Making sure that they learn everything, or not

So back to the topic of my last post, kind of.

I needed to address the email that asked me "how, as an unschooler, I made sure that my kids learned everything they were supposed to learn."

The answer, while multi-faceted, is simple.

I didn't.

Oh, I worried about it. I had folders of scope and sequences, lists of must-read books, and pages of state standards. Every once in a while I would panic and consider ordering a school-in-a-box so that my kids would know what they were supposed to know.

Then, over time, I became more secure in the knowledge that while they may not know what some educrat deemed that they should know, they would most certainly know what they needed to know. And if they didn't they would know how to find it out. And that they were learning so many things that were beyond the scope and sequences or beyond the wildest dreams of the standards writers. (I've gotta admit, sending that first unschooled kid to college, on a full merit scholarship, and watching her excel academically did a lot to boost the confidence for the rest of the journey!)

Yes. There will be holes in their knowledge. But EVERYONE has those. I don't care where you went to school, how many books you've read, or how many degrees you have, there is something that I know that you don't. There are things that my 17 year old knows that college grads don't. There are things that my husband the engineer knows that I have no desire to know.


There are things that they might have learned if we had followed curriculum "A." There are things that they might have learned if they'd gone to school. But there are also, undoubtedly, things that they have learned that they might not have in those situations.

Embrace the education choices you've made, whatever they are, unless they aren't working for you. If that's the case, make adjustments. But don't make changes to answer someone else's expectations. That's the way to crazy.

The choices we make

I was sure that I had written this post, or something like it, before. An email conversation and a Facebook discussion came together in my mind to create this topic, but I was certain that elements of it had been written before. I spent a long time looking through two of my blogs. Then I realized. I didn't write about it; I spoke about it. (Back to that in a minute.)

I got an email last night that is like others that I've gotten in the past. The mom who wrote it had been reading my blog and wanted to know if it was okay to ask a few questions. (The answer to that is yes. I like dialogues far better than monologues.) The main thing that she wanted to know was how, as an unschooler, I made sure that my kids learned everything they were supposed to learn.

At the same time there was a conversation on my Facebook wall about potential negative effects from a widely used medication. There were those who were giving it to their children, for a specific reason, and while they were--of course--concerned about potential side effects, they also had other concerns if it wasn't used.

These may seem completely unrelated, but I think that they have something in common. We are constantly making choices about every aspect of our children's lives. Each choice that we make has potentially good and bad outcomes. Each choice makes other options impossible. Choosing to give one medication for a condition means that others aren't used. It means hoping for the good that is supposed to come from the medication and being aware of potential dangers.

In the same way, when we choose to educate our children in a certain manner, we may close some doors. We choose based on the positives that we hope for and, at the same time, are aware of the potential negatives and paths not taken. One example that always comes to my mind is that by continuing to homeschool through high school we lost the opportunity to continue to participate in team sports. But the kids decided that it was worth it.

So we make choices. We do what we think is best. We pray for good outcomes. We evaluate as we go along.

And sometimes we decide that a post is really two posts. And that we will write the post that we thought we already wrote, and answer the email question tomorrow.

About that whole socialization thing

This post is several years old. I posted it on my regular blog. But I felt the need to revisit it here. Additions will be made in color.

The company you keep

This post has been rattling around in my brain for months. It was finally shaken loose by some things Gatto said about school and family, and some conversations with friends.

First: My kids are far from perfect. Those of us who are Lutherans understand this, but I felt like it was a necessary disclaimer given what is coming. This post is a response. It is a response to questions I have been asked many times, by different people. (And continue to be asked; thus the revisiting.) It is difficult to write, because I know the imperfections of my kids and our family. I don't have all of the answers. But these are the answers I have.

The question has been some variation of,"Your kids are so nice/helpful/polite/well-spoken. You all get along so well. They all get along so well. They read all kinds of good books. How have you done it?" (My kids are also opinionated and argumentative. Stubborn. And sometimes lazy. So there.)

My first answer is, I've had a lot of help. In fact, in many ways that is my answer. (YES!) The other is that I have resisted two urges that I have seen in the homeschool community, both of which are--in a way--reactions to the larger society. The first of these is the urge to control. The second is the urge to mimic school socialization.

The urge to control comes out most frequently as limits on time spent doing various activities: Watching TV, playing with toys, playing with video games or on the computer, reading for pleasure, playing musical instruments, or just laying in the back yard daydreaming. The other form is limitation of content. We did this to a very, very small extent, mostly vetoing kids TV shows full of snotty attitudes. (Can I just reiterate how glad I am we did this?)

The urge to control comes in large part from the checklist idea of education as tasks to be completed. It places higher value on some activities than others in a way that is often arbitrary, based on some outside idea of worthwhile activity.

My kids didn't have time limits. So one day they might have done nothing but play legos while watching musicals. On Monday Bethany might have reread Anne of Green Gables for the 15th time and played the piano for four hours. On Tuesday she might have spent all day playing Zoombinis and playing in the back yard. There were days on end where none of us left the Oregon Trail. In later years the boys might have spent six hours playing Age of Empires and then turned on the news. This post isn't about what they've managed to learn. That one is still to come. This is about why I believe they've become who they are. (And it really was like that. Exactly.)

But, here is, I believe, a huge part of the key. We didn't "do" "socialization." The s-word is the big bugaboo in the homeschool community. Everyone knows that homeschooled kids overall do well on tests, etc., but "WHAT ABOUT SOCIALIZATION?!" We've all heard it. Generally the answer is, "We have groups. We get together. Etc., etc., etc."

We didn't. We didn't do homeschool groups. Or scouts. Or 4-H. Patrick's sensory issues made large groups of kids torture. Part of the time we lived where there were no groups that we were compatible with, when there were groups at all.

Of course the kids have had friends. They played one-on-one with neighbor kids, were on soccer teams, and made friends at church. As they've gotten older they've developed friendships with other homeschoolers, often those who live elsewhere that they met through Higher Things or other church-related functions. But the social activities that they've been a part of have been family-oriented. They have been socialized by our family and friends. They have been socialized by adults who we like and admire and have chosen to spend time with. I firmly believe that one of the worst aspects of conventional schooling is the division by age and the imposition of barriers between child and family.

This part is important: As a result of our not being group-oriented, I think we have missed out on some of the attitudes and behaviors that come from kids socializing each other. They grew up socializing freely with those older and younger than them. They didn't learn that their parents are uncool know-nothings and that younger siblings were pests to be avoided.





(Andrew has had more group time with other kids than the others combined. He's taken more group classes. And his extroversion demands people time. But there have been times that we have needed to pull back from certain activities or relationships because we could see negative effects. It has been hard, but it has proven to be for the best.)

As I said above, we've had help. Our older kids have helped socialize the younger ones. I love seeing Patrick's civilizing influence on his younger brothers. Their grandparents and other relatives have had their parts. The hours that the kids have spent in the company of various pastors, both formally and informally, has had a tremendous influence on their thinking. Being a part of the life of the church, trained and useful, as acolytes has helped the boys to deal with the forced uselessness of that time that society calls adolescence. The women who are my friends have had a profound impact on my kids. I love it when I see a glimpse of Susan, or Lora, or Lori, or Jacqui--and these are just the glimpses I see the most--in something one of the kids says.

So that's my answer, I'm not saying other choices are wrong, but I've been asked what we've done. And this is it.

Addendum: One could get the idea from part of this that I was a permissive parent. Not really. I've always been pretty much of the "you behave or else" school of parenting. My kids had chores and did them. They learned that there are places where you need to sit still and be quiet, like church and the symphony. They learned that restaurants are awesome places to get yummy food, but you have to sit in your chair and behave like a big boy if you want to stay and eat the yummy food. Freedom to make many choices didn't mean freedom to be selfish pigs. As Patrick points out, I taught them to make wise decisions.
 

It really was like that

Over the last several years I have found myself becoming a bit of an unschooling advocate. There have been lots of, "What did a day look like at your house?" emails and conversations on email lists. There are been young moms on the verge of how-can-I-do-all-this despair.  There have been evenings with glasses of wine and questions, evenings when I found myself being quizzed by a circle of moms and wondered, "Why on earth are they asking ME?!"

(Of course, I do know why they are asking me. I have grown and almost grown kids who seem to have turned out okay. They are finding success in college and life beyond. They can use an alarm clock. They have reasonable standards of personal hygiene.)

I have often feared, when I have heard myself cited by someone else, that I didn't paint an accurate picture of our lives. That I made it sound looser than it was. Easier. Better.

It has been reassuring for me to talk to my kids about it. To hear their accounts of their childhoods. To hear them explain to others what it was like being unschooled. (Yes. In hindsight, I can admit that aside from a few panic-stricken moments, we have been pretty darn complete unschoolers.)

I wasn't exaggerating.

It has always made me nervous, this dispensing of homeschooling advice. I have always tried to emphasize--as anyone who has heard me speak formally, or heard me talk about homeschooling more than once can attest--that homeschooling, like parenting, is an individual thing. What works for each kid and each family may be different. And yet, when it comes right down to it, I do think that for many people, in many situations, unschooling is best. So when I am asked my opinion, that is the direction I tend to lead.

Unschooling has not been the whole story of our parenting and our family life, but it has shaped it. It has influenced the way I deal with my kids. It made me evaluate what was really important and taught me to value their input into those decisions. It made me look differently at the whole concept of what it means to be a success. It taught me to treat my kids as full-fledged people whose opinions about their own lives matter far sooner I would have otherwise.

It gave me lots of years to enjoy life with my kids, on our own agenda. And it really was like that.