A recent article in the
NYTimes on a Manhattan "unschooling" family--that being, families who opt out of the educational system and try to foster a life-long love of learning more informally, think of it as do-it-yourself Montessori or Waldorf or Reggio-Emilia--has brought back all of our discussions on education and the kiddos. I've been meaning to blog about this for about a year, since the discussion goes back at least 1 1/2 years, but haven't gotten my mind around it all. I'm still working on it. And we're still, as you might say, "in process." This, my friends, is a long one, and I'm already long in a normal post.
Some background: Mama and I are both academically oriented, having gotten where we are through different yet similar educational paths. She attended 12 years of Catholic girls' school; I went through a suburban public school system. She went to an Ivy League for undergraduate; I went to a small liberal arts university. We both have advanced degrees. She hated school until college. I loved school all the way through (with some exceptions for subject and teacher). Her parents both have advanced degrees and her mom is a professor. My parents have bachelor's degrees and have pursued a course of lifelong learning through reading and travel. Mama and I value education and want the best one for our kids.
But what is "best"? First, I should say, and not just because one of their teachers occasionally reads my blog, that we are extremely happy with the preschool they are attending. It is child-centered, play-based, with a relatively diverse student body, caring teachers, and no commute. But they didn't have to attend preschool at all, though we never actually considered homeschooling them for preschool. We wanted them both to enter formal education, if only to see how they reacted and what their needs were. And we considered several ways to do that--this being Connecticut, there are lots of private schools to consider (and no public preschool--don't get me started on that!). Believe it or not, at three, they were almost too old for Montessori, which, in this area, won't take children once they are three (which also means they can't go on in Montessori here because they must have been in an accredited Montessori preschool). We liked the quiet structure of the approach, the independence, though not quite the discipline, but weren't yet ready to swallow the cost (two preschoolers at once changes your perspective--the cost for both where they are now would only be the cost for one at most of these private schools). And having witnessed the disastrous experience of a little friend, we're glad we didn't go that route.
Waldorf has always intrigued me and many of my parenting choices have been Waldorf-inspired, from little television to my initial hope to avoid plastic toys (this is next to impossible on a normal budget). I love the ritual and tradition, the natural materials, the fairy tales and stories. I'm not crazy about it's almost anti-academic stance (Steiner, Waldorf's main theorist, didn't believe children should read until they were 7+). And I'm not keen on its predominantly white, Christian, upper-middle class, Eurocentric approach. Or it's righteous granola hipster superior vibe. Besides, the closest Waldorf is quite a commute, plus an outrageous price.
We try not to make the educational decision based on price, but in truth the expensive schools would require a major change in our family structure because we couldn't afford tuition on one income. I would have to go back to work. And my little non-profit salary would just cover tuition for two at these private schools. But we decided that it would be more valuable to the family and the children to have a stay-at-home mom there for daytime parental involvement at school and after-school activities then to have a private school education and another working mom, most likely with afternoon into evening childcare, yet another expense. I could pursue my alternative teacher certification to work hours similar to school, but the irony of teaching public school to send my kids to private school doesn't set well.
See, I'm actually a public school Democrat. Like one of the
NYTimes bloggers, I believe in the social, civic contract of quality public education for all of our children and despair at the white and/or middle/upper class flight from public schools. Besides, I loved public school and did well by it and think it is an important social bonding experience. But then, the only homeschoolers or even private schoolers in my part of Texas were rabid fundamentalist Christians; everyone else went to public school. Not so Mama, who only heard horror stories, and probably true, well-founded ones, about the public schools in her part of Queens in the 1980s. But she sat in class, had homework, had lunch, had recess, and music and art and reading and math, just all with catechism on top, and values the experience (if not the dogma).
But do I want my kids to be sacrifices to a political ideal? We have heard, from our pediatrician and even from public school teachers in town, that schools here, especially after elementary school, are mediocre at best. Real mediocre. The average SAT scores at the high school are, well, fairly dismal (I think my score, which was not meteoric, beats the average by more than 400 points; Mama's more than that! Have they so significantly changed the ways those are scored?). We want our children to have an educational grounding that gives them options later in life. They don't need to be brilliant, but we want them to have a love of learning, a solid knowledge base, and a future. Can they have that, if they are unchallenged and bored for 12 years? I'm not saying that is what would necessarily happen, but I want to avoid it and spare them the frustration, disappointment, depression of a negative school experience (I'm not talking about one or two episodes, but a widespread problem from grade to grade, teacher to teacher, subject to subject).
And I'm not saying my kids are too bright for public schools. But as someone with a little background in education, I recognize the truths behind Howard Gardner's learning styles, that every person has different strengths with regards to receiving and processing information. I'm a visual learner. My mom is auditory. I think my dad may be visual. Mama is kinesthetic (no wonder she didn't like K-12). Bud is probably auditory. Sis is probably visual and kinesthetic. Schools can't be expected to teach to each child's strengths; there just aren't enough hours or teachers or funds, though awareness of styles and processes is increasing (Mama Teacher could tell me the word for teaching to each child--individuation? differentiation?). Some children adapt better or have multiple learning strengths. But other children can't or don't, for various reasons.
So, with our pediatrician's encouragment, we have considered other alternatives, with some trepidation. Academic private schools: expensive in our area, with no doubt extreme social competition and a long commute, but with intense academics and options. Alternative private schools: like Waldorf, again expensive and far away, without intense academics, instead with lots of creativity (one of the commenters on the anti-schoolers article said these kinds of approaches are best for "artsy-fartsy" kids; I know we might have one of those, but not two), but still lots of social competition (our kids would be the poor ones, but at least our family is diverse enough to match the most granola ones!). Would one or the other of these work best for our kids? And how does the being bi-racial twins of lesbian moms play into the whole thing?
And then there is homeschooling. Teaching our kids oursevles at home, either following curricula or as less-informal "unschoolers." Or, specifically, my teaching the kids at home. Everything I read--often in extremely sympathetic publications like
Mothering makes it sound idyllic and ideal, but then they are preaching to the choir. I can picture us travelling to Boston to study the Revolution, or to Niagara to study geology, or to Mama's family in Thailand to study art. And being so close to New York, New Haven, even Boston, Phillie, and DC, we could do amazing things.
I know I would be an interesting, challenging, creative, resourceful educator, as it is after all, what I did in the museums . . . but for my own children? I feel like they need interactions with other adults, other kids, other ways of doing things. Not just other well-off, liberal, granola homeschoolers and their parents, but people with different backgrounds, experiences, opinions, and approaches. The true democratic education. With a childhood educational experience that they can take with them and share with almost anyone else--swapping lunches, the dreaded pop quiz, picture day, frog dissections, homecoming dance, science fair, book reports, "the" talk in 5th grade (do they even do that anymore??). I learned a lot more in school than the three Rs.
There is a lot of discussion of the socialization of homeschoolers, how they only relate to adults, how they are viewed as weird by their peers (and even my parents think we're weird for considering it and would be doing the kids a grave disservice), how they are self-centered, egotistical, precocious. Now, the homeschoolers I've met don't seem to be, and, really, is junior high and high school really a positive socialization? Getting along well with all types of "other" is really a key component to adulthood, from holding a job to building a career, even to checking out at the grocery or talking to the person in the elevator. What kind of schooling helps with that? I also don't want to be a so-called "helicopter" parent hovering over my children so that they never experience independence, even failure, probably one of the hardest lessons of public school for me, both academic and social. The kids are the center of our world, but they aren't the center of
the world. I'm afraid homeschooling would convince them otherwise, leaving them unprepared for life beyond school.
In the end, that's what it's all about: life after school. What you are equipped to do, what you want to do, and having those two paths align. Schooling is just a part of it, and just the first part. There are other factors in happiness and success after school--some of the people I know with the least formal education are the smartest, funniest, kindest, best people, irregardless of their schooling. And, with all due respect to the Ivy League, some of the worst people I've ever met were in its hallowed halls, Mama exluded. So, clearly, book learning isn't everything. And if the kids didn't even finish school, or never go formally and are the aforementioned unschooled, but are still kind, generous, reflective, engaged, independent, contributing, active people--all those wonderful adjectives that have little to do with the three Rs--I will be proud.
And so, for now, preschool is an experiment. To see if Bud and Sis work well in a school setting. To find out who they are as students. To see where their strengths and challenges are. It's "progress report" time, so we get to discuss them with their teachers to make sure they are thriving, not just surviving. And we'll continue to reevaluate it along the way, through elementary school, which will be public until proven otherewise. Because, in the end, the local public school system is our first, preferred choice. But, the other schools, the other approaches, will always be an option if things somehow don't work out well in public school. In the end, we really believe school experience is very individual (here come those learning styles again) and much of the success and difficulty is child-based, regardless of all else, that whole lily-in-mud-pond metaphor. What did my dad's friend say about college, "any college can teach you more than you can learn"? Most schools will provide an adequate or even good learning environment; all, as I've mentioned, have negatives and positives, even the expensive private ones. We just want to give them the environment that will most likely foster success and happiness, in their present and future. We just don't know what that will be for them yet.
