Learning From Life, Not School
Kids learn best about social engagement by participating in community life.
Some time ago, I had a discussion with someone who thought he had uncovered a major contradiction in my thinking and, therefore, in my work. He pointed out that home-based education is highly individualized and focused on the family, which he believes isolates children from society. It’s self-centered by nature, he stated, turning out “graduates” who are lacking interest in society and the common good. That, he pointed out, is totally out of synch with my writing in our Natural Life Magazine about social change, the New Economy, environmental issues, and so on. He actually said the “flaw” that he’d detected diminishes my credibility as someone interested in solving world problems…and kindly urged me to drop the “infatuation with homeschooling.”
Aside from the fact that I've been an advocate of “homeschooling” for over 50 years, which is more than an infatuation, I am always ready to patiently explain and educate. And this guy clearly needed both. So, I first tried to help him understand the error of his stereotypical view. I agreed that there are some homeschooling families that are insular in their outlook, and assured him that many others aren’t. Stereotyping people who live without schooling is just as ridiculous as making broad assumptions about people whose kids attend school.
In reality, I told him, there are large numbers of civic-minded life learning families where adults and children alike volunteer their time, speak up about important issues, and are active in other ways that will help their communities. These families model public service for their children, demonstrate to their neighbors that children have a voice, and provide a rich learning environment – in addition to creating social change.
To provide just a few examples of how this works, in our Life Learning Magazine in 2014 and 2015, we wrote about this type of community participation and unschoolers here, here, and here.
As is all too common on social media, my critic didn’t thank me for the information or apparently even take the time to read those articles. Instead, propelled by his misinformed righteousness, he went on to blame home-based education for what he called the “current and widespread degeneration of civic engagement.”
Realizing the wisdom of not speaking when someone isn’t listening, I didn’t go on to point out to this person that schools are the problem rather than the solution. Public schools are poor models of democracy and human rights. As I wrote in my now 25-year-old book Challenging Assumptions in Education, children learn about democracy by living and participating in one – going to public meetings, educating their fellow citizens about issues, protesting when something happens they think is inappropriate, and so on – not by being forced to attend school five days a week.
So I didn’t bother to suggest that removing the compulsory attendance requirement and other coercive, top-down methods of operation would go a long way to put some reason behind those criticisms.
If he’d been willing to listen further, I’d have told him that all the things I work on are results of the Industrial Revolution: our attitudes towards children and the way we educate them, the compartmentalization of functions in society, our outmoded medical system, environmental damage, the devaluation of the work of women and children….
All I can hope for is that eventually this guy – and all those like him – will notice how children and young people are repopulating their communities on a daily basis – volunteering, attending public meetings, using libraries and other public facilities, protesting harmful government policies, supporting the environment and human rights, and more.
And, if he's not too ageist in his beliefs maybe then he’ll realize that self-educated kids are citizens too, and that they are interested in and involved in community life, arguably to a greater degree than their peers who are sitting in schools, insulated from real life. Maybe then, he’ll realize that there is no flaw in my belief that they are an important part of the solution to the many problems our generation has created.
And perhaps he'll also stop dividing people into categories of right and left, stereotyping those who he thinks fit under certain popular umbrella labels. Because that is a whole other problem we've created!
Gotta love when people try to catch you out about a topic they know very little about but assume they’ve somehow figured out!!
My interest in home ed doesn’t go back as far as yours so I bow to your greater wisdom. But I do feel that I’ve seen more insularity in home ed of late, perhaps a post-covid thing. (If it makes a difference I’m in the U.K.)
I do think it cuts both ways though — here at least I’ve felt recently a reluctance from other home edders to get involved with community stuff, almost as if the wider community is seen as ‘The Man’ (you know, as in ‘stick it to The Man’) but also I’ve seen some community orgs acting like ‘The Man’. Eg I recently organised a home ed visit to a local museum and we were followed around, and kids constantly picked up on the most minor things (pushing interactive buttons ‘too hard’ etc).
Idk I do feel home ed has changed a bit here. More parents taking kids out of schools (often due to trauma, and/or undiagnosed neurodivergence) rather than home ed as first choice, which maybe changes the landscape a bit? Idk?