Yesterday kept unfolding with surprises. To begin, I took my friend B to pick up fresh milk from a new farmer. I swear, this farmer/kid looks about 13, his whole farm is new, and he has a wife with a three week old infant. Visiting his farm once a week, paying thirty dollars for three gallons of fresh milk, and helping in some small way to support their farming life feels wonderful. Milk is getting more yellow as spring grass comes in. Onion milk can't be far behind. And all is right with the world on that farm. So mote it be.

When we got home my daughter presented B a lovingly needle-felted sculpture of Blue, an ancient Great Pyrenees surpassed in her fluffiness only by her sweetness. I think this was one of my daughter's greatest works of art to date. It looks like Blue. It captures something of Blue's essence. And its made all with Blue's fur. I wish I'd taken a picture. I think it made B happy-sad-cry on the inside for her lovely aging dog, for art, and just for love.

Then we left to forage a picnic at the store and hit the park. We've been talking about Letterboxing to B. Its a thing we used to do in Texas, a thing we very much enjoy. Who doesn't want to scour beautiful lands for tiny artistic free treasure? Somehow, we've been too preoccupied to actually go. Yesterday the kids accidentally found a brand new letter box with a hand carved stamp. And that box led to another box. And that box led to two other boxes. It was spontaneous fantasy letterboxing.

But it gets even better. Because we found a box randomly, we missed the first two in the series. So now we get to go back with our hand carved stamps. No wait. FIRST we carve new stamps because we're all older and way more sophisticated than we used to be. Then we go back, find two new unseen boxes, and stamp the ones we've already seen. We may even be first on their ledgers.  What a great way to introduce our friend to our old hobby.  Of COURSE B just happened to have a compass with her. She says, "Well, you never know." I notice its those sorts of "you never know" folks whose path always seems littered with marvelous incidents.

Other things happened involving a rotten catfish carcass and a stick, a flower that was divine smelling on top and oddly but naturally stinky on the bottom, sunshine, love, magnolia trees, ghosts, and good times. 

Homeschool Progress Report 2009

Academic Achievement and Demographics 

"The study considered the many approaches that homeschoolers take to education—and found hardly any difference, less than .5% of variance, in achievement based on the following variables: 

•Degree of structure (ranging from very unstructured approaches such as delight directed learning or eclectic teaching approaches to very structured, preplanned, and prescribed approaches)
•Amount of time spent per day in parent directed learning activities"

Last night I dreamed I lost my toddling children in a grocery store. I lost them while I was waiting in line in a broken system getting angrier and more stubborn every moment. We waited, I fumed, eventually the kids vanished. I was left with my anger, fear, sadness, the broken system, and a basket of treats for vanished children.

Its important to understand the right moment to cut your losses and walk away from Broken and Not Worth It, to remember what matters.

Albert Cullum

"I believe teaching on the national level is a cancer of mediocrity."

An Open Letter to our local Homeschool Group

"Education and knowledge by themselves do not bring inner peace to individuals, families or the society in which they live. But education combined with warmheartedness, a sense of concern for the well-being of others, has much more positive results. If you have a great deal of knowledge, but you're governed by negative emotions, then you tend to use your knowledge in negative ways. Therefore, while you are learning, don't forget the importance of warmheartedness."
~The Dalai Lama

The D.L. get's it right, (of course) doesn't he? I think warmheartedness is exactly the quality that gives homeschoolers that sane suchness which can seem at once elusive and yet obvious in these kids we are raising. I believe warmheartedness is what sets them apart from many of their schooled peers. We spent five hours in the park yesterday. I can't think when I've had a nicer time. The day almost glittered with the common mundane and typical companionship and dearness I've come to associate with our group. It helped that the weather was perfect. And we can't control that. But I paused several times to notice what was happening at the park in an overall way--rather than just focusing on myself and my children, as I usually do. I saw warmheartedness.

I saw a core group of mothers sitting together. One cool thing about the Mother Camp that tends to happen at thea is that Mothers are easy to find in our varying parks, for anyone new to that park, for folks new to our group, and for wayward children. Its also just freaking BEAUTIFUL to see so many children nursed, held, and loved in one concentrated spot. Not to mention, I relish time with the Mothers. Its such a nice break in the week from our busy more isolated life. I love how unique, independent, smart, and cool thea moms tend to be. I feel lucky to sit with you all on occasion.

Four teens were first to the park yesterday. (I know because two of them were mine.) The first thing they did was go scour the tennis court fences for a discarded ball. They found one and that ball was in play, off and on, for the next five hours. They began with a game of Four Square which evolved as more kids showed up, into something creative looking I'll call "More Square." I don't know the rules of this game they invented. But judging from the smiles on their faces and the way bigger kids and littler kids integrated into and out of the game as it continued, I'm thinking it was a good game.

I saw groups of kids wandering all through the park yesterday. Some far into the woods, some quite close. I thought how wonderful it is that the kids get a safe opportunity to practice being big, being farther from the Mother Circle, and staking out a moment of independence in a safe place. Mostly the groups were fluid and shifting and tended to be vaguely age clumped. My kids look forward to these moments with their peer groups. But I saw older kids and younger kids interacting a lot. Age blending is one of the sane things about homeschool that teaches warmheartedness. I think kids need time with their core buddies and time milling around bigger groups.

An especially yummy moment was when one of the W. boys picked up a guitar and began to play and then, as a circle of calm wide eyed children gathered around him, to sing some of the songs he's written. WOW! That was beautiful on several different levels at once.

I saw wandering children. I saw nearly every child alone at moments and in differing groups in other moments. I saw all the normal things one expects to see on a playground. Except fighting. I saw no fighting and no evidence of discord. Which is unusual in such a big group. Surely someone made a mistake or tested a boundary or hurt someone else's feelings. (Perhaps it was unknowingly ME.) We expect people to be human and to make mistakes (and to learn from them.) But I never saw anyone look unhappy yesterday. Except for one toddler who cried. She'd been there a couple of hours. I'm guessing she was getting tired. I know I was getting tired.

I'm rambling on too long. But yesterday was just so fine and lovely I had to pause to let you all know I'm very grateful for this community of folks who manage to hang together, even through multiple generations (waving at you, A. H.), through growing pains, and through all our differences, to make such a totally awesome beautiful and excellent group. My life and our homeschool are way richer for knowing you all. I think our group helps foster a sense of warmheartedness as well as offering a place to practice it.

Two things I've learned about henna. If someone compliments your work just say "thank you." No further commentary, for instance a catalog of what's wrong, is necessary. And when you are drawing on someone refrain from exclaiming "Oh No" or even a gently whispered "oops" and certainly never shout "Crap On A Cracker" no matter how appropriate nor how easily the phrase jumps to your lips. Mistakes will be made. Manage them.

I've not found the will or words to write, yet, about washing my chicken's butt. I noticed she wasn't keeping herself quite up to snuff, not quite in line with the hygiene of her chicken sisters. Poo was accumulating in a distressing way, yet for a long time, I denied it. Some days I thought maybe I was seeing different chickens on bad days, in unclean moments. Some days I didn't see it at all. Many days I must have been in denial. Because, who wants to confront a stinky chicken butt? Denial was a mistake, it didn't work, as it can be counted on not too. The experience of washing her was not as bad as I'd feared, even as it became obvious the depth of the problem was worse than I'd imagined. She appears to be pasting up again. I don't know what that means, but it isn't good.

I finally got my goats in a place, physically, where I could trim their feet. I have never trimmed anythings feet before. And I don't think these goats had ever been trimmed either. They were terrified and fought the process as best they could. (Unlike the chicken, who was unexpectedly calm--perhaps relieved--through her ordeal.) The goats fought hard and their feet were atrociously bad.  Not infected, yet, but horribly overgrown and beginning to deform. Of the three of us, we each only bled once. Mistakes were made, yet we emerged wiser and better off.

My dear boy made himself an omelet for breakfast. Rather, he made two, the first one failed. He had forgotten to add butter to the pan before the eggs. So they stuck. When I arrived on the scene he had scraped out the pan and was starting over. Which was fine with me, but he was sort of sick about it. I could hear in his voice, his disappointment with himself. He glumly reported his mistake. I shrugged, preparing to eat the failed eggs.

"Buddy," I told him, "Your homeschooling assignment is to go forth and make as many mistakes as you can. I'm serious. I want you to try to make a bunch of mistakes." This alarmed him, the very idea! He wondered if I was giving him such an onerous task because he is a perfectionist? Yes. Because he has inherited the gift and burden of perfectionism. Mistakes will be made. Embrace them. Be kind to yourself about it. Plan for it, learn to manage it. And above all. Most importantly. For goodness sake, understand that fearing mistakes, and certainly taking a punishing attitude about mistakes--especially with yourself, hinders and limits your life.

Life is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and uncomfortable. There is no perfect way to get through chaos. Perfection isn't even a helpful goal. Unless you happen to be a brain surgeon or a computer programmer. Often perfection is a tool of persecution. Embrace chaos, learn to accept it gently. Do a good job, of course, but in the boundaries of kindness. Because its fairly certain the hard exact line we draw within ourselves will be expressed as rage, later, at the predictably absurd wrongness of others. So much is wrong and mistaken in life. And the most perfect response is a gentle smiling soft kind of kindness about it all.

Or, when that fails, shouting out CRAP ON A CRACKER and moving on as best you can.

"It cannot be overemphasized that no body of theory exists to accurately define the way children learn, or which learning is of most worth." ~John Gatto 

There is no science underpinning the methods or results of institutional pedagogy--no actual proof. We have been brought up (within the system) to assume science proved the system's methods and results first. But there are no studies to which we can point. Because they don't exist. Valuable science is based on a system of experimentation proved against controls. You can not study the efficacy of learning in a classroom without also studying the efficacy of innate learning. Which has never formally happened. To that end, unschoolers are offering the science of pedagogy an opportunity of immeasurable value and depth--the study of innate learning.

Pedagogy is a school of fish living in a fishbowl, teaching that their bowl is the best bowl, the most efficient bowl, the most valuable bowl. Pedagogy is dedicated to refining methods for teaching within the bowl. But this school of fish has never been to a lake, river, or ocean. The school never left its bowl. Can everyone see this clearly?

University level teaching, I think, feels valuable. You can feel yourself getting smarter when you go to college as an adult and study. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with studying in a university or college in the traditional way. However, as children we (if we are honest, at least nearly all of us) felt the stultification of school. I suggest there is an appropriate age for institutional pedagogy and science should figure out what it is. I suggest that age is not 1, 2, 5, 6, or even 10. Certainly by 15 for most folks. Definitely by 18 almost everyone should be neurologically and emotionally mature enough to study in a formal setting for six hours everyday. But there is no proven value to forcing it on little children. No. No proof, not anywhere. None. Not because your mother made you do it. Not because the local Principal wishes there was. Not because society enjoys free babysitting.

Which is shocking, difficult to grasp, and an emotional a slap in the face. Not to mention how sad it is, all that wasted time. And lets not even think about what harm the institutionalization of childhood causes. Wait, maybe that deserves some study...ya think?

Rob Reich over at Stanford says we don't have enough conclusive evidence about the efficacy of homeschool. He couldn't be more right. However, he hasn't yet figured out we don't have any conclusive evidence about the efficacy of institutional school either. If confronted, I am guessing he might say that proving the efficacy of institutional pedagogy for elementary school is too big. It can't be done. So he might simply dismiss it as impossible. Well, academics might have such luxury to choose what they will be paid to study, conscious parents do not. Furthermore, one can not insist on proof for homeschooling but not institutional schooling. That doesn't make sense.

One might suggest that children can not successfully enter college or university without 13 years of prior institutionalization. Of course unschoolers, in fact, are.