Unschool versus Homeschool.

You may have noticed a slight change on our blog. Probably not, being that this blog is new, very new. But some of you who are keen-eyed will have picked up on the change in the header from "On family's home school experience." to One family's Unschool experience. Well, what the hell does that mean? Is there really a difference? Yes. Yes there is.

This week we sought out a network of families who were using what is now called "alternative" methods of education, outside of the standard school system. We found what we were looking for in the St. Louis Home School Network, a secular network of home schooling families, cooperatively leading and taking classes, and sharing in public outings and whatnot. On Thursday we went to our first group meeting for a class to be taken to the Cahokia Mounds. I have never been to the mounds and have been told by many friends and comrades to go to this place and really take it in for what it is, a museum preserving what very little remains of land of the indigenous people's since we massacred them not so long ago. I will write more about Cahokia after our trip there, but for now I want to focus on what I learned from the experience of this particular class.

This is not an indictment of the class, or the class structure, merely an understanding of our experience. The class was to meet up at a public park, under a pavilion, where we would learn about archeology, Mississippian life, and museum etiquette (as per request of the Cahokia Mounds museum). We arrived and met the medium sized group of kids and parents, ages ranging from 3 (whitman) to around 9 or 10 if I had to guess. I immediately found kinship in one parent who was there for the class as well, a young man named Will who was wearing a shirt that proclaimed "tree hugging dirt worshipper". Perfect right?

The kids were asked to gather around in a circular fashion and sit on the concrete. This should have been my first indicator that perhaps this was not our setting today, but my conditioning of acceptance of false structure kept that thought of nature just that, a thought, and one that is distant from the reality that nature is not a thought, rather, it is being. At any rate, the children sat in groups around a circle, with a bag of junk to sift through as archaeologists would. Fun. Immediately, Whitman dumped the bag on the ground and began going through the junk with glee. Kids love stuff. They love getting into things and picking them apart, pulling out interestingly shaped items and imagining their purpose before discarding it to find another. Adults do this too, but we call it commerce, yuck. Kids don't yet know that feeling of pressure to buy something, so they just play, and play, and play as if they are actually free. Free to roam around rooms and gather ideas and take in experience. Adults tend to stay in the lanes between the racks of clothes careful not to brush against another shopping adult, contact is not permitted when the animals are feasting, this viewed in the animal kingdom as a threat and met with great resistance.

After a bit of sifting the kids were explained to what an archaeologist does and given the chance to now categorize all of this wonderful imagination into classes of: male junk, female junk, group junk, solo junk, room junk, garage junk. The kids were then to identify the junk and relate it to who they think the junk belonged to. This is a pretty cool game, I must say, but I started sensing something from Fair and Whitman that was unusual for me. they were bored. Why was that so strange? Well, I will tell you. To me this class seemed to be pretty decent. Engaging, outside, albeit on concrete, and in a radical-ish group of home school families. What could be cooler? Well, I will tell you again. Dirt. Dirt would be cooler. Grass under our feet and twigs in our hair. That would be cooler. Identifying a plastic water bottle in the river as an assault upon our landbase rather than wondering whose lips once grazed the opening. Running in the trees and pretending they are great hands reaching down to grab us until we out maneuver them and slide into freedom at the very last second. That would be cooler. That is what the kids were thinking I am sure, and not only that, but within 30 yards of the class was a playground and fountain, where others were joyously romping and scraping their knees. That, I am sure is where they wanted to be. I, of course, had assumed that I was doing the right thing. I had assumed that anything outside of the standard of school was better. Duh, I am a reactionary. I am a product of a culture that has taught me not to be proactive but reactive, and I am following suit, even when I think I might not be. The class was comprised of very cool kids, and very nice parents, but it was still being structured in classroom style. Kids scattered about are now students to the teacher who is sitting and speaking in a lighter toned voice and sending out the "right" answers every now and then to keep the class on track.

After the class got out, and amazing thing happened. We went to playground area to play, and Fair and Whitman were pushy with one another, cranky with me and not at all into social life at the moment. These are the same two kids who, only the day before had hiked for six straight hours without a single complaint or fight or whine, and now, after only an hour on the concrete, are ready to call it quits for the day. Wow. This is truly an eye opener. I know now that this is going to be hit and miss for a while, and classic class settings are a big miss. I then think about how Fair must have felt about mid-day at school, after four hours of being indoors, and knowing she had four more hours of it ahead. How much did her mind wonder? How far would her teacher let that go? Not far enough, I am damn sure of that. I then recall breakfast before taking Fair each day, and how her being subtly cried out.

Nearly every morning, Fair would confront us about something, be it her shoe choice, her food choice for breakfast, or whether or not to wear her jacket. There was always something. Of course, one would say, it was 7:00 AM, who isn't cranky? But I am pretty certain now that it was more than that. I am certain it was her slight resistance to going to school. Though she loved the idea of being in school and loved the idea of learning, it is one of those topics that can get her excited at any time, and adored her friends there, her body was pleading with her not to go, and in turn, her mood would show that to us in the form of resistance. Our bodies speak to us at all times, and we have been taught how to ignore this very well. how the hell else would we stand for sidewalks of concrete and buildings of steel, and roadways and parking garages? If we listened to, not even the earth screaming, but our own bodies broadcasting the messages of pain and suffering that we remedy with booze and pills and television and Dr. Scholl's, we would not at all stand for the injustice of another moment in a false setting.

this is where Unschooling comes in. Homeschooling is a step for us into the most natural idea I have encountered, Unschooling. The complete eradication of neo-traditional class setting and curriculum. Learning by living and living by choice. No more school, not even under the guise of home, rather lessons of life. Some of those lessons are going to be fun, some are going to be rough. Today the kids learned a rough lesson when our financial aid for Angela's college was cut in half, forcing us into a real bind financially. The kids were there to take part in the discussion of what we are to do now. We had planned on paying our rent in advance a few months to pad us into the winter and fix our car, now we can afford to do neither. We would have to put off both and work harder outside of the house, forcing us to work harder in the home and the vicious cycle begins. We were struggling with it. There is no answer, only possibilities and this is the lesson that hardest to understand. We need answers, we need life's problems to resolve in under 30 minutes with two commercial breaks. But we all know that this is a sham. That it does not work that way. Some of us know too, though, that problems are temporary and lead to adaptation and wither into the background as sure as the leaves will redden and fall.