On whether or not to homeschool one’s own young, a mother’s considerations, translated…
My son is entering middle school next year, my friends are always curious of my arrangements for him, living in the mountain villages, I had a different choice, and thought of how my son will be schooled, compared to in the cities. There was a minorly famous private high school, if I don’t think too much, and just send my son in, at least, for the six years after this, I can feel comforted, that everything will be taken care of by the school.
But I don’t know why, there are, those voices inside of me that won’t allow me, aren’t there any other options? As a mother who thought too much, I’d thought, “homeschool” this once-considered case stood out, it’d become, something my husband and I discussed with my son on.
What is, homeschooling? How do we go about it? For me, this had always been, unfamiliar, although there are a lot of my friends who’d walked down this very path, but, I was raised by the system, all the way, to the top, without the set up rules, the arrangements, returning education, back to zero; it’s like, we no longer used the standardization methodologies of mass-production, getting away from the production lines, but, we may not have the skills to make what we needed. That day as I sat in the office of the middle school, the head counselor asked me how I will help my son enter into the school systems, I can only answer, that I just want a different path for my son, and tried to find out other, alternatives for him. This irrational mother, it may be trying on the child, but, if I give the right to choose back to him, would he really know the difference of being schooled by the system and learning on his own?
It took me most of life to learn within the systems, to become me, can’t my son just, copy my methods, and become who he’s meant to be too? My worries may have stemmed from how I was suppressed, or what I’d lost in the process, but, all of these lacking and regrets, could they not be turned, into a sort of a motivation, for me, to turn around, to pick up all these pieces that went missing from before, to make a complete, whole?
What are we living for? A few days ago I saw a sentence that moved me, “if you walked far enough, you will bump into your self.” Life is alternatively, not about the final destination, but the process, as we accompanied our selves, becoming who we are right now, and, the final goal of education, is not about what’s learned, the passing of knowledge, but how every child is different, some lazy, some studious, to learn to be self-aware, and NOT trap oneself.
That day, Master Weng explained to me how someone strong is a person who kept breaking the boundaries placed on the self, and not someone who beats everybody else in everything; the way the nature worked, quite unpredictable, we couldn’t control that, and we can only, face up to it, and, only through finding our own hearts, making our hearts stronger, through the challenges of our lives, keep on, breaking the bounds, our own limitations, that final self can always, have, endless, possibilities.
Being a mother, what I want to give to my son the most, is how to live using this sort of an attitude; this means of teaching can and will NOT be found on the teachers in school, but it’s used as a reminder, for a lazy mom like me, that I will, NEVER be an outsider, to my son’s education, whether he will be homeschooled or not.
And so, this, is what you figured out, about yourself, in deciding whether or not to homeschool your own child, there’s a lot to consider, sure, you get to set your own curricula, write your own I.E.P., but at the same time, it’s, easier to slack off, because you’re homeschooling, because you’re at home to learn, whereas life in the schools is more disciplined, but there’s, less freedom within the schemata of school, for your son to find his own way if he’s more of a creative sort.
Life, the Obstacle Course 