Conceiving Of Change And Invisible Alternatives
Something happened to me since the first post in April. I’ve been… activated.
I was born into a family that was living an alternative. That was just happening, it was pre-decided. And I grew up the way that I did — without school. And it felt natural to me, invisible in a way. It was just my life and my experience. I learned with autonomy, and self-direction, and therefore responsibility. I feel responsible for myself today in a deep way. Not just my adult self, but more than that. I can feel my life as whole… beginning at the beginning. As a kid. A narrative of connections, not choppy-chapters.
But all of that, the “natural” unfolding, my experience… it’s a privilege. It’s rare. It’s rare to feel responsible. Maybe it’s rare to be responsible.
I don’t know; I’ve just checked back in. I’ve just opened up to this conversation about how we raise our kids, and how they learn, and how we teach. I’ve just checked back in and opened up to questions like: What do we want to be? Where do we want to go? How do we want to get there?
Education maybe sounds like a banal topic, but it’s pretty amazing. It’s huge, and amazing. And now I’m activated.
I like this moment of time that we’re in — the conversations that are being had about the mind, about how we learn and live, individually, collectively. I like that Sir Ken Robinson, and Sugatra Mitra’s ideas are out there, being discussed in mainstream channels. I like that, as an adult, I can contribute my experience to another generation — something that wasn’t around when I was growing up unschooled.
just a photo I took this weekend at a picnic
But, I know many of you will understand what I mean when I say that feeling activated makes the inactive unbearable.
It’s not disagreement that’s most frustrating. It’s the dis-interested, un-questioning acceptance that’s frustrating. People all around me are having kids and not really, really thinking about any of this. From where I am, it’s hard to understand or relate to.
We take so much for granted. The systems we move through, the way things are done. We assume the way we were formed was necessary, because it’s what we know. That’s why the status quo is the status quo. Not because it’s prevalent — but because we subscribe to it; we believe in it.
Anyway, lately being “activated” means I feel like the crazy one in the conversation. I’m the one that keeps insisting the emperor has no clothes, and everybody just humors me politely, but they don’t really believe me. Or care, maybe, either way.
But, I know I’m not the only one. I know that I’m not the first. After I wrote this post today, my mom sent me this quote:
“[A] danger of formal schooling is that it will imprint a disciplinary template onto impressionable minds and with it the belief that the world really is as disconnected as the divisions, disciplines, and subdisciplines of the typical curriculum. Students come to believe that there is such a thing as politics separate from ecology or that economics has nothing to do with physics. Yet, the world is not this way, and except for the temporary convenience of analysis, it cannot be broken into disciplines and specializations without doing serious harm to the world and to the minds and lives of people who believe that it can be. We often forget to tell students that the convenience was temporary, and more seriously, we fail to show how things can be made whole again. One result is that students graduate without knowing how to think in whole systems, how to find connections, how to ask big questions, and how to separate the trivial from the important. Now more than ever, however, we need people who think broadly and who understand systems, connections, patterns, and root causes.”~David W. Orr, “The Dangers Of Education”
Beautifully written! It is wonderful to read your wise perspective – my hubby and I grew up in the school system so we sometimes feel at a loss to know where or how our unschooled kids feel and see the world differently than we do. It’s a new path for us 🙂 I can’t imagine what a different perspective my boys will have… but they do ask the big questions and feel their own autonomy. You give me hope that their natural ability to grasp and move within the whole instead of feel divided up into unnatural parts, will serve them well! Thanks for the validation! <3 Julie
“feeling activated makes the inactive unbearable”
YES! I feel this way both about Self-Directed Learning and the unconventional ways we have found to help my child with Autism . . .
I’m almost always “the crazy one” in the conversation, BUT I have found that if I keep talking, eventually people open up to these ideas. More than one has come to me later to tell me that something I shared has changed the way they parent or educate their children. The world is indeed changing and Unschoolers are playing a big part in that!
Parenting is hard and deeply personal. It hits a nerve with everyone perhaps because it is the ONE thing in life we want so badly to get right. So I think when we meet with inactivity, the un-questioning, we might actually be meeting with fear– or at least with a shell-shocked parent who perhaps can’t even imagine there is an alternative. I wish I had a strategy to meet that inaction– but I think the best we can do for now is go conversation by conversation.
Thanks so much for your work here. It has become a great resource and inspiration for myself and our family. {{The Orr quote is great. Can’t wait to dive into his work.}}
That image is so beautiful. The post is beautiful as well and exciting. I too feel more activated by life these days. I thought it was just being in my early 30’s and having had some great times and some rough times and having, at least felt like, gained some different perspectives. I’m not sure exactly that that is it though. I feel like it comes from starting to know more what I want and the simply experiencing the education of life, sharing with family and friends, and following my interests without outside pressure. I’ve always felt how you described that “It’s the dis-interested, un-questioning acceptance that’s frustrating.” I want to be activated and engaged and surrounded by such as well. You are definitely not alone. It makes me so comforted to have you out in the world and in my life.