I was born and then handed to a nursery. My parents had bills to chase, like their parents before them.
I was sent to kindergarten. My parents' lives were a constant race, stealing moments of affection between meetings and deadlines.
Then came Primary school, with soccer games on weekends. My parents' faces showed the strain of endless demands. I learned to measure success by test scores and homework completion, while my natural curiosity slowly dimmed.
A Classic Movie
Secondary school brought bullies, while adults turned blind eyes to my pain. "Kids will be kids," they said, too busy with paperwork and protocols to notice the darkness growing in young hearts. I watched creativity die in fluorescent-lit classrooms.
College and University weren't hell, but my youth slipped away working double shifts to stay afloat. Midnight studying after serving tables, dawn shifts stocking shelves before lectures. We were all just running on a treadmill built by someone else.
And So Life Continues
I found love, married, and glimpsed happiness, but the grind of bills never ceased. We built our life on credit cards and overtime, promising each other that next year would be different. Next year, we'd have more time.
We had kids and started seeing the cycle through new eyes. We went to kindergarten registration day and we ...
WAIT THE F**K
I refused to let this cycle survive.
This isn't education - it's conformity. It's crushing spirits in the name of curriculum. It's turning vibrant, curious children into stressed, disengaged students who learn to chase grades instead of knowledge.
That's when I discovered unschooling. The radical truth that children are natural learners. That education doesn't need walls or bells or standardized tests. That learning through living, through curiosity, through real-world experiences isn't just valid - it's optimal.
The madness stops with Us
The cycle breaks now. We're choosing unschooling because we refuse to sacrifice our children's natural joy of discovery on the altar of standardized education.
Because if we don't show our children a different way to learn and grow, how will they ever know it's possible?
I learned from my kids that they really, really want to know things that interest them, and they have very good instincts as to what they need to know. I didn't just leave everything up to them, because I put them in circumstances in which they needed to learn practical things, construction, household maintenance and repairs, automotive control, repair, and maintenance, and etc. They learned how to add, subtract, multiply, divide and convert fractions using tape measures and the Imperial measurement system on jobs. The lessons they learned were deeply internalized, practical knowledge, not book learning.
In the meantime we had no TV. They were outraged, but turned to reading books for entertainment (at least at home), and became avid readers. One of the weirdest things that came out of homeschooling my sons was that the work they considered chores were fun and entertaining to their peers. Kids that attended public school used to come and visit our compound innawoods so they could swing wrenches on their cars (I let them buy 4x4's with their wages from ~10 years old they could drive on cat roads I punched through our acreage), cut, split, and stack immense amounts of firewood, use the log loader to move things around, and etc.
Even kids in public school really want to learn useful stuff.
Thanks!
You could change that to:
Every kid wants to learn life!
Mathematics is useful, but how can you learn life when you're STUCK inside a building 40 hours per week? Life happens when you get out there and discover all those wonderfully non-standard situations.
It's funny how the goal of school nowadays is to keep kids calm. The quieter the class, the more gold stars for the school!
Stand still, be quiet, don't ask questions. Apparently that's the recipe for the "perfect" kid in our society. And not just at school - try taking them to the grocery store or restaurants!
Keep them quiet or watch the boomers do their signature eye-roll.
And oh boy, dare to hand them a tablet and watch the judgment rain down!
You just can't win... but at least we can laugh about it
Reminds me of the opening scene of 'The Matrix'.
This reminds me of the story of The Grey Gentleman (Momo). I loved it at school and read it with my own children. Do you know it?
Wow! No I didn't know about it, but I really like the premise.
I might just read it!
Thanks for the suggestion =)
tldr;
I thoroughly recommend it. It's a take on this crazy rat race that is done so well it even makes children look at things differently. The children in the story even get swept up in it all as their time gets stolen away by school life.