What I Can Control

Ian told me yesterday that he's decided he wants to major in "everything."

This is from a kid who last year hated school. Every day when I'd pick him up from school, there'd be some sadness or anger. He didn't think he knew anything. He believed he was just plain stupid. He hated all his teachers (as did I) he hated school, people, life in general. I wondered if he took after some of the members of my family who struggle with depression and bi-polar and drug and alcohol abuse and aren't diagnosed until they're in jail or homeless or something equally depressing.

But now I think he's going to become a Renaiisance Man. You know, the kind of man that is well read yet can also wield a sword (or at least an Air Soft Gun.) The kind of man who can talk about all subjects without sounding like a blowhard.

My point is that with homeschooling I'm beginning to see the old Ian. The one that as a child read book after book after book and when I'd try to skip pages because it was late at night and all I really wanted to do was go to bed or at the very least zone out in front of the TV,  he'd say, "No Mommy, that's not how it works."

He's right. That's not how it works. That's not how public education should work. Some people are very anti-public education for various reasons, but I've always supported it. I've always believed in it. Not anymore. I think it works for the kids who don't make waves. The kids who follow the rules. The kids who never raise their hand, never skip class, never question anything anyone asks of them.

When they get to college they stand quietly in the Financial Aid line, even when it snakes out the door. They sign all the forms without reading. They don't question why they have to take English when they plan on begin a mathmetician.

These are good kids. I like having them in class. I enjoy talking with them. They are nice. They are sweet. And let's face it, they're fairly pedestrian, but that's okay. They make up most of America and we probably couldn't survive without them.

But Ian always questioned. When he was in second grade and brought home his spelling list with ten new words that he had to write three times, he said, "Why do I have to write them three times if I can write them right once?"

Good point. Why?

That should have been my first clue that Ian would not survive the numbing, dull-mindedness of public school (not all public schools - I'm talking about the ones where we live). I should have taken him out of school then, but I really, really believed in public schools (after all, I was a teacher in one).

It's been a hard lesson the last few years here in Colorado. I've lost my faith in public education. I've lost my confidence in teachers (myself included). Do we really know what we're talking about? What's the point of writing an essay about a subject randomly chosen from a list of subjects? What are we teaching?

Sometimes I think we need to go back to the old models of apprenticeship...seriously. We teach them to read and write and then we send them to someone to teach them a skill. We talk about skills all the time in education, but what skills are we teaching them? We talk about "critical thinking," what does that mean? And how do we know we've taught it and how are they going to use it?

What I think we need to teach our kids, our own kids in particular, are how to have confidence in whatever they do. We need to teach them to explore, we need to teach them to experience, we need to teach them to be unafraid.

And most of all we need to teach them that they can major in Everything.