I’ve written and deleted this post several times, and I haven’t ended up submitting it until now – I guess because I’m not sure of its relevance to the context of this weblog – and also I’ve been concerned about the reception it would get. But now that I’ve told my parents, I guess the hardest part is over, so I can put my deepest secret out here in the public domain.
You see, this is a coming-out story. I am not the person I have portrayed myself as. I’ve been living a lie. It’s time to come out of the closet and just announce it.
I’m a hippy and a flake.
The signs were always there: the woolly left-wing doctrine, the interest in McLuhan, Vance Packard and Kerouac, the putting spiders outside rather than stomping on them, well-read copies of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and ‘The Dancing Wu-Li Masters’ – even the I Ching. Then there’s all those Joni Mitchell albums – and the vegetarianism, for God’s sake. But I’ve always put those down as having been evidence of being somewhat ‘alternative’ – possibly even ‘arty’.
Finally, though, my tendencies have won out: Homeschooling has been added to the mix – and there’s no going back from there.
My 11 year-old son has been taken out of school toward the end of what I quaintly refer to as Standard 4, but which I think is known as ‘Year 6’ nowadays. He would have been going to Intermediate, but in our muesli-sucking wisdom, my wife and I have decided to save him from that, pull him out of the state system and raise him with our own values, customs and way of life. Then we’re going to splatter-paint a Kombi and drive up the coast to get our heads together. Er… man.
Actually, it’s not quite so flaky. Those who know me can probably attest to what I would call rigor and thoroughness, but which more commonly is referred to as ‘Dubber being completely anal again’. School just got tougher. But more fun too, hopefully.
The curriculum we’re following is pretty close to the official school one (same maths text book, for instance), but with the addition of things like current events, history, geography, spelling, punctuation, art, music, technology, creative writing, foreign languages and critical thinking (ie things that don’t get taught at school these days) thrown in for good measure.
Before you ask ‘the question’ (“What about socialisation?”), we’ve organised regular afternoons with friends, membership in clubs (the Museum has the ‘DinoMites’ kids club) and there’s his Kendo club – but Jake also has lots of interaction with other people of all age groups and lots of different backgrounds.
There are homeschool groups that get together for things like sport and art class. Christians, mostly – but we’re pretty tolerant about that sort of thing.
We’re taking the “It takes a village to raise a child” approach to a certain extent – many of our friends are experts in different fields of endeavour, and several of them have offered their time and energy. There’s a possibility Jake will be doing a module on conversational Zulu – but only because our friend Ken is a native speaker.
So… new at this, been doing it just over a week and a half, and loving it already. The advantages are obvious, the time commitment is probably the only real challenge at this point.
It’ll be something of a juggle, life-wise, but hey – what sort of hippy would I be if I couldn’t learn to juggle?
