School's Out Forever

Just typing that sends shivers down my spine.  Just imagine if it were true. Just imagine if we finally reached the stage of social evolution when schools no longer existed.  Wouldn't that be incredible?

Leaving that aside:

Click to tweet: http://clicktotweet.com/t0GQ1 .  We all probably know our own children better than anyone else knows them, and our families have individual needs and values.  When we bring up our own children, we may come to believe that the style and content of education (parenting?) which works well for us will also work well for the majority of other people, but we may well be wrong.  This makes it very easy to develop dogmas about structure, autonomy or content - we may be into classical, technical, liberal arts, Steiner (anthroposophy), Montessori, child-centred or other approaches to content or style, and that should be dictated by our own beliefs as well as the character of the children.  It can even be that, in theory, a child is best off at school, though i am convinced that this is extremely rare.  Nonetheless my mind needs to be open to that possibility.

I was startled and fascinated to discover that one of our children seemed to lack curiosity completely.  Prior to that i wouldn't have believed that that was at all possible - that it was part of what makes us human and that it never happened.  If i'd encountered that in a child with different parents, i would've concluded, quite intolerantly and prejudicedly, that something had happened to crush that child's natural curiosity.  However, i can't for the life of me see that that was what happened with our daughter, though that could be down to self-deception.  Her needs were therefore very different than our son's.

We should listen to each other and recognise that because every child and family is unique, simply because something works for us doesn't mean it'll work for someone else, and that although i am probably most sympathetic to the efficacy of autonomous education, that won't work for everybody, and if we fail to tolerate that, we're being somewhat like people who are opposed to home ed entirely.

I've now established that nobody reads these.  This was my intention of course, but it makes me wonder what i should do instead.

Tomorrow should include a video for the Other Channel, though i won't upload it immediately, a pregnancy vlog (already planned, going to try to get to 107 cm - ouch!) and a video on kidney stones (also ouch, and more so!)