Will you be like this until you die or I die?
arun on Feb 10 2007 at 3:29 pm | Filed under: education, unschooling | Click here to go HOME | or find out about SUBSCRIBING TO THE PIT |
That was the question from our now 5 year old daughter yesterday. She had just heard children talking about school. She asked, “will I ever have to go to school? Even when I am eleven?” (it’s always eleven… its her favourite number).
We explained that she never would. She has been asking more questions about how school works and other families work particularly in terms of discipline and rules. Our shift to radical unschooling was quite a conscious one that we had been discussing with her, particularly in terms of the sort of family we all wanted and how we wanted to live together.
A while ago she listened to a cousin who is now 6 years old… in real sadness he explained how often during school they can’t speak. “We can’t even say ‘ah’”, he told our daughter. She asked us more questions about school and our experience of it. We found ourselves trying to explain that some people enjoy school and relating positive stories to give her a rounded view of it. We talked about one of her Aunty’s who is wonderful with kids and invests a lot of love and energy into her job.
In answer to her questions we tried to explain what happens in a class, about having a group of children and one adult, and yes you did have to remain quiet at times, that there would be a range of things to do but the teacher would work out when you could do them, then in relation to a story of my childhood trying to explain the concept of ‘tests’ (took a while), let alone why children could not just ignore the teacher, walk out and do what you want… its another world really!
She was also curious about teaching and what they teach you at school. We explained that we wanted to support her learning and we knew that any of us could learn what ever we wanted if we wanted. She said she might want to learn to play the saxophone and our conversation took a detour.
Amidst these discussions she asked, “Will you be like this until you die or I die?” We knew what she meant… she wanted to feel safe in our decision and we told her of course. She smiled and went to play on the beach with some of her homeschooled friends.
