p255... There are many methods & texts & curricula, many organizations & approaches & styles, but we think that on methodology or recipe or formula will give you what you really need. The choice to work together with your children to help them learn is one that you need to make for a reason great enough to sustain you even through doubt & fear. .... There simply was no decent school available tous, none that would offer our children the kind of education we wanted them to have-- namely, an education in becoming free, reasoning, truth-seeking human being. .... Moreover, schools probably could not do this if they tried, becasue they are institutions & no institution can offer the one indispensable element of this education: a gift of self.
p255... We found in the course of our homescholing that the most important part of education is a close personal relationship that folds a child in arms of love & deep respect. This is a relationship in which parent makes a perpetual self-gift. It means that the parent never has amoment for herself (or himself), never ever tries to take anything just for "me." This idea now seems as counter cultural as our attachment to freedom. America is all about the self: self-esteem, self-sufficiency, self-improvement, self-service, self-development, self-satisfaction. It seems to be as much about the self as it is about fear & anxiety, & the more time we have spent trying to make a gift of ourselves to our children, the clearer it seems that there is a connection between attachment to selfishness & fear.
p256...Parents canmake it easier or harder for a child to live & choose & love. Many of our social institutions, & especially schools, make it harder to live & choose & love in freedom. We homeschool so that our children will be able to live & choose & love, to seek the truth in freedom.
p257...Basic Principles:
1. Believe: You can do it. You couldn't do it all alone but you won't have to. You should expect to exert all your strength, but if you do you will find others who can offer you a hand now & then when you need it..... Believe, but don't believe only in yourself. There is no tradition of wisdom that regards the self as trustworthy or benevolent, so beware of faith in yourself. Have faith that if you give your children what you have, in love, they will prosper. Have faith in them. If you are fortunate enuf to believe in God, have faith in God & pray.
2. Trust: Messages of fear & uncertainty will come from inside & from outside to discourage you & recommend that you give up. Trust that no matter how implausible your formal credentials, no matter how little money you have, no matter how limited your own education may be, you can do this. If you persevere you will succeed-- provded, of course, that you choose the right metrics to measure success. If you choose as your criterion of success the development of your children as fee & reasoning human beings with a devotion to the truth, & you persever in putting their interest before your own, you will succeed.
3. Love: St. Josemaria Escriva said, "Love is deeds, not sweet words." When we say "love," we do not mean tender feeligns & we do not mean "tough love." We mean self-sacrifice & self-gift. This love that can only come from faith & trust. Give yourself. Sometimes giving yourself means being tender & sometimes it means exercising discipline to help a child grow in strength & character. Always examine yourself to be sure that the choice you are making is not for yourself but for your child, so that your child will grow in freedom & truth. The self is subtle-- selfish motives sometimes conceal themselves in the most benevolent-seeming gestures-- so conduct the self-examination regularly & diligently.
p259... Only a person can give himself to a person, & what a child needs more than anything else is a person to make that gift. Seeing you make that gift is how the child will learn to make
it.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Ch. 10- Conclusion
The entire chapter is worth reading and writing down. It had so much food for thought. I think it is too long to type up the whole thing...so I will be selective and just photocopy the chapter for my personal files to be referred to...
p252...Before undertaking this book, we were too busy meeting the demands of every present moment to wonder how all the moments fit together. Now, at our halfway point as HSers, with 3 children launched into college & 3 still in elementary & high school, we've paused to consider where we've been.
We have chosen to be free & to educate our children in freedom. In this Land of Liberty, few make that choice. Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Vanishing American Hobo," "There is nothing nobler than putting up with a few inconveniences like snakes & bugs for the sake of absolute freedom." But Jack Kerouac was an eccentric, as were Walt Whitman & Henry David Thoreau & Thomas Jefferson & every prophet sacred or profane stretching back at least to the fugitive who saw a burning bush & came reluctantly back to preach freedom. Those who choose freedom almost always seem to be eccentric misfits, & those who choose slavery almost always seem well adjusted by comparison. Our freedom is always at risk, but we are its only real threat. The smoke of idols, the clang of cymbals, the shouts of apostates din the creed that freedom is too risky, too uncomfortable, too painful to bear. We've seen people start for freedom & then pause to consider how unreasonable a choice it was in light of what everyone around them knew to be true. Many have choked off their lives by limiting their choices to what they could see.
p253...[When we married...] we took a different view & made a different choice. We found that conventional wisdom was false. Many things that people say are impossible are in fact very possible if you simply live in the present moment, deal with the challenges of that moment, & let the future wait until it becomes present. We found that these 2 ways of living form 2 different habits of thought & life. The practice of taking conventional wisdom to heart & always preparing for the future often means that you never really live in the present, & therefore, that you never really live at all, because life is only in the present. The future, with its fears & opportunities, is always a figment of our imaginations. The practice of living in the present moment anchors us in reality & truth, & there is enormous power in reality & truth. Anything is possible then.
p254... We were not immune to the fears & anxieties of a society that seems increasingly to be a society of fear,
p252...Before undertaking this book, we were too busy meeting the demands of every present moment to wonder how all the moments fit together. Now, at our halfway point as HSers, with 3 children launched into college & 3 still in elementary & high school, we've paused to consider where we've been.
We have chosen to be free & to educate our children in freedom. In this Land of Liberty, few make that choice. Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Vanishing American Hobo," "There is nothing nobler than putting up with a few inconveniences like snakes & bugs for the sake of absolute freedom." But Jack Kerouac was an eccentric, as were Walt Whitman & Henry David Thoreau & Thomas Jefferson & every prophet sacred or profane stretching back at least to the fugitive who saw a burning bush & came reluctantly back to preach freedom. Those who choose freedom almost always seem to be eccentric misfits, & those who choose slavery almost always seem well adjusted by comparison. Our freedom is always at risk, but we are its only real threat. The smoke of idols, the clang of cymbals, the shouts of apostates din the creed that freedom is too risky, too uncomfortable, too painful to bear. We've seen people start for freedom & then pause to consider how unreasonable a choice it was in light of what everyone around them knew to be true. Many have choked off their lives by limiting their choices to what they could see.
p253...[When we married...] we took a different view & made a different choice. We found that conventional wisdom was false. Many things that people say are impossible are in fact very possible if you simply live in the present moment, deal with the challenges of that moment, & let the future wait until it becomes present. We found that these 2 ways of living form 2 different habits of thought & life. The practice of taking conventional wisdom to heart & always preparing for the future often means that you never really live in the present, & therefore, that you never really live at all, because life is only in the present. The future, with its fears & opportunities, is always a figment of our imaginations. The practice of living in the present moment anchors us in reality & truth, & there is enormous power in reality & truth. Anything is possible then.
p254... We were not immune to the fears & anxieties of a society that seems increasingly to be a society of fear,
Ch.9- Accepting a college
p232- We also looked at college as an investment-- not only of money but of time as well. The most important college cost is the opportunity cost. By attending one college, you accept a set of opportunities, & the cost of those opportunities is the opportunities you forgo at some other college. ...
p233...After our years of HSing, we know that there is little that we cannot learn on our own. For us, then, undertaking college must not be just about further learning but about something else too-- personal growth & development, certification, networking, validation, acquiring specialized knowledge, laying down the credentials to forge a career, & so forth. College is an investment, first, of time.
p244...Fear seems to be part of the marketing process-- it helps build a sense of urgency to buy & read one particular magazine or book. We read many such books & articles. But we gave ourselves time to calm down well before the actual application process. More important, we were highly selective about which of those books & articles we passes along to the children, & when.
p233...After our years of HSing, we know that there is little that we cannot learn on our own. For us, then, undertaking college must not be just about further learning but about something else too-- personal growth & development, certification, networking, validation, acquiring specialized knowledge, laying down the credentials to forge a career, & so forth. College is an investment, first, of time.
p244...Fear seems to be part of the marketing process-- it helps build a sense of urgency to buy & read one particular magazine or book. We read many such books & articles. But we gave ourselves time to calm down well before the actual application process. More important, we were highly selective about which of those books & articles we passes along to the children, & when.
Ch.7- Taste & see...
p167...Education is life itself, not just preparation for later living.....We feel that this is the most important teaching that we can give our children, yet we cannot give it to them. We can only hope to show it to them in our own living, & trust them to discover it in theirs.
p168...It is a core principle of our HS curriculum that the conventional & commonly accepted version of anything is probably an illusion & possibly a lie, including the things that school boards & teachers & fellow parents all take for granted, accept unquestioningly, & unthinkingly reinforce for one another. Many things that everyone takes fro granted make sense only when you exercise no skepticism & pay no attention, but it's easy to get swept away by the herd. To see things as they are, to trust your intuition, you have to observe closely things & yourself. To trust your own instincts you have to have a breadth of experience & input & eposure you get only leaving the herd behind. To believe that foundations everyone trusts can crumble, & to be ready to jump if they do, you need to know that other foundations everyone trusted have crumbled before, but you only find out by resisting the security of numbers & looking where the "safe" can't see.
p168...It is a core principle of our HS curriculum that the conventional & commonly accepted version of anything is probably an illusion & possibly a lie, including the things that school boards & teachers & fellow parents all take for granted, accept unquestioningly, & unthinkingly reinforce for one another. Many things that everyone takes fro granted make sense only when you exercise no skepticism & pay no attention, but it's easy to get swept away by the herd. To see things as they are, to trust your intuition, you have to observe closely things & yourself. To trust your own instincts you have to have a breadth of experience & input & eposure you get only leaving the herd behind. To believe that foundations everyone trusts can crumble, & to be ready to jump if they do, you need to know that other foundations everyone trusted have crumbled before, but you only find out by resisting the security of numbers & looking where the "safe" can't see.
Ch.6-Travel as HSing & Ch.7-Taste & See: family dinner as HSing
p125...Travel, as opposed to tourism, puts things in a new light, & I think what we saw in Florence did that for Billy.
p128...I was delighted to see him growing more cautious & skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's price worth paying.
p139...Yet our way of traveling is our way of living. We are constantly traveling, even when we are standing still. We see our lives as a movement from one present moment to another. Each moment is a time & place we are passing through & will never pass through again. Each moment is precious & unique..... We don't put our travel in the hands of tour organizers for the same reason that we don't put their education in the hands of schoolteachers. Discovery should be part of education, & of travel, but it is seldom part of tours or schools.
p140...But that's because so many people close their eyes to things around them. So few know how to travel without going away. There are places that any local with an exit leaves to go somewhere interesting, somewhere exciting.
p142..."Lost" isn't really the right word, though, because every place we go becomes our destination when we arrive. It's getting off the main road, & wandering around the back roads through unplanned detours, that opens our eyes to the country.
p161...The displine was less arduous now, & Br. Raphael was wearing civilan clothes, a work shirt & a baseball cap. Birds were making noise all around us. I asked him what he had learned after all of those years in the monastery, & he said, "I have learned that whatever I read about in the paper, I could do. You know, you pick up a paper, & you see some guy going to jail for someting, maybe he killed somebody, or robbed somebody. I could have done that. If it hadn't been for the advantages I had, the advantage of a good family, or the right mentor, or the right perosn to say something at the right time-- that could have been me. I'm no better, no different."
p163...Education is not just about learning facts & techniques. It's about learning a way of life. Would it be a digression to mention here Mother Teresa & her sisters....who came into our lives about the time that we began to HS? ....When you live on one inconstant income in a marginal city, it helps to have the example of the Missionaries of Charity. It is not that they are poor but that they are joyful because and by means of being poor. They are a sign of contradiction to a society that regards poverty to be a punishment for laziness, instead of a virtue & a blessing. Martine was closer to the sisters than she would take credit for being. .........To rely on a saint for an example is not to do exactly what a saint has done. As we see it, education means grasping the spirit of the saints, & living it in teh distinct circumstances of the present moment.
p164...But the following, adapted from Ascent of Mount Carmel, Chapter XIII, by St. John of the Cross, hangs on a bookshelf here:
ALWAYS STRIVE TO CHOOSE:
The hardest instead of the easiest
The unpleasant instead of the pleasant
The least instead of the most
The worst instead of the best
To desire nothing instead of any desire...
We find that those words summarize succinctly & usefully what practice is necessary for an education that aims at becoming fully free & fully human....Within the context of being Allah's 'abd, how do we become fully free & fully human? Within Islam, do we strive to choose these things? We are instructed to choose what is the most hopeful and the best in every situation....does that apply here or am I missing a point?
p166....The Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu tells of a wheelmaker who saw a duke reading the sages, & commented that he was reading "scum". The duke replied that the wheelmaker would die if he couldn't explain that comment to satisfactorily. The wheelmaker explained that the secret to making a wheel was to know how to cut. Cut too fast, & the cut would not be deep enuf. Cut too slowly, & it was almost uselss, though. Knowing how to balance fast & slow, deep & steady was something that came only fromexperience. He could not even tell his own son the secret, & he supposed the same was true of the sages-- everything really necessary & useful to know had died with them, & the rest, the scum, remained in books. The wheelmaker lived.
The understanding of what it really means to be human is similarly elusive, because in order to have it one must live it. If you live it, you don't need words; if you don't live it, words can perversely obscure rather than clarify it, make it harder rather than easier to grasp.
p128...I was delighted to see him growing more cautious & skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's price worth paying.
p139...Yet our way of traveling is our way of living. We are constantly traveling, even when we are standing still. We see our lives as a movement from one present moment to another. Each moment is a time & place we are passing through & will never pass through again. Each moment is precious & unique..... We don't put our travel in the hands of tour organizers for the same reason that we don't put their education in the hands of schoolteachers. Discovery should be part of education, & of travel, but it is seldom part of tours or schools.
p140...But that's because so many people close their eyes to things around them. So few know how to travel without going away. There are places that any local with an exit leaves to go somewhere interesting, somewhere exciting.
p142..."Lost" isn't really the right word, though, because every place we go becomes our destination when we arrive. It's getting off the main road, & wandering around the back roads through unplanned detours, that opens our eyes to the country.
p161...The displine was less arduous now, & Br. Raphael was wearing civilan clothes, a work shirt & a baseball cap. Birds were making noise all around us. I asked him what he had learned after all of those years in the monastery, & he said, "I have learned that whatever I read about in the paper, I could do. You know, you pick up a paper, & you see some guy going to jail for someting, maybe he killed somebody, or robbed somebody. I could have done that. If it hadn't been for the advantages I had, the advantage of a good family, or the right mentor, or the right perosn to say something at the right time-- that could have been me. I'm no better, no different."
p163...Education is not just about learning facts & techniques. It's about learning a way of life. Would it be a digression to mention here Mother Teresa & her sisters....who came into our lives about the time that we began to HS? ....When you live on one inconstant income in a marginal city, it helps to have the example of the Missionaries of Charity. It is not that they are poor but that they are joyful because and by means of being poor. They are a sign of contradiction to a society that regards poverty to be a punishment for laziness, instead of a virtue & a blessing. Martine was closer to the sisters than she would take credit for being. .........To rely on a saint for an example is not to do exactly what a saint has done. As we see it, education means grasping the spirit of the saints, & living it in teh distinct circumstances of the present moment.
p164...But the following, adapted from Ascent of Mount Carmel, Chapter XIII, by St. John of the Cross, hangs on a bookshelf here:
ALWAYS STRIVE TO CHOOSE:
The hardest instead of the easiest
The unpleasant instead of the pleasant
The least instead of the most
The worst instead of the best
To desire nothing instead of any desire...
We find that those words summarize succinctly & usefully what practice is necessary for an education that aims at becoming fully free & fully human....Within the context of being Allah's 'abd, how do we become fully free & fully human? Within Islam, do we strive to choose these things? We are instructed to choose what is the most hopeful and the best in every situation....does that apply here or am I missing a point?
p166....The Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu tells of a wheelmaker who saw a duke reading the sages, & commented that he was reading "scum". The duke replied that the wheelmaker would die if he couldn't explain that comment to satisfactorily. The wheelmaker explained that the secret to making a wheel was to know how to cut. Cut too fast, & the cut would not be deep enuf. Cut too slowly, & it was almost uselss, though. Knowing how to balance fast & slow, deep & steady was something that came only fromexperience. He could not even tell his own son the secret, & he supposed the same was true of the sages-- everything really necessary & useful to know had died with them, & the rest, the scum, remained in books. The wheelmaker lived.
The understanding of what it really means to be human is similarly elusive, because in order to have it one must live it. If you live it, you don't need words; if you don't live it, words can perversely obscure rather than clarify it, make it harder rather than easier to grasp.
Chapter 5-Mission
p120..
The mission, as we conceive it, is how we make the vision come true. Our vision of educaiton is, as we said above, the manner of living by which our children become what they are, become fully free & actualized. With this vision, HSing is the only way to go, because no other educational option available to us advances that vision. Our mission, then, became HSing, but HSing with a particular emphasis on freedom & on the present moment. Martine calls it "Carpe diem," Latin for "Seize the day," a phrase by the Roman poet Horace:
Dum loquimur fugerit invida aetas. Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.
While we speak, odious time flies. Pluck the day, trust little in tomorrow. (Odes I, 11.8-9)
The phrase also describes a school of English poetry that gave us such lines as:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a flying,
and the same flower that blooms today, tomorrow will be dying.
(Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time")
The mission, as we conceive it, is how we make the vision come true. Our vision of educaiton is, as we said above, the manner of living by which our children become what they are, become fully free & actualized. With this vision, HSing is the only way to go, because no other educational option available to us advances that vision. Our mission, then, became HSing, but HSing with a particular emphasis on freedom & on the present moment. Martine calls it "Carpe diem," Latin for "Seize the day," a phrase by the Roman poet Horace:
Dum loquimur fugerit invida aetas. Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.
While we speak, odious time flies. Pluck the day, trust little in tomorrow. (Odes I, 11.8-9)
The phrase also describes a school of English poetry that gave us such lines as:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a flying,
and the same flower that blooms today, tomorrow will be dying.
(Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time")
Chapter 5-Vision
p115...
By vision we mean our vision of education.
Our vision of education is: the way of living by which children can become who they are.
Every ciuld is a person, & every person is an end in himself or herself, never a means to an end. So the purpose of a child is not ensure that a school will stay open, that teachers will have something to do, that the society will benefit from a well-trained workforce. Our children do not exist so that we will have something to brag about, nor are their setbacks our failures. We must detach our egos from the children to loose ourselves in order to help them & to lessen the brden on them.
Becasue the child is not a means to an end, education is for the child, not for anything else. The purpose of education is to turn a child's potential into reality. Another word for this is "acutalization." Education is not study, & not a manner of learning to read or write or do math or get good grades or take tests, even though these may be a part of education, if they are a part of life. It's not something you have to "get" to "get" a job. Education is living & learning & developing.
By vision we mean our vision of education.
Our vision of education is: the way of living by which children can become who they are.
Every ciuld is a person, & every person is an end in himself or herself, never a means to an end. So the purpose of a child is not ensure that a school will stay open, that teachers will have something to do, that the society will benefit from a well-trained workforce. Our children do not exist so that we will have something to brag about, nor are their setbacks our failures. We must detach our egos from the children to loose ourselves in order to help them & to lessen the brden on them.
Becasue the child is not a means to an end, education is for the child, not for anything else. The purpose of education is to turn a child's potential into reality. Another word for this is "acutalization." Education is not study, & not a manner of learning to read or write or do math or get good grades or take tests, even though these may be a part of education, if they are a part of life. It's not something you have to "get" to "get" a job. Education is living & learning & developing.
Chapter 5- Watching the volcano: Vision, mission, values
p109...When I heard this story [story of Darto of Indonesia who watched volcano], I thought of how closely my has watched children, & how well she has learned to read their signs. She is as constant in her atten as Darto is, & has special connections with their mysteries, & is as alert to anything that might threaten them. Mothers & babies pay attention to each other in ways of which they are not even conscious. Their bodies communicate even after birth.
p110...As parents, we have a clear & singular objective: to do that best we can for our children. Even if the schools were as clear & singular as our own, even if they aimed only & wholeheartedly to provide the best possible education for every single child, they could not do it. It is impossible for a school to develop the intimacy of communication that grows between a mother & her child. For schools, "the best possible" could mean only the best possible within the constraints that govern them.
p110...We agree with the humanist Charles W. Eliot that the development of reasoning power & the ability to express thoughts clearly is a fundamental purpose of education, & share his rejection of the notion that the main purpose should be job preparation. We agree with William Heard Kilpatrick that education should be "be considered as life itself & not as a mere preparation for later living."
HSers have a different strategic focus from that of schools. Hsers in general focus much more intensively on each child's needs & abilities than do schools or teachers.
Schools cannot have this sharp a focus on the child. Afterall, schools must respond to political pressures from various interst groups, to economic pressures from teachers' unions on the one hand & tapayers on the other, to regulatory mandates such as the No Child Left Behind Program, & to other forces. Schools have such a diversity of conflicting mandates & objectives that they cannot have a single focus.
p114...We never drafted a statement of vision or mission for our HSing enterprise. In fact, we did not begin with a clear vision, mission, & plan. We began by groping in the dark, taking what steps we could, & groping some more. Eventually, we managed to grope toward soem light, & looking back at the trail we had made we could see where we had come from & where we had arrived.
We had a vision & a mission, but implicitly. We did not really begin to think about our HSing enterprise in terms of vision & mission & attemp to make them explicit until we began to write this book- after we'd been HSing for 12 yrs & seen 3 daughters thru grade school & high school & into college....... Yet while our vision & mission were implicit, no one was unaware of them. The vision & mission grew naturally out of values that were very explicit, & that we often discussed, & that guided all of our decisions, major or minor.
p116...We want our children to become who they are- & a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn posbility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying. Think of "going for the burn" in a weight room.
This is a countercultural vision, of course, & is not the sort of thing you find taught in schools.
p121... I have said that we see education as life itself, not mere preparation for some later state of life. But we believe that life itself is the act of a free choice repeated, repeated, repeated in every present moment. What choice? The choice to live....I am constantly and has always in the past lived for a later life that never seems to come. When I get married, then blah blah blah. Or when i have kids, or when I'm home or whatever.
The choice must be made in the present moment, because one can only be alive in the present moment. Those who are not completely in the present moment, who are distracted by the future or the past, worried about tomorrow or about yesterday, are in a sense not living.
It is as though every present moment offers us an opportunity to choose to live freely or not. Habits, attitudes, & circumstances may constrain our choice, making us more or less free. Every time we repeat an act, we reinforce a habit, so the stronger a bad habit is, the less free we are. Education is largely a matter of learning to form the right habits, the good ones, those that make us stronger & freer instead of weaker & less free. That is what we mean by developing virtue.
p110...As parents, we have a clear & singular objective: to do that best we can for our children. Even if the schools were as clear & singular as our own, even if they aimed only & wholeheartedly to provide the best possible education for every single child, they could not do it. It is impossible for a school to develop the intimacy of communication that grows between a mother & her child. For schools, "the best possible" could mean only the best possible within the constraints that govern them.
p110...We agree with the humanist Charles W. Eliot that the development of reasoning power & the ability to express thoughts clearly is a fundamental purpose of education, & share his rejection of the notion that the main purpose should be job preparation. We agree with William Heard Kilpatrick that education should be "be considered as life itself & not as a mere preparation for later living."
HSers have a different strategic focus from that of schools. Hsers in general focus much more intensively on each child's needs & abilities than do schools or teachers.
Schools cannot have this sharp a focus on the child. Afterall, schools must respond to political pressures from various interst groups, to economic pressures from teachers' unions on the one hand & tapayers on the other, to regulatory mandates such as the No Child Left Behind Program, & to other forces. Schools have such a diversity of conflicting mandates & objectives that they cannot have a single focus.
p114...We never drafted a statement of vision or mission for our HSing enterprise. In fact, we did not begin with a clear vision, mission, & plan. We began by groping in the dark, taking what steps we could, & groping some more. Eventually, we managed to grope toward soem light, & looking back at the trail we had made we could see where we had come from & where we had arrived.
We had a vision & a mission, but implicitly. We did not really begin to think about our HSing enterprise in terms of vision & mission & attemp to make them explicit until we began to write this book- after we'd been HSing for 12 yrs & seen 3 daughters thru grade school & high school & into college....... Yet while our vision & mission were implicit, no one was unaware of them. The vision & mission grew naturally out of values that were very explicit, & that we often discussed, & that guided all of our decisions, major or minor.
p116...We want our children to become who they are- & a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn posbility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying. Think of "going for the burn" in a weight room.
This is a countercultural vision, of course, & is not the sort of thing you find taught in schools.
p121... I have said that we see education as life itself, not mere preparation for some later state of life. But we believe that life itself is the act of a free choice repeated, repeated, repeated in every present moment. What choice? The choice to live....I am constantly and has always in the past lived for a later life that never seems to come. When I get married, then blah blah blah. Or when i have kids, or when I'm home or whatever.
The choice must be made in the present moment, because one can only be alive in the present moment. Those who are not completely in the present moment, who are distracted by the future or the past, worried about tomorrow or about yesterday, are in a sense not living.
It is as though every present moment offers us an opportunity to choose to live freely or not. Habits, attitudes, & circumstances may constrain our choice, making us more or less free. Every time we repeat an act, we reinforce a habit, so the stronger a bad habit is, the less free we are. Education is largely a matter of learning to form the right habits, the good ones, those that make us stronger & freer instead of weaker & less free. That is what we mean by developing virtue.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Chapter 4- A focus on the person...
{p88..Boys & Girls:
Boys r different. Throughout the 70s & 80s, I had been instructed that this was not so, & was rudely surprised. I found that while one & even two boys could be "managed," the arrival of the third precipitated a tipping point which masculinized our household, even though by the numbers we were evenly divided, male & female.
Our HSing experience with boys has been considerable different from that with the girls, & the difference is greater than learning styles or birth order would dictate. The most important differences are these: They boys are less likely to pursue an objective if they don't see the point They are goal-oriented. They want to know that you are watching. This need for a maternal audience seems to be hardwired. Finally, while the girls (our girls, anyway) would curl up with a book by default, the boys would chase one another, or play cars or ball. There is nothing wrong with this, but the difference provided the girls with an enormous verbal advantage while we had to consciously work with the boys to reach the same level. Martine}
p89...There is a big & very important difference between things children need to do in order to learn & things children need to do in order to perform in school. Different children learn at different speeds & in different ways. There are many ways to learn, but schools ignore most of them.
p93...Our educational goal is to equip our children for the free pursuit of truth through virtue. This is a goal that schools do not & cannot share. Their rules & operating constrains do not permit pursuit of virtue in the core curriculum, because virtue requires judgments of right & wrong that would surely be conroversial. Any code of virtues must have roots in some sense of the meaning of life & the nature of humanity, & that means making some judgments about ultimate things- again, too controversial for schools. Moreover, as virtue is something that one can only learn from good models & from constant practice, schools in order to teach it would have to be full of people at least trying to pursue it (honestly trying means acknowledging failure & trying again, again, again.)
p93...Education, real education, must take place in the context of a personal relationship. This relationship between persons becomes the foundation for another kind of relationship, the relationship of the student with the process of learning, with a tradition of learning, & with other persons who reach & may be reached through that process & tradition. These relationships shape the student. They help the student develop, through emulation, the personal characteristics of attention & imagination & diligence & dedication that are necessary to discern, to relate to, &, eventually, to teach others the way of learning. The Muslim traditional manner of learning..
p94...Education should develop the person. It should develop the person so the person can in turn make a gift of personhood, a gift of self, what Eliot called a "continual self-sacrifice." .....Similarly, there are so many little details involved in developing as a learning person that it is almost impossible to capture them in any other way than emulation. Schools seldom teach this way.
p96..When the deveopment of the person ceases to be the purpose & the way of education, as it has in our schools, then the process of education is no longer education at all. The word "education" is related to the Latin ex ducere, meaning "to lead out." But schooling as we know it is not a "leading out" at all. It is a "leading in," a kind of servitude or confinement in which the student becomes the object by which an institution furthers its own agenda.
p97...A similar process occurs with textbooks, as publishers aim to meet standards set by many different & often mutually contradicory agendas nationwide.
The lesson that many children leave schools with is to manipulate rules with more or less cleverness for more or less short-term gains, how to focus on test scores & GPAs instead of on truth, how to exercise low cunning instead of high learning.
p98...The development of the person through virtue, leading to a gift of oneself in service to others, seems to us the whole purpose of human life.
p102...How many people stop to think about what the shcool is doing, or why? Who considers the purpose of the school curriculum? What is it? Is the school's purpose your purpose too? How does the school measure success? Is that how you measure success? Few people seem to ask such questions.
The difference between HSing & public schooling is mainly a matter of focus. There r many different approaches to HSing, many different curricula & teaching styles. But they all have in common the practice of education thru personal relaionship....HSing always occurs int he context of a personal relationship, sometimes of many personal relationships. HSing multiplies personal relationships thru HSing groups & networks.
p105...Education has helped the children make a better living. By a better living we mean not more money but a life with more life in it.
Boys r different. Throughout the 70s & 80s, I had been instructed that this was not so, & was rudely surprised. I found that while one & even two boys could be "managed," the arrival of the third precipitated a tipping point which masculinized our household, even though by the numbers we were evenly divided, male & female.
Our HSing experience with boys has been considerable different from that with the girls, & the difference is greater than learning styles or birth order would dictate. The most important differences are these: They boys are less likely to pursue an objective if they don't see the point They are goal-oriented. They want to know that you are watching. This need for a maternal audience seems to be hardwired. Finally, while the girls (our girls, anyway) would curl up with a book by default, the boys would chase one another, or play cars or ball. There is nothing wrong with this, but the difference provided the girls with an enormous verbal advantage while we had to consciously work with the boys to reach the same level. Martine}
p89...There is a big & very important difference between things children need to do in order to learn & things children need to do in order to perform in school. Different children learn at different speeds & in different ways. There are many ways to learn, but schools ignore most of them.
p93...Our educational goal is to equip our children for the free pursuit of truth through virtue. This is a goal that schools do not & cannot share. Their rules & operating constrains do not permit pursuit of virtue in the core curriculum, because virtue requires judgments of right & wrong that would surely be conroversial. Any code of virtues must have roots in some sense of the meaning of life & the nature of humanity, & that means making some judgments about ultimate things- again, too controversial for schools. Moreover, as virtue is something that one can only learn from good models & from constant practice, schools in order to teach it would have to be full of people at least trying to pursue it (honestly trying means acknowledging failure & trying again, again, again.)
p93...Education, real education, must take place in the context of a personal relationship. This relationship between persons becomes the foundation for another kind of relationship, the relationship of the student with the process of learning, with a tradition of learning, & with other persons who reach & may be reached through that process & tradition. These relationships shape the student. They help the student develop, through emulation, the personal characteristics of attention & imagination & diligence & dedication that are necessary to discern, to relate to, &, eventually, to teach others the way of learning. The Muslim traditional manner of learning..
p94...Education should develop the person. It should develop the person so the person can in turn make a gift of personhood, a gift of self, what Eliot called a "continual self-sacrifice." .....Similarly, there are so many little details involved in developing as a learning person that it is almost impossible to capture them in any other way than emulation. Schools seldom teach this way.
p96..When the deveopment of the person ceases to be the purpose & the way of education, as it has in our schools, then the process of education is no longer education at all. The word "education" is related to the Latin ex ducere, meaning "to lead out." But schooling as we know it is not a "leading out" at all. It is a "leading in," a kind of servitude or confinement in which the student becomes the object by which an institution furthers its own agenda.
p97...A similar process occurs with textbooks, as publishers aim to meet standards set by many different & often mutually contradicory agendas nationwide.
The lesson that many children leave schools with is to manipulate rules with more or less cleverness for more or less short-term gains, how to focus on test scores & GPAs instead of on truth, how to exercise low cunning instead of high learning.
p98...The development of the person through virtue, leading to a gift of oneself in service to others, seems to us the whole purpose of human life.
p102...How many people stop to think about what the shcool is doing, or why? Who considers the purpose of the school curriculum? What is it? Is the school's purpose your purpose too? How does the school measure success? Is that how you measure success? Few people seem to ask such questions.
The difference between HSing & public schooling is mainly a matter of focus. There r many different approaches to HSing, many different curricula & teaching styles. But they all have in common the practice of education thru personal relaionship....HSing always occurs int he context of a personal relationship, sometimes of many personal relationships. HSing multiplies personal relationships thru HSing groups & networks.
p105...Education has helped the children make a better living. By a better living we mean not more money but a life with more life in it.
Chapter 3- our three R's (Rhetoric, rhythm, randori)
p53 ...One friend of ours speaks with firm conviction of homeschooling [HS] as a "profession." Her household is a model of order & discipline. The thought of disorder as something to be tolerated, much less celebrated, would shock her. But even she puts all her plans & routines aside to respond to an urgent demand in the present moment. She spoke with us about a serious "character issue" with one of her children, a problem with temper, that took "half my time & energy" for a long stretch of months. It was a serious and unexpected disruption to her schedule. "But I knew that the most important thing wea to address character," she says, "& everything else would come in time." The person is the priority- not the schedule, not the agenda, not anything else. Education is about the development of the child, the whole person of the child, not just the mind (& certainly not the school's average performance on some standardized test). .....we want the child to master the math concept, but more important we want the child to experience the joy of discovery in mathematics, the thrill of victory that comes only with concentrated intellectual effort & achievement. We don't want the process to be clouded by a power struggle, but we do want the child to have the security of knowing that someone is in charge. The ideal is that the child will find the joy & choose to do the work. Failing that, we will enforce drill until mastery ... Security of knowing that someone is in charge...
p54 ...Fear is not a very effective motivator, as almost any good manager knows. Fear can only elicit a steep long-term cost in morale & spirit. Motivation & commitment do not come from fear but from trust. That said, we have sometimes succumbed to the temptation to use threats & punishments, & in the hoary tradition of parent we have a painted a dark picture of the hard life of toilet scrubbing that those who don't do their homework can expect. institutions couldn't be. ...Fear and motivation correlation...applies so much to adults as well.
p54 ...Our real aim is to help the children consistently choose what they should choose. There are 2 reasons why they might not choose rightly. On the one hand, they might not recognize what is good about doing something they'd rather not do. A lot of things might seem more appealing than math homework. If this is the case, the problem is one of perspective, & our job is to help them see the advantages of doing what they should do. But sometimes they do see the advantages, yet just can't seem to reach for them. The problems isn't that they don't want to do the right thing but that their bodies won't let them focus. In fact, more often than not, that is the problem. She or he didn't blame that the child is lazy & just don't want to apply himself but came from the assumption that the child will choose the right thing just that the body won't allow them to focus... Our approach (the old cultural or old school thinking) is that the child is just too lazy and we have to force them somehow (so that it becomes about power struggle rather than trying to solve the real problem)
p54 ...So a third to a half of homeschooling time may consist of helping a child learn to seettle down & do the work. Martine was interested to see, on a news show about autism, a hugging machine someone had developed to help calm autistic children. None of our children is autistic, but when it is hard to settle down, a hug helps them. There's something about the physical contact, the reassurance of being held. She used to hold the young ones on her lap when they started writing Chines characters & sometimes sat with her arm around an older child struggling with particularly challenging math. This comforts & encourages them, & once they have the comfort & encouragement, they seem to be able to break through & continue on their own. They can make the right choices then. ... How do you manage to stay focused on this approach to your child's learning when you are exhausted or worn out or yourself not centered?
p54 ...Fear is not a very effective motivator, as almost any good manager knows. Fear can only elicit a steep long-term cost in morale & spirit. Motivation & commitment do not come from fear but from trust. That said, we have sometimes succumbed to the temptation to use threats & punishments, & in the hoary tradition of parent we have a painted a dark picture of the hard life of toilet scrubbing that those who don't do their homework can expect. institutions couldn't be. ...Fear and motivation correlation...applies so much to adults as well.
p54 ...Our real aim is to help the children consistently choose what they should choose. There are 2 reasons why they might not choose rightly. On the one hand, they might not recognize what is good about doing something they'd rather not do. A lot of things might seem more appealing than math homework. If this is the case, the problem is one of perspective, & our job is to help them see the advantages of doing what they should do. But sometimes they do see the advantages, yet just can't seem to reach for them. The problems isn't that they don't want to do the right thing but that their bodies won't let them focus. In fact, more often than not, that is the problem. She or he didn't blame that the child is lazy & just don't want to apply himself but came from the assumption that the child will choose the right thing just that the body won't allow them to focus... Our approach (the old cultural or old school thinking) is that the child is just too lazy and we have to force them somehow (so that it becomes about power struggle rather than trying to solve the real problem)
p54 ...So a third to a half of homeschooling time may consist of helping a child learn to seettle down & do the work. Martine was interested to see, on a news show about autism, a hugging machine someone had developed to help calm autistic children. None of our children is autistic, but when it is hard to settle down, a hug helps them. There's something about the physical contact, the reassurance of being held. She used to hold the young ones on her lap when they started writing Chines characters & sometimes sat with her arm around an older child struggling with particularly challenging math. This comforts & encourages them, & once they have the comfort & encouragement, they seem to be able to break through & continue on their own. They can make the right choices then. ... How do you manage to stay focused on this approach to your child's learning when you are exhausted or worn out or yourself not centered?
p55 ...We do not operate on a strict timetable, because a strict timetable would not allow for these expected yet not predictable needs. We do set daily, weekly, monthly, annual, even lifetime goals, but the timetable has to be flexible so that we can respond to the demands of the present moment. For example, we had planned to get an early start on high schoolwork while Bridget was int he 8th grade, bu we happened to move to another house that year. We had long outgrown our old one and had postponed moving until it could no longer be put off. ... No confidence to not do it without constant efforts of trying out timetables. Dh would never agree.
p57...Both our own experience & our acquaintance with many homeschooling (HSing) families have taught us that the people most apt to continue HSing have a high degree of flexibility & a willingness to roll with the throws. Because we could adjust to the unexpected & unplanned, & tolerate a degree of disorder, we were able to continue HSing. ......They went back because things came up that prevented them from sticking to the strict timetable they had set, & because they defined success as sticking to timetables & keeping everything in order...Again how do i define & measure success at every turn???
p58...We found out that the new house gave them more nooks & crannies where they could curl up w/ Tolstoy & Jane Austen. Meanwhile, the boys, then aged 2, 5, & 9, were exploring the adjoining woods & backyard & making the new home their own. So we let the schedule bend as far as it had to, just as we often have when dealing with the vicissitudes of illness, new babies, visitors, travel, & floods. The schdule relaxes when it has to relax, but studies never stop, & they continue throughout the year. Once when we tried to take a summer off, the children were asking for study materials by the end of July- they said they felt dull w/o study. We have noticed that continuing with math thru the year means that we never have to waste time reviewing. We've talked with other parents who have adopted a yr-round approach for the same reason. Nonetheless, the fear that we weren't doing things "by the book" was always nagging at the back of our mind. It's hard to relax completely into the roll, but it's important to try.
p61..There r some useful book lists to help guide homeschool reading. We used these lists to discover books that we might have overlooked, & to help the children plan their basic reading thru high school. Helpful sources include Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum, by Laura Berquist; etc...
p62..you don't let ur kids smoke, so y let them watch tv?
p68...working with our HSed Lincoln-Douglas debate team, all 3 girls developed skills to write persuasive arguments supported by evidence, & to rewrite or restructure these arguments under pressure during a debate..... our sons have begun to follow a similar path toward writing. We did not discover the opportunity of competitive rhetoric, speech, & debate until our daughters were of high school age. We incorporated rhetoric into the curriculum, & our sons began to compete in public speaking in the middle school yrs.... We suspect that the pressure on students to write early may be as damaging as the pressure to read early. In any case, our patient & tactical approach seems to have served our children well.
p69...Language study, on the other hand, begins early. Many HSers emphasize Latin & Greek. We love the classics, & have worked on teh basics of Latin, because it is useful to understanding English word roots. Yet our guiding principle has been to study those languages that will allow the children to communicate with broad range of people living today. Thus, when we had the opportunity to join a Chinese school founded by immigrants from Taiwan to keep their ciuldren in touch with their native culture, we seized upon it....
p71.. the single most important thing we did for math skills was to forbid calculators until the childern had thoroughly mastered all basic arithmetic, including multiplication of decimals. To speed up the calculations, they studied math shortcuts & techniques of mental math. ..... We used manipulatives, in which category we included the abacus, & also constructed such projects as "Eratosthenes' Sieve," "Sisal's Challenge," & "Pascal's Triangle." We did not miss a chance to reinforce math skills in everyday life activities: cooking (miscalculation that resulted in a flopped batch of choc. chip cookies was powerful incentive to greater accuracy in working with fractions), etc. ... having friends who liked math helped a lot, too.
p73..Over the yrs, we have learned that many HSing families follow a pattern similar ot our own. They begin with a structured curriculum & follow it for a yr or two. Those families that plan to reenter the school system at some point are likely to adhere closely to such curricula, because they make the transition back to school easier. Yet there is a real downside to the structured curricula. The more that HSers mimic school, the less they stand to benefit from the freedom & spontaneity, the serendipity & randomness, the surprise & discovery that HSing can offer.
Families that persevere in HSing may rely on structured curricula only long enuf to gain the confidence they need to take a more creative approach....
p76...Athletics, music, lit, science, & mathematics have not been distinct & compartmentalized subjects in our HSing curriculum.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Homeschooling- A Family's Journey- Chapters 1-2
I am reading the above book by Gregory & Martine Millman. Luv the book thus far. Now i'm on the chapter about college applications and all that. I'm going to list the pages and points from the book here. this will cover a vast amount of stuff:
p3 Homeschoolers can do one thing, esp. that schools cannot do: Focus on the distinctive abilities and needs of each child, on each child's level of maturity, on each child's interest, on each teachable moment, and fit the educational system to the child instead of forcing the child to fit into a system. I am afraid that i don't know my children at all to meet their needs. I may be a bit skeptical about the educational system, but dh (being the 1st generation here) would force my babies to fit into the system (not think that we should at all think about the other way around)..
p34 The fact is that our approach to education is radically different from that of the educational system. By radical, I mean at the root. We have a different idea of what education means, a different understanding of its purpose and process. We weren't completely clear about what we thought when we began, but we were already acting on it. The longer we have homeschooled, the clearer it has become that we and the school system use the same word, "education," to mean different things. It made me realize how i want to be clear now in no uncertain terms what education really means to me. I've realized that i have a vague idea of what i think i want my kids to grow up to be like with their education and all. And recently, with dh pushing public school for dd's kg, it's making me realize how easy it is for him to just decide that that is all she needs. She will be another product of the public school system, ready to work and be a rat in the wheels of the corporate world, slave to the herd mentality. How can I put her thru the public system and expect anything else when she'll be spending 8 hrs away from learning life from those who themselves are mostly lost? With all the weaknesses and inadequacies I have, will I be able to provide her the role models who will fill in the gaps?
p34 American schools have, since the late 19th century, demanded various things of children, but never that become subjects responsible for seeking truth..."work right now is clearly the dominant purpose of education" Herbert Kliebard.... Seeking the truth..
p35 AKliebard shows that since the very inception of mass public schooling, control of our schools & curriculum has been the prize in a sor of open contest among various pressure groups & ideologies. I wonder what that means for our kids today. Who sets the curriculum & standards for public schools? & truly, who is shaping the minds of our babies?
p36 The decision to send a child to school is a decision to send a child into an environment with an organization & culture shaped by such seldom articulated assumptions & compromises. It is a decision to entrust a child to an enterprise whose tacit missions & goals may be different from the ones written on the wall. These missions & goals are both political & economic......This contest does not really aim to teach children how to find truth. It is about who will have the power to indoctrinate them...
p37 ...That was what everyone did, wasn't it? ...preschool, then kg, then elementary school. It was easy to keep moving along the line. It didn't take any thought at all. The only question we asked was "which shcool," not "whether school." .....But that was a real abrogation of our parental responsibility &, viewed from our present vantage point, it is shocking & shaming. How could we do such a thing? How could we assume that schools could be trusted? We knew that most institutions couldn't be. ...
p38 ...We had written about business & finance & understood such concepts as agency risk- the notion that the people who manage an organization tend to manage it in their own interest, no the interest of shareholders or other stakeholders. There was absolutely no reason to suppose that the educational system was any different, whether Catholic or public. Yet we made our educational decisions as if we really believed that the educational system was different. Despite the evidence, we trusted. ... Despite the evidence, I am willing to send my children to a place for 8hrs a day (more than 1/3 of their lives, trusting that we will have children who think differently from the herd, who care for humanity, who will strive to be among the momineen....
p39 ...The stronger the polls seemed in support of any point of view, the more apt we were to remember that public opinion is usually a product of careful & costly engineering. We more or less took it for granted that the official & generally accepted version of anything is at best a half-truth, & often enough a lie. We generally tested anything we heard or read against our own experience & our own reasoning. We had defied conventional wisdom by deciding that we would live on one income in order to provide the children with a full-time mother. Yet despite all this, we had sent our children to school. Why?... Conventional wisdom...how am I following it all aspects of my life??
p49 ...For us, education means a kind of growth & development that seems to have no constituency within the school system. When we say "education," we mean a process of growing in truth & freedom. We couldn't find this kind of education by looking in the classroom. We had to look out the window. . Define what education means to me...
p3 Homeschoolers can do one thing, esp. that schools cannot do: Focus on the distinctive abilities and needs of each child, on each child's level of maturity, on each child's interest, on each teachable moment, and fit the educational system to the child instead of forcing the child to fit into a system. I am afraid that i don't know my children at all to meet their needs. I may be a bit skeptical about the educational system, but dh (being the 1st generation here) would force my babies to fit into the system (not think that we should at all think about the other way around)..
p34 The fact is that our approach to education is radically different from that of the educational system. By radical, I mean at the root. We have a different idea of what education means, a different understanding of its purpose and process. We weren't completely clear about what we thought when we began, but we were already acting on it. The longer we have homeschooled, the clearer it has become that we and the school system use the same word, "education," to mean different things. It made me realize how i want to be clear now in no uncertain terms what education really means to me. I've realized that i have a vague idea of what i think i want my kids to grow up to be like with their education and all. And recently, with dh pushing public school for dd's kg, it's making me realize how easy it is for him to just decide that that is all she needs. She will be another product of the public school system, ready to work and be a rat in the wheels of the corporate world, slave to the herd mentality. How can I put her thru the public system and expect anything else when she'll be spending 8 hrs away from learning life from those who themselves are mostly lost? With all the weaknesses and inadequacies I have, will I be able to provide her the role models who will fill in the gaps?
p34 American schools have, since the late 19th century, demanded various things of children, but never that become subjects responsible for seeking truth..."work right now is clearly the dominant purpose of education" Herbert Kliebard.... Seeking the truth..
p35 AKliebard shows that since the very inception of mass public schooling, control of our schools & curriculum has been the prize in a sor of open contest among various pressure groups & ideologies. I wonder what that means for our kids today. Who sets the curriculum & standards for public schools? & truly, who is shaping the minds of our babies?
p36 The decision to send a child to school is a decision to send a child into an environment with an organization & culture shaped by such seldom articulated assumptions & compromises. It is a decision to entrust a child to an enterprise whose tacit missions & goals may be different from the ones written on the wall. These missions & goals are both political & economic......This contest does not really aim to teach children how to find truth. It is about who will have the power to indoctrinate them...
p37 ...That was what everyone did, wasn't it? ...preschool, then kg, then elementary school. It was easy to keep moving along the line. It didn't take any thought at all. The only question we asked was "which shcool," not "whether school." .....But that was a real abrogation of our parental responsibility &, viewed from our present vantage point, it is shocking & shaming. How could we do such a thing? How could we assume that schools could be trusted? We knew that most institutions couldn't be. ...
p38 ...We had written about business & finance & understood such concepts as agency risk- the notion that the people who manage an organization tend to manage it in their own interest, no the interest of shareholders or other stakeholders. There was absolutely no reason to suppose that the educational system was any different, whether Catholic or public. Yet we made our educational decisions as if we really believed that the educational system was different. Despite the evidence, we trusted. ... Despite the evidence, I am willing to send my children to a place for 8hrs a day (more than 1/3 of their lives, trusting that we will have children who think differently from the herd, who care for humanity, who will strive to be among the momineen....
p39 ...The stronger the polls seemed in support of any point of view, the more apt we were to remember that public opinion is usually a product of careful & costly engineering. We more or less took it for granted that the official & generally accepted version of anything is at best a half-truth, & often enough a lie. We generally tested anything we heard or read against our own experience & our own reasoning. We had defied conventional wisdom by deciding that we would live on one income in order to provide the children with a full-time mother. Yet despite all this, we had sent our children to school. Why?... Conventional wisdom...how am I following it all aspects of my life??
p49 ...For us, education means a kind of growth & development that seems to have no constituency within the school system. When we say "education," we mean a process of growing in truth & freedom. We couldn't find this kind of education by looking in the classroom. We had to look out the window. . Define what education means to me...
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