I think I feel too much. Maybe I spend too much time on reddit.com. Maybe I’m just cursed by being an Aquarian. Or perhaps I am just human. But how can I be human and share my humanity with people like these terrorists in Mumbai? How can my life be filled with love, hope and beauty while so many lives are void of all those things? Where is the disconnect, the great divide? 

I just spent the last 20 minutes looking at these photos from Mumbai; I’ve been moved to tears many times by human tragedy so I wasn’t surprised to find myself a complete wreck after looking at these. I am an incredibly soft humanitarian and I feel the pain in the world every day. I carry it with me like an emo 14 year old myspace addict. When I look at my own children smiling I can’t help but remind myself that there are children just as beautiful as my own that are crying, being beaten, raped, or neglected at that very moment. When I go to the store to buy groceries I think about all of the families out there that don’t have money to buy groceries to feed their children. When I walk outside on a cold Maine winter evening and feel the icy air rip through my bones I feel sad for the people that don’t have a way to escape that cold, no homes to keep them warm. When I buy clothes for my kids at a department store I think about the tiny, fragile hands that made the clothes for only a few cents a day. I think about how my own country has destroyed the natural environment and economic structure of third world nations so that we could pay as little as $3.99 for a shirt at walmart when in the real world you couldn’t even buy a yard of fabric for that little money and make it yourself. 

My husband thinks I’m totally nuts. I drive myself insane because I can’t rationalize all of the chaos out there and I can’t find a way to contribute to the solution. He reminds me gently that I am contributing my raising two children with so much love and patience because someday they will inherit this world. He is right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the horrific things that are happening.

And as everything falls apart, as our humanity frays at its seams, the American consumer just goes right on consuming. They run in their hamster wheels and their scenery never changes because they refuse to look beyond their own borders and their own fabricated reality. We are losing our civilized world. We are falling victim to the savagery that is born through hateful dogma, consumerism, and our lack of presence within our children’s lives.

We work so much because we need to pay bills. We need to pay bills because we have been made to feel as though we “need” certain things like two cars per household, lots of name brand clothes, the newest technologies, new furniture, candle sconces, new coordinating bath rugs and shower curtains, on and on. We need these things because the TV tells us we need them. Our neighbors have them. Our friends have them. We must have them. We must assimilate. So we consume. And it never ends. We’re never happy. We are slaves to jobs that most of us hate and we work to pay for things that we turn around and sell in a lawn sale at 10% of its original price a year later. In the meantime, we’ve left our homes empty. Our children are forgotten. And when we are not there to nourish them emotionally and provide a stable foundation of love and support they turn to TV, computer games, myspace communities, and other forms of support and get lost in the confusing web of unattached support systems. 

I am overburdened by the sadness in the world. I cannot understand hatred because I’ve never truly felt it. I just want peace, understanding, diversity, and acceptance. I want that for all of us. Isn’t the need to love and be loved a part of all of us? When I sit quietly in the rocking chair as I nurse my baby boy, my thoughts wander. Many times I have looked into his dark, dreamy eyes and wondered how anyone could not love a child like I love my own. And I wonder how anyone that is this loved could ever grow up to do so much damage later in life. I don’t think they could. I think that love and peace must start between a mother and her child, and then blossom from there. I can’t think of any better way to cleanse the world of hatred than to hold our sweet children close to us, rock them gently, and allow ourselves to love them with every cell in our body.

So here’s the deal. My most fervent desire for my children and their future is that they are able to retain a healthy curiosity, a penchant for questioning authority, and the natural ability to be remarkable. I want them to be innovators, to be great thinkers. Therefore, I refuse to put them on the assembly line, which is the government-run education system in America.

Our education system is socialized daycare. My husband and I made incredible changes in our professional and financial lives before our daughter was born so that I was able to stay home and raise her myself rather than send her off to daycare. At a time when it was not popular for families to survive on single incomes we made it happen because we decided early on where our values were. So, we live with one car, we don’t have credit cards, we trimmed off the frivolous and $$ niceties so that we could bring into existence the life we dreamed of for our family. We did not want this precious new life to find itself surrounded by strange caregivers, limited emotional experiences, and stagnant environments. We didn’t want her earliest memories to be of Miss Debbie at Debbie Doo’s Daycare. Based on those principles that were the catalyst for so many changes in our lives, why then would we send her off to daycare under an educational pretext when she turns 5 years old?

As John Gatto points out in his book, “Dumbing Us Down,” our school system is good at one thing: it schools our children. It teaches them to follow orders. It teaches them to be timely. It does not, however, educate them. Enclosing children within a solid structure for 12 years of their lives, limiting their interactions to children of the exact same age, and impressing upon them that the only way they can “learn” anything is by listening to a teacher is absolutely absurd and intellectually heretical. Socrates would be pissed.

Is school really an assembly line? Well lets zoom in:

Young Gwen is sitting her math class working through a problem that she has been struggling with. She has been persisting though, and she feels as though she is making progress. Just as she starts to feel confident in her ability to solve this problem the school bell rings. Does Gwen remain in her seat to finish the problem? Of course not. Gwen has to shuffle out of the room, proceed down the hall and assimilate herself into the next classroom to memorize more useless facts that she’ll forget in less than 10 years. What is Gwen learning? That it never mattered to anyone else if she solved that math problem. Sure, it mattered to her. But what matters to her is not important. What is important is following that assembly line. Move on through. Don’t ask questions. Never seek. Just move on through.

When Gwen is 18 years old she might go to college. I hope she does. She might find herself in some interesting classes where her professors will encourage her to think for herself and solve problems in creative ways. Hopefully it will undo some of the damage that public school inflicted on her well-being for 12 very influential years of her life.

Realistically, Gwen probably won’t go to college. The burning desire to achieve, to create, and to think will have been replaced with pure apathy. She’ll assimilate into the 9-5 workforce that keeps this great consumerist economy rollin’. And our government will love her for it. They’ll show their love by requiring her to fill out W4 forms annually and using her taxes to grant large tax breaks to CEO’s of oil companies. The Federal Reserve will love her because she’ll live a long, unfulfilling life on credit. She’ll live outside her means because that’s what we are all encouraged to do, and she’ll always be in debt to a system that is designed to keep her that way.

For all of these reasons, and so many  more, I choose homeschooling for my children. I value their right to a meaningful, thoughtful existence. I understand the value in being on the fringe. On the educational fringe I can offer unique opportunities for learning for my kids. I can help them learn that the best teacher they will ever find is in fact, themselves. The ability to go out and teach yourself something on your own accord, is in my opinion the most beneficial thing a person could ever learn. In kindergarten my child would be asked to build a bridge with their blocks.  At home I can supply the blocks and then step back; the beauty comes in observing what their own curiosities will direct them build with the blocks. As an unschooling parent I will provide a landscape of potentials and be a nurturing guide.

If you want to know why mainstream is not where you want to be, I’ll tell you why: It’s not progressive, and it’s mediocre. It runs in shallow cycles, regurgitating meaningless and often harmful trends throughout hundreds and thousands of years. If you want an example, check out the girls wearing leg warmers over their jeans as they walk down your street tomorrow morning. It’s the 80’s in 2008. A more harmful trend? Check out this video and then watch and wait for Sarah Palin’s church to repopularize the witch hunts again. Sarah Palin needs protection from witches

Is it kooky to homeschool? According to most people on the assembly line it is. But, you can feel bad for them later. It’s ok to be on the fringe. Once you get used to it you’ll feel quite “normal” there. Living on the fringe requires using concerned analysis in your decision making process for anything that matters from education, spirituality, envinronmental concerns, your profession, your hobbies. It’s about abandoning the main road and creating a new path to the things that matter most to you. Allow yourself to think. It can be frightening, but I think you’ll agree that is the most exhiliarating and freeing experience you can create for yourself.