Today's Quote: "Your life, time, and brain should belong to you, not to an institution." - Grace Lwellyn
Jack prefers me not to write about him in this blog, and so I try my best to honor that. However, in order to write about our conundrum regarding schooling, Jack's name must come up. The story has a long, complictaed history, which I will significantly condense. Basically, for the past several years Jack has hated school. And I don't mean that he's just disliked it in the way many kids do, complaining about it now and then but accepting that it's a part of life. It's been different with Jack. He LOATHES school. For two years he was at a magnet school that offered a rigorous curriculum based on the classics. They studied Latin and read Sophocles.He worked hard but earned phenomenal grades. They also had an excellent thratre program, in which Jack participated and excelled. Glenn and I were delighted with the school and assumed it was the perfect fit for Jack. WRONG. Despite what appeared to us to be a successful, happy school experience, Jack was miserable. He spent this past summer campaigning to be home schooled for 8th grade. He did his research and provided us with plenty of written material supporting the value of home schooling. Even more strongly, he advocates un-schooling, meaning the individual is able to select the areas of study that most interest him and study them independently and in depth. Obviously this requires a curious learner with the initiative to learn on his own. It also requires a tremendous leap of faith on the part of the parents. In any case, we didn't agree. We insisted that Jack return to school, but we did opt to remove him from the magnet school and instead have him attend our local public middle school. And he's no happier there than he was at his former school.
The kid just hates everything about school. He hates the institution of school and doesn't believe it's the most conducive environment for real learning to take place. He hates being forced to read books far below his reading level just because that's the book the class is assigned. He hates that students are encouraged to take notes, memorize, and regurgitate what they've been taught, rather than think outside the box and question the norms. He is a rebel at heart. A well behaved rebel, but a rebel none the less. He's also an incredibly bright rebel. I do believe he has the initiative to learn a great deal on his own. And I often do see his point about school. (Having to raise your hand and ask permission in order to get a tissue to blow your nose is silly at any age, but completely ridiculous at 14 years of age.) The thing is, I just don't know a whole lot about home schooling / unschooling. There are plenty of books out there, but most of them address the philosophy of home schooling. In other words, the literature discusses the value of home schooling, but there's very little available in the way of specifics. There's just so much I don't know. How do I know he is learning all that he needs to learn? Yes, you can purchase a packaged curriculum, but that would sort of defeat the purpose. What Jack wants is to take responsibility for his own education. And there's a part of me that really wants to support him in that. But there's another part of me that fears the unknown. As his mother, I always want to do what is in his best interest. Is it in his best interest to be forced to remain in an environment that he hates? Is it in his best interest to be allowed to develop his own educational path? And how do I ensure that he is learning the essentials? Yes, I'm home everyday to oversee this, but I am hardly a math scholar. In truth, I sometimes have trouble helping Chloe with her math homework -- and she's in 4th grade! (Of course, they do math all crazy these days. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)
I suppose for someone not living with Jack this might sound a lot simpler than it actually is. It's pretty easy for an outsider to say, "Just send him to school. He'll survive it just like everyone else." But the thing is, he's really NOT like everyone else. He's a complicated, unusual individual. Definitely not a cookie cutter kid. And as much as I often wish he could just go with the flow, in my heart I know that's not who he is, and trying to make him fit that mold feels wrong to me. He's incredibly unhappy at school, and incredibly angry at Glenn and I for insisting he attend. We've sought all kinds of outside help on this matter, by the way, and we are still struggling to figure out what's the "right" thing to do. It feels like we're in a cosntant state of turmoil. The tension in the house is thick. Sleep does not come easily. It's truly a conundrum.
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