From my perspective as a person who chose homeschooling 25 years ago—homeschooling some of the children all of the time and all of the children some of the time--I think it’s very intriguing that many people who might never have chosen to homeschool are doing so now that schools are closed. I hope it’s providing lots of opportunities to engage with questions about our educational system as we’ve conceived it, including:
*Why does learning have to mean sitting?
*Why does learning have to take place almost exclusively indoors?
*Why does learning require ghettoizing young people in buildings away from the goings-on of the adult world?
*What do we mean by “educated”? Do we all mean the same thing when we use that word? Could it be that some people consider an educated individual one that can read and write and do simple ‘rithmetic while others consider an educated individual someone that is versed in the arts or in financial literacy? Why can’t we have a national conversation—or better yet, many local conversations—about what it means to be educated and how we can best facilitate people of all ages getting there?
*What does it mean that young people can graduate from high school and know how to solve quadratic equations but can’t identify five native plants and explain their traditional uses?
*What does it mean if people graduate from college and, faced with a blank map of Africa, can’t accurately fill in more than two countries? Or, given a map of the world, can’t identify which countries are majority Muslim? Or understand where U.S. troops are stationed around the globe? Can we agree that basic global literacy is necessary to absorb and understand current events and to vote with competence?
*Now that many schools have axed shop and home ec, can we have a conversation about the role these skills play in actual life and how best to acquire them? Can we also talk about how a balanced, Renaissance individual might be able to talk philosophy, write poetry and haibun, solve for x, fix a car, make a house and furniture from wood or other simple materials, grow a garden, compost, cook dinner for six or for one, make proper corners when they put clean sheets on the bed, and clean the counters in the kitchen?
*Can we explore the possibility that an educated person might have a good idea about how to become and stay healthy? Can we acknowledge that there are many healthy diets and offer individuals the means to assess which one or ones might be best for each person? Can we appreciate that the human organism was designed to move and develop an appetite in all educated individuals for various and frequent movement?
*Do we, Americans in the U.S., have a shared cultural inheritance—regionally or nationally or both? Could it be valuable to identify the elements of such an inheritance? Are there certain songs we can all sing and harmonize to, certain dances we know how to do to certain kinds of music, certain affirming stories we tell, certain techniques we employ to make beautiful and useful items with local materials? Might familiarity with our cultural inheritance be part of an educated person’s education?
*Can we admit that a lot of the systems and ways of being and doing that we have inherited are fucked up and we will need educated, open-hearted people to begin thinking big and wide to come up with ways of doing things differently? Can we encourage and accept openness and creativity instead of jamming every round peg in sight into shitty little square holes?
*Can we acknowledge our deep need for and connection to the natural world and to its diverse and miraculous species of all ilks? Can we plant the seeds of an appreciation and love for the natural world, and a desire to cherish it and improve its health in every individual?
*What are people for, anyway?