"the process which a child goes through after leaving school, where they adjust to a non-formal learning environment"I'm not completely convinced with it as an explanation. While it largely does the job, to truly understand it, you need a bit more detail. So, N, this post is for you, to try to explain why deschooling is necessary, and how it happens. I hope it helps :)
When a baby is born they are natural learners. They are autonomous. Like cats, they are curious about anything and everything. They move from one activity to another, following their interests, finding out how things work. If they are interested in only one activity, they can spend hours on it. When they discover something new, they'll practise it over and over until they've mastered it. Think of those lovely phases they go through, like spit bubbles, raspberries, and teeth grinding. Babbling da da da da, over and over, until they learn ma ma ma ma, and repeat that over and over too. Mushing food between their fingers. Dropping their cup repeatedly over the side of the highchair. Throwing themselves backwards while in your arms. "What happens when I do this? Does it happen every time? Really? Every time?" Practising drawing smiley faces until the whole paper is covered in them. The progression from faces with arms and legs; to bodies with arms and legs; to people with belly buttons, fingers and toes, hair and ears. This is learning in it's most basic and natural form.
As parents, we encourage them to try new things, to explore the world around them. We watch over them, guiding them down the paths we would prefer. Trying to protect them from things that will hurt them - no hot ovens, no crawling towards staircases, no eating lupins in the garden. Hopefully trusting that sometimes, even when they do things we wouldn't do, they are still taking something valuable from the experience...
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| Small Clanger, aged 8.5 months, eating a raw potato. |
The system. The system that, due to it's very nature, has to make certain sacrifices. Sacrifices in tailoring lessons to individuals; in taking time to make sure one lesson is secure before moving on to the next; in taking galloping leaps with those who are thirsty for knowledge. They can only go as fast as their slowest learner. For those who, for want of a better phrase, learn faster, they are held back by slower learners. For those who, again, lacking a better phrase, learn slower, they can struggle to keep up if something basic is misunderstood. A building cannot stand firm if it's foundations are not securely laid. Plus, schools have limited time in which to impart their knowledge to the children who are attending. Each child, assuming they're not struck down by lurgies or have to attend family funerals or whatever, attends school for 195 days a year, for around 6 hours each day. Into that time they must cram all their set level of maths, English, science, sport, IT, history, religious studies, modern language, music and whatever else the curriculum deems they should know, plus at least an hour daily of 'socialising' with other children. And that's not even counting the added hours of homework that seem to be handed out earlier and earlier nowadays.
I think we can all agree that, all things considered, school is intense. In fact, it can be overwhelmingly intense. While children can seem alright on the outside their brains and bodies can be completely overwhelmed and frustrated by school. That crazy behaviour that drives you mad when they get back from school? That's their way of dealing with being cooped up inside for hours at a time, forced to sit still and concentrate, whether they feel like it or not. The spending hours zoned out staring at the TV? That's dealing with being mentally overwhelmed. So the first part of deschooling involves children getting all that wound up physical energy and mental strain out of their systems. Going through the crazy behaviour stage and/or the zoned out to the world stage into being just them again. Able to run free when they have energy, and able to walk away when they are mentally overwhelmed.
Even when not in school for a long amount of time, the ways of thinking that are perpetuated by school persist. I'm sure most parents of children in schools have experienced their child putting their hand up at a mealtime to talk, or calling you 'Miss' instead of mummy, or asking if they can go for a wee. So, another part of deschooling involves children unlearning those habits. It is remembering that they can eat and use the toilet when they need to, not when it is prescribed by others. It also runs deeper than that. Schools teach their students how to think: how to analyse problems in set ways; how to accept the authority of their "teachers" even when they may disagree with them; how to conform; how to comply. How many mothers have agreed to interventions during pregnancy/birth that they didn't want because they felt guilty for considering not complying? That is one of the legacies of schooling. Unlearning those lessons can take a long time.
After a while of being off school, children start to say things like "I'm bored", because they've gotten used to having their day timetabled for them, so they don't have to come up with their own things to do. This is the point that lots of children reach at the end of the summer holidays. But actually, if you go through that phase, children start to relearn how to use their natural creativity to fill their own days with things that are important and interesting to them. This is another part of deschooling. Learning to explore things because they want to explore them, not because they have to; learning to find out more about something because it interests them, not because they've been told they "must" know it. Toddlers are never bored. They're never bored because the world is full of new and interesting things to do - you just have to be open to finding them.
Finally, as most adults in this country have been through school, there is a lot of belief in it as a system. As I said before, we think that school will nurture our children, help them grow. We are so sold on it as a system, that when thinking about home ed, one of the first things that people say is some kind of variation on "I couldn't possibly teach my kids all that stuff". We think we are inferior, unable to continue the excellent job we have done with our kids up until they enter into the school system. We can't possibly teach them everything they need to know. You need special training to do that. You need knowledge. You need organisation. You need to be better than a parent. You need to be a "teacher". Indeed, the mum I was talking to the other day said exactly that:
"I don't think I could do it. [...] I would probably melt down if I had to teach them everything."The last bit of deschooling is about the parents, not the children. It is removing the residual school-centric thinking from ourselves. It is realising that we do not have to compare ourselves and home education to school and teachers and the system in which children have bitesite nuggets of essential information continually fed to them for 14 years of their lives. And why not? Because learning at home often looks nothing like learning in school.
It can look like many things. It can look like a child lying on their lawn and staring at the sky for a whole afternoon. It can look like a train ride with friends to a nearby town or city. It can look like 4 hours of continuously playing on a game on the computer. It can look like an entire maths workbook in an afternoon. It can look like three children sat on beanbags with a huge encyclopedia balanced on their knees, one of them reading aloud to the others. It can look like using farm animals to recreate a film watched the day before. It can look like a kitchen covered in flour, sugar and buttery finger smears after a session baking wonky cookies with finger holes in them. It can look like counting change into the hand of a market seller. It can look like a group of children building a giant spaceship out of cardboard boxes. It can look like so many of these, and much more.
Where do we as parents fit into this picture? Well, we are guiders, we are listeners, we are debaters, we are signposters, we are sharers. Mostly we are creators of opportunity - we do our best to provide the right tools and resources for learning. To use an analogy, we provide the warmth, the water and the light, and the seed grows into a shoot, then a sapling, then a tree. But we don't, and indeed, cannot, make the seed grow - it does that all by itself. We just help it along, by creating the right environment. And if our saplings come to us with a question, we help them to find the answer. We learn about it together. Partners, on a learning journey.
I don't think that I am done deschooling. Far from it, I'm only just beginning. As are the kids. We have a long way to go. But we will get there, together. Supporting each other, and learning how to be together again. Learning how to learn. And having fun doing it. And probably not eating any more raw potatoes!
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| Mmmmm... tasty! :D |
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