"I've just recently learned that kids [baby goats] have a different nursing pattern than calves - where calves will latch on and stay at it for several minutes a few times a day, apparently kids nurse very frequently for mere seconds at a time."   ~Wyomama, Keeping a Family Cow forum

Its difficult to quantify learning, but I suppose I've learned half of what I know about livestock from reading one high quality farming forum. Though, the quality on forums is only as high as the folks participating the moment you happen to be reading. Twice in my life, both at crucial junctures, I've lucked into the right forum at the right time. Keeping a Family Cow for livestock and The Denim Jumper for homeschooling. The Family Cow is not what it used to be. The DJ is gone. Which seems to be the way of forums. 

I already knew how kids nurse. I've watched a lot of calves nursing. I've watched a lot of goat kids nursing. Heck, I've watched a lot of human kids nursing. And its true. Each has a unique species pattern. But it wasn't until I read this one tiny droplet of random information, did I identify the truth of my own eyes as actual truth. Goat kids will nurse for seconds at a time. When you observe them, you can't believe its enough.  You worry. You want them to nurse longer, you might even sort of agonize about their lack of nursing. Though, if you're me, you'll quickly be distracted by their adorable antics, and likely not fully register your concern consciously until you read about it later. 

How come the truth often isn't fully believable until someone else corroborates it? Not until someone else stated a fact I'd already seen with my own eyes, did I register the information as truth. Up until the moment of corroboration, I suppose I just kind of thought the goats I'd observed were having a strange moment of quickety nursing. Or they were strange goats. It would likely take me a few more years of goat watching to realize: Oh, they all do that.

I spent so much time on the water as I child I could thin slice the coming weather from a nanosecond glimpse of the color of the lake. I was aware I could do that by age 14. I had no trouble understanding my private education in the water color of weather as absolutely valid. That skill was self evident. (Sadly, I'm sure the skill is lost, along with fishing skills and proficiency at 8 Ball.)

I would bet children trust their observational experience more completely than adults. Yes, children arrive with fewer preconceived ideas. It is also true that institutional education bludgeons faith in observation mercilessly, relentlessly, and intentionally. Partly because there is both room for mistakes in observation, and wisdom in corroboration. But much more deeply because the entire institution is based on ego structure. The carrot at the top of the empire is not material wealth or wisdom. Ego supremacy is the hallmark of academia. 

Everyone needs a nice secure reliable and well balanced ego structure. Academics are lords of all knowledge, and professors more than any other paid employees, seem to be fed daily on the feeling of lordship. Teaching scientists being the worst offenders.

Farmers are scientists too. Empirical scientists with no one underneath but a lot of animals (or plants) that don't give a damn what you think you know, and perhaps a child or two with questions of their own. Folks who need an audience to feel valid aren't drawn to farming. Or housewifing. Or novel writing. Or tending to the sick or the poor. Or art (so few succeed) or manufacture. Those folks are drawn to a life of academia. And possibly blogging... We are all broken. But it struck me today, reading what I'd already seen with my own eyes but not yet synthesized as truth, that schools do a serious disservice to children. Institutional education is absolutely built on domination, sublimation, and ego. That cain't be good.

Imagine children raised to have a balanced kind of faith in their own judgement from the beginning.