An unschooler in school

When Chloe told us she wanted to go back to school, my reaction was mostly fear. I worried that she would be devastated by social crap and brainwashed by the school mentality, and that our unschooling lifestyle would be sacrificed on the Temple of Doom. (That's a bit of an exaggeration but not much.) I did my best to squash the worry in lieu of squashing her, but there can be no doubt that she was aware that Mom Did Not Approve.

I'm sitting here wishing I could go back in time and tell myself to shut the hell up. The experience so far has been entirely positive (except for waking up at 6:30!) and so much a continuation of our beloved unschooling lifestyle that I can hardly believe it. We have all learned SO much!

There was the day that Chloe expressed irritation because she was being required to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She didn't mind the "stand" part of that as much as the "required" part, so we did some e-research, found state law on the subject (which says only that students who do not participate in the pledge should be quiet), and discussed ways of making it clear to the requiring teacher. I gave her a copy of the relevant RCW section, and Steph sent us a truly beautiful excerpt from the Barnette decision, which includes this gem:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

Chloe decided she wanted to talk to her teacher herself and we left it in her capable hands. She went in the next day and simply remained seated during the pledge. The teacher did not complain, and Chloe was able to mentally amend the teacher's spoken "everybody stand" to the "everybody who chooses to, please stand" that it should have been.

Her English teacher has been doing a long (3 weeks plus!) unit on the Holocaust, purportedly to provide context for their eventual reading of The Diary of Anne Frank. We've had discussions about why an English teacher might decide to teach history instead. They have been at least as interesting as Chloe's Holocaust research and have led to discussions about religion, propaganda, the appropriateness of compassion for oppressed people, and more.

We've had conversations about the pressures that schooled kids are under; the ways that unschoolers are free from or share the pressures; the openness of unschoolers as opposed to the social caution of schooled kids; the reasons it might take longer to form friendships at school versus your average unschooler gathering; and the possibilities that kids both schooled and unschooled see, how those possibilities are often nay-sayed by adults, and what might happen if those possibilities were instead greeted by simple acceptance as possibilities.

She's discovered that most of what we've been telling her about school for the past six years is true: she's well-suited to do well academically, she hasn't been falling behind, kids who are in school because they choose to be have a lot more fun and get a lot more out of it. And she's learned that Mom's fears about school were (way) excessive but based in reality.

And finally, she's learning a lot about herself. These discoveries are her business, so I won't go into detail, but they are all very positive, and her self-esteem seems stronger than ever.

In short, my advice about handling unschooler requests to go to school is to stay calm. Certainly explore other ways of resolving any needs underlying the request (more social time? more structure? more variety?), but don't fear school. It is just another path for your child to lead you down, just another interest to follow, just another resource to explore. And it's a damn fine strewing machine.

Some people go all hardcore and say that a kid in school is no longer an unschooler. Our experience says otherwise.

(For additional posts about Chloe's experiences in school, click the "school" label below.)