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Ladder of Doubt
Dealing with life learning doubts one rung at
a time
By Marnie Black
Our family withdrew our eldest
two sons, Anthony and Mitchell, from school back in 2000. What a leap of
faith that was! We had to get out of the system after the havoc it had wreaked
on our boys. Even our pre-schooler, Jeff, had been negatively affected,
as most of his life had been lived in a family under stress.
We agonized over the decision. Homeschooling looked so risky, radical, and unproven. I wasn’t sure I was
ready to take the full responsibility for educating our children.
Would they learn?
Would they have friends?
Would they behave?
The school situation just
got so bad that we had to do “something drastic.” The decision was researched
and carefully considered but was also a matter of desperation. The boys
weren’t learning at school, they didn’t have friends, and their behavior
was atrocious. To be honest, so was mine – my parenting style resembled
John Wayne subduing the enemy as I battled the boys out of the house and
off to school each day. After school was an endless round of tears, tantrums,
homework, “time outs,” and bed battles. I took the Parent Effectiveness
Training course but initially it just made me think I was a failure.
Life was awful.
Homeschooling was the other
side of the fence. Even if it wasn’t as great as we hoped, we figured life
couldn’t get any worse. I was reasonably confident on the learning front;
the two boys had both spontaneously read before starting school, and their
math was above grade level. My time spent in the classroom had convinced
me they weren’t being taught much they didn’t already know. I was sure they
could learn more interesting stuff at home.
We took a deep breath and pulled the boys out.
The initial adjustment phase
was tough – all that bad behavior that we’d endured in out-of-school hours
now had all day, every day to expand into. I met some other homeschoolers
and envied the relaxed relationships and lifestyle they had. Life wasn’t
yet any better for us, but I began to think it might be. Doubts lingered.
Was I up to it?
Would the kids adjust to school again if it was
all a big mistake?
Would Mitchell regain his love of learning too?
Would Jeff learn to read?
Would I ever get through a day without a battle
cry?
Why did I think I could do better than the system?
Other homeschool mothers
seemed to have it together. Their kids actually listened to them – their
families even seemed to like each other! I spent all day trying to get my
guys settled so I could have five minutes away from them. Every time I tried
to get away, I had to come back with all guns blazing to try and restore
order.
Had I given up my life?
Would I ever get five minutes to myself?
Why did parenting have to look like a bad remake
of How the West Was Won?
After a couple of months,
the boys actually played together without incident for up to an hour at
a time. One of them joyfully announced that he was making friends with his
brother again. The neighbors commented on how much healthier they looked.
Wow, this was bliss! We were all happier, but....
Were we just avoiding reality?
Would they learn?
Would unschooling work?
When I looked back at how
my boys had learned before they started school, unschooling made sense and
I really wanted to give it a try. Our first priority on leaving school had
been to settle everyone down and hope that learning would kick in later
on. The homeschooling literature said to allow a month of recovery time
for every year children had been in school. I was reluctant to jeopardize
our new-found peace by introducing a school-at-home regime but my husband
was very doubtful about unschooling. I held my breath and waited.
Right on cue, four months
after leaving school, Anthony expressed an interest in learning about the
planets. Off we went to the library, and he began a huge astronomy project.
Wow, life learning works!
Would Mitchell regain his love of learning too?
Would Jeff learn to read?
Would I ever get through a day without a battle
cry?
We settled into the life
learning lifestyle. We went to exhibitions and homeschool activities, watched
documentaries and movies, and talked endlessly about everything under the
sun. I became less bossy and more understanding. My Parent Effectiveness
Training started to pay off. I stopped flip-flopping between model parent
and John Wayne and talked to the boys reasonably. I learned to stand back
respectfully and let them play and learn. I watched them learn through play
every day from the moment they got out of bed. Through play, both they and
their toys took on roles from fiction and history and coped with earthquakes,
wars, family upheaval, and everyday life. We joined the local homeschool
group and the boys found playmates there. They were learning, I was enjoying
my part in the process, and we weren’t alone on the journey, but....
Would they ever produce anything?
Did we need some structure?
How would they move on in life with knowledge
and skills but no qualifications?
Life and learning went on,
and I was reluctant to rock the boat by changing anything when things were
going so well. The years slipped by in what I now look back on as the glory
days of homeschooling. Most of our week was spent at home in days of endless
play. We had a weekly shopping and library trip, homeschool group fortnightly,
and trips to the city for homeschool activities once a month. At home, we
read lots and we cooked, played board games, and messed about with science
activities.
The boys’ endless imaginative
games had developed into what they referred to as “the episodes.” Each of
them had a game in which the three of them had a role to play, and they
took turns to play an episode of each game. Whole days were spent in this
way. At some stage, they decided to develop the episodes into books and
board games. Around the same time, they started family newspapers and magazines.
To begin with, Mitchell’s spelling was really odd but gradually that corrected
itself – I guess from all the words he absorbed visually through having
so much time available to read. Life was good, they had become a unit, they
were producing work, but....
Would they ever have friends beyond home school
group?
Should we have some structure?
Would Jeff ever learn to read?
There were twenty children
on our street, and – because I was a mum at home – after school, on weekends,
and on school holidays our house was full of kids. Either I was minding
them, or they just ended up here because there was always something happening.
The whole tribe came to our place, played games, dragged out the dress-up
box, and made movies. The movies became more complex, and the boys started
script writing and story-boarding. There was still the reading worry about
Jeff, but everyone I respected in the homeschool world said, “Don’t worry.
Just wait, it will happen.” But....
What if he had missed some essential preparation
while we were all stressed out?
How would I know if there was a problem or if
he just needed a bit longer?
What if it was too late?
As it turned out, Jeff didn’t
read spontaneously as his older brothers had. Maybe he would have done so
if we’d waited long enough, but he got sick of waiting and asked me to teach
him. We used the phonics approach from Why Johnny Can’t Read by
Rudolf Flesch, and Jeff was reading independently five weeks later. So now
they could all read, they were all happy, they were all learning. All my
worries were over – except that as the neighborhood friends started high
school, one by one they stopped coming to play and our house was much quieter.
The boys still had each other, they still played long and complex games,
wrote books, and were working on fabulous movie projects based on their
books, but....
How long could we go on like this?
They were getting older. Should we do some math
lessons?
Were we just avoiding reality?
I found some math tests and
persuaded the boys to complete them. I discovered that they could easily
do what was expected for their respective grade levels. I toyed with the
idea of getting more formal, although we were all too busy learning to follow
through. To ease my worry about math, we agreed on an hour of math per week
but found it hard to stick to.
How long could we go on like this?
They couldn’t learn by playing for ever, could
they?
What about higher math and science subjects?
A cousin introduced the boys
to computer games. I worried that it would be the end of everything. For
several months, all they wanted to do was play those games, and much of
the lengthy imaginative play that had been the hallmark of our homeschooling
went by the wayside because one of them was always on the computer and the
others were just filling in time, awaiting their turn.
Would this be the end of effective home education?
Would their eyes, brains and fitness be permanently
damaged?
Without computer time would they fall behind
schooled kids?
I set time limits and insisted
on hourly screen breaks and that they get some exercise. The computer game
obsession passed, but computer time became a regular feature of their days.
After a while, I did notice the learning involved. They learned history
while playing Carmen Sandiego, and computer time also developed
skills in typing, file management, word processing, desk top publishing,
spreadsheets, presentations, and movie production. I began to realize that
they will spend their adult lives in a world in which computers are much
more prevalent than in my generation and that their computer time prepares
them for that. Perhaps it contains more learning than people of our generation
appreciate. We tend to think of reading time as valuable and educational
but computer time as frivolous. Back in the 1700s, reading novels was considered
frivolous but the recommended alternatives, reading Fordyce’s Sermons,
for example, have certainly fallen from favor these days.
Gradually, the boys’ writing projects became more ambitious and sophisticated.
At the same time, Anthony’s interest in science became more serious, and
let loose on the Internet he found science websites, blogs, and podcasts
from all over the world. He made long lists of science books he’d like for
presents. Okay, higher subjects didn’t seem to be an issue, but....
What about moving on to university?
Should he try Open University?
How would he go with a schedule that discouraged exploring interesting
tangents?
He was too busy learning so we let the idea simmer for a couple of years.
In the meantime, he began writing a history of astronomy, a book which grew
to gargantuan proportions. He was visiting astronomy websites daily and
often knew astronomy news before it hit the mainstream media.
His brothers continued to play for hours, but one of the team was far
less available. They still planned and wrote movies together, but their
projects were so ambitious (for example, a three-hour murder mystery), and
filming days so infrequent and complex, that they aged noticeably between
scenes. Mitchell expressed an interest in doing a writing course and, after
I had to talk his way in because he was “too young,” the tutor was astounded
by his maturity and the quality of work he turned in.
In the meantime, Anthony decided to start on some subjects with Open
University and excelled. The most difficult part was adjusting to deadlines
and resisting the temptation of interesting tangents. So university level
work didn’t seem to be a problem, but....
What about getting in to a traditional university?
How many open uni units would be necessary and with what results?
How would he have time to study other interesting things while doing
a degree?
Getting in to university turned out not to be a problem. Two open uni
units with excellent results were enough, and Anthony solved the non-assessed
study time problem by going part-time. He has spent this year getting excellent
uni results with time left over for his voluntary job and to study science
and politics in the self-directed way he always has.
Meanwhile I’ve moved on to my next set of doubts:
How do you encourage teenagers to get more sleep and exercise?
How educational is Facebook?
How do kids who aren’t keen on university move into a job they actually
want to do?
I continue to climb my ladder of doubts. Old doubts are left behind,
and new ones crop up all the time. I’ve come to accept that doubt is part
of the journey. I just deal with one rung at a time. The next rung on the
ladder is sometimes within easy reach and at other times seems to require
acrobatic finesse. Sometimes the ladder feels more like a spiral staircase
when I revisit the same doubts at a higher level. I’m sure you have your
own ladder of doubt to climb no matter where you are on the home education
journey.
Doubts are useful. They help us to consider, examine and re-examine our
homeschooling and assess whether something needs to change. Often we decide
to leave well enough alone, and sometimes we decide it is time to make changes
to adjust our homeschooling to match our kids’ ages, stages, and interests.
In likening the doubts to a ladder, I may have made life learning sound
like a long hard slog in mid-air. On the contrary, it is more like an adventure
playground with fabulous lookouts, interesting challenges, cosy cubbies,
and interesting spaces to explore. It is sometimes challenging but the views
have been worth the climb.
Marnie Black has been unschooling in Australia for eleven
years and continues to have doubts despite the growing evidence that it
was one of the best decisions she ever made.
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