Daring to Begin

I recently talked to some parents who were just trying homeschooling for the first time, specifically 'unschooling' one or more children in their homes. All of these mothers had babies and one or more toddlers approx. 2-3 years old, and all were extremely unsure of what they were doing. They were unsure of whether homeschooling/unschooling was something that they ought to be doing considering the current climate of hyper-accountability in schools, and many of them were just plain wondering if all this grief would really be worth it in the end.

I remember feeling exactly the same way years ago when we first began homeschooling. I remember having a child that was 4, one toddler that was 2, and another baby who was a few months old and in need of nursing 24/7 (or so it seemed at the time:)). I had already committed to homeschooling despite the fact that 'formal' education would not begin for several more years yet, and I remember my worst moment of uncertainty being when the kindergarten bus passed our house on the first day that my oldest would have started public school, and having to tell the bus driver not to stop because there would be no one here who would be getting on. As a person who had gone all the way through public schools, studied through college and teaching classes to get an education degree and then gone back to traditional school to go to work again, this was a defining moment that was literally fraught with terror. I knew down inside that I was doing the right thing, but the conditioning of early schooling is such that panic is almost a knee-jerk reaction in us, causing us to disregard what we know to be true in favor of what everyone else expects of us (school, teachers, parents, administrators, other kids, and so on).

The earliest days of homeschooling here were like what everyone else seems to describe. Very strict, very regimented, and very accountable. There were schedules, charts, word lists, and maps stuck to the walls, and I wanted very much to make it look as though there was serious 'school' stuff happening in our home and my children were not missing out on a blessed thing. Looking back now, none of those charts or schedules were for the childrens' benefit at all---they were solely and strictly for me. Those props were hanging up to reassure me, the 'trained' teacher, that my children were acquiring every possible skill from every known corner of the universe via 1000 different vantage points. They had nothing whatsoever to do with my kids or my kids' educations. They were purely and simply a product of my own fear.

Anyone who homeschools (or does anything outside the mainstream for that matter) should think alot about fear. It is the one thing, almost without fail, that clutches us all unconditionally and makes it virtually impossible for us to see the world clearly or find the brightest possible future for our children. A.S. Neill (and other pioneers like him) saw the danger in bestowing this kind of fear on children. He saw the limitations and handicaps it would evoke and realized that there was no going out into the world successfully unless a person could somehow manage to throw it away afterward. Since that is such a difficult thing to do, his solution was to create a place where it would be prevented from taking hold in the first place.

Most of us who have been weaned on conventional educational systems understand fear well. We spend 10-20 years after school is finished trying to shed what has been thrust upon us in favor of who we really are and what we truly believe in. Even if we should manage to slip the chains (and practically speaking, most of us never do), we will still have our moments of sudden fear, panic, and the 'knee-jerk' reactions that occur where we are sure we have done something that is about to get us in trouble with someone somewhere.

I believe that it is this innate fear that stops us from trusting our children, that makes us fortify each experience with thousands of theories, walls, and safety nets. Simply put, we don't trust kids because we don't trust ourselves. Our FIRST duty as homeschool (unschool, or free-school) parents, is to examine our own insecurities and lay them to rest in order to give our children a more confident future. There is no other way to 'slay' this beast:(.

Last of all, homeschooling is a 'process-oriented' approach. This means simply that trying DOES matter, and every little step you take benefits a child in some way, though perfection will never be attainable (Thank Goodness:)).




Anonymom