Do You Really Want Your Kid to Be an Artist?

Me at 7, trying to be an artist.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. Or a botanist, or a hair-dresser. My parents and grandparents gave me wonderful art supplies, and my father even made me a palette with a hole in it for my thumb, and positioned the kitchen stool in front of the wall of our trailer for me to use as a painting stool. That’s me in the photo, in the early nineteen-eighties, feeling wonderful and accomplished, but with absolutely no idea of what it meant to “be an artist”.

So What, Exactly, Is an Artist?

I'm an artist, now. Twenty-five years and two kids after I got my degree in visual arts, my career is built on helping people reach beyond societal expectations to un-silence themselves, and connect genuinely with the world we inhabit. I do paint, and I do have gallery exhibitions, but I also tromp in the forests, use materials I never imagined would one day be called “materials”, and make art I never imagined would be called “art.” The focus of my work is to connect people with our own deeply-held stories; as an explorative learning consultant I also encourage parents and teachers to do the same with their children. It turns out art was just a vehicle for something more important to me. And I’m still an artist.

The stereotype of the famous artist making masterpieces in his (he's almost always male, white and powerful) studio has almost nothing to do with a successful art career. I wish somebody had explained this to me when I was a kid. Picasso was an abusive, deceitful creep, and we don't have to appreciate his work to be artists. There’s SO much more wonderfulness in being an artist than I had imagined! So much more diversity!

Artists are responsible for not only the beauty we see in our human-made world, but also for the connection we make with neighbours, for the realizations we make about our own lives and feelings when we watch movies, listen to music, or read books. Artists determine how easy it is to use the devices we buy. Through media, artists determine which devices and foods and colours will be more popular. They understand the influence of shapes, colours, sound, movement and texture on our emotions, and... like it or not, our emotions govern much of what we do. Artists are powerful. A “career in the arts” is a massively open-ended term, but also, having a grounding in artistic practice and theory means a deeper foundation or influence in any career we choose. Moreover, having the ability to express ourselves is an important foundation of meaningful connection.

I like to imagine a world full of people who were encouraged in this way. How happy, satisfied, and valuable could we all be? How would our chosen paths be enhanced by a facility with self-expression and material, sound, or movement exploration? Do you really want your kid to be an artist? And if so, how can you support them?

What NOT to do: Unsolicited "Help"

It's incredibly easy to break kids' confidence in art (or anything) and less easy to build it. As with so much in life, the first thing we can do to "help" our kids succeed is to get out of their way. It's not easy, especially when we're watching them struggle with something we know there's an easy solution for. But we zip our mouths, find something else to occupy our attention, and trust that they'll get where they need to go. And never, ever critique.

Criticism is more likely to break our confidence than to teach us something, and a shattered confidence is a massive barrier to success. My daughter is a writer, and was recently working on her second novel. I edited her first novel for her, judiciously reporting back on only glaring typos and missing punctuation. It was an amazing realistic fiction coming-of-age story, written from the bold heart of a young girl whose grandfather had recently died. I love it so much I heartily recommend it to readers of all ages. Her next novel, though, was a departure from the world she knew and understood so well, and required a steep learning curve. It was an epic fantasy, full of people from different cultures and a massively complex magical world... all of which she dutifully researched and developed before writing. But then she was challenged by trying to fit this enormous complexity into a single story. And when it came time for me to edit her book, I didn't hold back with the criticisms and suggestions. Some chapters were confusing, some events seemed out of place, and mostly I was confused by the timeline. Sure, she was only fourteen, but I just knew she was capable, so I critiqued! Despite my attempts at being gentle with my criticism, it all seemed insurmountable to her, and after a few attempts at editing, she abandoned the book. To her credit, she's keeping an open mind about the possibility of writing it in the future, but unfortunately I feel I threw a hammer at a beautiful glass sculpture she was creating, that actually she just needed more time with, alone. Without my critiquing.

So that's how not to build confidence. Just think of all the ways we're doing that, in every part of our kids' lives, and even our own. So many of us have an overachieving inner critic. And a culturally-supported fear that that critic is what's keeping us on the straight-and-narrow. But you know what? It's not. What would happen if we just didn't correct our kids? Well I have some experience with that, now, both in teaching and parenting. It's ridiculously hard to shut up my inner critic sometimes, but when I do, the kids thrive.

My daughter is truly an excellent writer--so much so, that in her frantic enthusiasm she charges ahead, forgetting to put periods at the ends of sentences, capitals on names, or sometimes misspelling words. She edits herself, and (as we all are prone to doing) sees right through her mistakes to read what she intended to write. What if she asks me to edit and I just ignore those mistakes? I've experimented with that. Sometimes she looks over her work later and discovers her mistakes. Sometimes she puts it aside for a few months, grows and learns, and comes back to it to realize she would now write it differently. Sometimes, even, she submits or publishes something with mistakes. And you know what? That's just fine! I frequently go back to my own work from years earlier, and see how much I've learned and grown since my thirties--and yet my work was appreciated then, as well. Have you any idea how many typos I still find in my writing? Tons. I'm especially accomplished at missing words and totally redundant examples. Sometimes I don't even bother to correct them. Because they're part of my humanity. Our kids deserve that space to be human, too.

Honouring Growth

Rhiannon, age 5, experimenting with paints.

As a visual artist, I love to look back and see all my mistakes. I look at portraits I painted years ago, and wonder why I did them the way I did; sometimes I also notice things I thought were problems at the time, that now inform new directions in my work. Growth is where it's at, people! Otherwise what are we living for? In some deep place, children know this, as from the moment they're born they challenge themselves to grow by exploring different tastes, movements, and expressions.

Children, like my daughter in the photo, above, want to represent their world. But it isn't always as we might expect! As parents, we have a choice about whether to show our children how to draw things the way we think it should be done, or to allow them to discover their own ways, through experimentation. My son was once drawing a whole page full of lines, and I asked him what he was drawing (something I've since learned not to do), and he told me it was a drum. I was totally perplexed, and asked him where the parts of the drum were. This was a boy who had no problem drawing a circle--why would he choose to represent a drum with a whole lot of unconnected lines? "It's the sound of the drum." He said. Boom.

He didn't need my assumptions. He needed my appreciation, and the freedom to keep exploring. As long as we respond to our kids' experiments with curiosity and loving encouragement, they'll continue to know that where they are on their journey of growth is perfect. And that will be the impetus they need to keep growing with enthusiasm. I have no idea how my son's drawings of sound influenced his life, but considering he now is employed as a visual artist and makes music to accompany his personal visual projects, I'm relieved I didn't get in the way of that particular growth pattern by showing him "how to draw a drum."

Asking Helpful Questions

I realized during my children's earliest years that questions like "what are you drawing?" are extremely limiting. In that question I have determined that my child must be trying to represent a specific thing, and the assumption is usually that it's a visual representation of something we know. But what if it's not? What if it's our children's experimentation with colours, shapes or lines? Or sound, as in the drum example? That kind of experimentation--without intent to satisfy outside demands--is essential for learning to use materials. Professional artists actually bill for material experimentation; it's called "research". We even sometimes mount gallery exhibitions composed entirely of experimental output--often to great acclaim. So why would I limit the possibilities of my own child's artistic output?

But we want to ask questions! We know it's important to engage and encourage! So how can we ask questions that promote growth-dialogue about art (or anything), without limiting our children's growth or expression?

Think about the words in the question "What are you drawing?" The word 'what' carries the assumption they're trying to represent an object. The word 'drawing' means we assume they're focused on the output of the material in their hands, as opposed to the feeling, taste, smell, or movement of it. How are these assumptions limiting the range of acceptable answers?

Drawing by Taliesin, age 3.

Maybe we have a kid who is happy to contradict us, and says, "I'm not drawing anything. I'm dancing the pen," or, as in my son’s drawing, above, “Nothing. I didn’t tell you.” (I learned a lot about parenting from that bold rejection.) But more likely, our kid wants to please us; to learn from our example, and will find a suitable answer, like, "some lines," or as my daughter used to do, look at a bunch of lines she was experimenting with and come up with a wild explanation like, "it's a dog on a house with the family having dinner." It's tragically very common that kids learn to minimize themselves to match what they perceive coming from adults. I've seen plenty of kids who were making successful attempts at depicting what might have been people or animals declare that they were “just scribbling.” Why? Because maybe they feared hearing our criticisms, or maybe we've previously defined their drawings of animals as 'scribbling', or maybe, because their own inner critic is already developed enough to silence their voice.

Adults are notoriously bad at asking kids questions, and kids generally have rote answers ready to respond to each of them: How old are you? How is school? What are you making? What is your favourite colour/subject/sport/etc.? How are we so uninspired?! These questions aren't about engaging with kids or developing rapport; they're expected. What if, instead of asking what they're drawing, we invite them to tell about what they're doing? This is an open invitation to consider what they're doing and talk about it. It's up to us to be open to hearing their response, no matter how long, unexpected, or confusing it may be. Not all questions will be helpful for all kids in all situations, but through practice we can become better at asking good questions. Here's a list of interesting open-ended questions to use in engaging kids to talk about their art:

• Interesting! Can you tell me about this?
• Does this have a story or feeling?
• How do you feel about what you're doing?
• Show me how you like to use [material]...
• What do you think about the materials you're using?
• Are there any other materials you'd like to use?

Materials

Ah how I love shopping for materials!! And hoarding them!! Don't we all?! How much of our parenting waste is comprised of once-used adorable kits that were soon replaced by something newer and more exciting? I won't go on at length about this, because I've previously written a whole article about Materials for Open-Ended Art Exploration. But suffice it to say that well-chosen art materials are the foundation of good artistic experience. And I don't mean the expensive stuff. I mean well-chosen. Materials can be anything from kitchen supplies to mud and sticks outside, to a mish-mash of mark-making, gluing, cutting and melting tools. The important feature of all of these things is that they do not come with instructions or intended uses. How we present and use materials is much more important than what they are.

Modelling

From the moment they were born, and possibly earlier, our kids have looked to us to lead them. The important thing to remember about modelling to our children is that it's happening all the time; not just when we do it intentionally. Our kids see our hesitation and fear with art as much as they see our enthusiasm. They see us avoid trying new things, and they see us when we courageously do them, and when we have small successes and failures. They emulate not only our actions but also the way we emotionally deal with these things.

With this in mind, the absolute best thing we can do for our children is to use any and all materials available to us to explore creatively, for our own happiness. That last bit is important. Kids can smell a fraud from a mile away, so we have to be creative in the way that we want to be. Otherwise we're just teaching our kids to put on a show for someone else's benefit, and that's nothing about authenticity.

And we should stretch ourselves. If we're accustomed to buying craft kits and following the instructions, we should absolutely try to break that habit (more on why in the materials article, above) and try experimenting with new materials. We can also stretch our definition of art-making. Try experimental baking! Try sewing or crocheting! Try putting on your favourite music, getting dressed up in fancy dress or costumes and dancing your heart out! Try painting your whole self and rolling around on an old sheet, outside. In the rain! It doesn't matter what or how you engage in art, just as long as you do it. And if your output isn't what you expect? Even better. Keep experimenting. You're modelling growth to your children.

Living a life full of joyful exploration and learning, ourselves, is the best way we can teach our children.
 

Nurturing Important Skills

Me at 4, being an artist.

We’re culturally trained to associate specific skills and attributes with art: dancers should be thin and flexible, visual artists should be able to draw realistic depictions with technical skills like shading, perspective, and colour theory; musicians should first learn to read music and do scales. Unless we’re born talented, of course.

Oh hell, I hate the word ‘talent’! It's such a harmful concept. I wasn't born talented; I developed some skills in accurate rendering of my observations by having a keen interest in observing how things are put together; how the light plays on them, and being given room to experiment with materials throughout my life. It was easy for me because I loved it, just like my daughter loves telling stories, so writing is easy for her to learn. We develop the skills we need when we realize we need them, and as long as we're not discouraged from exploring them.

As parents and teachers, we need to help build foundational skills for life, and trust that those material skills will come when needed. As an artist, I owe a huge amount of my career satisfaction to some less-concrete skills and passions:

• seeing the big picture in life, art, etc.
• a keen interest in social phenomena
• a passion for exploration and discovery

We really can't know what skills will be foundational for each of the unique kids we work with. Neither can we know the cultural landscape our kids will grow into, nor what careers will be common, when they’re grown. Who knew, when I was in art school twenty-five years ago that people would be making virtual and even invisible art to sell online, one day? Who knew I’d raise a son who gets paid to make thousands of geographically plausible planet renderings by using procedural generation techniques? His art process looks like a bunch of visual programming. I could never have predicted this, never mind taught him these skills. So when trying to support kids I parent and teach, I try to encourage growth of all sorts of skills. Life is not divided by subject. Careers are not determined by skill-acquisition. It's all interconnected. The more we learn, the more we can learn.

So Do You? Really?

Yes. I guess I really do want my kids to be artists--however that looks for them, and however it looks in the future we can only dream of. I want them to explore all the materials and develop all the skills I can’t even fathom right now. I want them to change the definition of the word “artist” to mean new and wonderful things, and I want them to keep on growing as the world grows, around them.

I've Changed my Thinking on University Entrance and Attendance

Taliesin in his early years, trying to get some lift. Photo: Emily van Lidth de Jeude

I thought about calling this article 'Getting into University as an Unschooler', because that's what people ask me about, knowing that I parent two young adults who are currently in this stage of life. But by the time I finished writing it, I realized that I can't even recommend university anymore. Not the way it's traditionally done, anyway. University is a beautiful little corner of a much bigger, beautiful picture, and I mean to let my kids have the whole picture.

I have two different kids who have traveled through life in the same community, sharing the same upbringing, home and family, and often the same activities, but with vastly different journeys towards what our culture calls "adulthood". They're both now on the precipice of finding meaningful employment in fields that inspire them, still living at home during the pandemic, but eagerly researching the rental market since, one day soon, they plan to move out and build their independent lives. Here are their stories, followed by my current thoughts on university.

Taliesin
He's my firstborn. He was passionate about science since he opened his eyes, though it took me a few years to see it. He observed the whole world around him, figuring out how everything worked. He was passionate about making art, too, but since he was mostly drawing machines (albeit very imaginative machines), I figured science was his thing. By the time he was nine he was begging to go to university and study physics. He was fully unschooled, so we went out to our local university (UBC) and their particle accelerator for tours and to listen to lectures whenever we were able. It was wonderful to see him so engaged, but other than attending lectures, there was little to interest him, scientifically. All the kids' programs were too condescending and boring, having little to do with the science he craved so much, and the teen programs that graciously let him in before he was of age were too few and far between. And as his friends became busier with school activities, he was becoming lonely. We tried gifted homelearner social groups, but both he and I feel an aversion to the 'gifted' classification, and we weren't interested in defining ourselves that way. 

So he went to school. Taliesin did two years at our local private middle school where his uncle teaches, followed by three years at the democratic school in the city. We always approached school from an unschooling perspective, with no concern at all for grades or attendance, and always the option to take a different view of the projects than what was expected. Mostly this served him well, and he managed the shift from unschooling to school quite well. He found science classes boring, because the material is presented in such a slow, methodical manner that there was little room for him to explore his interests. He aced most of the tests because he knew the material, but he stopped pursuing science, on his own.

He still wanted to attend UBC for physics, but now understood he had to wait, and decided to go through the usual route for entrance, by graduating and applying like most others. He graduated with honours at the end of his grade eleven year, and then spent a year taking additional grade twelve and first-year science courses at college, while volunteering in his community and applying to UBC. He only applied to UBC, because that was all he had ever wanted. And at the end of this long haul that started when he was nine, and in the middle of a pandemic, he was denied entrance to what had been for many years his constant life's goal. It wasn't a big deal to me, but I think it was to him. I think it felt like failure, simply because of the competitive nature of our school system and the application. However, he tells me that by the time he received his application rejection, he was already losing interest in the program.

Taliesin moved on. He began teaching himself digital music composition and 3D rendering. He says he's just not that interested in science anymore--and it's true he's been creating art and music all his life--but what I saw as his high school career ended was a young man whose interest in science faded away as he dragged himself through the system that was meant to teach it to him. What I saw was my son's enthusiasm dwindled, his confidence shattered, and his life's goals just thrown out the window. But, because he had little else to do, he continued drawing, rendering, and composing. Within months of self-teaching from his bedroom, he had mastered rendering to such an extent that he found a volunteer job rendering a space station for a show being produced by the College of Southern Nevada's planetarium. 

And now, eighteen months after he dropped out of college and failed to be admitted to university, I am finally seeing a resurgence of his enthusiasm for learning. He has developed the beginnings of a successful career as a digital artist. He still works entirely from his bedroom, but with a fancy convertible desk and insane computer setup that he created and funded through his work. He did rather over-commit with his many contracts (he's still mostly employed designing planets and space vehicles), so is now consciously working on his health, making sure he gets free time, outside time, and family time. He's also now talking about using some of the money he's earned to pay for a mentorship to help him establish a good careeer. The great thing about all of this, to me, is to see that all of these decisions were his. He identified the needs in his life, and is finding and actualizing solutions according to his means. I never could have imagined his career developing this way, but honestly could not be more proud.

Rhiannon
She was born communicating. She smiled her first gigantic toothless grin at only two weeks old, as she watched her big brother walk by and followed him with her whole upper body. Stories, music, and social interactions are her lifeblood. As young children, she and her brother sat for hours looking at books together every day, but while he was tracing the mechanisms of the machines, the families, the buildings, or whatever else he could find, she was telling the stories. She was looking in the little faces of the characters and feeling their feelings. By the time she was six or so, she frequently stopped her brother from telling about science, declaring, "science boils my brain!" 

Like her brother, she was unschooled for many years, until social interactions became too infrequent, and she went to school. She attended a part-time Distributed Learning program, and then the same democratic school as Taliesin, but focused more on writing and musical theatre than anything else. Over the years she enjoyed many personal projects, including publishing magazines online, working and volunteering for local childcare centres, reviewing books for middle grade readers, and babysitting every chance she got. By the time the pandemic hit, she was nearly finished preparing her first novel for publication, and finally self-published it at the end of 2020.

It's funny how people often struggle with the things they excel at. Despite being a highly social person, or maybe because of it, Rhiannon's struggles have mostly been social, and the pandemic isolation has been the worst of it. Her decision to quit school entirely and register as a homeschooler, returning to a fully self-directed unschooling life was difficult for a girl who thrives on social connection. So after cutting herself off from all the social interactions she relied upon, she began livestreaming, teaching online, and writing like her life depended on it! She's still reviewing novels on the website she built herself. She's expanding that website to include relevant articles about writing for children and teens, and she now publishes a successful magazine for middle-grade readers. She's not going to graduate from high school. She's just living.

But what about university? Well, Rhiannon still hopes to study Early Childhood Education at Capilano University, so before she quit school she made sure that would still be an option. I helped her find a contact, but other than that, this process is hers. She had a conversation with someone in the ECE department and discussed how she might apply without a high school diploma. Capilano University doesn't really have much of a homeschooler admission policy, but they were delighted to hear that at fifteen she was already enthusiastically pursuing her goals, that she already knew enough about those goals to know exactly what her own educational values are, and that she intended to apply. They will, eventually, look over her activities and projects from the last few years and admit her according to whatever those have been. 

There's no guarantee, just like her brother wasn't guaranteed a spot at UBC despite an honours-standing graduation, a scholarship for his biology-related community work, and significant long-standing attendance at UBC lectures. But then, there's really never a guarantee about life, is there? Amazing grades in all the relevant subjects don't create success. The only thing we can do to prepare our children for the reality that there are no guarantees is to equip them with resilience, resourcefulness, independence and confidence. That's where unschooling shines.

University
That brings me to what I've learned. I've learned that not only is there no guarantee of admission to university, but there's no need to worry about it, either. I've learned that university, like school or a job or a friendship, offers a lovely and important opportunity for learning, but it's not everything. 

When I was a kid, we were expected to go through the gamut of school until high school graduation, and then either get a job or access further education if our career goals required it. College or university has now been tacked onto that expectation as a part of the gamut. But why? What's the point? Not only do most kids not have firm career goals by the time they finish high school, but increasingly, people are having a multitude of different careers over the course of a lifetime, and accessing further education only as needed. There's little point in spending four years in training for a job that may not even exist when we finish. There's equally little point in spending all that time in school, when we can be learning and growing on the job, or while working on other pursuits.

So what's university for? A friend of mine pre-read this article and asked me to explore this a little more. Her comments made me realize that many of the skills and experiences I gained from university are now unneeded in our society in general, like outdated job-search skills, now-antiquated writing conventions, and working in a pre-social-media world. Other skills I gained, such as time-management, a sense of self and community engagement, mature social skills, real-world career-building skills, and, most importantly, independence have already been mostly acquired by my unschooled kids, simply because they spent their teen years exploring rather than schooling. During one of the many parent meetings at the democratic school both of my kids attended, the principal explained that at a democratic school kids are encouraged to do whatever they like, even when that means spending every day playing video games or sitting out on the grass chatting with their friends. She then said something to the effect that "we let them do this in their teens, instead of during their first year of university, when they're paying high tuition fees just to sit out on the lawn chatting with their friends." Right. At the time, with a couple of unschooled teens I could already see had more "adulting skills" than I did at twenty, her words hit home. Resilience, resourcefulness, independence and confidence are often what we gain through attending university, but we can also gain them through unschooling, at any age.

This current expectation that everyone should attend college or university just to have a diploma or degree that allows us to apply for the next degree, or for a particular job, is not a long-standing tradition. Universities used to be simply a hub for research and discovery. They still are, and in addition to that, they offer kids who haven't already had a chance to gain independence a space to do so. More excitingly, they offer a place for people to gather in pursuit of common interests, and because of this (and their ancient position as research hubs) they still hold more resources for the exploration and pursuit of those interests than other parts of the city. The only particle accelerator in this little part of the earth is at our university, for example. And much of the pertinent medical research happens at universities. It's good to have a place to gather in community and pursuit of knowledge and understanding! We need that! Universities still offer this, and the greatest professors are those who show up not to impart knowledge, but to gather people together in pursuit of it, sharing their enthusiasm as they do. The best classes are not rungs on the ladder towards a degree, but those that welcome in the public and people of all experience levels to just get excited and share ideas. I hope and imagine that as humans and education continue to evolve, universities cease to be an expected part of "growing up", and continue to be, as they have been for many centuries, a hub for growth.

I love how my kids are making their way into adulthood without following the prescribed route. My son felt he needed some education in rendering, so he found and accessed an online course. Now he needs help developing his business, so he's looking for a mentor. All his own initiatives, and both through universities, but only on an as-needed basis. Both my kids are on the precipice of their adult lives, and finally free to jump. Maybe one day university will be a bigger part of my kids' lives, but I imagine it will be just one strand in a great weaving--definitely not something to spend their teen years fretting about. It turns out they can spend their teen years doing what they love and each of those other activities will be equally valuable strands in the same big weaving of their lives.

Unschooling: Am I failing my kids?

My nine-year-old son sat staring at his comic book, lengthily, before raising his eyes to meet mine in the glassy glare that has always alerted me to my failings. He told me his friend, who was a year younger, was already doing grade five math. 

"So?" I said, wanting to reassure him, but already knowing that the river of his disappointment would overcome my small boat of hope before it launched. "You're unschooled. We don't even know what level of math you do. Who cares."

His eyes pierced me, and he muttered, "I can't even do math."

I knew it wasn't true. Sure, he would probably test 'below grade level' if we tested him, but I disagreed with testing, and besides, though he was ignorant of long division at the time, he was able to Google a useful formula and calculate the speed at which his theoretical space-station would need to spin in order to simulate earth-gravity for those on-board. I didn't really have any concerns about his ability to 'do math'. But his eyes told me that I had, indeed, failed him. If not academically, then socially. Or maybe in supporting his sensitive heart and competitive nature. There's always something. My boat was sunk.

I've been consulting for unschooling families since the beginning of the pandemic, and by far the biggest and most common reason people call me is because they're afraid of failing their children. I struggled with that so much, myself, in the earlier years (and off and on even now that my kids are grown!) I struggle with it as a teacher, too, and I'm pretty sure it's actually most parents' niggling deep fear. 

I think we always want to do the absolute best we can for our kids, but the truth is we can't ever know what the best is for each individual kid, and for our family as a whole. We won't even know when our kids are grown if we've done what might have been best for them. All we can do is to keep an open heart, an agile mind, and work through every challenge as it arrives. But picking through our human insecurities and finding ways to re-imagine them is kind of my life's work, so I've decided to dig into this one a bit. Every one of my thoughts won't apply to every one who reads this, because we're all unique, and in that uniqueness is an infinity of different possibilities and outcomes. So don't take this essay as advice, please--just some thoughts on our mutual journey and a jumping-off place for your own thoughts and conversations. And be reassured, although this list may bring up many deep-seated fears, I'm going to talk about how to overcome them later on.

Have I set my kids up for failure if they want to go to school (or quit school) later on?

Luckily, in most places, if you have the legal right to homeschool your kids, then you also have the legal right to send them to school, later on. Some systems make you jump through hoops in order to determine appropriate placements for new students, but some also make coming and going from school quite easy. And regardless, we can rest assured that many kids leave school for a variety of reasons (travel, illness, poverty, or exploring different education options) and manage to return when the time is right. The system is always willing to take kids back. 

Then there's the fear that kids will be 'behind' if they join school later than their peers. From the experiences I've had as a parent and also witnessed in other eclectic homeschooling families, I can say this is actually rarely the case. Sure, there will be differences between our home/unschooled kids' experiences and the schooled kids' experiences, but every school year begins with quite a bit of review, and home/unschooled kids are often quite skilled at harnessing learning opportunities. They 'catch up' quite quickly. 

The bigger issue I see here is the possibility of failing our kids' learning and self-esteem in general by succumbing to our own fears about 'grade levels' or 'keeping up' or 'being behind'. These competitive thoughts often lead to our kids feeling insecure about their learning. My son's insecurities about math were absolutely rooted in my own 'encouraging' him to practice math. I thought I was being mostly positive, but my actions made him aware that there was a bar he needed to reach, and he always felt in danger of failing. That's really no different than the very visible bar that school-going kids are expected to reach, so I'm not going to kick myself too much for bringing it into his world. Still, since my conviction that competition and coercion is detrimental to learning was a big part of the reason we chose to unschool, I really did fail myself, in this case. And my son's ongoing insecurity about his own intelligence is the result.

I don't know if [insert educational philosophy here] was the best choice for my child!

It might not be. Maybe you chose unschooling and now your kid is passionately yearning for the excitement and rigidity of the school her friend attends. Maybe you and your child researched the hell out of all the school options, then maxed all your credit on 'the best school', and now you're all miserable. Both of these situations have happened to me. Things change. Things can change. And the way we navigate these needs and unexpected changes with agility will be the greatest lesson to our kids. And after it all? Our kids will almost certainly blame us for choices we made that didn't serve them. That, too, is an opportunity for growth. How we work through our feelings of regret and uncertainty as a family is another of life's greatest learning opportunities.

I'm antisocial. How can I socialize my kids?

This one is hard for me. I have really deep social insecurities, and I passed them on to my children long before we even considered educational options. Unschooling, and being a part of an incredibly small homeschool cohort, was in some ways easier for me, because of the possibility of forging closer relationships with fewer people. But it was also devastating to all of us when friends moved on to school, or other communities, or just other friendships. My kids have witnessed my depression upon realizing that close friends had moved on, and this didn't help their social confidence at all. My experience with this led me to see, yet again, that the way I navigate this challenge is hugely important to how my kids will grow. Yes, unschooling in a small community amplified this problem for us, but that just gave us a chance to meet it, head on. 

My kids and I talk a lot about our social lives; our thoughts and feelings about why we or others behave the way we do. They know I don't have many answers, and frequently I have learned more from them than they have from me. As a whole, these conversations are one of the most important things we do. We all know that our house is the place we can safely air all our thoughts and feelings, that we'll love each other no matter what, and that we'll always have our hearts held, here. Dr. Gabor Maté "believes that most mental health conditions originate from unresolved childhood trauma" (Human Window, 2020). We can't avoid emotional trauma, but we can work to resolve it. So, rather than hold back about topics that challenge or frighten us, we talk about them. I'm not a psychologist and I'm not confident in my understanding of humanity, but I am my children's confidante, and that means it's my job to support them and to take their social and emotional journeys with them. Wherever we go, we go together. At least there will be someone there at the end of the road, holding their hand.

I'm no good at [insert subject here]. What if my kids want to learn things I know nothing about?

In my consulting work as well as on homeschool and unschooling discussion groups, this question comes up often, and in many different forms: 'My daughter is interested in sewing clothes, but I have no idea where to begin!' 'My child is asking to learn to read, and I don't know how to teach them.' 'I failed math in high school, how can I teach my kid at home?' In fact, the reason my son was so worried about his math level was likely because he sensed my own and his father's lack of confidence in math. I really don't understand much about math, but his father studied engineering and physics in university. His actual skill may have passed on to his son, but so did his lack of confidence. The confidence we lack as parents is normal, but it's also a detriment to learning, both for ourselves and for our children.

This issue is complex, but relatively simple to solve. First of all, we need to dismantle our thinking that learning is a top-town dissemination of knowledge. Many of us were raised in the school system and/or at home to believe that that's how learning works, but this system no longer serves our population, and even school boards across the world are beginning to change. While it's entirely possible to seek out a more experienced person as a guide or mentor in a specific subject area, that person is still growing, too, and there is always more to learn; more to share, and more ways to grow than just by collecting knowledge. The best mentors are just sharing their enthusiasm for learning with others. As parents, we can be those best mentors simply by finding some kind of enthusiasm as we go on the learning journey with our kids.

The learning can be direct, where we (or our kids) seek out information and learn it through whatever means suit us best (my own kids have variously accessed local experts, online courses, YouTube tutorials, in-school classes, and library resources). But it can also happen through undirected exploration and play, which happens to be how most of my kids' lifelong passions and skills have developed. The point is that my own skills were not needed for any of this. Maybe, especially when they were younger, I helped them access the resources they needed, but I didn't have to actually understand the subject matter to do so. My enthusiasm was for supporting their learning--whatever that was. I was the excited buyer-of-microscopes. I was the diligent driver-to-the-library. I was the supervisor of Googling, and the provider of the computer. I was the lady who made the muffins and insisted we were going to eat them in the woods, because I like the woods, damnit! That's our role, as parents: to be unflinchingly passionate, supportive, and true to ourselves. This is how our children learn to do the same, and how they learn to learn.

How to Support Our Kids:

Our kids are watching us, and they're learning 'how to human' from every nuance of our lives and behaviour. Working through our own insecurities is always the best work we can do, as parents. We will most definitely fail our children. All we can hope is that we've done our best to model resilience, agility, and a kind, supportive heart, so that when our failings rear their heads in our children's lives, our children are prepared to meet them with confidence, and grow.

Climate Catastrophe: Why an Unschooling Mindset in School or at Home Is Essential Now

Paddling in Wildfire Smoke on Tum Tum Lake, August 2021, photo by Kristina Calli

Yesterday I listened to a news report about the UN "code red" climate change report, which is likely to be the last such report written before we go beyond the 1.5° of warming that will put an end to life as we know it, if we don't take drastic action, NOW. At the end of the report, CBC played a clip of Greta Thunberg saying, "Today, it will probably be quite popular to talk about the climate crisis; tomorrow it will not be popular anymore." I knew she was right, and I can't let that happen. Today is tomorrow, and I had to do a text search just to find the reports I heard, yesterday. They've been eclipsed by reports of covid, bitcoin, defamation lawsuits, and the health status of movie stars.

And why not? It's easier to care about individuals than our vague and vast communal future. Easier to care that one local person lost their dog in a fire than the millions of animals currently burning just inland from us; people losing their homes and farms and futures. Unless we know them personally, their stories are just part of the mesh of disaster that we look away from. Because we're overwhelmed. 

Overwhelm is reasonable. It's acceptable to look away; to protect our mental health. But it's not acceptable to ignore the crisis. So what can we do? I've been asking myself. The answers are also so vast and vague. We know we need to consume less. We know we need to divest from supporting fossil fuel industries, or for those of us who can't afford investments, to simply question the ways we support those industries in our daily lives. Can we live more locally? Can we consume more locally? Can we eliminate foods and products and activities that depend on fossil fuels or other ecologically devastating industries? Those things are easy, compared to the big things--big things like the medical system and school system; our centralized cities and global industries; all the huge systems that are interdependent with not only the fossil fuel industry, but our rampant capitalism that feeds it. We have to move towards a post-capitalist, decentralized society, and that is not at all easy. Just the thought makes me feel overwhelmed and powerless. I'm only one lady with a crippling disability, one hard-working partner, and two kids, and I care most about my own little household. How am I going to save the world?

Then I realized that as parents we DO have power in how we educate our children. In places like where I live, we have legal options to home-school--with an unschooling philosophy if we choose, which helps move us away from the centralized society we currently have that supports the status quo. That moving away from the status quo is exactly what we need to do, and not only does home- or unschooling physically remove us from it, but it prepares our minds for a new paradigm. In fact, many of the concepts integral to unschooling will help us move in sustainable directions, even when used in schools. It's the mindset that we gain through this kind of living that will help us build and thrive in the new, post-capitalist society. Let me explain:

What Is an Unschooling Mindset?
Unschooling is the practice of allowing our children (or ourselves) to move, grow and learn exploratively, independently from the capitalist notion of "school". Sometimes this looks like bucking the school system altogether, and living a free-range life, engaged in whatever interests us; developing similar skills and understanding as school-going people, but organically. Sometimes, unschooling involves various parts of the school system, as they benefit the learner or the wider community. My unschooled children both attended school programs for a few years, when those programs (or social situations) served their needs. But we accessed them with an unschooling mindset: to use what works for us, in whatever way best serves us, and to skip the rest. 

What Does An Unschooling Mindset Have to Do With Post-Capitalism?
Moving to a new way of living, societally, will require us to have flexible minds. It will require us to be agile in our thinking; to creatively solve problems we never expected, and to move forward courageously in situations we're unprepared for. All of those things are habit to the unschooled mind.

Unschooling, whether at home or at school, means taking each experience as it comes, with a deep awareness of personal and community needs. At home, we look at the options the day has presented to us, and follow our instincts and current assessment of needs to determine what will best feed us on this day. We learn organically, in a needs-based prioritization, and hence develop the skills that will best serve us. Maybe we don't learn to read when we're five, but when the need to read arises, maybe at nine or ten or twelve, it's easier to pick up the skill, because our needs and prior experiences have prepared us. In school, the teacher hands out an activity--the one they feel will best serve the majority of students--and the students who are unschooling through school will assess the activity and determine independently whether the activity merits their participation or whether they might better benefit from working independently on something else. That can be difficult to do as an individual unschool-minded student in a school that doesn't allow for such independent thinking, but there are democratic schools all over the world that function very well in a scenario just like this. Students in these schools are empowered to work towards their own best purposes, and in doing so, empower each other to do the same. Students in unschooling groups, democratic schools and other similar programs are accustomed to assessing and providing for their own needs, as well as to determining their own engagement in the greater community. Hence they're also accustomed to keeping cognizant of the community's needs. Fast forward to a post-capitalist society, and these same students will find it easier to assess their own needs and meaningfully engage with their communities. When we are no longer told how to engage by schools, corporations, and capitalist-funded media, we're going to need to figure those things out for ourselves. 

That takes courage now, and as climate disasters become an increasingly large part of our lives, our need for courage and ingenuity will only grow. I think about the man I heard interviewed on the radio after he watched his parents burned alive, while they hid in a ditch and a wildfire burned through the town of Lytton. Now he has to pick up and carry on; to find meaning and drive in a world that will never, ever be status quo again for him. I think about the principal of the Stein Valley Nlakapamux school who fled her home at the onset of that same fire. She and dozens of other evacuees ran for the school, and her first thought was to make sandwiches for incoming people, because it was dinner time. Before she could finish preparing the food, the fire had jumped the river and they all fled north again, to settle in Lilloet. The people of Lilloet, themselves on evacuation alert due to a different massive wildfire, took the Lytton evacuees and housed and fed them. With courage and agile-thinking, everybody in this horrible situation stepped up as needed, in the moment. Interestingly, the Stein Valley Nlakapamux school is one of those forward-thinking schools, working to equip students with courage, community values, and self-reliance. It didn't surprise me that the first thing their principal did when arriving at the school as an evacuee--her home burning down just miles away--was to make sandwiches. Thankfully, the school was one of the few buildings spared in that horrible fire, and it also doesn't surprise me that now, with the town still under a state of emergency, they have delayed their school year and offered up their building as a relief and gathering centre for those working to rebuild. That is agility, courage, and creativity in action. 

We don't have a choice about becoming a post-capitalist society. Either we change voluntarily right now, or the now-commonplace storms, floods, fires and pandemics will drive our capitalist society into the ground. You know what will be left after that? People. Maybe with no landscape or resources to speak of; maybe with not much hope, but there will be people. And if those people are prepared with an unschooling midset, we will persevere.

Growing up without Grad: How It’s Going One Year in to This Epic Life-Choice

Rhiannon baking keto pecan shortbread, today.

It's a rainy day, eighteen months into covid isolation. My daughter just put a tray of cookies into the oven. Rain is falling thick and heavy, and through the dining room window I see the beans and luffa streaming fresh cool water onto the porch. It's been a long, dry summer. The well has run dry twice, already, and today I am just filled to bursting with gratitude for the rain, but also, on this labour day weekend, for having my family safe and close, and for my daughter's brave decision, last year, to drop out of school. It turns out that dropping out of the system was even better for our daughter than we expected. Finally, she is thriving.

Last year, around this time, Rhiannon faced the uncertainty of returning to her part-time school program during the pandemic, and opted to register as a homeschooler, instead, following her own interest in a self-determined path to adulthood. She'd been unschooling all her life, in and out of alternative school programs and musical theatre, voice and acting programs. But always, she thought she would eventually fulfill graduation requirements, attend university, and end up teaching preschool or--even more to her liking--open a school for self-determined learners. When covid hit, the school she attended went online, and she discovered two things: First, commuting to school had been sucking the life out of her, quite literally. And secondly, online school just sucks in general. 

Over the course of the lonely summer, she made peace with the reality of not seeing friends, and reassessed her needs. She contacted the university where she intends to study early childhood education, and formulated a plan for getting in as a homeschooler, which in our province means no graduation diploma. To her delight, they were very encouraging. And with that reassurance, she declared her decision not to graduate. What did she do with this first year of ultimate (but isolated) freedom? Well let me tell you about that.

Isolation
Looking back on those first few months of online pandemic schooling (all the school with none of the face-to-face contact), I can see why it was so awful. The greatest thing about school for my young socialite daughter was the friends. From her earliest days of unschooling, when she nearly decided to attend Kindergarten with her friends, it was about the friends. Now here she is, at the beginning of what would have been her grad year, with no grad to attend, no friend-group to plan with, no dress to buy, and not even classes, tests, and teachers to complain about. I offered to buy her a dress and host a prom for her but she declined. To say this is a loss would be a massive understatement. It's a cold miserable metallic wall between my girl and some of the major life experiences we are conditioned to look forward to. It's an equally massive achievement that she has surmounted this disappointment, and a great relief to me that she seems to appreciate the benefits of the other side of the grad-no-grad coin.

She's free.

She's free, and do you know what that means? Well, that's the thing--it could mean anything to anyone, and she's had the freedom of defining that totally for herself. I can't speak for her, and most certainly not for her future, but I do see her with the perspective of a mother who's watched her grow. I see her with uncertainty and fear for her future, as most mothers would, but also with a great respect as she's shown me again and again that she is capable of achieving goals I couldn't even wrap my head around, myself. I see her, also, with the eye of someone who used to have to describe her activities in a convincingly schooly way to satisfy ministry requirements, and worried grandparents. 

Evaluating Learning
Yep, there was a period of about six years, when we unschooled at home while enrolled in a ministry program that required me to report regularly how my kids' activities met the "prescribed learning outcomes" for their respective grades. I know now that unschooling would have been much easier if we'd just pulled out of the system entirely, but that experience really taught me to see the culturally-defined "value" in my kids' activities. So guess what? I'm going to do it again! But this time I'm describing the skills that I've seen my daughter develop during the first whole year of completely unschooling herself outside the system... including those activities that I have struggled to see the value of. Yeah. She's free. And here's what that's done for her.

Clara and Kalea waiting for their birthday pupcakes!

Raising a Puppy
Rhiannon began planning for a new puppy months before we agreed to it. Our previous dog had died quite tragically, so we adults were just not emotionally prepared to welcome a new puppy. But when the pandemic arrived and we watched our girl grow increasingly lonely, we began to see the value in it. The one requirement we had was that she would take this dog on, herself: poops, walks, vet bills and all. It would have to be her dog, and that meant a very big commitment. Years. Yes, she said. And she got her dog. Clara Snowberry Leftwie is now a year old. Rhiannon has trained her, walked her faithfully every day, taken on veterinary and other care decisions entirely on her own but with a great amount of research, and (mostly) kept our yard poop-free. When Clara ate something awful and needed to vomit every half-hour in the night, Rhiannon cleaned her bed and took her out. When Clara peed on the carpet, Rhiannon cleaned it up. When we ran out of dog treats, Rhiannon learned to bake some. When Clara's first birthday arrived, Rhiannon made pupcakes for Clara and her best doggy friend, Kalea. Rhiannon has not only shown herself to be responsible and a very capable dog owner, but also to be flexible, committed, and cautious in her decision-making.

Baking
Like many people during this pandemic, our family has done a lot of baking. Rhiannon eats a mostly ketogenic diet, due to her ongoing thyroid and autoimmune issues. So when she wants bread, sweets or, well... almost anything... she has to make it from scratch. In the past year she's become quite adept at baking cookies, cakes and quick breads without a recipe, as well as all sorts of interesting potato and veggie dishes, depending what's available in the garden. To my mind, the "without a recipe" part is the best part, because it means she's experimenting, and learning heaps about the properties of the ingredients and processes she's using. Above all, she's learning to take calculated risks; to have faith in her choices and to problem-solve along the way.

Once, when Rhiannon was much, much younger, I found her miserably hanging over a bowl of what looked like cereal, her spoon dripping thick-looking milk into the bowl. She looked near tears. When I asked what was wrong, she looked bleakly at me and said that she had made herself an invention of cornflakes, pepperoni, frozen peas, milk and lemon juice, and now that she had made it, she felt she had to eat it. But it was bad. Well... she's come a long way!! Plus, we now have chickens to help us deal with the accidents.

Our rooster, the Splash, helping to construct his new coop.

Farming
Yep--chickens!!! I saw a t-shirt the other day that said "I might look like I'm listening to you, but in my head I'm thinking about getting more chickens..." Well, that would be us, I guess. Before we agreed to the dog, we agreed to the chickens. We also agreed to visit a farm, where Rhiannon sat for hours (and more hours) watching the cattle, just waiting to see if one of the pregnant cows would go into labour. Was that a labour moo? I think that one's been pacing a bit. Do you think that one is standing especially still? ... So just over a year ago we brought home thirty chicks and built them a really fabulous coop and run. Over time, they needed all sorts of unexpected care, as well as a new coop to be built. Rhiannon and her brother, Tali built that second coop themselves, out of scrap lumber, which is infinitely more work than using new materials. It requires not only a good amount of construction know-how (which they learned from helping with the first coop) but also a huge amount of engineering problem-solving, since there really never is an appropriately-sized piece for the job. Learning improvised construction on the fly is something we didn't expect from farming, but it sure is happening!

In addition to the more tangible skills like construction, coop and run maintenance, and chicken husbandry, we've all had to confront our own ethical choices. We're raising chickens as part of a general rewilding of our home. We slaughter and eat our chickens, and Rhiannon has chosen to keep at a distance from that activity. Every time we gleefully give one of our broody hens some eggs and then count down days until hatching, we fall in love, and every time we do, we accept the eventuality that most of those chicks will end up on our plates. Some of them may die before that even happens, and a couple of times it's been Rhiannon who finds the corpses or ailing birds. Coming to terms with the reality of consciously farming and eating meat, as well as how much of our vegetable garden we need to sacrifice to the chickens while still retaining enough to feed ourselves, involves some deep emotional growth. Rhiannon may not always eat meat, but this farming journey, with its extreme elation (babies!!) and deep reckoning on slaughter days is, I feel, a very important part of what it is to be human.

Another lesson we're all learning from this process is to eat seasonally. Rhiannon (and all of us) have become much more adept at designing a meal around what's available in the garden today than we were a couple of years ago. No eggs today? No macaroons. No lettuce? Make salad out of kale, or pick wild greens. No pickles? I guess we should have grown more cucumbers. It forces all of us to plan for the future; to be aware of what we have now, and to consume as if our consumption matters. Because it does, and farming makes that more evident.

Playing The Sims
You might have noticed me mentioning babies quite a bit. The puppy, the chicks, watching cows hoping to see them calve... Rhiannon has loved babies since she was a baby herself. That's not going to change. So she's been playing The Sims for years now: Basically making homes for cartoon people to grow and raise babies in. Sure you can play without babies, but I'm not sure she does that much, if ever. I can't say I love the amount of time or the money (all her own) that she spends on this game, but if I'm going to write about the benefits of The Sims, I'll have to find some. 

Sims is all hers. That's one thing. She paid for it, and that means I can't complain, even though I want to. Independence is always good. And it turns out there's a massive community around this game, like so many others. She and an apparently huge number of other people livestream their gameplay and chat together about their experiences. In a time of very little in-person social interaction, I can see the benefit of this. And to be fair, she's learned a great deal about video game politics and self-regulation through her playing of this game.

Watching TV with Clara and a rooster.

Watching Youtube and TV
Erm. This is a hard one for me. She watches some things I really appreciate, and some that horrify me. I could say we're always learning from whatever we watch, and that's true, but actually, the shows the kids watch have led to some epic conversations (and arguments) about social and political issues in our house. And that's definitely always a good thing!

Writing Her Second Novel
Rhiannon actually somehow managed to write her first novel while also attending programs many days per week, but one thing we've all learned this year is that second novels are sometimes much harder to write. First novels often come from such a deep place of self-knowledge and personal experience that they can't help but be deeply moving and engaging. With a second novel, a writer wants, perhaps, to break the mould and create something new. That might require not only a whole lot more research than a more personal novel, but also a kind of deep personal introspection, as the writer makes infinite ethical, narrative, imaginative and descriptive decisions. In Rhiannon's case, this second novel has a much more complex narrative, so has required quite a bit more editing and rewriting than her first novel did. Learning to navigate criticism from editors as well as quite a substantial amount of redrafting is an intense lesson in self-regulation, resilience, and tenacity. Not to mention mastery of language, obviously. She's not ready to publish her second novel yet, but you can be sure I'll write about it, when she does.

Publishing a Youth Magazine
The whole idea behind this magazine thrills me. In a world where many people are looking for fame, my writer daughter decided to publish a magazine solely for the purpose of publishing other people's work. The Youth Voice Magazine publishes kids' work, of course, because... well... if you haven't noticed yet... Rhiannon's whole life is about supporting kids of all species. The number of interesting things she's learning from the process of promoting, collecting submissions for, curating, editing and publishing a magazine has been wonderful for me to watch. She figured it out all on her own, promoted largely through social media, and after a few months has a list of contributors from around the world, and another teen volunteering as an editor. She's been invited to speak about the magazine, and with every issue that comes out she learns more about editing, publishing, supporting contributors, and generally working with kids.

Babysitting, Mentoring, and Running Community Programs
Working with kids. You didn't think a measly pandemic could stop her, did you? She still babysits, outside and with masks on. But that wasn't enough for her, so she organized and ran some kids' book clubs over the past spring and summer, and has now moved on to mentoring young(er) writers, and will soon be running two programs for kids at our local school. The process of developing her career during a pandemic has taught her all the more obvious things, like networking, management skills, professional engagement with parents and the kids she's teaching, but it has also given her opportunity to grow, emotionally. She has had to learn to engage over Zoom, as so many of us have (but it's so much more difficult with young children!), and to stick to her values when presented with job opportunities that she doesn't agree with, from an educational standpoint.

Organizing and Facilitating an Un/Learning Festival
What is her educational standpoint? Well... it's basically unschooling. (Yeah, I'm proud and not going to hide it.) My daughter and some other young people organized an online Un/Learning Festival this past summer. It was amazing. They had attendance and speakers from some very well-respected self-determined learning organizations, as well as many interested parents and learners. They produced this festival on their own terms and were so successful that they're now deep in planning for an in-person festival, next year. Imagine families and educators all with dreams of creating deep self-determined learning opportunities for everyone, all getting together for one fabulous weekend of creative engagement. And it's likely going to happen on a farm. (A farm! See where I’m going, here?)

The Future
In one year of fully unschooling herself outside the system, my daughter has brought together everything she loves about life and is pursuing her dreams with abandon. Her rather large dog sits on her lap as she runs Zoom book clubs for kids, or runs out to protect the chickens when ravens fly through the yard. My girl can cook up a really delicious chicken dinner from a bird she watched hatch from an egg, but she knows herself well enough to stay in the house on slaughter day. She has maintained friendships with those closest to her, and broadened her circle to include people who share her values about nurturing healthy childhoods and providing freedom in education. She gets together nearly every day with either the Un/Learning Festival organizing committee, the kids she mentors in person or online, her young writer's group, Sims players from around the world, or other people out walking their dogs. Today she and one of her oldest friends had a puppy play date. They watched as the friend's slightly younger dog observed the signs of Rhiannon's Clara going into heat. She is hoping to go on an epic post-grad trip with friends. 

Oh yeah. It's her friends' grad; not hers. She's not graduating. But maybe there will be a formal un-grad ceremony and dance at the Un/Learning Festival next year. Because opting out of high school doesn't mean opting out of life. It means creating your own best life. And apparently, that's what Rhiannon is busy doing.

~~~

*For those wondering about our son, Taliesin, he's working as a freelance 3D artist, now. I wrote about him recently, here: Why My Son Quit Science and How to Raise a Scientist

Why My Son Quit Science and How to Raise a Scientist

My son out exploring with his botanist grandfather.

 

We're systematically destroying our culture's love of and faith in science through the way we're teaching and parenting. When I was a kid I knew I couldn't do science, because I wasn't smart enough. Also I didn't have glasses. And when I finally did get glasses at about fourteen I'd realized that science was uncool anyway. Like my shameful glasses. Except for geeks. Geeks who were actually good at science were super-cool, and beyond my league. I could barely bring myself to speak to them, even when we were paired in biology class. Until I married one of those guys (they're almost always guys, right?) and raised some kids, one of whom, from the age of about seven, wanted nothing more than to attend university NOW to study theoretical physics. That wasn't an option for a young kid, so we unschooled our way into his adulthood, and everything about my understanding of science changed. I learned a LOT from watching how my science-passionate kid explored the world, how he was encouraged and discouraged and, ultimately, how our system fails both our kids and science. I'm going to lay it all out here, including, at the end, the list of resources I think are essential and nice-to-have for encouraging a love of science in all of us.

Dictionary.com says that science is "systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation." Look at that. Observation and experimentation are literally enshrined in the definition of science. Nowhere does that definition say "following instructions" or "memorizing facts". It definitely doesn't say "knowledge gained through performing boring pre-determined exercises where the outcome is already known". Of course, we like to call those boring, pre-determined exercises "experiments", but they're not experimental in any way, and I'm not going to pretend, here.

 

What We're Doing Wrong

Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in this fabulous lecture that kids are born scientists, and the first thing we do as they start wreaking havoc with their scientific exploration is to stop them, because the chaos is inconvenient for us. He also says "we don't have enough parents who understand or know how to value the inquisitive nature of their own kids, because they want to keep order in their households."

 

Taking the Exploration and Experimentation out of Science

Back to my son's experience, here's what happened. At nine years old, unschooling from home, he designed an interstellar space station, complete with a plan for the human population, sustainable onboard environment, and calculations to simulate gravity for that onboard environment. At thirteen, he took an admission test for an early-entrance program at the local university. He was younger than most kids there, and wasn't admitted to the program, but was encouraged to return the following year to try again. He declined. Over the next few years he became more and more adamant that the usual highschool graduation would have to be his route to studying physics, and so he pursued it, graduating a year early, and then attending a local college to beef up his collection of science and math courses. At the end of that year of study, he received his rejection notice from the university. Despite a couple of awards, excellent grades, and an honours graduation, he was rejected again from the university he'd longed to attend for most of his life. And shockingly, he was relieved!

Wait--what?! His whole family was ready to console him, and he blithely told us he didn't really want to become a scientist anymore anyway. How did this happen? Well... school happened to him. When he was a kid, science was about questions, exploration, and discovery. School made it about rote memorization and regurgitation. "Experiments" became a process of proving someone else's billion-times-already-proven theories. It was academic theatre. There was no inspiration or passion at all. He realized and explained to us that his creative exploration was more suited to a career in design.

How many of us have had our inquisitive nature killed or redirected by the school system that took the inquiry out of science? What would science be like today if we'd all been encouraged to participate? How would our social and technological evolution be different? Would we still stereotype scientists as elite, affable, or socially inept geeks with oversized glasses?

 

Stereotyping and Persecution

Why are science geeks almost always guys? Why geeks? Why glasses? Why is science uncool? These stereotypes seem to be as old as time, just like misogyny, religion, mob mentality and a thirst for power. 

 

Science is power. It means discovering new things; understanding how things work and developing methods for working with them and harnessing more power. That's why so many scientists have been persecuted. If you want to discover who's shaking things up, look for the guy on the stake, whether proverbial or real. People whose knowledge threatens to change the status quo (or unseat those in power) are silenced by whatever means necessary, from Hypatia to Galileo to many more modern scientists currently jailed, humiliated or disappeared following their work on controversial subjects.

 

But it's not only those in power who reject science. At the level of the lower classes (far from positions of power), scientific discovery heralds change, and that's pretty scary to those who walk the precarious line between starvation and survival. All the what-ifs of progress and change can be terrifying. And in the extreme, desperate people seek comfort and community in rejecting the norm, entirely, championing ideas like flat-earth and other conspiracy theories. These are people who've had their personal agency crushed by a system that told them science was for those at the top. Those uncool smart people with glasses. They were told they weren't smart enough for science. So they made their own "science." And I think not many of us wants to go down that road.

From perspectives of power and powerlessness, it's easy to see how science education for the masses has become the dry, uninspired wreck that it is in most public schools. The public school system was created over a hundred years ago to build a population of obedient, follow-the-rules workers. It was created to feed a growing consumerist society that needed cheap, dependable labour. People at the top don't want their positions of power threatened by the lower classes getting too inquisitive, and those at the bottom know that the food on their tables depends on keeping their noses down. 

 

Science Tied to Capitalism and Consumerism

The irony is that the technology developed in the rise of industrial consumerism has now displaced the need for that obedient work-force, and it's likely that the majority of jobs in the coming decades will require inquisitive, creative thinking--not obedient task-completion. This presents a way forward out of the educational quagmire we're now living in. It's time to shift the focus of education in general towards creative thinking, free exploration, and delightful discovery.

 

Besides, as the lower classes are no longer needed for the jobs now done by machines, the social pyramid is crumbling, and those on the bottom would like a new kind of geometry. So there's the question of justice. I think the only way to achieve a just society is for knowledge and discovery to be shared. Open-source technology is becoming more and more expected as the pitfalls of capitalism become undeniable; as capitalism-caused climate change makes technological advancement not just wonderful but urgently needed. And the sharing of knowledge makes global technological advancement even faster. I think the stereotypes and fear of science will fade away as our culture experiences change at an exponentially faster rate, and we become accustomed to a life centred more on agility than on stability. Then, with flexible minds, we can embrace science.

 

School Constructs: Facts vs. Questions 

Childhood is a big romp of explorative learning. Whether our kids attend a brick and mortar school, study at home as homeschoolers, or lead an unschooling lifestyle, they're exploring to learn, and learning to explore. Playing with baking ingredients, construction tools and materials, personal care products and even fire are exciting for kids because they inspire explorative play. Kids mix products and see what happens, they burn things and see what happens; they build and break and experiment and... see what happens. It's that exploration and discovery that creates learning, and even more importantly a desire to keep learning. That desire is the spark that my son lost in his journey into high school science.

 

When we, as parents or teachers, present things as already-known facts, we remove the need for our kids to explore, themselves. In doing so, we teach them that exploration is unnecessary or, at worst, unacceptable. We take all the spark out of science.

 

The most disastrous thing parents and teachers do to science is pretend that it's about facts--things that are already known. It's not! It's about questions! Sure there are answers to the questions, and thousands of years of other people's discoveries to explore, but it's the questions that are interesting; and discovering the answers... whether or not the questions or answers have ever been discovered, before. It's curiosity and the excitement of discovery that leads to science. Some questions are answered by researching other people's answers, and that's OK, but only if the initial curiosity came from the researcher. And curiosity comes from freedom to explore and experiment. As soon as we take away freedom to experiment, we take away the spark of science.

 

Pre-Determined Kits and Activities

Seriously. I can hardly even discuss this topic it makes me so frustrated. Cross wanton capitalist consumerism with the strangling of scientific exploration and you have pre-determined "science kits". Yuck. These are shiny, polished, packaged activities for which the method and outcome are already determined--usually described or illustrated right on the box. Kids look at them and know exactly what they are expected to do. And so often they know they'll face the disappointment of their teachers or parents if they veer off into actual experimentation with the components of the kit. 

 

These kits feed our consumerist desire to look like the saturated, tidy, smiling family in the photos and post something similar to our kids' Instagram accounts, but they also take the science out of "science." They're disastrous. And the instructions on how to use the components are disastrous, too. When presented with activities where the outcome is already known, we lose our desire to explore. 

So what is a well-meaning teacher or parent supposed to do? I have good news. There's a LOT we can do, and some of it even can include shiny store-bought kits. But the good ones.

My fifteen-year-old son's chaotic desktop: Collection vials, yeast experiments, and parts of various electrical and biological experiments.

How to Do Right

Free Exploration

It's hard to let go of our adult desire to guide kids' exploration, but actually that's the best work we can do, ourselves. Generations of unschoolers as well as a few democratic schools have provided ample anecdotal evidence (though I've never seen any rigorous formal inquiry into this) that kids who are allowed to explore freely, unhindered by adults' expectations and demands, end up having not only a similar academic ability to schooled children, but also a greater ability to work independently, more success finding meaningful employment, and a greater love of learning. That was enough reason for me to do the work of de-schooling myself, and making way for this kind of learning for my kids and students.

Let Them Be Bored

But how?! What do we give them to do? Well, that question--especially when backed up by little faces whining "I'm boooored" in the background of our Zoom meetings--is actually one of our greatest hurdles. The answer? We give them nothing to do. Boredom isn't a problem for us to solve. That's up to them. And when they learn to solve it for themselves, they'll have already set themselves ahead of the kids with the pre-determined science-kits.

Respect

Of course, our kids' boredom might cause too much interruption for us to carry on our own activities. Maybe we have to set our boundaries, and make sure our kids have a rich environment to explore. Partly, that means accepting danger, chaos and mess as part of our lives, and--importantly--also keeping boundaries around our own need for clean spaces. Maybe this means there's an experimenting/play/rumpus room, and a tidy, peaceful room. Maybe it means we agree as a family or class to do a big clean-up every day at a certain time, just because some of us have a need for a peaceful space. 

 

And by "we agree" I don't mean that we adults decide what will be done without consultation, or with a sham of consultation that actually amounts to coercion. I mean we discuss our needs in an equitable way that allows each of us to present our needs and our ideas for resolution. All of us have needs that can be presented and discussed as a whole, respectfully. That's how it works in a democratic school, and it can work that way in a home or school classroom, as well. Though I will admit as a teacher and parent, that it's far easier to do with with a classroom of not-my-own kids than with my own family late at night when I'm tired and grumpy and have let my guard down. Overcoming that is part of the work I have to do as a parent.

Natural Consequences

My needs aren't more important than my kids' needs just because I pay the bills or have a greater understanding of consequence. My kids have very important needs, too, and are developing their understanding of consequence through discussing our needs, together, and through having their own needs voiced and respected. Kids' sense of personal worth is reinforced through having their needs heard and considered. But what happens when we come up with solutions that fail? Natural consequences!

Natural consequences are teachers to us all. When we experiment with fire we may discover all kinds of interesting things. We may get burned. And guess what? That's science! We all experiment with our behaviour as much as we do with our physical surroundings, and through observing the consequences of our experimental behaviour (maybe a friend decided to go home early; maybe we ran out of time to make dinner; maybe our partner no longer trusts us) we make discoveries. We learn! That's science! 

My son and his friend experimenting with their homemade forge.

Materials for Scientific Exploration from Toddlerhood to Adulthood

So how can we encourage scientific exploration without those dreaded kits? More important than the specific materials we have is how we present them. 

 

Strewing

The concept of "strewing" is often talked about among homeschooling and unschooling parents, and even used in many classrooms. Generally speaking, strewing means to scatter items of potential interest around the house for kids to discover: books, games, toys, craft or construction materials, etc. This can be great or awful, depending how it's done. 

 

I've seen plenty of Instagrammable "strewing" photos in homeschool groups: A perfectly clean natural wood table with a curated selection of art supplies and a brand new "activity book" laid out with a special treat, for example. That's not an invitation to explore; it's an invitation to tell Mama what a beautiful set-up she made, and then work tidily in the book with the provided materials while enjoying the treat. A more productive way to "strew" the same activity would be to simply add the (hopefully open-ended) activity book to the heap of books already in use, and go to the kitchen to bake the treat--experimentally. Maybe the kid will find the book. Maybe they'll play Lego. Maybe they'll join the parent in the kitchen to experiment with baking, or maybe they'll lie on the floor painting their arms with flour and water they took off the counter. Maybe three years later they'll pick up the strewed book and use it in some unexpected way. We cannot possibly know or direct the learning that will come out of good strewing, and that's just as it should be. As parents and teachers we need to open our minds to the natural consequences of strewing.

Are You Still Waiting for the Materials List?

I hope by now I've made it clear that our homes are already full of wonderful explorative materials; that there is no "right way" to teach science, and that the best of all worlds is an open-minded parent or teacher and time to explore. But we do live in a material world, and I'm going to give you a shopping list, just to make us all feel more satisfied.

I'm making different lists for different age-groups, not because they're not absolutely interchangeable, but because it's a bit easier to get our heads around, and, to be honest, people in specific life-stages do gravitate towards specific things. 

 

Please keep in mind with every single one of these suggestions, that it's only useful if we maintain total freedom of use: how, when and where to use it should be totally open for experimentation. It should always be OK to mix materials in new ways. That's often where creativity and novel discovery come from! Of course, sometimes some family discussions on safety and respect for others' property are warranted.

 

Early Childhood:

• trips to the library, and an unending supply of ALL KINDS of books
  
• musical instruments and sound-makers of any and all types with no attached expectations. Some libraries lend instruments, and parents of young kids are often trading around an assortment of interesting instruments as well.
• an always-available assortment of art and craft materials (see my separate post on this)
• cardboard boxes, ramps, large paper brochures, blankets, cushions and other materials for building in the house
• shovels, rakes, buckets, and water for playing outside in the dirt, forest floor, or sand
• freedom to cook and bake in the kitchen with appropriate supervision but as much freedom as possible for experimentation--be prepared for creations to be inedible! 
• Duplo, Lego, Keva blocks, Zome, marble runs, or other similar open-ended building toys. Instead of keeping the sets together as they came, dispense of the instructions and create a mixed box for free-play.
• dolls, stuffies, and materials for house or care-giving play. "Real" tools like brooms, rags, kitchen tools and baby supplies are great for playing, too!
  
• fabrics and sewing supplies
• endless outdoor explorative play (see separate article, here)
• time spent with a diverse range of different people
  

 

Middle Years:

All of the above, plus:

• a good quality dissecting microscope (we got ours from Westlab.com)
• a good quality telescope for astronomy or wildlife viewing
  
• a little pocket jeweler's microscope that can be brought outside
• a bunch of exciting chemicals: sulfur, stump remover, matches and books by Theodore Gray (especially Mad Science and Elements)
• a fire pit
  
• materials for electrical and electronic experimentation: discarded electronics from local recycling centres to take apart, some basic breadboards, wiring, and related components; perhaps a big transformer and some guidance on related dangers
• petri dishes, measuring glasses or beakers, agar powder for growing molds and bacteria (again, with some guidance)
  
• an inexpensive waterproof camera
• access to wood and metal shops
  
• Internet access. I'm not a big fan of screen time, but it's the world our kids live in, so the sooner they're able to have unfettered access (with lots of family discussion and good role-modeling by parents) the sooner they'll be able to master it and use it safely. Some of my kids' greatest self-determined learning has been through exploring and publishing on online platforms.
  

Teens Into Adulthood:

I always wondered how my son would manage in university, without having gone to school. And although it happened that school caused him to lose interest in studying science at university, we know of quite a few unschooled kids who went on to excel in university studies, including in sciences. We also know that many accomplished modern scientists were homeschooled or unschooled, and that Elon Musk educates his many children by encouraging open exploration, as well. So by now I've abandoned my fears about university and am witnessing my son develop a nascent career in 3D rendering, using many of the resources listed, here. 

 

The trick to learning exploratively through these resources is to allow inquiry and discovery to lead our progress, instead of the expectations of others. The same can be done through university, by allowing ourselves to change course when the need or desire arises, or to use resources in ways for which they may not have been intended. 

As with strewing, the point with these activities is not to provide a pathway, but to provide a rich matrix in which our open minds can explore and grow. I unexpectedly learned to cook Pakistani foods while doing respite care! You just never know what may materialize in a rich, explorative life.

• open university courses either online or through brick and mortar schools
• university or trade programs
• interesting and unexpected jobs
• online exploration through YouTube and other platforms
• experimenting with tools (software, woodworking/metal/automotive shop, camera, etc.)
  
• clubs or discussion groups
  
• volunteerism
• homemaking/home-building
• pet care
• farming
• building relationships
  
• raising children

 

To Conclude with a Neat and Tidy Package

Back to my son. His life is nothing like I thought it would be when he was a gregarious nine-year-old trying to get to university and I was a proud but ignorant parent. But I think it's a good life. After he quit college and declared the end of his pursuit of a physics and engineering degree, he reverted back to free-form explorative learning. He taught himself to play and compose on piano, and then eventually with synth and computer. He veered into the world of 3D rendering, and after two years of intense exploration and some online courses he sourced for himself, he's now developing a career as a digital artist. His most popular pieces? Spaceships. You can take the boy out of science, but...

 

As parents and educators we want to see our children succeed, and the way we measure success is set by our own experiences. But the limitations of our own experiences are roadblocks to our children's advancement. We have to let go of our own supposed knowledge and certainly our expectations in order to allow our children to succeed on their own terms. 

 

In the bigger picture, our children are the next generation on the trajectory of humankind's evolution, and we can't predict what tools or skills they'll need on that journey. Human advancement has always followed the path of ingenuity rather than the staid and unchanging path of what-we-already-know, or who-wants-to-stay-in-power. It's always the explorers, the inventors, and the heretics who advance science. Science needs these people. The way to raise a scientist is to encourage exploration, invention, and breaking all the rules.