Friday, April 6, 2018

Ruminations of the Future (Homeschooling)

A lot has happened since I last updated the blog - we have been through a lot in the past couple years...from dealing with Laurel May's medical issues, me changing careers, buying a house, and Chad finishing up his undergraduate degree.  I feel like each of those things could require their own reflection and summation, but as of now, I'm looking forward and have been thinking about setting my intention, both individually and as a family.

On a personal and unrelated note to the rest of this rumination, as I've trained for 2 marathons since having Laurel (one completed and one about to happen), I've noticed training sessions that used to be "hard but doable" are now utterly brutal.  I've been thinking about the toll childbearing and child caring has taken on my body.  My comfortable training pace has slowed considerably, maybe 1-2 minutes per mile and I don't know if I've "lost my mojo," or if I lost some of my training during the time I was pregnant with Laurel and the year after she was born that I spent mostly pumping and never, ever working out.  It's hard to see your body not perform the way it once used to, and I've been coming to terms with the fact that accepting a new normal (at least for now) may be the best path forward.  Further, in light of the toll my long training runs seem to take on me, I've been wondering if the marathon is a goal I should even be striving for these days.  I really want weekends to be an enjoyable time for us to spend together as a family exploring and seeing the world together, and scheduling long training runs between Chad and me, and being tired from exertion just seems to be getting in the way of that.  I think about how running is supposed to be "something I do for me," but I've come to realize that if I am always viewing the weekend runs with trepidation or reluctance, it may be time to scale back.  Running the point of utter exhaustion has felt like I'm missing the mark in self care.  Besides, I haven't even done any half marathons since about six months after Everett was born, and I think it'd be fun to focus on those for a while, to take the pressure off.  We're about to find out anyways, because I'll be running the Cap City Half Marathon at the end of April, two weeks after the Athens Full Marathon!!

As for other goals I've been mulling over for future, a big one is the education of my children, which is almost too big to encapsulate in one journal entry, as there are so many facets to it that I think about on a daily basis.  

When I think about what I want for my children in terms of their education, the main thing is that they grow up with a thirst for knowledge and learning, free from the confines of the institutional system and the toll it takes on both body and mind.  I don't want my children to sit in a classroom all day, being told to be quiet, sit still, and make sure they answer the questions in the right way, the way that they must if they intend to take the required state and national testing.  I don't want my children to live for grades and tests, no, I don't even want those to be words in their vernacular.  I want them to see the world as their classroom, and for them to be free to follow their desires to learn in whatever direction they see fit.  Should they have learning differences, their constitution will not be bent to fit a system, perhaps giving them drugs to help them sit still or concentrate, rather I hope to help them learn in a way that they will naturally thrive.  It is not the fault of the system, per se, as systems are meant to be the most to the most number of people, but never the most to any one person.  I see it as my responsibility to be the best to my people.  

Another main motivating factor in choosing to keep my children out of conventional schooling is that I also do not, frankly, want them to be a part of mainstream culture.  I loathe consumerism, the keeping up with the Joneses, and I especially loathe the idea of lunch time politics, where popularity is always at play.  My children will never be bullied, and my daughter will never have her bra strap snapped, or her ass grabbed in the busy hallway of class changes.  And they will never feel they have to skip meals or adhere to a certain body standard to fit in, because we will celebrate them as they are.  And certainly, I want to raise my daughter and my son both to be able to navigate outside the heavy glass ceiling of conventional society...the one in which, for example, only approximately 12% of both undergraduates and graduates at the school of engineering are women (at OSU specifically but similar statistics probably follow nationwide), because that type of disparity doesn't happen in a bubble, it happens in the everyday microaggressions (as well as macro-aggressions) of our toxic society.  

Further, as I have deepened into the role at home of caretaker and provider, I have strengthened my resolve that my children, as other animals, are meant to remain close to their parents from early childhood through adolescence.  Chad and I often remark how it could have been, almost was, him who ended up taking the role I have now taken on - I don't really care which parent it is, but I want my children to be surrounded closely and firmly by family as they make their way into adulthood.  Now, I don't pretend to know everything my children have yet to learn, and I intend, excitedly, to learn right along with them, and sometimes support them as they surpass me in certain areas.  I don't see myself as their teacher, per se, but more a steward of their knowledge.  As long as we as a family can keep the spark of yearning for knowledge alive, I have no fear that our children can soar to whatever heights they want to.  An education is not a means to the highest paying job, the biggest house, the most expensive car (and in fact we strive away from these things).  No, I won't measure the success of my children by whether they measure higher than me on the stick of prosperity.  I just want them to lead lives of contentment, whatever that means for them.

In choosing this different path, there are a lot of things I worry about: privilege, not supporting public schools (which is kind of like privilege), and unintentionally hurting or concerning others.  I worry about the inherent privilege I know that comes along with this choice.   I know that not everyone has the ability to choose this path.  I look around me in the working class neighborhood in which we live and know there's a lot of people who probably want a good number of things for their children and their families, but that lack of resources will keep them from ever hoping to attain those goals.  I worry about what opting out of public schools means about my personal micro and macro ethics.  Many fierce education advocates would say that opting out of the public system is irresponsible, and again is a signifier of my privilege.  Opting in would be throwing my hat into the system to try and keep it chugging along for the betterment of society.  When all those who have the privilege of opting out do so, what does that do to the system that contains in the end, only those on the bottom end of things...those most in need.  Anyways, I am in no way myself personally knowledgeable about education politics and policy, but I do admit to see some flaws in my personal choice to opt out, especially when my political and ethical views are pretty firmly socialist.  Finally, every time I tell someone I plan to homeschool (or unschool, rather), I worry that maybe they will think it an indictment on themselves in some way.  Often, when you choose a route less taken, people tend to see your choice as a sort of anti-affirmation of their choices, which...I don't know.  The only thing I can say to that is that, the world is a diverse place made up of people who make a hundred different choices.  In the end, in most ares I feel passionate about (childbirth, feminism, food systems, etc.), I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I think what it comes down to in the end is "Did you feel you had a choice?" "Were there options?"  No one path is the end-all and be-all, it's the idea that there are many choices out there to take, and that we can all respect, support, and celebrate each other on our many splendid journeys. 

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