:: Avec Mes Zèbres (Blog de Phoebe) ::

I'm going to give this carnival a try, though it's hard for me to express my toughts the way I'd like to in a language that's not mine. I hope I'll be able to make myself understood and that you readers won't mind the many mistakes I'll certainly make. That being said, I can move to the topic :)
I'll make a mix of both suggestions for the July and August Carnival in order to catch up with everyone else.

I guess it all started when I was a child, a schooled at the age of 2 child (I won't expand on the organization of the French educational system here, but children can go to school at the age of 2 here and even if it's meant to be fun and recreationnal and all it's still a school with everything this implies in terms of rythm etc.). I eventually left it 22 + years later, with none of the diplomas I could have had if I hadn't been crushed by the system. I actually do have a few of those useless papers saying I achieved this or that (academically speaking), but none of them are useful to my present life which is that of a mother, growing with her three children.
I became a mother almost 7 years ago now. My parents kept telling me how much my son reminded them of me as a little girl. And I too was reminded of me as a little girl : seing him live, hearing him asking all these questions, making all these connections... all that made me take some sort of trip down memory lane in which I could feel some of the things that I had just intellectually known so far : yes school had damaged me, my curiosity, but most of all, my sense of self, of who I am and what I want. I knew that I was lost at 20, that was not too hard a guess to make since I was at that age suicidal and had no desire to live (which is different from to desire to die). Being a mother and seing my son live, I could feel in my guts that school had played a huge part in how confused I was at 20. And I didn't want my son to go in such a place. Not that all teachers were going to be as bad as some of the ones I had met, but because no matter how nice and human (and whatever...) these teachers are, they too are part of a system : how could something designed to fit the majority be a perfect fit for each individual ? The way I saw things, my son would have to be torn between :
- living & learning things at his own pace at home and then having to deal with the inevitable gap between home and school and
- fitting in at school and giving up a variable portion of who he was in order to achieve that.
I could not let that happen. School was not an option, not now anyway... maybe later when it would be HIS choice, but it certainly would not be mine.

When he started to ask "what's written here ?" before he was 3, I misunderstood his question and thought he was asking me to learn how to read. I took a couple of wrong paths but it quite quickly became clear that none of us was really willing to play that "I am the teacher - you are the pupil" game. I started to let things go, or at least to try to let things go for it was not an easy thing to give up control. I started reading John Holt's books, subscribed to quite a few unschooling lists because unscholing made sense, spoke to me : I could see how such an approach would have been great for the little girl I was and how it still was great for the woman I'd become and as for my son, well this was just exactely how he was living and breathing, and learning without me interfering.... and he was happy and curious and was discovering with delights the world around him.
My heart, guts... my whole body was yelling "this is the way"... but it's not an easy thing to overcome 22 + years of schooling, a society that is not familiar with homeschooling let alone unschooling, a partner whose doubts are echoing my own fears.
It's not an easy thing but day after day I try to let it go and let my sons, and my daughter (in the meantime we were blessed with two more children) be in charge of their own lives, free to pursue their own interests. I try not to guide them but to be there, where they say and show they need me. I try to trust them, to trust myself too and I hope they won't have as hard a time to trust themselves as I have trusting myself.
It all started with the "school" question, but I guess it's like a ball of yarn : you pull the thread and realize it's longer than it seemed at first. It all started with school, but I came to realize along the road that it had to do with life in general : at the same time I was discovering unschooling, I was also expecting a second child and questioning how my son was born... all the questions I had were part of a "big whole", were part of life and I couldn't separate them anymore, at least in my head (in practice I'm still struggling to live up to what I feel and believe is true).
It kind of all comes down to a few words for me now : life, freedom, trust, joy.
And it's hard for me to live up to that ideal. But I'll keep trying, baby stepping my way...
Useful links :

How to submit a post to the carnival
UV #1
Unbridled learning : podcast
Unschooling Voices # 01 (mon annonce sur ce blog à ce sujet)