Monday, November 3, 2008

Collections

Kids and Collecting are inseparable. I am sure of it. Having watched this curious habit take place in my own house for the last 14 years, I am still at a loss as to why it happens and what purpose it serves, long after the collections themselves have been forgotten.

Well actually I cannot say that I am at a complete loss, because I remember doing this myself when I was young. Piles of objects in cans or on tables were often an irresistable invitation to investigate thoroughly and separate each object carefully into sizes, shapes, colors, and functions. BUTTONS were an especially alluring treasure now that I remember them, and there was nothing more luxurious than plowing your fingers through each and every one and taking hours upon hours to sort the lot out.

The kids have been impassioned collectors of everything for as long as I can remember. Various choices that come to mind have included 'normal' things such as baseball cards, Pokemon cards, action figures, matchboxes, Legos, and series books, but some of the crazier things have also included walking sticks, dead bees, license plates, antique meat grinders, property line tape and markers, old VCRs, and wooden fisherman buoys, LOL.

I am pretty sure I know why they do it, or why any person must choose to hoard anything without a serious reason. Collecting and quantifying an object is an attempt to collect and quantify the world. Organizing something and putting it into a category is an incredibly sensible way of deriving meaning from a world that is complicated and confused, and it even helps exert a little bit of control over it. It is grounds for hysteria that the educational standard in New York puts such a heavy emphasis on 'teaching' kids to categorize objects, because no child has ever needed instruction to do something that is so innate and natural.


This Saturday we cut down a tree in the front yard. Once the guys with the chainsaws left, the kids moseyed on over to carefully survey the scene. After one or two moments of studied silence, Keith suddenly said "Quick. We need sawdust!" He ran into the house and took a ziploc storage bag out of the pantry, and banged out the front door again. In another minute he ran back in, grabbed a Sharpie from the jar by the phone and ran off yet again. A couple of minutes later he returned with a full plastic bag that was neatly labeled, 'Sawdust'.

Now the other guys got the idea, and decided that one bag of anything could not possibly be enough. They took the baggie box out the door and began to collect twigs and pieces of bark, separating them carefully and labeling them legibly. At this point, a full-fledged search began as the potential of this project was realized, and backpacks were dug out of closets, sandwiches packed, and markers, tools, bags, and compasses were thrown into the bag along with assorted, unrelated stuff. Each kid grabbed his favorite walking stick (bunched in a pile from an earlier collection), and set off into the woods towards the pond.

An hour (or maybe more) later, they came back home with this:



Included with what they found were cattails, leaves, fungus, milkweed, and an assortment of other objects, some of which were too big to fit into any old ziploc.

There was a bunch of----



and some carefully stored-----


And this, my absolute, ABSOLUTE favorite, a stroke of genius by any stretch of the imagination IMO! :-D



And closer still--------




I don't have any idea what the kids will eventually do with any of this. I'm sure they don't either. The point of it, and the point of anything that children seem to do in my honest opinion, is that it is not the result that matters, but the process that gets us there. Things were learned this day that would have pleased and impressed an academic, but I am sure that their reasons had nothing to do with educational skill. A child without fear needs no reason to do anything, because learning is as natural as breathing. We could all do with taking lessons from collectors, especially the young ones:).


Friday, August 15, 2008

Where Have All the Children Gone?

There was a time in the past when all a child had to do to find a playmate was open the front door and walk out. Not everyone lived in close neighborhoods, of course, but even those who lived in the more remote places could usually count on 2-3 other kids living nearby that they could wander off to impulsively and visit. In the country neighborhood I grew up in, kids could always be found playing, visiting one another, plotting adventures and escapades, and building imaginative new things. Some of the most fun (funnest?:)) things I remember included treehouses, wood forts, lemonade stands, bike rides on the street and trails in the woods, stone stepping and skipping, on ponds and over streams. Once I remember some kids down the street putting on a 'kid carnival', setting up games and activities that each cost a dime but that always resulted in fabulous prizes that nullified the profits completely. Not an adult was ever in sight, and everything was organized, planned, initiated, and finished solely by children from dawn until dusk:).

In today's world, there is a different scenario that plays itself out in towns and cities. The life after school and in summer that kids used to call their own with no interference from prying adults was long ago terminated in favor of more structured, 'beneficial' play, more organized 'enrichment', more competitive sports, and upscale daycare that leaves no stone unturned in their quest for the perfect child . Gone are the days when a child would come home from a stressful day at school, throw his/her books on the bed, change into playclothes, and run out to see who could play that day. Nowadays they are lucky to get home before dark, often with fast food suppers on the way home and 2-3 hrs. worth of homework waiting for them before bed. That all important 'Socialization' that we homeschoolers hear of so much that is viewed as the advantage of formal education is utterly suppressed in these children, only because there is no longer time to do what every child since the beginning has done---play and play some more.

Our kids have some sports that they play, and they have activities that they attend when they want to. For the most part, these things are done only because they enjoy them, and because they wanted to try something new and participate. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view:)), we do not have the money to enroll our kids in a multitude of different classes. If there is something they love and really want to get involved in, then we think hard and figure out a solution, but most of the time they are left to their own devices and their own imaginations, just as we once were:).

Today the boys found a new friend in the house next door. They played this afternoon while I washed the dishes, folded the laundry, and took care of the things that I needed to do. I kept an ear to what was happening, as usual, but never interfered with what they were doing because that was their time and not mine. I hovered near the edge of their world as my mother, her mother, and all the mothers that came before us have always done, trusting them to do what was right and become social, well-adjusted human beings (with or without our enrichment:-).

Friday, May 16, 2008

Quotes and Free Thinkers

Here are a few more wonderful quotes having to do with education (or just life in general as it pertains to what education really is). It is not enough to walk blindly through life accepting limitations that are imposed on us in the public school anymore. It is becoming more and more necessary to break through convention and allow children to express their talents so that they will know what to do when the consequence of past human action comes crashing down on us (which it most certainly will at some point). It does not behoove us in this day and age to raise conformists. The hope of the future depends on original solutions and unrestrained intellect like it never has before, and there is no way to create true thinkers other than trusting children to be in charge of their own learning. The philosophers of the past understood this very well because they were free thinking, non-conformists themselves. As a result, their words ring as true today as they did tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years ago...


Valuable achievement can sprout from human society only when it is sufficiently loosened to make possible the free development of an individual's abilities--Albert Einstein

The heart has eyes that the brain knows nothing of--Charles H. Parkhurst

Nothing in this world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come--Victor Hugo

A good education is not so much one which prepares a man to succeed in the world, as one which enables him to sustain a failure.--Bernard Iddings Bell Chaplain

J.M. Barrie - - I am not young enough to know everything

Ansel Adams - - Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.

Aristotle - - it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Sir Francis Bacon - - They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
Plato (BC 427-BC 347) Greek philosopher.


You cannot teach a crab to walk straight-- Aristophenes

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Farm Life

Here in our family we live on a small 'farm', or what might more properly be termed a 'farmstead'. We do not own any large livestock or have the land to support large numbers of animals, but we do have a rather good-sized chicken flock that is kept for meat and eggs, a large herd of French Angora rabbits who provide meat and a small income from stock sales and wool, and a large, 1/2 acre vegetable/fruit/& herb garden. In addition to this we have a sizable orchard of apples, pears, plums, and peaches, and all in all we keep very busy cleaning, maintaining and breeding animals, weeding, harvesting, preserving, and planting. There may be pigs in our future someday around here too, but for now that is a ways away yet, and will only happen after we can build an enclosure to keep them safe from the bears:).



Farm animals (and gardens) are not only a great way to save money and control the quality of your family's food, but they are also of infinite value in teaching children the cycle of life and, most important of all, the principle of cause and effect.



Cause and effect means precisely what it sounds like, which is to say that the cause of something on one end invariably produces an effect (or consequence) on the other. From the very youngest age children have a perfect understanding of this principle. They know from infancy that when they cry, someone will feed them and attend to their needs. When they become older and decide to snatch their siblings' toys away, there are definitive consequences for that too:). The beauty of life on a farm is that the rule of cause and effect is an absolute, ever present force. It pervades every facet of the working family's existence, and without this symbiotic relationship that exists between animals and their owners, neither can produce or survive.



One of the reasons kids love farms so much is because they are so delightfully easy to understand. An animal is provided with food, water, and shelter, and it return it provides us with meat, eggs, milk, or fiber to spin. Seeds are planted in the ground, they are watered, weeded, and protected, and after a few suspenseful weeks there is food on the table to show for your efforts. Farming is a lifestyle that is so concrete and perfectly balanced, that children gravitate to it naturally as an extension of their own experience with the world.



We have seen many, many homeschoolers embrace the idea of growing food and raising livestock, but there is an alarmingly large number who also shun the idea of exposing their children to some of the 'darker' sides of farm life---which necessarily include sickness and death.



Of course, the ultimate 'cause and effect' principle is life and death. Whether you butcher your own animals or they sicken and die through one circumstance or another (as happens on every farm regardless of living conditions), it is important for children to see death as the natural outcome of life whether it occurs naturally or as a result of human effort. When the boys were small we carried on our work of raising and butchering chickens and rabbits. If they chose to be present during the culling they were certainly allowed, but if they didn't they were never forced. Over the years we also lost many housepets (dogs and cats, etc. who died of old age), but even though the kids were always sad at the loss of their pets, they never panicked or became overly distraught. I believe this was because they had an understanding of death as the natural effect of life, and there was no opportunity to develop irrational fears of the process.



The society we live in has an almost schizophrenic fear of death:(. Every day we hear of new products and research that promise to stop us from aging, keep us young and alert, and extend our lives no matter how ill, worn out, or compromised we have become. The refreshing thing about life on a farm is that events must be accepted regardless of how they come, and the emphasis on quality of life vastly overshadows the question of how it will end. This is a good way to look at the world, and a pretty nice way to grow up:).



Here is (an unfortunately dark!) photo of the chicks we ordered from the hatchery this spring to replenish our laying flock. Take a close look. Aren't they just the cutest darn things?:) Included in this batch are hens (and 1-2 roosters) of every possible description, a group we put together of the most endangered heritage breeds we could find. From a geographical standpoint it is interesting to point out to the kids that each of these breeds originated in different countries. This year we ordered breeds from Spain, Italy, Egypt, and a variety of other places. No doubt the yard is going to look seriously colorful come Fall.

Anonymom:)















Sunday, April 27, 2008

Writing With Purpose

My oldest son never much cared for writing. Like so many boys in homes and schools across the world since time has begun, my son declared that while writing was something potentially useful in certain situations, it should not under any circumstances be embarked upon without a vital clear purpose and motivation of intent. In other words, there is no reason in the world why any child with zillions of more important things to do like wading in streams, reading comic books, and playing with tinker toys should ever be prevailed upon to take time out of his schedule for things such as rote copying or report writing. There is way too much to do in the course of a day, and life is just too darn short.

Brandon was a reader from the time he was young and has loved books passionately since the day of his birth. Every chance he ever got to listen to a story or find books on a subject that interested him were almost religiously followed up on, and he was one of those kids who just woke up reading one day without anyone ever showing him how to do it. He was (and is) a voracious reader, but his attitude toward writing was the complete and total antithesis of voraciousness, and astonishingly enough he never got the slightest inclination to do it. The only evidence I had that he even knew how to write came every Christmas when it became 'necessary' for him to write an extensive list of requested toys at the risk of something getting overlooked. In these situations, he miraculously sat down and churned out 3-4 page long descriptive toy lists with next to no effort in near-perfect penmanship. I was aghast.

I witnessed this phenomenon several times before realizing that there was a harsh and vital truth behind the idea that children need a reason to learn. Without a purpose for every element of skill that takes place in a person's life there is just no way that 'lifelong' learning is remotely possible. It is a wasted pipe dream at best. Even worse, everything that the tax-funded establishments spend years teaching kids around here is promptly forgotten the moment a child walks out the door in 9 out of 10 instances. Why? Because it does not serve the purpose of the learner at that time. Education is more a matter of timing than anything else in the world:(.

Something interesting I have noted lately, is that a child will never lose face in the event of a forced activity. Rather than subjugate him/herself to a higher authority and risk losing his (or her) identity entirely, kids will revolt in ways that are incredibly, logistically brilliant. They daydream, they fail to apply themselves, they misbehave accidentally and on purpose, they become downright disruptive, and most brilliantly of all, they simply forget what was taught as soon as it is no longer necessary to remember it. Are these marvelous examples of creative non-compliance, or what? It's very simple when you think about it. The human spirit refuses to be broken, and refusal takes all forms from babyhood to adulthood. No child will allow herself to be shoved and humiliated without mounting some sort of defense. Should we be surprised that kids revolt in school nowadays? It has nothing to do with peer pressure and course materials. It is purely an act of self-preservation:(.

Back to the writing issue. I decided that since no one can stop the flow of the ocean after all it was better to run with the tide than against it. Suddenly, at the age of 13, my darling son found a group of kids who shared many of the same interests and used email to communicate their battling monster/hero gangster swordsmanship scenario sequences every day. Suddenly, the boy who never wrote was whipping off page after page of questions, comments, opinions, and discussion points with textbook grammar usage, standard spelling, and shockingly creative expression. I spent weeks in a state of astonishment at the volume of material that was pouring out of him, and I realize now that my years of worrying and wondering were all in vain, and that the ability of Brandon to express himself perfectly resided in him all the time waiting for the right time, the right place, and the right purpose.

So this is what unschooling is all about, in my opinion. Free-schooling also. And even the movement of homeschooling in general. We are born with inherent tools and timetables, and all the instincts need is a little time, space, and self-motivation to develop. We as adults cannot force these issues. We cannot bestow tools that do not exist or force a talent to surface before development dictates that it should. All the cleverness in the world will not bring a horse to water if it does not want to drink. It has to need to drink.

In my opinion the most important thing we can do for any kid is not to teach them skills. It is to have perfect faith in their ability to unfold. No one knows what a person will do later in their lives. No one can see the future or find a way to tailor education to individual destinies if no one has the remotest idea of what those destinies will be. Self determination is the only hope for reaching adulthood intact and becoming mature, self-actualized human beings. That must be the future of education as we know it.

More streams of consciousness next week (with luck....:^),

Anonymom:)

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Honesty

Honesty seems like the simplest concept in the world when you think about it. It means, in the most basic sense, 'abstaining from telling lies'.

Lies are not always terrible things when we tell them to protect someone else, or to spare a person pain that would not have benefitted them, that could only have made things worse, etc. These types of lies are known as 'white lies', and everyone in the world has told one at one time or another for any number of reasons. 'Honesty' as we know it does not usually mean the exclusion of 'white' lies, but the absence of a much more important kind of falsehood----the lies that we tell to ourselves.

Where children are concerned, honesty is of the utmost importance. When we say 'honesty', we should not include occasionally shielding a child from events that may be too upsetting and abstract to bear (for ex. exposure to rude or offensive adults, x-rated internet content and pathological situations, etc.), but it is of paramount importance to answer the serious questions that children ask at all times, no matter what.

The adult track record for honesty is admittedly horrendous, and probably has been since the beginning of time, LOL. Some of the worst examples of lying to children (IMO) are listed below:

1) A child asks, "Mommy, why does it thunder?", and the parent replies, "Because God is bowling". Answers like this to basic questions seem harmless and even humorous at times, but they definitely fall into the category of dishonesty because an adult has deliberately misled a child who has asked for a specific explanation to something. It also assumes that the child is not capable of understanding a scientific answer (or how the world works in general), and in this case there is no reason for failing to offer the explanation other than not wanting to expend the effort to supply a person with a detailed answer. There are situations in which stories like these are told in fun and that's wonderful, but the objectionable versions involve children being made fun of, with their intelligence deliberately being insulted on a basic level, and adults lying sheerly to get a laugh at the expense of someone young.

2) Ignoring or brushing off questions. A common tactic for avoiding unwanted questions is simply to push them off until a later date. For ex, the child asks, " What happens when you die?" and the parent answers, "We'll discuss that later". Of course, there sometimes is no time to discuss a subject of this magnitude at length, in which case "we'll discuss it later" is an honest response provided that someone actually does so at a later date. Unfortunately, answers like this can also be a shield that adults hold up to deflect questions that may be uncomfortable for them (putting a whole new spin on the subject and demanding more in the way of personal reflection).

A famous poet (who I forget the name of now), once said that the worst types of lies are not those we tell other people, they are the ones we tell ourselves. Dishonesty like this is the plague of child rearing, IMO. That kind of denial pervades not only families but public institutions of every description including those that handle our children. Schools are rife with dishonesty, teeming with manipulation that is almost impossible to believe. The worst untruths are those that tell a child that he will never amount to anything if he does not conform to rules and acquire skills and abilities by age-graded deadlines.

Children are honest to a fault, everyone knows this is true. The only time in all my years of working with them that I have ever seen them lie is when they are afraid or trying to protect someone they love. They see more clearly than any adult is capable of seeing, and their observations are often embarassingly on target as a result of this amazing clarity. If we as adults try to evade their honesty every chance we get, then there are issues at stake that need to be addressed immediately. The toughest part of raising kids (especially those being raised in less restrictive environments), is addressing our own fears so that we do not pass them onto our children.

The concept of honesty relates directly back to the idea of unschooling and free-schooling. Children who have been raised without deception do not have to spend years of their lives restoring themselves afterward. That original clarity remains intact, they are unafraid to address challenges, and there is no delay (or utter failure) to launch themselves later in life. An honest relationship is totally reciprocal, involving the willingness to fix ourselves before we even think about paving the way for our children.

A tough job, but we've all got to do it, LOL.


Anonymom:)

Monday, April 7, 2008

Summer Fun (to Come)

What the heck is this thing, do you think??

Funny you should ask. It's a 'Splongee Ball' (!!) that one of the boys concocted over the weekend:).




I admit this seemed like sort of a funny thing to make (except for the fact that it was loads of fun, which means that it wasn't funny at all:)) . According to the book Jonathan borrowed his instructions from, it's best use is outside in the summer, as a tool for radical, splash fight 'hoedowns'.

As everyone who raises boys (and probably girls too:)) knows, there is nothing quite so important every summer as staging the all-out, ultimate, championship water war. This conflict must be replete with water guns, hoses, water balloons, buckets, and a variety of other creative weapons employed solely for the use of soaking your opposition into submission. Each year there is an entirely new plan and much discussion about how everything will work ahead of time (with some incredibly sophisticated rules and pre-war strategies in place), and then as soon as it is hot enough to run around outside in soaking wet bathing suits (or regular clothes, as the case may be), the fun begins.

Jonathan found his book called, 'The Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions' by John E. Thomas and Danita Pagel, in the library. The wonderful thing about this book is that it makes project and craft ideas out of EXTREMELY cheap ingredients (perfect fodder for the single income HS family), and it is easy to understand the simple instructions for each project.

The 'Splongee Ball' project is located on pg. 24 and reads as follows:

What You Will Need:

-3 large sponges (use 3 different colored sponges) preferably nylon
-1 plastic cable tie
-Scissors

How To Concoct It:

1. Cut each sponge into thirds lengthwise
2. Stack the cut sponges on top of each other in three rows of three
3. Grab the stack of sponges in the center and twist the stack once.
4. Secure a plastic cable tie around the center of the twisted stack, pulling it as tightly as possible.
5. Trim the plastic cable tie down as close to the eye as possible.


Jonathan made his ball out of cellulose sponges because that was all his dad could find and because he was impatient to make it immediately. However, nylon ones would really be best because they stay soft and are easier to twist and tie (and as a bonus, come in lots of 'radical' colors:)).

It's a little early to think about summer yet, but once those triple H days roll around there is nothing better than to send everyone out with buckets of water and an arsenal of splongee balls to hurl across the yard at each other (while you position yourself somewhere w-a-a-a-y out of reach). They are cheap, fun, and best of all, indestructible!!

All the best,
Anonymom:)