Raising Leaders Instead of Rulers

in #homeschooling8 years ago

We are a family who homeschools our children and there are many people in this world who don't understand what we are doing. Today I'm going to explain the importance of our mission and how someday our children will be the next visionaries in a whole new world of thought.

Socializing and Unschooling

Often times when we tell strangers our children are homeschooled we are asked why our kids are not able to be social with other children. It's almost as if we keep our kids under the stairs like Harry Potter and never allow them to play with mainstream children. However this is absolutely not the case and basically an absurd way of thinking about homeschooling.

Since we started homeschooling our two sons, which was well before the age of five and kindergarten criteria, we have socialized our children. Across the entire world in every city and small town there are homeschool groups and we have joined some of them in our local area. When we lived outside of Boston, our kids took part in various groups that included other children just like our kids. Years later we moved to Florida and found similar groups where our kids could interact with others. No, they are not stuck in a classroom with thirty other children sitting at a desk for over six hours a day. Our socialization techniques with our kids are quite different from this method. Our two sons attend museums, nature walks, gardening classes, and many more activities than the desk and chalkboard application. Still to this day no matter how much you explain this to strangers they still can't grasp that our kids play with other children.

Alongside this, we are often asked if we follow a curriculum. Another stipulation brought on by society's demands of what the majority thinks is right. Our sons are unschooled which is taboo even in mainstream homeschool circles. We let them learn when they want to learn, and education has worked best for us in this manner. When my son wants to read or learn to write, he has told us this when he was ready. Over time our son has learned to write and read at his own pace and does significantly better than most children, I've observed who are schooled traditionally. Another great aspect of unschooling is what our son enjoys and what he excels at is what we like to concentrate on, and this pays off exponentially. Our son is fantastic with computers and could someday be a programmer which is a well-paying job within society. He’s also great at talking and being a kind spirit to others in need and someday this may lead to an occupation in therapy. He gets the basics of math and reading on his own terms and has learned quite a bit because he wants to learn. You can't stress that sentence enough in this world because people who want to be educated on their own terms typically learn very well.

“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.” ― Noam Chomsky

We Don't Want The Village Teaching Our Children

One of the biggest reasons why we homeschool our children is because we don't want the village teaching our children things like nationalism, patriotism, that war is good, or words written in textbooks are facts. In fact, we teach our children to question these beliefs on a regular basis and let them know there are two sides to every story. In a lot of schools, the pressure to be the best in sports, academics, and popularity is on the forefront of many kids lives. This puts an enormous amount of stress on children who are trying to be kids. Kindergartners now are given vast amounts of homework and studies where they have no time to just be a kid. Then when children become restless and unable to stay in their seats for a six hour day they are labeled with attention deficit disorder and children as young as five are told they need medication.

My children will never be burdened with the stress of having to stay seated for hours and hours. They will never be told they have a disorder when in fact they are just kids being kids. Our sons will never take medication that sedates them so much so they can fall in line, never question and maintain the herd mentality. This is the village that will never teach our children and it's a shame parents fall victim to this type of system. Life is too short to appease the expectations of what society believes is the norm so we teach individualism at its core.

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”— Ayn Rand

Children Who Learn To Question Will Be Society’s Movers & Shakers

Indoctrination is horrible and is one of the root causes of poor economics, wars, and political tyranny. Often in the traditional school setting children are taught that the economic systems of today are sound and participating in it helps the world prosper. However, the world's money game is based on debt, and promissory notes that continue to inflate our purchasing power and nonparticipation can actually create a better tomorrow. Through counter economics, people can learn to trade alternative currencies such as Bitcoin or practice the art of barter and trade. These systems bolster prosperity within the global level and the local level and keeps money out of the hands of third party pillagers.

Questioning war is also not really taught in public schools. Children are taught to stand behind soldiers who reside and fight for their countries goals. Kids have no idea how these things are funded and are told many different reasons to why these wars take place. It's not very common for a teacher in the public setting to teach kids to question this behavior. Instead, they bolster it through indoctrination of patriotism and nationalism which is just as disgusting as racism, but somehow it slips through the cracks. Kids are often taught the “my country is better than yours” mentality for twelve years or more and end up teaching others this failed philosophy.

Another part of the nation states education is children are taught they must participate in the act of voting for leaders. They are never taught that maybe this practice is also a failure and continues to bolster tyranny. This can be seen with the thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters when he lost the nomination, and now many of them believe they have to choose Hillary Clinton because having Trump for a president will just be horrible. Even if Hillary doesn't meet the Sanders supporters criteria, they then believe they still must participate by choosing a third party candidate such as Jill Stein. No one is ever taught in school that completely opting out of this mentality of having to vote will destroy the current corrupt political system. If no one participates no one wins, and that's a vote people can count on.

My kids are homeschooled and ultimately unschooled and we don't care about the expectations of society. We only care about our sons individualism and their desire to learn what they want when they want. Our boys know how to question the wrongs within society and also learn to do what they love. They will continue to prosper and someday they can be whatever they want even if they did not attend a traditional school. The future depends on growing kids with strong desires to be individuals and these types of children will be leaders as opposed to rulers.

Disclaimer: I attended the public school system and at a certain age began to question on my own. Children who attend public school are able to break the mold if they desire and motivate themselves to become leaders as opposed to joining the ruling class. This path our family has chosen is what we feel is best for our family.

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I had the good fortune to homeschool my children, at least at the start. The staggering display of interest, aptitude, energy, and love of learning.

Now, 5 years after they were stuck in the government schools, they're just as jaded and resentful as everyone else. Almost like the system is designed to destroy happiness. (almost?)

The son of a friend went through the montessori system in his early years. Then they had to move him to the public system. I remember my friend mentioned that he noticed how the shine on his child's eyes started dimming through time. It was heartbreaking :/

Thanks for reading my story. Life is too short to be jaded and resentful. And yes the system was designed that way!

I also feel that I would like to homeschool my children someday if the opportunity arises.

Homeschooling provides children with the ability to learn the way that best suits them. (I cannot stand to learn just through lectures and am a very hands on learner). You can tailor your teaching to accommodate your child's learning style because you can be one on one with them.

Taking time as a family to explore nature and go on vacations together while still teaching a curriculum, affords a whole new realm of freedom to teach your children. I would much rather learn about the environment by being immersed in nature than with pictures in a textbook.

There are some homeschooled children that are not socialized and are kept in a bubble by overprotective parents, but that is not the norm. I have quite a few friends who are homeschooled, and they tend to do better later on in their schooling because they already know how they learn best.

As much as I love the teachers that made an impact in my life, I personally feel that as a parent I would rather instill my own values and time into my child. For all the good teachers out there, there are plenty that could make a negative impact on the future of my child's life.

Hope your children continue to follow their dreams as you can offer them opportunities that just aren't available to those in public schools.

Thanks we mean to provide all the knowledge to bolster my two boys dreams, whatever they may be the sky is the limit!

That's what good parents should do :) Even though I attended public school, my parents have encouraged me to follow my dreams too. I hope they will look back one day and realize how blessed they are.

I am about to have my first child with @jessica-miller and after reading this great article you have further validated my reasoning for homeschooling our unborn son. I don't particularly want him indoctrinated as I was. The patriotism and nationalism scare me as well as the conforming and falling in line, not to mention the lies from the church. It took me many years to realize that almost everything I was taught in school was indeed all lies. Thank you for sharing this important decision about the wellbeing, and future, of your two sons.

Great, I'm happy I inspired you to think about the decision. Good luck and cheers.

Great post Jamie, when Anabell and I have kids I hope to be able to learn from your journey of HomeSchooling!! Thank you for having the courage to do it.

great article, i would love to live long enough to see what the world will be like when everyone is left to grow wild

My mom raised a ruler and I'm doing just fine. Unless you count killing your wife, having your kids hidden from you, and cutting off your son's hand. If you count those. She did a crappy job.

This is more like it.

I'll start following you :) "teaching our children things like nationalism, patriotism, that war is good" - this resonates very much with me. About to have a child, all this questions have been on my head. Great read and great feeling of hope while reading it. Thanks so much!

You are very welcome. Writing is what I do and inspiring people brings me great joy.

Glad to see other parents here on steemit. I appreciated your post. It's always good to hear a different perspective.

Appreciate the commentary, and it makes me smile that you appreciated my post. Cheers.

This bolsters my belief that school has been the worst that has happened to me.
Another thing is attention and guiding. For 12 years I went to school , then went home and played video games. Totally blind to the fact I'm slowly killing myself, never discovering who I really am, never starting to live. There was like this mentality that attending school is your work, once school is done for the day you can relax, reward yourself. Awful. A neverending cycle of disengagement from life.

This is very interesting. I took about 12 years since graduating highschool to reverse the indoctrination I was taught to become a libertarian in philosophy and it didn't come easy. It took a lot of self-help, therapy and education. I don't know if the excessive drinking in my early/mid 20's helped or hindered this process.

I think a lot of it has to do with parents who can barely find time to be "good" parents these days even with school helping them with the majority of time... I don't think most could imagine being 100% responsible for the outcome of their children. So they feel "safer" allowing the "state/gov" schools to be such a big part of their childs life.

I believe if I was a parent I would want my kids to experience a healthy amount of elementary/grade school for the social skills etc they learn but would hope to be in a financial and mental position before highschool to transition them to being home schooled so they can focus on the importance of education instead of wasting their time at what is essentially a day care system for young adults to socialise. then allow them to choose their own path for grade 10 and beyond.

Cheers Jamie, great piece... lots to think about

"Social skills" (as was pointed out in the story) are not something that you want your kids to learn in a public school environment! Home/Unschooled kids will interact with MANY MANY more humans, diverse in age, gender, ethnicity, religion, ability, etc....than will a 9 year old stuck in a room with 35 other nine year olds, expected to sit still and memorize data to be regurgitated in the form of state testing which often traumatizes young children with serious text anxiety that's imposed by the teachers and administrators in the public schools - after all, Little Johnny, we won't get as much funding from the government if you don't make a 100% on this meaningless waste of time three day long test we will administer to you in the second grade...." 😳

#HOMESCHOOL

Thanks for the feedback appreciate all the love.