Musings From The Heart
An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 96 April 5, 2012
The Home Schooling Disaster
Part 2
It is already difficult enough as traditional parents to honor the enormous benchmarks of ideal parenting outlined in part 1. To be on the side of the child we must be lateral to the child in personhood, and equal to the child in value, but be a gentle fascist dictator simply at times of nutrition and safety, and nothing more. We must never invest in the outcome of our children in any way, except that they simply be alive, well nourished, and happy. As the “teacher” of our children, we break every rule of potentially beautiful parenting, and we degrade ourselves to simple “little Hitlers”, that not only arrogantly believe that we know better than our child, (an enormous moral and ethical transgression to our child), we also believe that we have the right and power to wield our mistaken arrogance, (an even bigger moral and ethical transgression to our child).
Children learn by comparison and contrast vis a vis the community around them. If children must be victims of arrogant and mistrusting fascistic schooling, they absolutely must not see the parent as an authority figure, and absolutely must never see the parent as a disciplinarian, and absolutely must never feel as though they are expected or coerced into any outcome at all by the parent. This is a direct violation of everything that every child hopes for and holds dear for their own parents. Children must be used and abused and mistreated and expected and coerced and pushed and disciplined and forced and inspired and championed and admired and rewarded and a 100 other life lessons by OTHER adults and children, and as many as possible in as many ways as possible, and always return home to their parents as mutual soul-spirit guides as heroes, and see their parents as heroes.
Children absolutely must have the freedom to be uncivilized as long as they desire, to fight and break and yell and cuss and mistreat and rebel and do stupid and ridiculous things, and basically be selfish and self centered and anti anything and everything authority questioners and authority rebellers and authority haters, and eventually they will become honest and fearless, loving citizens of the world. You can never suppress a human spirit or you will create the opposite of what is feared. A good childhood education is about the child having the freedom to test the waters and buck the system, and fit in to our world around us or not, by their own choice, which is always valued, and this is impossible around the oppression of a combined parent-teacher.
Learning information and data and memorizing and regurgitation and testing is for parrots and circus dogs, and obedient citizens that work for other people and pay their taxes and obediently go off to wars to die without a clue why, except obedience to false patriotism at the hands of other half dead people like us all that were “taught” and “educated” and “schooled”. We must provide the freedom and choice for our modern children to save and correct this world that we have ruined, and we cannot teach them how to do that, or we would have done it ourselves. A child that is schooled at home has an enormous conflict of interest, and the championing, spirit-guide parent now becomes the representative of our greedy, faulty, nuclear, warring status quo. The parent becomes the judge, jury, executioner, God, friend, parent, and teacher, and it is too much and too daunting for parent and child to combine these roles.
The conflict of interest of parent-teacher kills freedom, the highest ideal of all living things, and it kills childhood, where every aspect of the child is now controlled and orchestrated by parents with questionable motives, questionable skills, questionable emotional and psychological health, and questionable knowledge. Good parents trying to produce “good” children misunderstand the need for the freedom to not be good, and to face the natural lack of good out there in community. Teachers are professional teachers, while parents are professional parents, and the roles are incompatible. Every person has a memory of that person or teacher that changed our lives, and it is a tragedy to mother hen and father hen our children at home, and deny them the chance for great disappointment and great inspiration from others far more qualified than the parent. I lobby for wonderful parents in a wonderful house full of deep trust and respect of their children, where the children happen to go to crappy schools with crappy teachers and crappy kids, and who get an amazing education of life itself in the trenches, but who may not have learned much data or information, rather than some “ideal” education in a mediocre home with mediocre parents and a mediocre education, all designed “for the better” of the child. Home schooling is oppression for parents and children alike, and a life stunter for all.
The option for home schoolers is to trust our children to determine their own lives since birth, and these children will astonish their parents in 20 years with their compassion and individuality, and their stunning education. This freedom for children and trust of children is called self regulation, and “auto-didaction”. Self regulation means that the parent trusts that the child will eventually become who they are meant to be, and fulfill their own lives and dreams their own way, with no help from the parents unless the child expressly requests and welcomes it. In self regulation the parent allows the child to regulate themselves, and that means do anything they want to do anytime they want to do it, unless it directly affects health and nutrition, or safety, or the freedoms of other people. That means since birth the child is free and never molded or coerced or forced to do anything they don’t want to do.
Auto didaction means “self education”, and that means that the child teaches themself. An auto didactic child can learn anything that they want to learn with total parental support, but the child does not have to learn anything that they do not want to learn ever. In true self education the parent may never intervene or expect any outcome, and the parent only strives to be on the side of the child, and insure that the child is happy. In auto didaction the parent does nothing but follow the interests and passions of the child, and the parent is thereby always in the side of the child.
In freedom for children and self regulation and auto didaction, there are no “what ifs”, no “what if they don’t learn”, “what if they don’t read”, “what if they don’t get a high school diploma or go to college”. No “what if they don’t become successes or prosperous”. In freedom for children the parents drop the reins of the children and stop driving them like horses in any given direction, trusting that the child already has their own direction and outcome of their lives. What the child does in freedom is none of the parents’ business, except to have an interest in and support the children in their own personal passions. The results are spectacular and surpass anything any fascistic home or school or society could ever hope for.
Self regulation and auto didaction are the only possible compromise for home schooling parents that do not want to send their children to school, or for children who do not want to go to school. Parents of free children simply get off of the backs of their children, stop the childhood killing homework and chores and expectations and discipline and sermonizing and leading and hoping and blah blah blah. Parents of free children have happy and vibrant, passionate children who respect and admire their parents as people-parent-spirit-guides, and life at home becomes lateral and loving, and fun. For parents it is also a lot more difficult, since a free child will be the first to tell their parent what they feel fearlessly, for free, self regulated and auto didactic children are fearless of authority, and ready, willing, and able to push for the edges of boundaries and enjoy a happy childhood of bucking the “system”, and finding their own true selves.
Parents of free children find out quickly the quality of their own lives and person and education and values when their free, self evolved and self effaced children who use their prodigious voices. Freedom for parents and children is the opposite of fascism. “You can lead a child anywhere, but you can’t really get them to believe anything you say or to do shit” (my not so eloquent expression) But parents can stop pretending to know what is better for their children and then stop forcing them to do it, and they and their children will be a lot happier and a lot healthier.
Here is to “home freedom”, and “freedom for parents and children”. Here is to the adventure of Love and of Life that we determine ourselves in freedom.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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