A Perfectly Good School

You would home school if you were terribly isolated, right? Miles from Timbuctoo? If a vast red earthed cattle station was what you called home?

Or maybe you’d homeschool if you were a weirdo beardo hippie, living in a commune somewhere. Rejecting the mainstream, man, living on the fringe. Cool, yeah?

Or maybe you might do it if your kid has been so traumatized by bullying that you couldn’t stomach putting them back in school for another go.

This article, though a few years old, reflects on the extent of the latter problem; http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victorian-school-bullying-is-out-of-control-national-report-says/story-e6frf7jo-1225719028056 .

Certainly homeschooling when there’s a perfectly good school just down the road is irresponsible, isn’t it. Denying them all those opportunities for socializing, for being socialized. Denying them educational opportunities. Holding them back.

I was a teacher in the state system for 8 years before escaping to be a mum. I worked for 5 years at one rural high school where I was a Leading Teacher, Year Level Co-ordinator and ran many events and programmes. Before that I did a year at 3 different high schools, and after it several years CRT where I saw many different secondary and primary schools. I put in. I worked in a lot of different schools, in a lot of different places in Victoria. I cared. I wanted to make things better, to pave the way, to use my passion for learning and my genuine interest in kids to create an environment where… you get the picture.

What really happened was that I simply got worn down. Innovative teaching and learning? Great! But we can’t change the timetable or the way the day is structured (to death). No, there’s no money for changing or building anything more kid friendly. Perhaps you could chase funding. No, you can’t change the rooms around because the next person might want the desks left in neat rows. Etc. The System was too big. The bullies were too numerous, too sneaky and too well connected. The kids were too disconnected, too resistant, and mostly they had given up too.

There were too few of me.

I stopped protesting the Coke vending machine and Crappola Junke Foode in the caf, both of which apparently brought in much needed funding that couldn’t be replaced by selling actual food. I gave up on creative learning projects, student built veggie gardens and strategies to address bullying.

I started recycling lessons, putting videos on, and taking a lunch break now and then. I stopped writing each child’s report individually, until 4 am, and started using the comment banks that everyone else relied on.

I still protested the new testing regime, and refused to participate, though. That was just going too far. I still cared about the kids, I simply had seen what was at the top of the mountain and it no longer seemed worth trudging on.

 That is why I'm homeschooling my children. Not out of some idea to be cool or fringe or out of fear of the 'mainstream', but because the environments in the overwhelming majority of schools are harmful to children in pretty much every way I can think of; emotionally, physically and certainly in terms of learning and the joy that naturally comes with learning. Our schools drain the lifeblood from kids, then the kids turn around and drain it from each other with bullyings and conformings and pushings – around. I know that some people sail through school untouched by all this, doing ok, but I’m not taking the chance for my kids.

And I want better than ok for them.

I don't want certain values normalized for my children. I want them to be part of a healthy, supportive, accepting community and to know how to find a satisfying community for themselves. I want them to retain their basic natures, their ability to judge and discern for themselves, their sense of themselves as empowered and worthwhile and thoughtful, respectful people.

The current school system was designed to keep kids out of the way while the workers of the industrial revolution went back to keep the factory wheels turning, and you know what, it still basically serves that purpose. It also conditions children to be good workers and avid unthinking consumers.

Missed the ad for the latest bit of plastic crap or death - defying junk food? No probs, the other kids at school will be sure to fill your little one in and tighten the screws of peer pressure until your child feels that his self worth hangs on having just the right crap.

What, you’re denying your child the right to be socialized to is accepting that normal is high–sugar high–junk high–plastic consumer goods equals acceptance?

Yes, I am actually.

There is a difference between simple social conditioning, the process of moulding children to fit into the current social regime, and creating an environment in which children can learn to interact in socially meaningful ways. Schools both reflect and create society, as does the media, and the current system is recreating a society that is increasingly obsessed with what it can sell and who will buy it.

To be happy, kids need to feel safe, they need to feel connected, and they need to be able to learn to deal with other people in a place where they are backed up, supported and guided. What guiding do you think your child receives in social interactions at school? How much individual attention can one teacher on yard duty covering hundreds of kids give? How many of the 30% of kids being bullied will be noticed in that environment? Or even one teacher in a room with 25 kids, all of different abilities, personalities and interests, some who want to be there and some who desperately don’t. Not. Much.

Our schools are places of mass. Mass ‘teaching’, mass socializing, mass testing. You can do quantity or quality, not both. It really is that simple. It’s Lord of The Flies, survival of the most vicious, socializing by throwing in the deep end, sink or swim. Schools are certainly good at socializing children, and the generations of school – socialized socially disconnected adults who eat crap in front of the tv night after night and derive joy from buying things instead of interacting with other human beings outside their front door attest to its success.

I want community, I want a social world for my children. That's why I wish to be part of a strong homeschool community, and even utilize a very tiny school that will let my kids attend a few days a week should they choose that. There’s no perfect, I can’t protect them from everything. But at least I can try to be part of a like minded community with kids who are treated respectfully and age appropriately, who are more likely to generally treat others with respect and be guided by adults who care about them and know them as individuals. Where individuality and differences of thought and personality are accepted and valued. That’s the hope, anyway!

I can be also as much a part of their lives as keeps them generally connected and safe, and I can provide what guidance and support I can as they learn about themselves and others and the world, rather then tossing them in that great big swirling vortex and watching from increasingly afar as they sink or swim.

That’s why you might choose a homeschooling community when there’s a Perfectly Good School Just Down the Road.