The Frame Goes Out The Window

A few days ago I purchased a print from an artist on Etsy.  It was a gift for a dear friend of mine and I wanted it to go in a beautiful frame. I went to the store and purchased a standard sized frame.  I had the print with me and although I didn't measure, it looked like it would fit.   Once I got home and attempted to place the print in the frame I found it was just a little too tight.   Now I had a choice to make.  Return the frame and go searching for another one, maybe even custom made as it was now clear to me that this was not a standard size print.  My other option was to trim away at the edges, lose a little bit of the picture, nobody would notice or ever know.  I could make it fit in the standard size frame, the easiest solution. I had the scrapbooking tools to make it happen.  However, I knew that if I cut away at the picture I would be loosing part of the beauty that the artist put there.   The work she so lovingly created would be destroyed.  Perhaps it would still look good sitting there in that frame, but something would be missing, it would be a broken image, less than what it should have been.  The picture had been perfectly made, every drop of color and tiny marking meant to be there.  Who was I to say it had to go in a standard sized frame?  

During that time of framing the print and considering cutting away at it I thought about the latest decison for the education of my son. I thought of all the time we spend telling him to just sit still and try harder. Wiggle a little less and for goodness sake stop doing cartwheels when you are supposed to be in line waiting with the rest of the children! This is what we had been doing.  Trying to make him fit into a educational system that is standard size.  The problem is that he wasn't created to be in a standard frame.  We can trim away at him, put him in the hallway, explain that he must do what the rest of the class is doing.  We can make him feel like he isn't good at school and destroy his joy in learning....or we can throw the frame out the window and see where the exploding ball of excitement would like to bounce to!

Just where did this standard size education come from anyway?  It came from the industrial revolution.  We needed people who could stand still, focus, and do one job very well all day long.  They needed to be strong in self control and imagination and movement were frowned upon.  We also had the farmers, planning the crops, daily repetition of caring for the crops, careful examination of soil conditions and waiting patiently for the harvest.  We needed those farmers, we still do.  We need those people in the factories.  The trouble is not everyone was created to be a farmer or factory worker.  Some are wild hunters, always on there guard, ready to run, climb, and swing to reach their prey. They must be clever and quick to react in danger. They are on the move and rarely settling in one place for long. They belonged in the wild, but there isn't very much wild left in today's world and so they are left to be looked at as trouble makers.   Thom Hartman writes about this in The Edison Gene.  The book goes trailing into some genetics that I skipped over but the heart of the book is that American socieity, and schools were created for the farmers type, they work very well for most children but for the hunter child they are a nightmare. Those children deserve something different.  Something more than a label and time in the corner wearing a dunce cap.  

Even if you think Thom Hartman is a loony (and some people certainly do) there is other research out there with the same message about school and kids like my son.  

 I've done a lot of reading on kinesthetic learners (Learning by doing/moving) and kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD.  Studies have been done showing that children who were diagnosed with ADHD and medicated so that they could be successful in school no longer needed medication to learn once they switched to learning at home.  Here is the catch though, if the parent used a traditional curriculum the child would still have trouble learning and the parent would feel they needed medication.  If however, the parent  did not follow a curriculum or educate in an environment like that of a traditional school the child no longer needed medication to learn.  This means not homeschool in the way of "whatever school does, but at home." Instead it must be child lead learning.  The child picks what they want to learn and the parent facilitates getting them to the information they need.  You can check out the study in Psychology Today (because that is the kind of stuff I read in my spare time.)   The idea of no curriculum and following whatever he wanted to do sounded a bit scary and possibly a terrible idea so whenever I began to doubt my decision I would look back at this study.

I am not doubting it anymore.  My intuition has been screaming all along that this whole "school" thing wasn't best for him and about a month ago the decision was made final.

  "You can learn ANYTHING you want!" I told him.  

"Remember you took Spanish at school and didn't like it, what language would you like to learn?" 

 Without a moments pause he replied, "Ancient Egyptian." 

Since then my husband has taken him to the library, he checked out a book on hieroglyphs, learned about the Rosetta stone (the real one, not the learning program) and has began his journey in unschooling.    

There are some tricks you can use as a parent and one of them is called strewing.  Basically  it means putting things out there that you think would interest your child.  You don't tell them  they must look/play/study the item and if they never pick it up that is fine.  Although secretly you might be wanting to beg them to look at it.   I did this a couple weeks ago with cursive.   I knew that my son was interested in cursive because last year he dissected writings until he discovered how to sign his name in cursive.  I was at Barnes and Noble and saw a cursive practice book, the kind with the arrows that tell you how to make the letter.   I brought it home, and showed him, I simply said, if you decide to check it out be sure to look at the little arrows as they will guide you on how to move the pencil.    I left it on the kitchen table that evening and went to bed.   The next morning, before I had even woken up he had already finished the entire cursive alphabet. I was actually strewing before I knew the term existed.  The year between 1st and 2nd grade he wasn't feeling like a strong reader.  I started writing notes back and forth with my daughter intentinally leaving them where he would find them, and of course he would want to read them to spy on his sister and mom.  His reading confidence improved greatly that summer.   That is strewing at it's best... at it's worst they ignore it and learn something they are more interested in.   

This method of learning doesn't have to be done only at home, schools can certainly do it too. Montessori gets very close and there is Sudbury, and Reggio schools using this method throughout the world.   There is one school in Mexico that was previously using the traditional method of teaching and switched it up and now the kids are one of the top schools in the country.   You may have heard of the computers given to children in India.  No instructions, just a computer.   Driven by their curiosity they figured out how to boot it up and much more.  The article on both of those stories and more can be found on Wired.

The initial thought I had was that this way of education will not be convenient for me.  Next I thought of all that we had put into making regular school work for him.  The emotional energy that was drained from hearing the latest news from the classroom of what he had done wrong that day. His own feeling of failure, or his defensiveness as he told me that he wasn't being "bad" but just had to sit in the hallway.   The nervousness when I would volunteer in the classroom as I would try to somehow telepathically control him into sitting still and not making a sarcastic comment.   I actually stopped volunteering in his classroom because it was bringing me so much anxiety.  So perhaps, mentally and emotionally this is not inconvenient at all.   I feel very lucky that our family can make this choice.  I do not have to work a 40 hour work week and  I know that not everyone has the luxury of taking their child out of school, or the choices nearby of alternative education styles.

Looking forward I am excited and hopeful.  I'm seeing the potential in my son rather than what he is lacking.  I wish more kids like him had the options to learn in their own way.  I imagine we would have many more Da Vincis, Einsteins, and Newtons if they were only allowed the time and space to explore.