Why must we all learn the same thing at the same time?

I am one of the 200 'Globe and Mail School Council' panelists chosen from across the country to inform G & M journalists on matters concerning education.  It sounds important; you get to weigh in on timely issues of the day. I must say, I was rather discouraged at the first big question they asked:

Where do you stand on the practice of kids being educated at home? When parents become the teacher, and the home becomes the classroom - does it work? And beyond that, how can home schooling improve?   

Why did they have to start with picking on homeschooling?  Everyone and their dog has an opinion(usually mis-informed)  about homeschooling. “Oh I know homeschoolers who think Indians deserved to be put in reservation camps.” “Yes, yes. They are academically capable but they are weak when it comes to conflict!” “Oh socialization this and socialization that.”
Hello? When was the last time you spoke to a homeschooled kid?
You know what I feel like saying on that council?  I feel like telling most people to go get educated about homeschooling. Don’t just spew out your random notions.

When are people going to get it in their heads that homeschooling is not mom and child locked together in a basement, no other people involved, hiding away from the rest of the world, lest the child be contaminated by outsiders and different people and strange, fanciful  ideas like evolution and homosexuality?
Reality check:sooner or later if you are living in the world-yes even that chained up homeschooler will eventually have to emerge from the basement- you are going to bump up against ideas and people who are different from you. Like any schooled kid, you will be open to new ideas or you will not.

Do schools teach tolerance? Hardly. Do they teach you to respect other people? While authorities are looking. I am sure that all the racists and bigots out there were not all home-educated.
We celebrate cultural diversity in Canada. Why can't we celebrate educational diversity as well?
 It is pointless to say that had your child been homeschooled, he would have missed out on the chance to play in the school brass band. So what?  Life is such that another opportunity, a different opportunity would have arisen instead. Maybe he would discover a love for the guitar and then gone on to form a band of his own.
I can't understand why so many school people are indignant of and even hostile to this idea. Why must we learn the same thing at the same age at the same time?
Is it because it is easier for the adults to classify and control kids? Is it easier to interact with kids if you know what grade they are in and what they supposedly have 'covered?'

Read here for the 'article' the G&M came up with.

Whose Education? Take responsibility.

I've been looking through past blog postings and came across one I wrote for the Learning Revolution Facebook group for their weekly message- about two years ago now. I wrote about responsibility in education in the context of freedom.

It started like this: With freedom in education comes responsibility.
We have to be responsible for our learning; we have to take responsibility for being in this world. That's my message to you. I think it is the most important message you can 'teach' a kid.

Being responsible, taking responsibility is difficult to do. It means that you are accountable for your actions. It means admitting your mistakes and errors and having to do something about it-and not blaming someone else. That's tough. I want to say 'even for adults' but let's be honest, adults aren't that great at it. 

Who likes to admit that they are in the wrong?  That would be revealing weakness or ignorance and looking like a fool at times.

Viewed this way, school can provide such a relief; just let the school do it all for you. If it goes wrong, blame the school. If it goes right, credit the school. The school is a monolith; it will absorb all.

Taking responsibility forces you to understand that you are not the most important being in the world. Life would be that much easier if we learned from infancy that we are neither more important nor less important than the next person. Most of us learn it the hard way. Others never learn it.
But taking responsibility for your actions, education, life, is empowering. The secret? The more you do it, the better you become at it, the more you grew as an individual.

Learning in freedom and becoming educated in freedom means we need to give that freedom that we want for ourselves, to make decisions, to impact the world around us, and yes-to take responsibility of our actions as we grow- we need to extend it to our children. As much as you can, put the learner in charge of his/her learning.

John Gatto has said it over and over; you don't get an education.
"Nobody can give you and education. Education must be taken by those who want one. The will and dogged persistence of the seeker are the only essential tools needed to become educated. Teachers, text, money play only minor roles and papers, pencils, tests play no role at all."

That's taking responsibility on the road to self mastery.

As parents, educators, students, people interested in a learning revolution we can help a child or young person see that they have abilities, they have potential, so that they truly believe it but that they must take on that responsibility for themselves.
The challenge is one that they will want to accept.

In the post, I wrote the following:

Take very young kids. It's, "No. I do it," and "Let me!"
They want to do things; they want to challenge themselves. They are deeply insulted if you try and do it for them.

So in our commitment to revolution in education, let's nurture that compulsion for self autonomy. Let's not allow that urge for self sufficiency and inquiry be quelled or squished in our zeal to provide education.
I think we would do well to remember that when talking about autonomous, self- directed learning, our children are not the ones who need it the most. Our kids are perfect beings before the schooling mentality reaches them.
It is we, the adults, who need to divest ourselves of unexamined beliefs and the imprisoning expectations of society's well meaning people.

Is Unschooling Elitist?

 Some people insist that unschooling is elitist; “Public school isn’t good enough for you?” they’ll ask.
They’ll compare this practice to the methods of the rich who can afford to have the best in private schools and tutors for their children, trips, vacations, resources and general privilege.

Other people think that keeping kids out of school to educate them at home is doing a disservice to those who fought so that education could be universal; going against the school system is sacrilegious. What about all those unfortunate kids over in Afghanistan or Ethiopia who would give an arm or a leg to go to school?  What do you say to that, when you turn up your nose at public schooling?
Here’s a quote from one such downer who knows very little about unschooling. The
person sent this in response to my article on why I unschool:

To me this article smacks of elitism and onesidedness and is smug to boot. It assumes that all parents are able to guide their children's education. Well that's wrong. Many parents are not able to read well enough, or let alone teach. It takes an educated parent to be able understand education. I wonder what the Mexican janitor would think if he came across this article, if he could read it, (here I am, working my butt off to put my kids through school, so they could have a better life, better than mine, and what, I'm doing it wrong?) Single mums? Poor mums, in the inner cities? No trees, no grass,  no snowflakes. School is where their kids go to get any kind of teaching, or positive attention. What about the 'educated', 'rich' mums. A doctor perhaps. Should she just dump all that schooling to unschool her kids? The 150 years argument makes no sense, because this is the world we live in now. The professions that exist now are pertinent to now, not to 150 years ago. And women can be fulfilled outside of the home, away from their kids.
What is the endpoint of any type of education? Overall? Overall, I think it is to make a living. Practical, prosaic, unpoetic, making a living. I am sure there are many creative and free-thinking people among the homeless who line the streets of any town. Does unschooling lead to better employment opportunities, more professional success? That's the question you unschoolers need to ask, I don't know, but I can tell you a snow-flake never filled an empty belly.

People who think like this are missing the point.
I ask those who call unschooling 'elitist,' would you call breastfeeding elitist because rather than drinking formula, the baby is receiving breast milk--natural and tailored to his growth and well being? Would you call that mother a snob? Hardly! It would be ludicrous to claim elitism is at the core of her intention. And so it is with unschooling that some parents see educating their kids as being natural and wholesome for their family.

Let's take energy. Should ‘developing countries’ go through their own industrial revolutions and burn coal rather than straight to renewable energy if they have the chance to do so, because that is the proper way to do it since Westerners did? Of course not.
So if as parents we view unschooling as a healthier way to educate, and we can and want to do so with our children, why should this pose a threat to the education system? Why should we be beholden to this institution just because others fought so that all could have so called universal education?  Why is guiding your child's education without public school seen as elitist and wrong?
Innovation isn’t fair. Deal with it.
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School: a level playing field?

Has anyone asked poor people what sort of education they would like?
Who has bothered to query the poor if the school system works for them?
In my opinion, knowledge is not power if the knowledge you have does not empower you. What is the use of knowing things that are useless to you?
Read Ivan Illich's classic Deschooling Society .
Ivan Illich said, “For most men, the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.”
I take the position with Illich that public school can never provide universal education.
Back in 1970, Illich wrote in Deschooling Society 

Institutionalized education and the institution of the school are producers of merchandise with a specific exchange value in a society where those who already possess a certain cultural capital derive the most benefit. 

Here’s what Ivan Illich had to say about the so called mythical ‘leveling field’ that schooling is supposed to provide:

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for
them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value.
Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of
community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat
race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.......

It should be obvious that even with schools of equal quality a poor child can seldom catch up with a rich one. Even if they attend equal schools and begin at the same age, poor children lack most of the educational opportunities which are casually available to the middle-class child. These advantages range from conversation and books in the home to vacation travel and a different sense of oneself, and apply, for the child who enjoys them, both in and out of school. So the poorer student will generally fall behind  so long as he depends on school for advancement or learning. The poor need funds to enable them to learn, not to get certified for the treatment of their alleged disproportionate deficiencies.

What needs to change, what is already changing, is what as a society, we give value to. Education to further consumption or education to further contribution towards a decent society for all?