These things I believe with all my heart:
~As a society we over-educate too-young children.
~Children, for the most part, have the natural capacity to learn, they merely need the tools, the guidance, and the patience.
~Education is important, but not so important we forget the rest of life.
On the first point, the Waldorfs and many unschoolers, probably, agree. Childhood is precious and short and it should be valued deeply. There are few toys in mainstream stores these days that simply allow babies and preschoolers to just enjoy life – they all have to teach something. There are no stories for the sake of stories anymore – even the ones not focused on letters, are pushing morality – not that I am against morality. They just canceled Reading Rainbow, essentially, because it is no longer considered valuable to expose a child to literature; instead children’s programming must focus on the mechanics of reading. It’s not unlike a punch in the stomach.
This is not to say I am against all these things in moderation – we have Leap Frog toys, watch PBS Kids, and we love these things (but not Barney – Mommy doesn’t like Barney). And I feel these sources probably played a role in how well my kids know how to read. But we also read to them. Everything from Dr. Seuss to Beatrix Potter to Blue’s Clues stories to Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh.
In an ideal world, we probably would stick to classic literature and read it down by the stream while eating organic apples. But this is not an ideal world and we enjoy it, all the same.
My daughter is what we call spirited and she told me without so many words that she was simply not ready for formal education at the preschool or kindergarten level. We sometimes would try a curriculum here or an idea there, but ultimately always returned to unschooling. And she absolutely thrived. Slowly, in the last two years, I have seen her moving towards ready for formality. She is seven and we are this year moving into something where we sit down daily for a couple of hours and work in books and on papers. So far, we are only one week in, but I feel like this is the right time for this – she has responded well and I am excited to see it.
My son, on the other hand, I think might be ready for formality a little earlier than she (and then again, maybe not) because I imagine him to have a brain more like an engineer’s.
In any case, I feel that to not respect the sort of brain a child has is dangerous. I fear that forcing or pushing too hard will break something within them and make learning either not enjoyable or more difficult. I do not mean that a child, or a person, doesn’t need a nudge, a push, gently forward – we have done this before and I think there comes a time where this is necessary in everyone’s life. I intend to follow my instincts as to when to push and when not to.
My children have shown me countless times that I needn’t teach them anything much. My daughter reads grade levels above her own and my son is only four but can nearly read simple books without help now – I didn’t teach this to them. In fact I have no idea how they learned, really. Each time I become worried about not having reached a milestone, they jump ahead and not only are my worries alleviated, but my faith in the human mind is renewed.
At the same time, I feel like unschooling wasn’t working for us very well last year. It was becoming apparent to me that there were some holes in Margie’s learning and I was not comfortable with it. There were various reasons, but some of it was due to not nudging her when necessary. My close friend has a son so very like Margie in many ways and she recently wrote something that made Margie’s issues with spelling so clear to me:
He’s just a very fast reader and doesn’t have to decipher the code of phonics when he reads, so he doesn’t really think about how words go together or ever really had to sound a lot out so there is not a strong basis for spelling.
How very true. And so this year we are using a spelling workbook. Once she learns to spell, she will be much happier since she will be able to write her stories and notes and cards that she is constantly creating. And so I am insisting that she do this. And, frankly, there isn’t a lot of insisting because she is rather excited and cooperative about this. (Which is another sign she is ready.)
Having had the educational experience I did, I was left with a very low self-esteem in regards to scholarly matters. I considered myself stupid. As horrible as it sounds, it’s given me some blessings as well – I’ve learned that education isn’t everything, that being scholarly doesn’t make a person worthy. I can be just as successful, happy, blessed, smart and even educated as anyone with a college diploma. I would rather teach my kids to be well-rounded than to teach them that education is the only way to be successful.
I hear more and more about people who do something called “afterschooling” with their kids – like an education on top of public education. Except when the afterschooling is unschooly, I am really uncomfortable with the idea of adding yet more hours of education to a child’s day. I don’t believe in homework to begin with, and then for parents to add hours of memorizing on top of all that worries me – when do these kids get to be kids?
I don’t like the idea that certain things must be accomplished before a child hits a certain age – I do understand and respect that they may be more receptive to certain things at certain stages – but to imply a deadline is to instill a certain amount of fear in a parent, in my opinion. And I have spent too much of my life in fear – of grades, of religion, of many things. I refuse to go there. I also think that such thought discounts the awesomeness of the human brain. People are amazing and can learn anything they want at any time they want. It may be more work at certain points in life, but I refuse to turn schooling into a fight over things that really and truly can always be added in or changed later. Children – indeed, people – are amazing creatures with amazing capacities. Of all the knowledge in the world, I would hope that this is what underlies everything else in the minds of my children – that they can learn anything they decide to.
And so I hope to strike a balance between freedom to play, freedom to learn, and freedom created by gentle nudges as needed. I hope to support my children in their interests, and in return I expect them to cooperate in the few issues I feel are necessary to push on. I hope to teach them to love education and I hope they go to college (or whatever path leads them to a successful life). But I hope they learn to love so much more, too.
