Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Theresa's hiking analogy and more educational reading

Lately I have been using Theresa's beautiful hiking analogy and applying it to not only our homeschool journey (as the last post attested to) but also to life's journey. Such a wonderful way to consider the meanings of all that we do and the way we do them. Thanks so much Theresa :)

One of the books that I recently read and have been doing some thinking on is John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down. In all these years of homeschooling I had never read any of his books though I was familiar with his name and the ideas he espoused. The book was a veritable gold mine of ideas and thoughts for contemplating my own philosophies regarding education and learning.

Here are a few I'd like to share:

"...wherever possible I have broken with teaching tradition and sent kids down their spearate paths to their own private truths."

"...people have to be allowed to make their own mistakes and to try again, or they will never master themselves, although they may well seem to be competent when they have in fact only memorized or imitated someone else's performance."

"... I get out of kids' way. I give them space and time and respect."

"... we've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know how to tell themselves what to do."

"... reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn. The trick is to wait until someone asks and then move fast while the mood is on."

"... when children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cell blocks they learn to read, write and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them."

"... School takes our children away from any possibility of an active role in community life - in fact, it destroys communities by regulating the training of children to the hands of certified experts - and by doing so it ensures our children cannot grow up fully human."

"... Aristotle taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being."

"... school insitutions 'school' very well, though it does not 'educate'."

"... two institutions at present control our children's lives: television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stop abstraction... in centuries past, the time of childhood and adolescence would have been occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn."

"... Right now we are taking from our children all the time that they need to develop self-knowledge... I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers - and only self-teaching has any lasting value..."

"... independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships - the one day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling... no large scale reform is ever going to work until we force open the idea of "school" to include family as the main engine of education."

"...Discovering maning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me. "

"... whatever education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; how to live and how to die."


These are only some of the notes that I took as I read this book. Mr. Gatto has hit his finger on the spot so to say. What do we adults expect from children when we require of them things that will not in the long run help them in living life?

I felt as though I had been hit with a 4 by 4 after reading this book regarding a situation with one of my own children. My youngest daughter attends a public high school. She has been homeschooled in the past and is now a part of the educational system. She will be a sophomore this coming school year and is scheduled for all honors classes. She was recommended for an AP class and was making herself physically sick this summer worrying about all that she will be dealing with this coming academic year. After much discusssion with her, her father and I emailed her teacher and called her school to notify them of the fact she will be dropping this class. There is NO reason for that young woman to feel such pressure. I have to admit that in the beginning I forgot to look at HER and all this meant to her. I had felt proud of her and just a bit smug with myself as her parent and let that get in the way of seeing what was really best for her, not only as a student, but as a person in her own right. I was so pleased when her teacher responded postively to our notification of her dropping his class. He said he sees so many students being pressured in "performing" not only by teachers etc but by their own parents and was glad to see parents involved and concerned with their child's education in the exact opposite regard. It was funny that in homeschooling her brother I don't have a problem trying to "live" ideas such as Mr. Gatto talks about in his book and yet when faced with a situation in the education system with one of my other children I almost forgot about my own philosohpies and beliefs and the application of such. Thank you Mr. Gatto for the wake up call!

If you haven't read this book I highly recommend it. I borrowed it from our local library but plan on adding this gem to our own family homeschooling library.

1 Comments:

Blogger Theresa said...

Your daughter sounds alot like mine. She is very motivated to do well...too motivated some times, to the point of perfectionism. Not healthy. I am so glad she decided to homeschool this year as I could see the pressure building ahead for her.
I was also surprised myself at how much my own pride was wrapped up in my daughter's "honors." It's hard to admit and even harder to let go of, isn't it? But once we let our pride go, what a lighter load for both of us to carry!
Journey lightly...

9:04 PM  

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