watersportgirl

Hi everyone! :)

We are in San Diego, love the beach, have two boys at home (ages 19
and 8) and one gigantic, gentle Golden Retriever --- and are
absolute fans and proponents of the unschooling philosophy. :)

I've written the following as my "testament" to all my friends and
relatives who are inquiring the famous "What?" and "Why?" over our
new lifestyle:

:) Lori

P.S. Today is my son's last day in public school (whew!). I cannot
wait to bring him home! Last night was Open House and what was
glaring apparent to me what the assinine work they do (color
worksheets and staple them together) and how they made my son feel
inferior because he didn't want to do that. His beautiful poster
displays that were made on his own about his trip to Yellowstone,
Mt. Rushmore and Custer State Park were shoved in a drawer and never
given attention. arrrrghhhhh.........

-----------------
Hello Friends!

I write today with extreme enthusiasm - an epiphany, to be exact! I
have found "the" answer for my son. No more labels. No more testing.
No more desk-bound, convergent, in-the-box, get-the-one-right-
answer, artificial curriculum based learning that defeats his
imagination, divergent style thinking, passions, risk-taking and
self-confidence. I am going to homeschool him. More precisely, I am
going to "unschool" him.

It was a big decision, one which I struggled with at first, but now
I am fully confident that it is absolutely right for him. In talking
with another mother, my answer to her inquiry (of why?) was
this: "My son was born into this world a happy, confident, risk-
taking, inquisitive, exploring little guy with wonderful rhythm and
a song on his lips. After three years of public schooling, I hardly
recognize him."

The truth is that children are born with a love of learning - they
spend their early years investigating the world, making connections,
and testing hypotheses. This love of learning is destroyed with
the "open your books and I will teach you what you need to know"
style that forces artificial timelines, constant evaluations and
labels children that aren't "productive" or "achieving" some
artificially-imposed curriculum that teaches task-oriented behavior -
not higher levels of thinking.

What kind of students does this style yield? Sometime in high
school or college - after 10-12 years of task-oriented classwork -
professors/teachers sigh in disdain over students who cannot
think "outside the box" and "make connections" and "explore and
evaluate ideas"!! Is this no surprise???? They have been conditioned
otherwise for so many years. And what is the answer that government
comes up with? More testing, more evaluations and the likes of No
Child Left Behind. The government tells schools that if they want
money, they had better have high test scores. So schools have
learned that they must teach students how to get right answers on
tests - task oriented behavior.

The world is not in a shortage of people to perfom task-oriented
jobs. The world is in shortage of great thinkers. Task-oriented
people require directions and step-by-step instructions before they
can proceed (or dare to proceed, even then with fear). Thinkers look
for connections and reason their way to problem solving. They may
not want to "go from A to B" without more information. They may need
information on C, D, E, F and a host of other details to form their
big picture analysis, and then decide that going from A to B is (or
perhaps is not) the answer!

My son is intelligent. Quite so! He does not need an IEP or special
education - when the truth is he is thinking on a higher level that
what is required! He sees connections and has deep insight into a
lot of things. Maybe not everything, but who does? He does math
perfectly well with shells on the beach. He reads books that
interest him just fine, with nearly perfect phonetics and lively
inflection. He can memorize things that interest him, including
sequences. Standardized tests do not reveal these things. My son is
like a rare, beautiful plant -- he does not grow anywhere, in any
light, in any soil, like common plants do -- he needs the right
cultivating conditions, and then he grows in ways that amaze us all.

My son is excited about homeschooling. But he needs to
be "deschooled" for a while (new terminology I'm learning) to shake
off the paradigms that didn't work in the classroom and identities
that do not belong to him. I had absolute confirmation that my
decision was right when he came into our bedroom one night, after he
had been put to bed for a while, carrying a brand new folder he
found in his bookshelf. He announced, "This can be my
new "Unfinished Work" folder for home!" I hugged him and
said, "Hunny, we do not need an Unfinished Work folder at all." He
was confused, as this wretched folder that has caused us to much
grief at school has become part of his identity. The shame of it!

I joked with my husband that maybe we should have an ceremonial
burning of it --- and throw in the "star chart" too. I want my child
to learn because he loves to learn. Learning should be the reward in
itself. If he has to feign interest in something to earn a star on
his chart - what is the point of that? Has any real learning taken
place? Why are math, science, literature and art separate subjects
that are approached as solitary domains? No wonder students sigh and
say, "I'll never use this stuff." It is no surprise.

We're off on a fantastic, adventuresome journey of sailing (physics
of the wind), making paper airplanes, IMAX films, museums, turtle
watching, shell collecting - whatever catches our interest. We will
find glory in the integrated, whole life approach to math, science,
literature and art. We are abandoning who the public school thinks
we are and what we should know and are reaching for the skies………..