Whether out exploring ponds and parks, or indoors creating with paper and crayons, we share an approach to home education that embraces the whole child and their interaction with the whole world.......
After a rough week, having lost two of our dogs within days of each other, the kids and I decided to celebrate Epiphany (or Three Kings Day) with a getaway to Kids Senses Science Museum in Rutherfordton, NC. It is about a thirty minute drive from our place, not as far as the wise men traveled to Bethlehem, of course. And we rode in the station wagon, since camels are rather rare in these parts.
The first spectacle after paying admission is the fire truck room. There are buttons to make a siren sound and a spinning light.
Jude enjoys a cloth book in the Alphabet Trail playroom.
The silo beside the kid sized barn makes a great reading hideaway.
Jude can hold himself pretty high, and can roll over now, both ways.
Seth is holding a toy onion, which can be planted or harvested from the "garden". But of course, it's not an onion, it's a sword. And not just any sword, but the "He-man-Power-of-Grayskull!" Lately, many random objects have undergone this incredible transformation.
More of the Alphabet Trail playroom.
Metal objects defy gravity as they leap upwards from Virginia's hands while Seth turns up the magnet's power.
Three mirrors form the Kaleidoscope!
The lower level of the museum can be reached by climbing through this platform maze.
The Little Pueblito Cafe
Virginia takes orders from some fellow museum visitors.
Check out those teeth!
Reuben lifts a soapy wall around himself in the bubble room.
Miriam pulls one all the way to the top!
The little grocery store is very popular, and the kids shopped and checked out many times during our visit.
The art room has lots of supplies for creative crafters.
A model of a hot air balloon rises to the ceiling after being heated.
View of Rutherfordton's main street, still with Christmas decorations up.
Reuben reluctantly leaves the museum behind. Until next time!
Last night the kids participated in a bowl making session for Empty Bowls, a project that brings all ages together to create clay bowls, led by a pottery instructor, which are then sold at a banquet with the proceeds going to a local ministry that feeds the hungry. I was really thankful for the opportunity, since Virginia had pottery on her "to learn" list at the beginning of the school (i.e., doing life) year. And I had really hoped to do some volunteering in our community, especially during the holidays.
First, they were given clay to press onto a mold.
Lots of busy bowl makers
Once they had a good, smooth layer of clay, they could use a variety of objects to press in different textures.
The bowl is removed from the mold and can be smoothed with water. Everyone could make their own, unique design. Virginia added a flower to hers, another girl made alphabet shapes to stick to the bottom.
Luke kept Reuben and Seth occupied by having them pose for pictures.
The world is a stage.....
Miriam inspects the finished bowls. I think she is pointing to the one she made, and Virginia's is the one in the middle of the pan beside her with the flower sticking out. Reuben's is down at the far end.
We've been having lots of fun this fall. So much fun, that I haven't had any time to blog about it all!
We kicked off the first day of the season with an equinox party and bonfire at our home. A few families came from a new "homeschool" group called LATTE, which stands for "Learning all the time, everywhere". It's really a planning center for events and activities and is particularly suited to our autodidactical approach to education. The group was recently started by a friend I met at the local farmer's market, and it's been a wonderful way to incorporate the kids' interests within the local community. Leslie heads up the children's table there at the market with activities and crafts each week. She brought materials to our party to make fall garlands and apple stars. The kids all had a great time collecting leaves, twigs and acorns to thread onto the garlands. Then we enjoyed a hot dog roast and s'mores over a cheery fire for supper. And last of all, we skyped my friend Lauren in Australia to meet her family and see what their brand new spring looked like in the southern hemisphere. The kids are all growing, especially Jude, who has gotten quite chubby and quite too big for his newborn sized clothes. Here he is at his first trip to Grandma's. Big sister Virginia snapped this picture, as well as the one above of the fire in the wood stove. She experimented with several settings before she found one that captured the dancing flames just right. She does a lot of experimenting these days. You might stumble on a perfect, rectangular patch of new grass on the bare patch under the old swing set, a half finished model of a lego fire truck, and many bracelets with various arrangements of beads strewn about the house. Especially since my friend, Kelly, and I coordinated a jewelry making class with Kelly's girl scout troop led by two local artisans, whom my girls had gotten to know a bit at the farmer's market. Both Virginia and Miriam made lists of the things they wanted to learn this school year, and jewelry making was at or near the top for the two of them.
Miriam is the little mama to her brothers and loves to have them accompany her on endless pretend trips to the market and real picnics that she packs up for them to take outside. This morning she drew a calendar with illustrations in each box for the chores they had to do each day. When I asked her why she only had "feed the cat" for one day, she informed me that that was the day they would visit Virginia and help her feed her cat, but they did not have a cat to feed every day.
Reuben is funny, and impatient. But you can't blame him too much when he is stuck in the middle and sometimes needs a little extra drama to get attention. We are all learning to be patient with each other. He loves super heroes, drawing monsters and dressing up as a fireman. We took a tour of the local fire station in his honor with the LATTE group. At four, he is proud to make himself snacks, which he learned by watching his sisters. Trail mixes are his specialty, but chocolate milk from scratch (a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of cocoa, a spoonful of hot water, mix, then stir in milk) and a cup of tea are, well, also his cup of tea.
Seth is quickly leaving his babyhood behind. He's grown into a stocky boy with a bright mind and lots and lots of words. He is our earliest talker and has opinions too, which he never hesitates in sharing. He is also the loudest and largest for his age, which sometimes makes the two year old mood swings a bit challenging. In a matter of seconds he is the loving big brother who makes the baby coo and smile and the charging bull/screaming banshee who didn't get his way when Mama refused to let him ...wave a sharp knife in the air, pound the baby, flood the kitchen, play with fire, you get the idea. But he's almost always in the mood for a cuddle. They all are, and I'd better get as many in as I can before they think they're too old. (You are never too old from a mama's point of view). We've also been enjoying the harvest. I let the garden go while recovering from the c-section and new baby days, but was grateful to still harvest some big sweet potatoes (which were so good, we ate them all already), a few acorn squash and some beautiful, colorful ears of Cherokee popcorn. I've been gathering acorns, too, soaking and drying them, and grinding them into flour, and making oodles of muscadine jam. It's hunting season too, and our neighbors have given us a generous portion from a buck they shot here in our neck of the woods. I made some stock with the bones and used it to make some warm, hearty stew with local veggies from the farmer's market, herbs from the garden, and some tender meat that was stuck to the bone. And I have steaks and roasts in the freezer for future recipes to try.
Public shaming is a disciplinary tactic common in the classroom setting. Most of us have probably experienced it at least once. The teacher finds a child guilty of some negligence or disruption and rebukes her in front of the whole class. Dunce caps may have been discarded, but the chorus of derisive "Ooooooh's" from fellow classmates, combined with the disapproval of an adult that the child tries so hard to please certainly carries a similar emotional weight. The pink splotched cheeks, the jaw clenched to prevent tears (which would only add to the shame), the downcast gaze- these are all outward indications of the turmoil within. With knotted stomach and a monstrous lump in her throat, the branded heretic returns to her lunch, now tasteless, and with great effort tries to put on a show of not caring. She musters a smug look and forces herself to chew and swallow as if nothing had happened. But inside her brain a firestorm is raging as she struggles to understand why whatever she did was so unacceptable when she intended no harm. And gradually she internalizes that the teacher must be right and that she is, herself, unacceptable. Is it any wonder that, given the way we treat our children, that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any other country?
Part of the reason for this disciplinary method is the religious background of this nation. The Calvinist doctrine of Original Sin once prevailed and it was interpreted in such a way that parents and teachers assumed that every infringement of "the rules" was due to an inborn propensity to rebel. And it was their job to beat it out of their children. When I was a child I can remember how offended I felt if my motives were thus dictated to me, knowing in my heart that I had not acted out of rebellion, but simply out of ignorance or forgetfulness of what was expected of me. I had a deep and lively faith and love of God, and was hurt when those who did not know my heart would not believe me. I wonder if parents and teachers really think about the golden rule when disciplining their children. I know I forget it far more often than I care to admit. But I believe we should always assume the best in others, especially our children, if that is how we wish to be treated ourselves.
Once children have moved on from the baby stage, during which a large part of their thinking is devoted to simply learning the mechanisms of how to live in space and to make sense of sensory information, they gradually begin to understand about relationships and how their actions cause responses among their peers and caregivers. Though even before they are born, babies are deeply perceptive of emotions in others, especially in their mothers. And their first textbook is the human face, which they try to mimic and understand as soon as their eyes can focus. As they grow to school age, the desire increases to be instrumental in shaping the world around them, as well as being involved in the lives of the people around them. They are very anxious to prove themselves to the adults closest to them.
I think that as adults, we often take for granted the customs and manners we have adopted through the process of socialization. We sometimes seem to think that children should simply know which behaviors are appropriate and which are not, and when they act out of ignorance, we assume they are being intentionally rebellious. We get frustrated when children simply don't "get" what is obvious to us. For instance, if a child is making rude sounds at the table, even though this is not a sin in itself, we make it into a sin by virtue of them doing something we told them not to. We thus make the parent the arbitrary definer of sin. Why not rather ask the child to be considerate of others and explain that most people do not want to eat around people who make those noises while they eat? I suspect this appeal will, in most cases, be all that is needed. If the child still will not cooperate, then it is probably clear that he is being intentionally selfish. But the approach "obey without question because you are under our authority" treats the child more like an animal to be trained, rather than a thinking, human being with a soul capable of moral choices.
There are, no doubt, times when children do intentional wrong. Often, though, this is in retaliation. Again, we should try to assume the best. This does not mean that wrong or socially unacceptable behavior should be ignored. But, as in the illustration above, we first need to strive to communicate with them, before we discipline.
And we should not use the tactic of public disgrace, either in the school, the home or any institution. We so often forget that even though our children are children, they are no less our brothers and sisters. Thus, if we are Christians, we begin with "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you...." (Matthew 18:15)
"Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." He took a little child and had him in his arms and he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me." (Mark 9:35-37)
Note: The image above is by the Spanish artist, Francisco Goya, and is part of of series done in 1797, 1798 entitled "Los Caprichos". Goya described them as depicting "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self interest have made usual."
What is education? It is the subject of much debate, though usually the matter is consigned to educational directors and social planners. Most parents do not feel that they posses the intellectual qualifications to grapple with it. Yet perhaps a more fundamental question needs to be asked first. "What does it mean to be human?"
In the book of Genesis, in the Bible, we read a story of origins. We read that God created the world and then formed humans out of the dust of the earth. He made them male and female and placed them as co-equal rulers over the rest of creation. And most importantly, he made them in his own image. To be human, therefore, according to the Biblical narrative, is to bear the image of the Divine, the stamp of his own character. We can think, reflect, reason and create after the same manner as our Creator.
This propensity to emulate God is evident from earliest childhood. I can look around the room and see it in the activities of my own children at this very moment. Just as God thought, then expressed his thought in creative act, so they make use of the elements of paint, water, glue, piano keys, a computer, and random toys and objects in order to rearrange them into a form that was conceived in their own minds, by their own wills. And, like God, they can step back from their creations and say to themselves, "It is good." Furthermore, as God himself completed his masterpiece, and set aside a day for his people to enjoy it, so is the urge to share what is made expressed in so many words, "Look what I did, Mama!" or, "Listen to this!" or "I made this for you.", followed by an expectation of approval, a sign that the delight is mutual. This should naturally lead to the desire for God's own approval, exercising our creative labor during the week, then enjoying that work in the context of God's gifts of grace in feasting, thanksgiving and worship together when the week is done, and a new one begun. This completes the cycle of love between the Creator and his people.
What happens to this universal work ethic model, for it is nothing less than that, when one enters the business world, or the public school system which was designed to prepare children for it, is the great question that the book I am reading, The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto, helps to answer. In it, Gatto, a retired public schoolteacher of 30 years, traces the various influences in history that played a part in shaping the structure of society as we know it today. Through a strange wedding of wealthy opportunists to Utopian dreamers, armed with the tools of scientific management and the moral commission that Darwin granted to those handpicked by natural selection to help the selective process of evolution along, the modern business model and it's labor force supplier, the public school, emerged.
Despite the danger of oversimplifying Gatto's intensive investigation, I think the words of Frederick W. Taylor, brilliant evangelist of the scientific management model of the early 20th century, best sums up the sentiment of the age. He said, "What I demand of the worker is not to produce any longer by his own initiative, but to execute punctiliously the orders given down to their minutest details." In his book, "Principles of Scientific Management" Taylor summarized his managerial discipline in the following power points:
A regimen of science, not rule of thumb.
An emphasis on harmony, not the discord of competition.
An insistence on cooperation, not individualism.
A fixation on maximum output.
The development of each man to his greatest productivity
Perhaps this list does not scare you as much as it does me. But listen to how it is applied by Taylor in a theoretical scenario at a steel factory:
"Now Schmidt, you are a first-class pig-iron handler and know your business well. You have been handling at a rate of twelve and a half tons per day. I have given considerable study to handling pig-iron, and feel you could handle forty-seven tons of pig-iron per day if you really tried instead of twelve and a half tons.
Skeptical but willing, Schmidt started to work, and all day long, and at regular intervals, was told by the men who stood over him with a watch, "now pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down and rest. Now walk—rest," etc. He worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at half past five in the afternoon had his forty-seven tons loaded on the car."
And so it goes, so it goes. The deliberate massification of the population. The systematic destruction of the Imago Dei in the human imagination, both in the mind transplants of those forced into the school manufacturing process and, more so, in the goitered jowls of the suit and tie business tycoons and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. We owe much to this model. Suppression of creativity leads to violent passions, which requires psychological therapy and brain altering medication to control, and television to soothe the numbed mind, or mass policing when these other methods fail. Students are trained to trust an elite hierarchy from birth onward for every area of life. First there is the immune system rape of mass vaccination, upheld by mythic hero tales, coupled with the disabling and vastly under-reported neurological side effects of these toxins. There is the seizure of the food supply by powerful agribusiness lobbies, squeezing out the nourishing traditions of small farming families and replacing them with nutritionless convenience foods with addictive chemicals added to mask their flavorlessness. And let us not forget the seizure of lands rich in fossil fuels, both local and abroad, regardless of the cost to human and ecological life. There is the co-opting and absorption of religion and indigenous traditions into mass national and global identities. There is the mutilation of family life, the shared table replaced by the cafeteria. And the list goes on.
What is the remedy? It is as manifold and varied as it's adversary is monolithic. Each of us must stop and seek to recover the Imago Dei in our own lives, in our own localities. We must reflect deeply, nuture our creative urges, and create free spaces for our children to develop theirs, away from the mind control of massified society. We can plant gardens, support local farmers and crafters, invite neighbors to read through classic literature together, share meals, and learn skills to become independent in herbal medicine, traditional foods, and locally produced renewable energy. There are many possible avenues to be explored, many minds to recover. There is much to be done.
"the fight against the wall continues" (picture by Yann Forget)
Miriam came over while I was planning the menus and writing up a grocery list, and pointed to some of the words for me to read them. I did, but chose one to write in neat print, opposed to the chicken scratch I normally scribble in. She copied it and asked for another. That's not the first time a grocery list has turned into a lesson. Grocery lists and menus make great teaching tools. Here are a few reasons:
1. Kids want to do what Mom is doing.
2. Kids want to learn things in the context of something in life that they can relate to.
3. It sets a good example to always plan what you are going to eat and buy in advance so you eat healthier, save trips and save money.
4. It turns ordinary excursions into jolly holidays when your little ones get to be involved in the planning and help with real, grown up things.
I wish I had taken my camera with me to the grocery store today, because Virginia scanned nearly the whole lot at the self check-out and didn't mess up once!
