes, because it fascinates me that human minds can get
such very deep and difficult ideas across so poignantly and
succinctly. I have had life-changing "AHA!" moments inspired by
these snippets of mind, so I thought I would share a couple of quotes
I came across while collecting inspirational, pithy prose to share on
the SOS website, and some of my own thinking in response.

Laura, from Texas, wrote this on an email list:
"One piece of advice I always give, and the thing
that often gets TOTALLY left out of "what you need to get started" is
that new homeschoolers should spend some time thinking about what
education, and "being educated" means to them. Where is it that
they're trying to go? What do they want to accomplish? What's
important to them about the process? What's important to their
children? What kind of life do they want to have together?. . . "

I think my early formal education, and most probably that of most
Americans of my generation, had a pretty typical look to it: without
having to think about it, my parents sent me to catch the big yellow
bus at the bottom of my street every morning before 9 am, from the
time I was five until I received my public high school diploma at age
18. I was lucky enough to have been born with the temperament and
talent to fit into that world very easily. As an early and avid
reader I did spend a LOT of time reading materials of my own choice
outside of school, but as a people-pleaser, I kept that stuff to
myself and found most of my self-esteem in being "smart" in school -
ready, able and willing to take in and spit back whatever my teachers
required, pleased at the thought that I was what my mother expected
me to be: smart and diligent, bringing home A+ report cards on a
quarterly basis, for 13 years. (Well, I'll admit there were quite a
few B's in the last couple of years, but that's a whole 'nother
story!)
When senior year came and thoughts turned to "my
future" it went without saying that college was ahead, though I
really had no particular career or direction in mind, and I just went
because it was expected - I was smart, and back then (aargh! has it
really been twenty+ years?!?!) smart people went to college. It was
expected. This was the path through "Good Education" and out the
other side to "Good Job."
College was quite a bit tougher to slide through than my
previous schooling had been; I wasn't sure why at the time, but
since then I've come to realize that I had chosen many classes where
I was required to do a lot of original thinking, something I was
hardly even ALLOWED to do before. So here I finally tasted the inner
rewards of thinking outside the box, began to realize that all that
learning I had done by reading on my own was my REAL education, and
began to acknowledge that fitting in the box had so very little to do
with who I truly was and who I might possibly become.
I managed to squeak through and graduate with a BA in
art history -- which I loved, and love, but hardly guarantees a "Good
Job" manifesting itself! I flailed, my dh flailed (his BA is in
Art!), together we flailed around trying to figure out what to do
with ourselves, til we made a baby, pretty much inadvertantly, and
my "Good Job" was forever redefined as "mother." My first-born, my
angel, my cattle-prod, my Larkin allowed for no speck more of in-the-
box thinking, or expectations, or living. I now had another life,
another spirit I was wholly responsible for, and I would push myself
to be the best at it that I could be, and that meant I needed to be
the best me I could be, and that meant a whole heck of a lot of
challenged expectations! Lucky for me, whil I was still pregnant
with Larkin, I came across John Holt's books and after only a few
pages I found his ideas resonating deeply within me - I remember
thinking, I KNEW this, I KNEW this! He knew what my childhood looked
like, he knew about children, he knew how children learn and he knew
what it means to be "educated".
We became unschoolers at that point, saying to ourselves (and
anyone who would listen!) that we don't need school to learn, and
while adding three more young'uns, have only gone further to the edge
of the "unschooling spectrum" as the years have gone by. We live
our lives as if school didn't exist. We've become less and less
influenced by the typical, the expected, the schooled; and more and
more entranced with the joy, the beauty, the possibilities, of the
real, natural world. Our education is not preparation for some
future "real" life, it IS our lives. We learn because we can't NOT
learn. We trust ourselves and each other to engage the world
joyfully, thoughtfully, respectfully, compassionately; we trust
ourselves and each other to learn the world's "lessons" as they're
needed and as they come into our awareness. We trust ourselves and
each other to be and become the self-made, self-aware, self-
actualized persons we were each born to be.
Those are my answers to Laura's poignant questions. So far.
Maybe I'll learn something next week or next year that will change my
mind. Life is learning.



Life is good.
Live long and prosper.
May the force be with you.
Namaste.
cris