The difficulty of commitment
My friend Lisa Nielsen just put a post on her blog full of resources directed at me: a to do list to start homeschooling. Except she calls it home education. She says I should use that word on my blog but not in the titles, because homeschooling is better SEO. It comforts me that she shows this practicality in the midst of presenting material for the homeschooling idealist.
I scrolled through the list and I can tell there is no way I’m going to avoid reading everything on it. I compulsively read everything when I teach myself something totally new.
I have a son who shows aptitude for programming but I need to learn more to show him more. And, can I teach my kids history by doing it through literature? And have you read this book, Molly Bannaky? It’s lovely, and my boys asked questions about the slave in the book for a week. I cried when I read it. Maybe I had PMS but I think I would have cried anyway.
So I have to read Lisa’s list. And it’s a test, really. Because if I really believe in lifelong learning, and I really believe in self-directed learning, then I believe I can do this. I can become an expert on educational theories. I have to be. How else can I reject them?
I have read Gatto, Illich, and Holt, and I particularly love the books and writings of John Holt. He is one of the people whose writing is seemingly very simple, clear, almost plain… But the clarity of his writing makes it powerful, in my opinion. I met Holt once, long ago, before I had kids, and he was heroic in his humility and sincerity as one could ever hope for–this, in the face of all this adulation by home schoolers who had read his every word.