Luísa´s group coming back from the beach. Not many schools offer a trip to the beach and to the botanical garden every week.
One aspect of a good school is the different people it can gather. Luckily, I find Luísa and myself immersed in an international environment again. There´s also some other good things that help a school be good, that I talked about in When schooling is good, it can be really awesome, and here I want to go deeper in the discussion I started back with To unschool or to not unschool?
Back in our home in Brazil, her cool kindergarten had all these international kids in the group.
Here in Costa Rica, we have an even smaller group, with only 9 children at the moment. The parents of the children here are from Germany, Austria, French Guiana, Holland, Italy, Argentina and Brazil (me), besides locals.
The teacher and assistants are from all parts of the world too and they have an interesting human soup there. The language immersion is happening, with the main teacher speaking English, the other Spanish and the young children full on with their non-verbal communication skills.
How about the title, don´t I think unschooling is better? How come I am keeping my daughter in a school?
Because at the moment, having a 3-year old around all the time is too intense for me, I can´t handle it in a nurturing way for 24-7. I also need help in educating her, in giving her the most basic values of cooperation and respect. Under my supervision only, I´m might be too indulgent, and we need a break from my behavior patterns. And hey, isn´t the mix of ages and cultures just lovely?
Besides, at her age, school is just a word to call where she is at for a few hours. They are not teaching her things that she sees no use in learning in batches of 40 minutes per subject. Instead, she is being helped to develop her motor skills, her social skills and to use natural materials, that´s completely different than school.
I do think unschooling will come to us with a bit more time
I feel greatly inspired when I can see unschoolers talking about their experience, like this Astra Taylor´s lecture on the unschooling life or when I follow blogs like Raising Miro and The Organic Sister and I´m reassured that unschooling is awesome and the way to do it.
Once you understand what is behind the creation of schools and know that they cannot teach our children anything about the professions that will be around in 10 years from now (because we can´t possibly know what that will be like yet) you tend to reject any school.
Right now though, we have a nice Waldorf kindergarten here in Costa Rica, where I can see the adults there working with full respect and admiration for the children (something uncommon in schools). And I guess there are some examples out there for older children, of democratic schools where the children decide on what they´ll learn and how.
Unschooling my daughter should happen in literally a couple of years. The funny thing is that back when I was pregnant and thought about taking Luísa with me on a long international trip one day, I thought that it had to be before she was six and ¨having to¨ learn to read and write.
Now, I feel that I need her in school only until she is around 6 or 7, and then I can take her out of school (if she wants to), so that she can discover when she is ready to learn to read and write or anything else that interests her in the order that it comes.
Unless I find a school that can provide her the freedom to be herself and learn what she feels like, in a child-led way, I´ll unschool her.
Not everyone has the luck that we do now, to have their child in such a nurturing place, that being a school. Most schools are out there to kill our children´s creativity. Schools are an invention of the industrial revolution, they are old now, they were designed to prepare children for the existing jobs around.
Watch this amazing talk about Why Schools Kill Creativity, by Sir Ken Robinson. This talk was made in 2006 and watched a few billion times already and there are more talks by him on the subject (warning: you can change your world view after meeting this man).
There is also the fact that schools were made to let the state control the minds of the population, I like how unschooled Jason Hunt said it in his interview: ¨I still love learning new things, and always will. I feel like my attitudes and ideals are completely self-developed, and I think I’ve been able to avoid, to some extent, some of the silly things in our culture – materialism, conformity, pre-defined notions of success (things that I think may be largely created by, and propagated by, school).¨
Independent thinking is absolutely discouraged in traditional schools, the system of punishment and rewards is mean, and making children memorize information when they now have everything at the tip of their fingers is completely obsolete. Children are way ahead of us in the explosion of information and free learning available. For how long more will parents let the traditional schools squash their children´s ability to learn better and in their own way?
I can´t wait to see a mass of parents join the homeschooling-unschooling community, choose carefully any school, kindergarten or nursing home for their children with full awareness of what this all mean.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I understand what it feels like to be a single parent to a toddler and totally applaud your honesty. Yep, it’s intense. Miro was in school until we left on our trip, 2 years ago. He first started out in Montessori school where he stayed through 2nd grade. He totally excelled because it was individualized learning. Also, it was the first time in his life he had a taste of disciplined schedule, which is something I never provided. He did great in that environment, made a ton of friends and learned so much since he was so hungry to learn. Afterwards, he spend 3rd & 4th at a public school in Los Angeles.There he was completely bored out of his mind. The class was so behind and covered what he already learned. He often times got called out because he’d read a book because he had already finished his class work and was asked to tutor the other children, which he resented, because it made him feel like a know-it-all. He said to me time and time again, if I have to go to school, why can’t I at least learn something.
I recently asked Peter Kowalke of unschooer.com if he thought unschooling is for every child, and he said, with a few exceptions and enthusiastic “yes!” Not all kids are in Miro’s situation, but I can see in our circumstances, how it was the best choice, even if we were not traveling.
I think our job as parents is to follow the needs of our children and encourage them to discover things on their own. But yes, the parent(s) need to be on board with that. Your sanity is definitely a big part of it..
http://www.raisingmiro.com/2010/12/30/podcast-episode-16/
Kudos to you for being open to your path!!!
I love this post!! I completely agree that school is purposely formulated to beat the individuality out of children. Take reading for example. From the moment kids learn to read, school tells them WHAT to read. There are required sets of books that must be read by every grade. This never made sense to me, even as a child. And this is exactly why I grew up HATING to read. Because it was forced and I had zero choice in the matter. And what is more, we are taught that there is one right interpretation of a book. Once I began questioning the authority I was taught not to question, I realized that my understanding of a piece of writing (or anything for that matter) is just as valuable as a professors. Now, in my 5th year of college (I’m twenty-two), I am still facing the same resistance to the list of “Required Reading” I must do for each semester.
Whenever I imagine my future and the children I might have, I certainly do not see them in traditional public school. I would rather them have a CHOICE in their own upbringing, because I think that breeds self-confidence and ultimately (and most importantly) happiness.
Kate, I so agree with what you said about reading. In fact, I just wrote a whole post about it for Monday. I hated being told what to read in school and in College, it takes away all the time you could spend reading about your own interests and learning much more about yourself. But this would make us all too different to sit in the same class, I guess…
I remember being so incredibly bored in school. I was smart, caught on quickly but then would have to spend hours in lessons of things I already understood!
We are unschooling our five year old right now and it has been such and amazing journey! When I compare the things that are on the curriculum for Kindergarten with what he is learning through living this year I am amazed by how much more enriching our unschooling is!
A few months ago we started to read a series of books called “The Secret of Droon” They are chapter books of about 100 pages each and we are on number 13. He is absolutely enthralled with the story and it has been intertwined in many things we do, from drawing, to storytelling, to acting. He is living and breathing these books right now and I shudder to think that this opportunity for discovery and creativity would have been missed if he was in a traditional Kindergarten class reading picture books!