My Education, part 3: Beginning Public School

My mother taught my brother and me at home until 1998, when I was finishing 6^th grade and Isaac was finishing 4^th. My parents separated that year, and both Isaac and I started public school in the fall. I had attended I think a month or so of first grade (after which my mother decided it wasn’t the best place for me to learn) and I believe two weeks of fifth grade (after which I decided it wasn’t the best place for me to learn) in public schools. I had just lost my identity as a family and my identity as an alternative-schooler (and moved house twice in five months), so for me a sharp identity-less panic was cast over the general malaise that is middle school adolescence. *

Even while I was attempting to just keep my head down and get good grades so no one would look at me and I could try to find some solid mental ground to stand on, I was horrified by some of the things I found in public middle school. Not that it was a bad school or that I had bad teachers. Many of my teachers were good, a few of them were excellent and there is only one who I would credit with increasing my anxiety. For one thing, I found that cliques were real, even though every book or movie or anecdote I had ever heard of seemed to prove that all cliques did was build walls between people who should have enjoyed each other.

More than that, I found that I had trouble relating to how the students learned. They were not used to having any control in their learning, and so didn’t often seem to evaluate the worth of a piece of learning outside of what it meant for their grade.

The experience that stands out most illustrating the difference I felt between our minds was a lecture by the eighth grade Social Studies teacher while I was in seventh grade. I don’t remember if it was just my grade or the whole school that was required to attend, but I remember being sent rather unexpectedly to the auditorium first thing in the morning instead of to my first period class. This teacher was originally from Laos and he told us the story of his family’s escape from their probable deaths in that country. I have never been a morning person, or terribly fond of changes in my schedule without my consent, so I don’t remember being thrilled to be in the auditorium at 8am when I was expecting to be in Reading class but I was moved by the offer he was making of such a personal experience. And I was impressed by the odds against this kind of story coming to me in Ames, Iowa. So I resolved to thank him for it.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want his attention when I talked to him. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. I didn’t really want anyone to look at me. I just wanted to get through my classes so I could go back home. But I finally convinced myself that, even if not because of the magnitude of what he had offered, I had to thank him because everyone else would and I would be the obvious one missing.  So I wrung my hands for a while when everyone was milling around in the cafeterias afterwards and finally walked up and thanked him for what he had shared. He said I was welcome, and I think said another warm-hearted thing, and then as quickly as I could I made an awkward retreat.

A week or so later during a break in my Social Studies class, my teacher asked me (in front of everyone) if that had been me who thanked his colleague who had made that presentation. I said I had, and he thanked me and said I had been The Only** student who had thanked him, and that the presenter had been very moved that I had spoken to him.

Aside from this total backfire-- attention-wise-- of what I had been trying to accomplish, I could not believe this. I could and can hear some homeschool parent voices in my mind saying that public school kids don’t have manners, but honestly I think those voices can be dismissed pretty quickly. There were many students who were at least as worried about looking good as I was, and many also who were genuinely kind people. Somehow this just wasn’t personal for them, somehow they didn’t relate to him enough to want to talk to him. Or, if they wanted to, some other social force stopped them.

*I realize this is more or less a demand for pity, but this had a huge effect on the way that I experienced public school and I haven’t found an honest way to talk about this phase of my education without it. It probably also made my opinion of middle school much more negative. Please bear with me.

**I remember “The Only student”, and it may have been “one of the only students” or “one of the only students who wasn’t in his own classes.”

A note on home and public schooling

Writing about homeschooling and public school I am afraid that I may seem to be criticizing teachers in the public education system. That is not what I mean to be doing. Teachers attempt to be the living spark that crosses the distance between the institutions and necessities of public education (separation of learning into subjects, standardized tests, large classes with one schedule for many minds, and many more that public school teachers can identify more accurately than I) and the needs of living breathing students. The fact that teachers do this and even do it well is nothing less than incredible, and they have my constant respect.

On the other hand, homeschooling is highly stigmatized. Most people seem to think that parents who choose to homeschool their children are religious fanatics, abusive, or both. I'm sure there are families who sadly choose homeschooling for both of these reasons, but I don't know any. I knew a few homeschooling families who were sheltering their children more than I would have been comfortable with, and some families including my own who were not entirely functional emotionally. But I found a much higher percentage of children who thought badly of their minds when I started public school, and was shocked to find that only a few exceptional public school students even seemed to have a clue about how they learned and what characterized their individual minds. I think every homeschooler I know could have explained pretty confidently by the time they were eight years old whether or not they would learn from a lesson, and how they would need to supplement what a teacher or parent did to make sure that they did learn from it. 

Obviously it is possible for a public school experience to lead to developed and fulfilled minds, but I am hoping that my voice as a former homeschooler can help me and others to think about some of the reasons that it often doesn't. Because, honestly, I think that I received one of the best elementary-age educations in the country.

My Education, part 2: Homeschooling with My Mother

Luckily for my brother and me we did not begin our education in public school, where we both would have been stuck with labels that could have damaged his sense of self worth and my easily inflated ego irreparably. My mother decided to teach us at home after I had attended I believe a couple of months of first grade. I wasn’t a problem student, and I remember having fun with classmates, but I wasn’t happy there and she wasn’t happy with the methods and especially the priorities that are employed in public schools.

We spent our days learning, and mostly trying not to label it too carefully. I don’t have very clear memories separating years except when we moved between houses when I was seven or eight years old. My mother worked hard to make sure we were learning things in all of the subjects we would have been taught in school, mostly so she could record this and keep us officially official. She was always flexible and happy if we had our own ideas about what or how to study. I remember being delighted to learn one year that  a person could read about a subject and then write down what they had learned and then, if one provided a name or some designation of topic, other people would be happy to read it—I had discovered essays! I proceeded to write I think thirty-two of them that year (as I have said before, I was very fond of numbers and of documenting my accomplishments). Most of these were a short paragraph or two long. One was entitled “Dolls” and I believe was the result of original research. The longest was on King Tutankhamen, for which I drew my own reconstruction of the Nile on our computer.

My mother was also very considerate of our different learning needs, which along with our age difference (which is only a year and a half, but a year and a half can be a big deal in grade school) required a lot of creativity and careful thought. Isaac, as I began to describe in my last post, is I think a kinesthetic, visual, aural learner. He could listen to my mother read to him for very long periods of time as long as he had something to do with his hands, and would remember just about everything he had heard. I loved to be read to as well, but more often needed to stop doing anything else so I could focus on seeing what was being described or just the words themselves in my mind. 

Most of my memories of day to day learning are by myself, with frequent projects with Mom and Isaac. We spent a lot of time in parks talking about biology and ecology. We spent time with craft projects, often in a weeklong craze that petered out rather abruptly. Mom bought a loom and I learned to weave. I journaled and thought about my mind. I read books—sitting in the branches of trees when possible.

Learning this way taught me to respect my mind and to take responsibility for what I was learning. I decided myself how best to test what I was learning (for things like math, anyway, which I felt benefitted from checking to see what I remembered. Many things, like vocabulary and history, can just be re-looked up if you really need to know them and find you have forgotten) I would wait until at least a week had past since I had studied a chapter and then do as many of the questions at the end as I could. If I ended up getting more than fifty percent, I was proud. I knew that I had really internalized this knowledge, and was not just parroting back things I managed to keep in my short-term memory. These skills of knowing my mind, knowing how to learn something and how to check if I had have served me well all my life.