Gods impersonating as children

Healing looking very suspicious these days, tracking along side escalating dollar amounts almost becoming a trillion dollar industry.. If healing is thriving in a time of sickness then we ought to be careful what we name sickness.

-Bayo Akolomafe

What does it mean to be well? Functioning? Normal? Contributing? Sane?

What does it mean to be these things from the view point of an ideology that is failing, has failed and who’s very fabric is falling away at the seams?

Should we even want to be well when wellness means falling back into systematic ways of being, partaking in stories that have not served kindly on the majority of humanity as a whole. Where do we find ourselves if we refuse to follow along, refuse to indoctrinate our children and force them to define themselves by notions that only serve the small minority, but instead waver on the outskirts, on the margins, belonging somewhere but no where from the grand narratives point of view.

How do we justify a life of happiness, enough food, warm shelter, access to clean water, the ability to take what we want to believe in and leave the rest behind for someone else’s contemplation because the harsh truth of it doesn’t feel good, because we know that what is on offer, is most certainly causing another to suffer? How do we justify our phones, our clothes, the very earth we hold ourselves to, when it is to the detriment of another be it human, non-human or life force. Can we still be alright with that, if that’s what it means to be well? Are we functioning well by fitting in, showing up, and wearing the construct of the story that has been passed down, placed upon us, even when we know that the fabric of the construct is dramatically failing and falling away, that it makes no sense anymore to the children that can’t sit still in a classroom, to the children that can’t ware shoes or don’t own any, can’t read or whom carry the companionship of voices in their heads. Are we well if we know these things and still we look the other way, we medicate, force and dominate, trying to make these things fit, that were most likely never meant to fit us this way in the first place.

Maybe we are not meant to be healing, fixing these things. Maybe the children that are being born into these untameable bodies that are bursting in their own wild forces are meant to be here. Maybe they are not really children with Autism at all but Gods of some other time. They are arriving in a cataclysmic motion, with an irresistible compulsion, causing trouble, denying the normative, upsetting the grand narrative. Could it be that we haven’t yet realised it is not for us to decide how they should be in the world, that it’s not really about us shaping things differently so that they can fit better, when fitting in is no longer what is necessary. Maybe they are here to take things apart, to cause mischief in the systems, to undo things, upset things, make trouble, disturb all manner of the seemingly normality of things. What if that story we are trying so very hard to manipulate their bodies into is finished now, that the reason they arrive in such grand force, what has been assumed could be an approaching Autism epidemic is because we are not listening, we are not really paying attention. Instead we are still trying to play out a narrative centred around an androcentric normality that no longer exists.

…maybe we should be ‘considering not what gets in the way of healing, but .. what healing gets in the way of. ‘ -Bayo Akomolafe

Maybe healing and fixing these things is, to not consider what we may not be able to see. Maybe we are yet to have the language for such places. What if we are being asked to consider and trust something so vastly different from anything we have ever known or seen before and what is really happening is that we are scared. We are afraid of arriving somewhere and not knowing the answers, or worse still that there will be no answer. We are afraid to enter into these unknowable places with our children because we feel that we are the ones guiding them, that we know what is best for them, it’s what the narrative has always been. But maybe we need to step down now, from our hierarchy and thinking that we know what is best, for it is overtly obvious now that this is not the case. Possibly it has never been. Maybe we need to place our faith in something else, be it the roots of the tree, the soil of the earth, the unassuming butterfly or the invisible ones who occupy the unseen spaces or could it be in these wild Gods that are impersonating themselves as Autistic children.

..a deeply limited observation, a tiny infraction of sorts

“Where running our of words to describe things.” Tyson Yunkaporta

He is not just thinking in spaces of here, nor in places that are concrete and known by the matter of what we assume to be fact and certain. A red chair is a red chair that sits before me. He’s not just thinking with his own mind in the solitude of self, individualised and seperate as it seems, in body and space. He is not thinking alone like this. He holds access to a magnitude of worlds, of universes, of things that perhaps cannot be known about or seen or touched by us from this point of time or from this point of reference. He, at times whilst in the thoughts of all that cannot be seen or touched, moves in a systematic dance with his hands. Visually sifting and sorting out the invisible threads of creation that contain the fabric of the unseen worlds. He has no real name for this, but his look assures me it must be done. He is not really all here but neither is he all there, where ever there is. He floats in the mystery of this space not really fitting anywhere. He comes not wholly in the light nor from the depths of darkness, but sits within the equanimity of both, which he says is a shade of purple and is where he needs to be, no matter how I try to lean him futher into the light of grace. There are things he says, are not for me to know. So I let them be between him and his God. It would seem that he is here to do things that are not really of this world at all. He seems to be working from some other unknowable space or perhaps place. He seems to be doing something here, that possibly matters, that is possibly necessary, yet it remains in the unseen, it is not tangible, cannot be recognised or commended and proudly acknowledged, there’s no certification for work like this. At this point, it would be more rational to disregard, to disorganise his innate, organic organisation, to attempt to undo his unusual invisible doings, to dismiss his hand dances as repetitive self stimulatory behaviours, or so it would seem. Yet, the small voice of my own knowing says that what he does, must be done. That this is not mine to contain, name or control. It is not even mine to understand. Do you suppose that maybe nothing needs to be imposed here?

wander lines

A philosophy of tracing 

This TRACING / from before the sign / I will never cease to see in it / what no gaze / would it be mine / will ever see • the human is there / perhaps / quite simply / with no one in the end / without voice • those / TRACINGS / are from my hand which borrowed the manner of handling / the style of this janmari who speaking is not • and everything that I can write from this / TRACING that all the writings of the / world have no chance of drying up. (Deligny, 2007: 813; quoted and translated in Alvarez de Toledo, 2013: 5) 

I am exploring wander lines. trying to move away from neurotypical thought processes to a wider less structured thought way. I am trying to not think in straight lines, like my son and my eldest daughter, they don’t think in straight lines.

I was leaving early on a Saturday morning to head to a farmers market. It’s always a big day, a big drive there and back. As i was heading our down our driveway i was stopped by fallen trees laying across my access. This was a big deal, they would have to be moved and i was annoyed that i was the one having to do it. From closer inspection it would require a chainsaw, not an easy task for this moment and for one person. I worked in slight annoyance, internally voicing my frustrations at the inconvenience, which could have been tended to yesterday. Why didn’t she say this needs to be cleared, she knew that it was mess, she knew because she walked over it to check the mail. Why didn’t she say you won’t be able get through tomorrow. I was having a self indulgent early morning rant to myself.

Nevertheless I was able to clear the path, remove the trees and branches and the nuisances that were ailing me and was on my way to the farmers market. All was well. On my drive I calmed. Breathed. And there it was. I understood the need for the early morning obstruction. The obstruction was not in the fallen trees on my path, it was in the obstruction of my thinking of how she thinks. Yes, she knew about the fallen trees, yes she mentioned them in an incidental way, but she wasn’t thinking in straight lines. She doesn’t think in straight lines.

I had been pondering on Deligny and his maps of wandering lines. I was wanting to understand this more, explore it from new spaces within my own thinking. I was wanting to see it in movement, thoughts in processes not travelling on straight lines. It seems someone was listening.

The straight line process would have been to notice the fallen trees and say we need to move them before tomorrow morning. It would have been to work together and have the driveway cleared for access again in the morning. But that’s straight line thinking, neurotypical line thinking. Its thinking- action-result kind of thinking. Its thinking that has been educated, indoctrinated, cultured into us like good manners. Its viewed as rational and necessary, as normal.

But it starting to feel false. As though by thinking in such ways we are denying something else. Perhaps something is becoming lost within us, within this process, something innate, ancestral, something that offers more to the experience we are having. We are not seperate from our experiences. My fallen trees were my lesson here. It would seem as though they were a cleverly planned obstacle placed within my path, within my thinking of things. They were my obstruction of thought and became an invitation to think of things from wandering lines.

Deligny clearly recognised this in his working beside non-verbal autistic children. What can be lost within the language of words. It reminds me of my son when he was small. He didn’t talk with words until he was four. We had to understand each other in other ways, by other means. We had to feel into these places. I had to remind myself that i can know him from here, just as a mother understands her newborn babe, words become so unnecessary from this space.

..that touches us without our knowing why, a touching that occurs not through the effects of language but beyond, where “something that cannot be seen” exists, something ineffable but nonetheless “immediately felt” (Deligny 1990).

My son thinks in wandering lines. He has his own maps of thought. They make little sense to the indoctrinated typical mind. They aren’t clear, they don’t stay in one place, they cross space-time- realities. Yet when i listen, really listen, his anarchy of thought makes way for contemplative thought, they invite possibility, maybe not always in this place, or in this time, or even this universe but what he chooses to use his voice for is stories of happenings and who am i to determine such things as real or not.

carly

beings as wild alters

“I worry about fixing these bodies that are beginning to experiment ..when we have fixed the human race the human race can no longer evolve. 

We think of ourselves as a climatic species but we are living in dynamic environments that are shifting that we will need to glitch out and become disabled in order to inhabit and so I worry about fixing these bodies that are beginning to experiment at the very edges of the eco tones of what is supposed to be materially appropriate. So somebody’s body that could be fixed I wonder if it should be fixed.” -Sophie Strand

this is the space I find myself occupying now. im sitting in wander. wandering lines, that are not set with a concrete direction or goal orientated destination, i already know that there will be no real answers to the questions that i am asking here. there will be no ending or certainanty, to be looked forward to. it will not be completed with yet another DSM5 diagnosis and a full stop. no, that is not the way of the wandering lines.

when I speak of wandering lines i am thinking away from what we think we know about autism, mental health, stability, what it means to be well. i cannot tentatively hold myself completely to notions of how the world interacts and responds to these things so much anymore. i have cautious steps now. i have learned to not trust the narrative. i have ventured in my thinking of things from wilder places.

 It’s in the glitching out, its in the disability, its in the diaschronic. Its in the place that we loose eloquence that God comes in.  

Bayo Aklomofe

instead i find myself trusting something that cannot be named, that is innately inherent, and who’s guidance has never wavered over the years. my faith in these unknowable spaces have always shown me the way, where to place my next step, or they have laid before my very feet the guidance i am seeking. these Gods have always traveled beside me, even in the times when i wasn’t able to hold space for them.

The void isn’t empty. The gods are everywhere. We are swimming in dynamic, animated, tentacular territories and there is no escaping that, there is no removing ourselves from that. We are always in conversation with these bio field signals. 

Bayo Aklomofe

my son’s story is unfolding in wildish uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable ways. when he moves, it is through space time, through universes and galaxies and inconceivable notions of more than we can comprehend. i’m sure its not really new to him now, i think he has always occupied these wide places of existence. maybe what’s new is he is somewhat more aware now of this traveling self he inhibits and it is beginning to ruffle him. it has become obvious that he is not contained or limited in his thinking or do i dare assume knowing, to any preconceived ideas of how we exist in the here and now. he moves from spaces much wider than that.

i as a mother of this young human, and my ‘i’ in this is small i know, for i don’t think he has ever been a child, especially one for me to call my own, he belongs to something much greater than that. nevertheless, i wonder where i am to stand in the witnessing of this unfolding of self and other. i wonder where my place is, if it’s really relevant at all, from such expansive unknowable landscapes.

i have borrowed a notion, of’ beings as wild alters.’ Bayo Alomofe tells of a story of his beloved wife Ej and her philosophy towards caring for their son in the unknowable times of trouble. i have listened to this story many times over and it always brings me to tears, it reminds me of all the times i too have fallen to the ground to be beside my son in the face of the unknowable storm. Ej invites us to hold our children as alters, as a wild place where the subject is not to cure or to fix them into sanity, instead the object is to worship, to stay in the trouble of the yelps and screaming. this resonates in me, it makes sense to not move in these times, but rather lay down in the face of the fire. for, we can never be sure of where the fire has arrived from or where it is on its way to, we can never be certain of what it means to have such things move through and captivate the bodies of our children. there is no real language for these places, perhaps we are not meant to bring them out of the turmoil, or lead them away or quieten them down, we don’t know what they are moving in the heat of the storm.

revisiting this space from another time

many moments have passed since I have traveled within these pages. I owe so much of the story I have now to the time I spent here exploring possibility and then, the inevitable unraveling of myself and everything that followed.

I wonder now if I could step back in? could I arrive here again after all this time and continue a journey from such a vastly different place, from such a vastly different self?

looking back, I can see the hard choices I made to be where we stand now. Great sacrifices have been made, that have not gone without notice. Ones have had to let go, when it was not what they were wanting, ones have had to go without the stories for us to move forward on the unknowable path we needed to take. We have travelled the nomadic experience, we have slept in wild places, woken beside oceans, played in sacred rainforests, spent more on barefooted adventures than in a classroom. There has been no school. There has been no indoctrination of an old story. And the children that were so little when we began our adventurous life are not so little anymore. And I wonder what will become of this wild experiment we have been on, where children have been given their lives to call their own? i wonder now how the story will play out?

maybe there is a space here.. beckoning to be rekindled.

maybe there is still something to be found amongst the raw tales and musings of life and wonder .. maybe the story isn’t complete.. maybe there’s more to tell.

challenging the ‘be a good girl’ notion

 

When she is  told to be a ‘good girl’, it is assuming that she can also be ‘bad’.   What exactly ‘Bad’ entails is completely in the eye of the beholder. We see ‘bad’ in all sorts of experiences in our daily lives. Children hear us relaying things we have read about, or seen or are listening to our interpretations of events that are all seemingly ‘bad’, and generally its pretty ‘bad’  if we are all talking about it. So why is it, that children are so often told to ‘be good’ by the people who care about them, implying that they must be capable of being ‘bad’, otherwise what is the point for mentioning it at all.  It is patronising to children that we so easily hold them to such unwarranted judgments.  It is pretending to be loving and kind in deliverance but really its just condescending superiority. Adults would never say this to each other, it wouldn’t be accepted by any means, and it’s not necessary for children either. Our interactions with children have become thoughtless, just repetitive habitual words, that we think have no real meaning or impact. Except they do.  I don’t tell my children to ‘be good’, but they have heard this enough already in their interactions with others  to know that this wins praise. Children are intelligent. My daughter will intentionally do things for the praise. She does ask ‘am i a good girl?’ after completing something, not often, but it happens, and it’s hard one to over come once the mindset has already been established. The truth is, there is no good or bad in children. They are just children learning to maneuver their way through their experiences and emotions. Most of the time my children are outwardly honest in their deliverance of their feelings and that can raise some awkwardness in the moment, usually because honesty is not what the recipient is expecting to hear. Their opinions haven’t been filtered or moulded to fit some false sociably acceptable standard. Their opinions are respected and they are learning that they are valued for them even in their indifference. How we can help others to understand this better, I’m still trying to work this out. My children are not obedient, because I don’t expect they should be.

What do we trade when we prioritise obedience over our children’s needs, mistakes or messy emotions? -Raised Good, parenting by nature

This doesn’t mean that they are ‘bad’. They simply have choices, and most of the time they make the ‘right’ ones for themselves. They are learning that certain choices they make wont bring them their desired outcomes, eventually they’ll make a different choice. It requires more patients and more compassion and understanding. It requires that we be present in the moment with our children.  Admittedly, it’s is definitely easier to take control over their lives and autonomy. It is definitely easier to play the role of the boss and dictate their days to them. Telling them when to eat, sleep, bathe, work, play, talk, listen or  who to be nice to, etc…Its definitely easier to tell them what to do rather than ask them if it is what they are wanting.

My children are more often than not outspoken, meaning they don’t think to hold their thoughts back on any situation, especially ones they themselves are directly impacted by. They are defiantly clear about what it is they are wanting and what it is they do not. They are unafraid to use their voices, and they don’t easily abide towards domination, manipulation or any other techniques that degrades or undermines their  usually valued opinions.  They wont simply hand out respect if it’s not warranted. And this can be somewhat unsettling, if you’re not expecting it, especially when it is coming from a five-year old. Are they ‘Bad’ children, No. Should they do what they are told to do, simply because someone tells them to? I don’t think so. Understandably, this is a tough notion to consider. But i would prefer that my children risk politeness for honesty and remain true to their feelings, than to deny themselves that right, in fear of being socially unaccepted by the opinions of others.   There are many ways we could be interacting with children that doesn’t entail making them feel inferior or imply that they are incapable of making good and safe decisions for themselves.

“The reality that adults have more power than children, however, does not mean that it is appropriate or necessary for us to exercise control over them. Rather, it means that we have an obligation to consciously choose how to use our power. We can choose to use our greater power to control children and coerce them to do what we want. We can choose to do nothing with our power. But we can also choose to use our power to support, assist, and facilitate the growth and learning of children in ways that affirm their personal power, dignity, and humanity.” -Teresa Graham Brett

We could be making ourselves clearer to children about what we are desiring, explain ourselves better without the authoritarian overtones. We could be offering them a range of possible outcomes to consider, before making decisions for them.  And we could allow ourselves to think about it a little more deeply and question our own concerns with needing a certain outcomes.  Possibly, we should be asking ourselves more often,  does it really matter?  We could stop opting for the quick, go to, fix  ‘do what i am asking of you and do it now.’  We could opt out of needing to power struggle with children.

My children are strong and independent, this strategy never works on them and i would never wish it to.  They are learning that people aren’t always sincere with their words and in their actions.  It must be incredibly confusing for children, when their well-being is so conditioned to only having particular outcomes and behaviours, deemed to be acceptable. It still bewilders me, that children are so often condemned for their natural feelings and emotions, it is asking children to deny feeling parts of themselves, simply because they may be causing undesirable attention.

We know that the way we are moving is not the norm, we know that its unconventional. The easier path would be to compel ourselves, despite our instinctual knowing and follow the less confrontational path. We could accept the ‘normalised’ and ‘expected’ way to raise children, without ever questioning it, even if it doesn’t feel right. But thankfully, that’s not our journey.  I’m strongly in favour for questioning what has gone before us and i’m thankful that i’m raising children that will without a doubt question everything that comes before them, before taking it on as their truth at face value.

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changing the paradigms

As my two wilder ones are embarking on their journey of natural learning and self-directed education, my oldest son is finalising his, on the mainstream path.  It’s been a long tedious road, and i can’t say its been worth it. If only i had realised all that i do now, we may have never let that story play our for so long. So much of this path or knowing we have found ourselves travelling on comes from Trust. Trusting myself to know what is best for my children and trusting my children in that they also know what is best for themselves.

My son is excited, really excited. He has no idea what he wants to do, but the possibilities that await and the fact that he can now choose for himself has made him ecstatic. Most might be uncomfortable sitting in the ‘unknown’ with their children’s next move. Most would feel a pressure in wanting them to have an idea or an answer. Most would not be alright in their child just pausing to find their feet or in them seeking out their own fire.

There is no plan that’s set in stone for us, and we have no intention of forcing any learning upon him anymore that holds no interest for him.  We have learnt the hard way, that this rarely works and its more that likely that the information and possibly the skills that we believe are relevant to now, will be more than likely be irrelevant in the future anyway.  Right now what is important for this new venture my son is embarking on is that he regains his passion for learning, not for the sake of meeting some  regulation, or somebody elses ideas of what he should be doing in his life, but for himself. His passions, his ideas and adventures for his life are his to own and pursue, that freedom is his right. School for him has been what has denied him this basic right, for the last ten years.

Now, he will have the freedom to explore what ever it is he is drawn to in this moment. There simply is no need or expectation for him to have it all worked out just yet. It’s absurd, that this has become the ‘norm’ within the realms of the educational system.  There will be times, when the space isn’t filled. There will be more time spent now, where he is not in the position of being ‘directed’ or ‘told’ what to do than ever before in his life. There will be some ‘uncomfortableness’ here, and an uneasiness in this freedom this brings.  Why is it we fill children up from such a young ages, leaving no room for boredom or self discovery; always keeping them ‘productive’ and ‘doing’ in their lives, and in turn keeping them the furthest from discovering their own desires. The longer children are kept within these reins, the longer it takes for them to find their way back towards what it is that they truly desire for themselves. Usually it’s not until, there is enough time left  ‘unfilled’ and free from the direction and ideas of others that they can truly begin to discover this for themselves.

The process of unfolding everything  ‘school’ has made an imprint on, will be long. It will require, patients in the transitioning from being schooled to one where he has the freedom to move in his own life. He will no longer be forced to endure long sessions of dictation on subject matters that have little to no relevance him. He will no loner be conditioned when to eat, speak, sit, stand or listen and if he needs use the bathroom now, he wont be degraded in to having to ask for permission.

So as for the restlessness that most likely will arise at times in the ‘Not’ being consistently told what to do, there’s also going to be a great beauty in bearing witness to my son discovering for the first time the things that truly drive him for the journey of his own life.

 

 

 

 

 

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a community for home and unschooled kids

“It is hard to swim against the current and risk the negative judgments of parenting peers. Yet, some do, and if enough begin to swim upstream, the river may change its flow.” –Peter Gray, Free to Learn

Thats what we are doing. Bravely and confidently we are swimming up-stream, embarking on a new adventure for educating children. We are doing this because we truly believe that the current systems of mainstream education are fundamentally ‘not working’ for the diversity of all children. There comes a time when it become necessary to move away from what has been done before if it doesn’t innately feel right to be moving in that direction anymore.

“Today most people think of childhood and schooling as indelibly entwined. We identify children by their grade in school. We automatically think of learning as work, which children must be forced to do in special workplaces, schools, modeled after factories. All this seems completely normal to us, because we see it everywhere. We rarely stop to think about how new and unnatural all this is in the larger context of human evolution and how it emerged from a bleak period in our history that was marked by child labor and beliefs in children’s innate sinfulness. We have forgotten that children are designed by nature to learn through self-directed play and exploration, and so, more and more, we deprive them of freedom to learn, subjecting them instead to the tedious and painfully slow learning methods devised by those who run the schools.” –Peter Gray, Free to Learn

We are beginning a community for home and unschoolers to come together. We are creating such a place  ourselves because there are no such facilities for kids to regularly be together, who are on these new paradigms of education. And even though, I’m referring to this path of education as ‘new’, it’s really not ‘new’ at all. Free to learn schools have been around and successfully operating since The Summerhill School was first founded in 1921.  This model of schooling, whilst now is still seen as ‘radicle’ and alternative, is what I believe our futuristic education models will be based on and the direction they will begin to move in, eventually.  Why do i think this? Because there is a movement towards this. Parents are not content with the old system because children are not content within the system. It has become clear to those ready to see it, just how much children have outgrown the system already and how exceptionally hard it is to keep themselves ‘happy’ within it. This is why they can’t sit still. This is why we have more diagnosed ADHD now than ever before. If children were free to move, speak, play, eat, rest, run and even shout as their bodies needed,  ADHD wouldn’t be a problem. It wouldn’t need to be medicated. It probably wouldn’t even be noticed. Then the masses of children referred to as having “abnormal behaviours” thereupon become “normal” children once again. If you believe there is such thing that is.

Our idea for education is free from conformity, free from authoritarian fear based learning. Our community will fundamentally from a grass-roots level wholeheartedly trust children in their abilities to know what it is they need to learn about  without being restricted by the confinements of their age. Much the same way we trust toddlers will begin to talk by themselves. We don’t sit them down for hours of instruction, to teach them the spoken word. We just live, talk and play with them, and we instinctively know that the words will form by themselves and in time will be mastered, when they are ready of course.   Children learn better through experience, most would agree with this. If you can offer children experience in what interests them, they not only will learn about it more authentically but more important it facilitates the way for a love of learning. So much of ‘mainstream’ school is, consciously or not working against this philosophy.

“Human beings have been sharing information and skills, and passing along to their children whatever they knew, for about a million years now. Along the way they have built some very complicated and highly skilled societies. During all those years there were very few teachers in the sense of people whose only work was teaching others what they knew. And until very recently there were no people at all who were trained in teaching, as such. People always understood, sensibly enough, that before you could teach something you had to know it yourself. But only very recently did human beings get the extraordinary notion that in order to be able to teach what you knew you had to spend years being taught how to teach.” -John Holt, Teach Your Own

There is a saying “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” [Tony Morrison] Thats what we are doing. We are rewriting the story. We will do this because we are a small part of an important movement that knows we must because it has become vitally necessary for the well being of our children.

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schools of trust

“Like cattle most humans live and die in passive subjection..We live lives locked into narrow patterns, often filled with great suffering and it never occurs to us that we can actually become free.” -Samadhi

“My dream of course is that we give up these dreadful authoritarian prescribed hateful state systems that clearly everybody agrees.. are obviously failing..”[Derry Hannam, retired school inspector]  We are so afraid of giving children the freedom they deserve in being the driving force for their own education, that we are doing them an incredible injustice in their opportunities for true learning and for their lives.  This is not what children want or need anymore and It is not what is valuable for our futuristic world either.

“We need young people who are independent, who are responsible for themselves,…who can work without strict leadership, we need young people and employees who can think outside of the box. Thats what we need. Everything that our schools don’t allow. It what companies need. It’s what science needs. Its whats needed everywhere.”  [ Jesper Juul, author ]

Why I won’t force my son to stay in school

 

” I think i’m getting dumber”.

This is the statement my 15 year old son made to me one day after walking in the door after school. So my question is, what are ‘they’ doing to make him feel this way about his own intelligence? Why is my son no longer feeling capable?  This is not the way he feels about himself outside of those school walls.

We send our children with enormous amounts of trust into these school domains that have become by law.  We  place our trust in allowing other people, to mould and influence our children’s own innate belief systems because we have been enticed into believing that this is the only way that they will be able to successfully make it out there in the ‘real world’.  We  have been led to believe that they are the better ones or rather ‘only’ ones who know how to provide them with the knowledge and experience that they are going to need.  These notions are ludicrous. This is an old story. And it does not fit our world anymore. Parents are afraid to change it, children are becoming unable to stay within it.

I have seen children unravelling, questioning everything they thought to be true about themselves. I have seen their sense of worth be so diminished by this system that it’s frightening. Our children are never born into this world feeling about life or themselves in this way. So why do they get to 15 and suddenly feel hopeless? Why are they questioning their worthiness within the school domain and worse, then how they’ll make it in their lives outside of school?  Suddenly this place that they have only ever known and trusted (because we said to) since they were five, no longer feels good to them? This place no longer wants them, if they cannot provide them with the highest scores, and grandest achievements and keep themselves from questioning anything. The school domain begins this subtle elimination process early, while young minds are still susceptible to easy manipulation. They question 14 year olds about what path they are considering taking in their educational futures? Are you staying or are you going? As if they are meant to be considering it at all? Aren’t they ALL allowed to stay? The system works out who is worth supporting through to the end and who should be sent packing towards other avenues. These  avenues that are suggested usually feel to the students like the road the ‘dumb kids’ take. Of course, they aren’t but the fact is, that this is the perception that has been created by the system.   The message isn’t even hidden, it’s said directly. [Maths teacher] Are you taking Maths next year? [15 year old]  Yes Why? I’m good at Maths. [teacher] You might want to reconsider that choice.

The system is old, the story is old, it doesn’t work, it most likely never did. We are so far behind our children, that we can’t keep up, and they can’t sit still anymore. Conformity and confinement to uncomfortable conditions in rooms is cruel.  Tables with hard chairs, textbooks and dictation is not working. Trying to control this situation with imposing punishments or worse medication to fit this dynamic, is unquestionably not the answer. The system cannot be reformed,  the story must be transformed.  Learning is innate. Learning and creating is a every human beings right, they will do this without force, if we let them. Possibly, it’s time to begin listening to these young minds and what they are wanting to learn for themselves, instead of dictating an outdated curriculum and insisting that it is what they will need for their future ‘survival’. How can we possibly even know this? We could instead be supporting their innovativeness and their desires to explore and create around their own interests. We could be assisting their learning by trusting them to know what supports it is that they need, instead of compelling them to abide by a support system that is failing to adequately support them anyway.  If our education systems can move towards more agile learning environments with, student-directed programs rather than the enforced dictatorship we currently have; then possibly our young minds operating within these systems can begin to start thriving instead of merely surviving.

 

How Children Fail

…thus  we find ourselves trying to poke certain facts, recipes, and ideas down the gullets of every child in school, whether the morsels interest him or not, and even if there are other things that he is much more interested in learning.

These ideas are absurd and harmful nonsense. We will not begin to have true education or real learning in our schools until we sweep this nonsense out of the way. Schools should be a place where children learn what they most want to know. The child that wants to know something remembers it and uses once he has it; the child who learns something to please or appease someone else forgets it when the need for pleasing or the danger of not appeasing is past. This is why children quickly forget all but a small part of what they learn in school. It is of no use or interest to them; they do not want, or expect, or even intend to remember it. The only difference between bad and good students in this respect is that the bad students forget right away while the  good students are careful to wait until after the exam. If for no other reason, we could well afford to throw out most of what we teach in school because the children throw out almost all of it anyway. John Holt, How children Fail, 1964

I know, I am unrelenting in my passion towards changing the way children are educated. I also realise that the very idea that the school system may not be working for our children, is just too hard to even contemplate for most. We have come to rely on the ‘system’. We have come to expect that this is the way, the only way our children can learn, therefore be educated, and have a successful life. This system has become so normal and so accepted, that to veer in any other direction is met with disturbing scrutiny. Nevertheless, many brave ones are tempting the path, and heading themselves towards uncharted waters.  We are a part of this movement. Not just because we love Autism too much to conform it out of our children but because we are simply not willing to conform our children to fit a broken system.  We are moving towards empowering our children rather than suppressing them. Moving in a direction of allowing, rather than controlling their minds and bodies.  Trusting that they have the ability to learn what it is they require to know at any given time. Much the same way we trusted that they would recognise us when they were born, or learn to walk and talk without our forced instruction.  Most important, understanding that they are not here to fulfil any requirements of my ideas of what they should be doing with their lives. This is not a new notion. There has been a quiet progressive movement towards this for a really long time. A.S.Neill founded Summerhill School, the first ‘free to learn’ school, in 1921 and the Sudbury Vally School in Massachusetts has been successfully running since 1968. Many more have been successfully modelled on this idea of educating.  The idea of allowing children to be free to be who they are, embrace what they want, and learn in a way that comes naturally and supports their thriving, is not really as radicle as it may seem. There continues to be an unassuming movement towards freeing children from the grips of the industrialised school systems. This unyielding movement is steadily growing and I assume will keep on growing as parents become less and less contented in allowing the detrimental failings that schools are  having on large proportions of children.

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