Photo Credit: earthporm.com
Questions
from parents about gaps in education, socialization, and learning how to do
things one doesn’t want to do come at me all the time, and it’s difficult in
the moment to remember that unschooling isn’t about those things, because those
things happen when people are in school too.
So many of us don’t have a firm grasp on world geography and political
boundaries and world history. So many of
us have known some “weird” or “unsocial” kids in school and have tried
desperately to cover any weirdness in ourselves so we would “fit in.” Many of us know people who, despite all their
public school training, still cannot seem to just do as they are told or obey
the laws of the land. The point is that public
school didn’t save them from themselves.
If anything, it distracted them from being themselves, so that they had
to spend years finding themselves after school.
While
unschooling, for our family, is a healthy way to raise our children and enjoy
our lives together, sometimes I have to remind myself of what it’s not. It’s not a guaranteed way for our kids to
“get ahead” in a world where the corporate version of success rules. It’s not a backdoor ticket into college or a
good paying job, or even of any form of satisfaction later on in life. It also isn’t a cure for abusive parenting or
poverty.
But
school isn’t any of these things either.
Some might argue that schools provide free food for children and can
help them get out of an abusive home life, but the child who needs the food at
school still goes home to poverty and the child who is taken away from abusive
parents is put into a system that may or may not be much better.
Some
teachers have addressed the social inequality issue with unschooling by telling
me I should keep my kids in school for the benefit of those kids who have no
choice but to stay. I had to tell them
that my kid was bad at doing school;
he wasn’t helping the other kids, except for being on the bottom of the bell
curve. I never believed that putting my
kids through school would solve these problems, but I’ve been troubled by the
fact that homeschooling, and especially unschooling, doesn’t seem to make room
for those already marginalized by the existing systems in place.
In
addressing implications for educators, I would say that educators need to pay
attention to the children in their care and do what they believe to be the best
for those children. They need to be a
voice to and for parents - communicating the consequences of federal mandates
on the classroom culture and standing up against unjust laws for parents who
don’t have the time or resources otherwise.
Teachers can be a pivot point, a gate keeper, protecting children from
federal mandates that are detrimental to their development and only serve the
institution. We’ve all been led to
believe that we need to fit into the system as it exists to do well, but if all
we do is work to fit into the system, there’s no one who can think about
changing it. So we work and work and
work, many work full time and still need food stamps, many work second jobs to
“stay afloat” – fitting into the system
isn’t working anymore, the system needs to change. And it seems like school is just another way
to feed people into this system. Of
course, it was designed for that, but democracy requires that we question the
system, and make it work for the people. Sometimes I think of our unschooling as a weed
tree sprouting in the concrete. It’s not
much to look at now, but in time it will grow big enough to provide shade and
hope to other families looking for a different way.
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