What We are Learning in Living

On homeschooling, how children are learning, when we’re, unaware, through their interactions with their own, external environments, translated…

One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can break through the boundaries of learning that the schools create for us, the kids no longer chose from running the laps, playing the balls for physical activities, they can also choose swimming, rock climbing, baseball, and, they don’t need to switch activities once every two weeks or so, we can use the years as the units of learning for each and every physical activity.

Recently, my son took up air-yoga, this sort of coordination-prone and challenging oneself sport helped my son build his self-confidence as he was not agile in running, or tossing the balls, he’d stated it clearly, that he will become, a yoga instructor in his future.  And, for most people, they would be confused, because, in the impressions, aren’t the yoga instructors mostly, females in tights, twisting their bodies around, stretching their limbs to their limbs?  It didn’t feel, too, masculine.

But my son had already been “unlimited by his gender”, not just because this yoga instructor was a young man, with long hair, and earrings, but because of my work in advocating gender equality, which allowed him, who’s homeschooled, to get involved with what I was, working on, and, in recent years, all the seminars, all the books he’d read up on on the subject, may have exceeded that of the school teachers.

But, taking my son along to work, it wasn’t, easy.  Even if my work is quite flexible, I’d not needed to stay for long hours at an office setting, my son can do his own things when I’m working on my drafts, as I went to give the lectures, he’d sat, quietly by, read his own books, but, after all, he was quite young, and, couldn’t help it to run to the podium to hug me, or to grab away my mic, my projection pen, the other assortments of technologies, gadgets I was using in my lectures, and it’d made me mad, that I swore I was, never taking him to work with me again.

illustration from UDN.com

Until he entered into the second grade, and can get along on his own better, and, it wasn’t as difficult for him, to be there, when I worked.  One day, I’d gone to a children’s bookstore in Taoyuan to share an illustrated book on sex education, in my two-hour long lecture, he’d found a shelf full of comics with the scientific subjects, as he’d found this slot of treasures, he’d started reading it for very long, and, although he still ran up to me to tell me things a couple of times, but, everything got resolved, soon enough.  Afterwards, I’d bought him a volume, with the money I was paid for the lecture, and to support this independent bookstore that watches over the children.

On the way home, my son started asking me, what I’d lectured about, of the stereotypes of gender, that was it a gender stereotype when others asked if he were, a little, girl?  Wow!  I can’t imagine, that he actually, heard me, while he was, reading his own books.  As we got home, I’d, taken a few illustrated volumes on gender, to have him be able to choose it as one of the books for his own reading assignment of the week, we’d passed through this day, pleasantly.

It’d dawned on me, that it all depends on the adults, whether or not their young will steadily, enter, into the systems of, learning.  For instance, the phonetic spellings, for a young child who’d encountered the world of symbolic language for the very first time, it was all unknown, if the teachers can provide a more active means for them to learn, instead of forcing them to memorize the phonetic symbols rote, then, it will surely, speed up their paces of learning, and reduce the pains as they learned.  And, on the subjects of gender equality education, if the kids are told what to do this, what not to do that in class, then, to them, it would only be whether or not “I followed the words of the adults”, but, if we can, help them evaluate things in their own lives, to pose their own questions on these matters, to discuss the subject matters with them, then, the kids will then, internalize the materials.

But, it’s nothing easy, teaching our own young, especially when we want to “teach using life”, it’d become, that much more of a, challenge.  Sometimes, I would get upset in teaching my son, attempted to control how the learning sessions would go, to make sure that my son understands what I’m teaching to him.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I still can’t get past what’s inside of myself, we’re not in school now, so, why is that game of catching up still being, played, what am I, hurrying at?  I’d needed to, remind myself constantly, to NOT complain all the time, that my son can’t understand, what I should do is to change my own thought, to use a wiser way, to help my child understand, what he wants to, understand.

And so, this is the lesson you learned, from how your own young son learns, and, children are, absorbing everything they encounter, from watching how the adults interact, to how they interact with their own, external environment, and, if we keep that in mind, and, we find that way to teach our own young effectively, then, they will be, more than educated, even when they are not, placed inside a school setting to learn.