I think my most recent "we haven't done any school in two weeks" panic attack that hit me yesterday comes entirely from the lack of lists of page numbers and lessons covered for the time period. However, it has nothing to do with any personal feeling that we did nothing educational for two weeks. If I honestly felt that we hadn't done anything worthy of being called "educational" in the past two weeks of chaos, then I don't deserve to be a homeschooling mom. The trick I need to learn is how to log life in a way that will suffice. These people who judge us, they don't hold much stock in the idea that life is, in fact, full of lessons.I have to make lists to prove it. It so sucketh.

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly."

--Albert Einstein

Posted by gwendolyn on December 01, 2001 at 03:26 PM