Luz Shosie and Ned Vare

on 8/11/02 11:53 AM, [email protected] at
[email protected] wrote:

Elissa asks:
> SO Ned,
> What do you want US to do?

Ned responds:
What has happened has been a crescendo of ill feelings, mostly triggered
this past week by the flap over the Bryants. For my seemingly simple plea
that they be treated as people whose reasonable rights were (are) being
trampled, I was amazed at the reaction. I can't believe that hsers could
feel the way we've had expressed here. Blame the victims! is what I
hear...they brought the problem upon themselves. I can't buy that. But, sad
to say, a similar attitude has existed in CT for many years.

My hope is that everyone know his/her rights -- not just the ones permitted
by the government of your state, but those you are born with and cannot be
infringed by any laws. Start with how you want to live your life. If you're
content to obey the big one -- "do unto others.." -- then it seems to me
that no one has the right to force you to do anything against your will,
ever.

I want you to express your freedom, if you have time for that. If your state
doesn't give you freedom to live as you'd like, something is wrong, and I
hope you will help change it so that your kid and mine will live in more
freedom than we have, and under less of a threat.

I admit that I see things through political lenses. We live according to
laws. If those laws restrict us unnecessarily or onerously, then they are
bad, and we need to change them. If someone can tell me that there is a
large group in MA that is helping the Bryants so that all homeschoolers in
the state will have easier, less hassled lives, I would be pleased.

As for unschooling, the big trick for many parents is learning not to
believe that your child needs schooling as you remember it. I did not
realize until I was about 40 that I had had a miserable time in school. All
that time, from varios influences and explicit teaching, I believed that I
had enjoyed school.

Only with the perspective of time was I able to realize how limited my life
had been. Luckily for me, my school had a good program of sports, and I was
intimately involved in those. It was the UNschooling at school that gave me
the feeling that I was enjoying the whole thing. I can say with total
conviction that I learned almost nothing from the schooling, but everything
important from the sports, the clubs, the trips, the singing (choir and
chorus), times spent in casual conversation with teachers, etc. Here's the
catch for homeschoolers: All of that good stuff is available, full time,
outside of schools. Don't ever believe that your kid is missing something.

Give the children the advantage they have by not being in schools. Give your
children access to people doing real things. Do you need examples. I don't
think so, but take your kid places. It doesn't need to be far. Walk, and
get in the habit of talking to people who are doing what they're interested
in...the shopkeeper, the butcher, the mechanic, reporters, etc. They will
love your attentions, and your kid will take it all in and participate.

John Gatto talks about real learning. He tells us that we need to learn real
stuff. He believes that learning to build a house is urgent business, and
learning to build a proper boat, and knowing how to make good clothes, and
grow good food are essential knowledge. I agree. John Gatto says that if a
person doesn't know how to perform essential functions of living, such as at
least a few of the above, then that person has no business teaching his kid.
Most teachers have no clue about the above, and the world outside the school
house walls scares them. I was married to one, briefly.

What I want you to do is the same I want for the children. To start living
your real life, not the one you think you are expected to live. I see the
two as vastly different for many people. The Sudbury Valley School has a
graduation policy: You can graduate any time you feel you are ready. I think
kids should start their lives whenever they want to. Mine took charge very
well, at age four. We gave him the reins, so to speak. We did the feeding
and some grooming. All he needed was our trust.

Today's life is synthetic. Many people feel the need to do crazy things
just to feel alive. I've been lucky in having had a varied life so far. I'm
68. Training and work designing lots of people's houses, private school
teaching -- most subjects, most grades, professional skiing and golf,
farmer, contractor, store owner, antique dealer, elected office holder,
wrote two books, published both, more. I can ride a horse, sail a boat, fly
a small plane, build a house, play three instruments poorly, make tv
programs twice a month. None of the above was learned in school. I did study
architecture, but I had to learn the real stuff after grad school. I wasted
forever in school.

What I want you to do is to believe in yourselves, not wait for anyone to
say it's OK to do something.

A great example of what we need to overcome is the belief that things are
difficult and that we can't do them without experts telling us how.

I was asked to teach school at some friends' school. I can't believe my
first reaction, "Oh, I don't know how." After 18 years in classrooms,
imaging feeling I couldn't teach 2nd grade. They handed me the book,
Teacher, by Sylvia Aston Warner, the New Zealander (whom I met years later
in Colorado where I was living and she came to teach in a school I helped
start) and the next morning I was perfectly prepared to teach school. We had
a ball, too, and I felt like most teachers do -- I was doing something
terribly important, blablabla. Nonsense. It was prison for them and for me.
My work was making it sufferable, because not going through it in those
days, was un-imaginable.

Today we know better. Just do it. Learn as you go. Start in the middle.
Nothing is hard to do, if you want to do it.

All of the above is dangerous advice, too. I don't care. I want you to live
-- if you want to. I am on the side of individuals, not institutions or
groups. I want individuals to take advantage of the freedoms we are all born
with in this country.

Luz and I have had two encounters recently that are significant. One, with a
woman from Taiwan. We met because of our website and she phoned me two
months ago and that convinced her to come here. She has friends in RI and so
it was not far to visit our home with her wonderful 9yo son. They are the
leaders of the homeschooling group in Taiwan. that country is considering
making Hsing illegal, but she is leading the fight to keep it legal.
Imagine, this tiny oriental woman, standing like the student in front of
that Chinese tank, fighting the Taiwan government, almost single-handedly.

The other was in Germany. Our unschooled now college grad son was traveling
in Germany a month ago when a woman emailed us from Dusseldorf about
homeschooling. It is illegal there, but she was planning to move to Canada
so she could homeschool her now 4yo boy. We gave her our son's email
address and she contacted him in Berlin and he took the train across Germany
and spent two days with her little family. Her first homeschooler, and he
was most impressive to her.

I am saddened that on opposite sides of the world, there are modern
governments, and so many people here too, that are opposed to letting their
citizens exercise freedom of education.

Ned Vare
If you want to unschool your kid, you need to unschool yourself first.