Posted by gwendolyn on April 21, 2004 at 05:04 PM

What I Have Always Known

I am up, once again, in the wee hours of the night. Fueled by caffeine, a cool breeze, and the profound effect reading works by John Holt and John Taylor Gatto has on me. I realize, after any amount of trying to conform to someone else's ideals, that the reason I don't fit into this already highly controversial band of nonconformists is because unlike these other people who are already on the outskirts of the social norm and who are all in search of a better set of books, a better form of teaching, a better set of facts to feed to their children, I am in an even more controversial band of nonconformists that lies somewhere even beyond that band.

In times of self doubt and anxiety this is a real cause for panic for me. However, like tonight, during times of clarity and resolution, I am happy that I understand Unschooling's true agenda and now accept with a great deal of finality that this is what it is all about for us. There is an underlying and perfectly valid reason we continually fail to get any sort of curriculum under way. By doing so we kill everything we are fighting to promote and nurture.

I resolve to not let myself ever be influenced again by anything other than what I know is right in my heart and in my own head. I see it every day, the way natural learning takes place and how even I struggle daily not to twist it and turn it into something false and undermining for the sake of feeling I am doing my job or for providing some unknown oppressor with proof that education is taking place here.

It is so easy when you have been hit as a child to hit as a parent. It is as if instinctively you react the same way you were treated and then quickly try to justify it to make yourself feel better when you know it was completely wrong. It takes daily practice and patience and evaluation of my own actions and mistakes and how it shapes the relationships with my children to build that strength and break that cycle. It takes the same diligence to understand and trust my children and avoiding the pitfalls that squash that process in my children. It takes huge amounts of patience, courage and trust. It also takes a great deal of acceptance.

The reason I feel myself growing even more confident in my beliefs about children and learning is that I spend a great deal of time thinking about the different ways we approach learning versus teaching and what the outcome might be in the long run should I let them progress on their own as opposed to pushing them. I see very clearly now all of the ways that my children have been successful with unschooling that I hadn't considered since our homeschooling journey began.

Reading the observations John Holt writes about the children he spent so much time with makes me look at my own children with careful observation, it helps me realize where and when I need to be active and when I need to just let things take their course. I am learning so much about not getting in the way and it is proving to be right on the mark.

I see my oldest struggling to figure out what exactly it is he is supposed to be doing while I am on the sidelines sending him all kinds of confusing messages in the last few years about what exactly he should be doing with his time. No wonder he takes ten steps forward and then five steps back all of the time! I really have got to show him that I have every faith in him because I honestly do. You cannot straddle the fence on this. You either believe in them wholeheartedly or you don't. You either trust them as whole people or you don't. Other people's beliefs have influenced my confusion about what it is my role should be with my children during this whole process. Those that don't believe in child-led learning are quick to tell you that you need to take control of the situation and that you are going to fail them if you do not. I have let those people intimidate me in the past. That is my shortcoming, not his. It won't happen again.

Then I see my younger two who are living proof of everything I believe in because they are not restricted in any way by any curriculum or formal setting and they are two of the most curious and ambitious girls I know, amazingly enough because I have left them to their own agendas while trying to figure out what to do about my oldest.

I have not made the mistakes with them by spoiling their education with schooling. They are very much in charge and doing just fine. In fact, my four year old explained to everyone during breakfast this morning that when mommy says "Not literally" that she means "not really" which I found extremely interesting and then mentally patted myself on the back for never really rearranging how I word things to dumb them down. If I use words they don't know then I leave it up to them to decide how important the meaning is to them. If they want definitions I oblige, otherwise, I never even give it a thought. The fact that she felt the need to clarify it for anyone in the room she thought might not understand totally cracked me up.