September Newsletter

Welcome to the September Freedom in Education Newsletter. I hope you have been enjoying the holidays and sunny weather, and I hope that for those of you who have gardens, it has been giving you plenty of good things to eat! September is a month of harvesting, and if you live in the country you are sure to find hazelnuts, beech mast, walnuts (if you're lucky), blackberries, elderberries, and maybe even some chestnuts later on, all growing in the hedgerows round about, in that wonderful abundance so befitting of Nature.

The articles this month are "Back to School" and "Choosing a Career", by my father, Gareth Lewis.

Isn't it funny the way that when children are little they always ask each other what they are going to be? I think for them it is a fun game, and sometimes parents can take their answers a little too seriously. I used to reply with the unusual combination of 'jockey, ballerina and post lady'! My brother used to say that when he grew up he was going to be a bird! I had plenty of ideas until I got to the age when adults started to ask me the question seriously, and then I couldn't think of anything at all! Maybe some children do have a clear idea of what they want to be, but I know that I don't have.

At the age of about eighteen, it seemed like everyone was asking me the question. All I could say was "I don't know what I want to be," and wonder if there was something wrong with me, or if there was something wrong with the question.

To me it just doesn't seem natural to plan out life. My only plan is to try my best to remain quite happy, which, by the way, is extremely ambitious, although it may not count as a career!

Life only comes one day at a time, surely the aim is to enjoy each day as much as one can. If one doesn't have money to do something, one works out a way of getting it, and that way doesn't have to be the same each time.

But I am aware that this philosophy usually sounds pretty hopeless to people, and not very 'practical' at all! These days, though, people aren't so unimpressed. I only have to add that I do the Central Brittany Journal, which, like this site, is very much a family effort, and people think that I already have 'become' something. They assume that I will now be a journalist for the rest of my life, and if that is what they want to believe, then why not let them?

The Contact list is still growing, and I find it interesting to see the amount of people joining it who are completely new to home education. When a parent has the courage to do what they believe to be right, regardless of what family, 'friends', society, and 'important' people are telling them to do, it really is good news. Because that isn't easy to do, and the more it happens the easier it will be for the next person. The news on the television and in the papers, is so often about schools, and it is very depressing. The media seems extremely happy to report on all the atrocious side effects of the education system, and yet not be the least bit interested in the solution. When a little freedom is brought in, when the child feels they have a choice, when parents are in control, and the children are happy, there isn't a problem any more, - but it seems that people would rather do anything than acknowledge this.
However, if you feel you need a little good news to balance up the media's bad, you can always take a look at the latest entries on the Contact List!

If you would like to send a comment, link, favourite quote, or news about an upcoming event to be included in next month's newsletter, please contact me.

‘Back to School’ must be one of the bleakest phrases in the English language. The fact that it is used by retailers to draw parents into their shops so that their children can be equipped with new clothes, bags, pencils, pens, etc. is, in itself, sufficient to blight the second half of the summer holiday for many children, as they see it blazoned across shop windows, on billboards, and in magazines.

‘Back to School’ serves as a cruel reminder that perhaps you are having fun now, in the holidays, but school is looming up on the horizon once again, and an inescapable doom is once again approaching.

Perhaps this is not how it is for everyone – people often tell me how much their children enjoy school and look forward to the new school term – but this is how it was for me, and this is how it has been for every child that I have known well.

And whether or not some children like school is really beside the point. The question that we should all be asking ourselves is how we have managed to devise a philosophy that has managed to justify making even one child do something that they do not want to do.

When a baby is born, parents let themselves be guided by what it wants: if the baby wants to be fed, they feed it; if it wants to sleep, they let it sleep; if it wants to be held, they hold it; the guiding principle is that if the baby cries, then something must be done to help it, if the baby is content, then it is not disturbed. From time immemorial, this has been the standard method of parenting, and, left to their own devices, parents do not deviate too far from it, no matter how old their children become: if their children are happy, parents let them carry on doing what they are doing – if they are unhappy, they try to make things right.

Why should there be some magic age where this changes? Why should it be that just because a child is five years old, it becomes all right to make them unhappy? Why should it be that because a child is twelve years old, it becomes all right to make them unhappy? Where does the idea come from that small children have a right to be happy and can spend their time playing and enjoying themselves, but that adults do not have a right to be happy, and that therefore children have to be forced through a transition of suffering.

The truth is that once a parent abandons the principle of trying to ensure that their children are happy, they cease to be a parent. Once a mother or father allows themselves to be persuaded that it is acceptable that their children should spend their first day in school in tears, but should still be made to go back for a second day, they no longer have any reference points to guide them in how to care for their children.

Many parents now see nothing wrong in committing their children to eleven or twelve years of pointless misery – and are then bemused when their adolescent children have no respect for them.

If the phrase ‘back to school’ fills your household with joy – then all is well. If it hangs in the air like a lead balloon, then why not return to the basic principles of parenting – if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it, if the children aren’t happy, make some changes!

One of the questions that children get asked from an early age is what they are going to be when they grow up. It is striking how different children answer this question in different ways.

Some children seem to have acquired a certainty about their intended career while they are still very young, others change their minds regularly, and some hardly appear to understand the concepts of growing up or of getting a job. It is difficult to determine to what extent these different responses are due to differences between the children themselves, and how much they are due to children picking up on their parents’ hopes and expectations.

There are, in fact, many good reasons why parents should try not to guide their children towards a specific job:

People don’t like being pushed: When parents do succeed in getting their children to follow a particular career, they may not actually receive much thanks; instead children often blame their parents for making them spend their lives doing something that they do not enjoy. Just as bad, the plan often backfires and the child rebels and does the opposite of what their parents have been trying to make them do.

No one knows what skills will be in demand in ten years time: The whole idea of parents directing their children towards a particular job is based on the idea that the job market will be the same when children leave school as it is now, and will stay the same throughout their working lives. This simply is no longer the case, and parents have no way of telling what forms of employment are going to be available in ten or twenty years time.

Children want to please their parents: Everyone wants to please their parents –even most adults still worry about what their mothers and fathers think about them – and children in particular will do almost anything to win their parents’ approval. It is a betrayal of trust to make this approval conditional upon a child working towards a particular career.

The system is unkind: The system that trains people for a particular career is not child-friendly: for instance, a four-year old may set out with the innocent intention of wanting to be a doctor; if they follow the conventional path this means that they then have to go to school, learn to read and write, try to do well in school tests, consistently come towards the top of their class, to spend their evenings and weekends doing homework, to opt for science subjects at secondary school, to get high grades in their exams, to win a place at medical school, and then they still have to spend at least five years of work and study before they get their qualification. When the idea of becoming a doctor first entered their heads, it may have been nothing more than a childish whim, but the more of their time that they give to school and schoolwork, the more difficult it becomes to admit that perhaps they would rather do something else.

People’s attitudes to the question of careers underlies the decisions that they make about their children’s education from the very start.

If a parent really believes that it is inappropriate to push a child towards a particular career, then they have no choice but to let their children make up their own minds about what they want to do when they grow up, and this means letting them develop in their own way and at their own pace from the very beginning. If, on the other hand, a parent believes that they are responsible for ensuring that their children are able to have a ‘good’ career, they are almost inevitably going to push them as hard as possible towards doing well in schoolwork – even if they have taken them out of school – and are teaching them at home.

Something to fall back on: Whilst many people agree in principle with the idea of letting their children choose their own path in life, they still feel that they ought to push them through the conventional educational system, so that they will have something to fall back on when they are older. In particular, many parents are very worried about reading and writing, and, to a lesser extent, arithmetic. It is almost universally accepted that children have to learn these ‘basic’ skills by a certain age, and that if they don’t there is something wrong with them.

It is seldom pointed out that such ideas are inconsistent with letting children find their own feet in life. The truth is that no one – neither their parent, nor their teacher, nor anyone else – can say for certain that a particular child should learn to read when they are three years old, five years old, eight years old, ten years old, or, in some cases, ever. If a child wants to spend their time playing or drawing or doing practical things then who is to say that this isn’t what is best for them, and who can say that people who are now regarded as having learning difficulties would not have learnt to read on their own if they haven't been put off by teachers when they were five or six years old?

Special Needs: These considerations are particularly important in relation to children with special needs. There have always been children who do not fit into the normal pattern of development but now, instead of this being tolerated and such children being allowed to be themselves, they are diagnosed as having one particular ‘syndrome’ or another. Attempts are then made to cure them of their problems, and to mould them as much as possible into what is considered to be a normal pattern of development. As the demands made upon children become more alien to their nature, more of them are unable to comply, and more of them are branded as having special needs.

The converse to this approach is not to worry about what will happen to a child when they grow up, but to simply concentrate on helping them to have a happy and fulfilled life when they are young. When this is done, it is surprising how many children who are considered to have special needs grow up to become adults who have no difficulty at all in finding work and fitting into society.

When a parent decides not to push a child towards a particular career it does not mean that they are not interested in what their children want to do in life. They are still likely to be called upon for advice, and they are bound to have experience of the world of work that they can pass on to their children. They may also be able to give their children practical help and encouragement. The difference between helping a child to fulfil their ambitions and pushing a child into doing something that they do not want to do is not always clear cut: as with every other aspect of parenting, a balance is required and there is no rulebook to follow that tells you what you should do and when you should do it.

At some point in a young person’s life – often in the early teens – a sense of self-awareness develops and with it a realisation that they have to take responsibility for their own decisions.

In particular, they start to realise that one day they will have to earn their own living in life. It is important that they be given time to look around them and to form their own judgements of the world at this stage, so that they can develop their own understanding of what they want to do with their lives, rather than being carried along by other people’s expectations.

Young people today are confronted with very confusing mixed messages about the state of the world: on the one hand if they read the newspaper, watch television or listen to people talking, they could be forgiven for thinking that civilisation was about to end – the news is occupied almost exclusively with crime, murders, war, worries about the environment, threats to health, and economic uncertainty, leading one to suppose that the people in charge of affairs have no idea what they are doing. On the other hand, at school, teachers act as though everything is under perfect control and that all a young person has to do, is do as they are told: they will then be able to get a job, and everything will be all right.

Young people have to make sense of these contradictions for themselves. If they believe that society is forcing people to overwork and to take on debts and mortgages that they will never be able to repay, and is putting them in a position where they are unable to care properly for their own children, and is exploiting people in other parts of the world, and is causing damage to the natural world, and that no one has any idea how these problems can be solved, then devoting one’s life to working within this system hardly seems a sensible choice to make. Even though people may not talk about these concerns openly they do still influence the decisions that they take about their careers.

Getting a Job Anyway: It seems that, in spite of what they say, many people, young and old, have a rather pessimistic view of life and do think that things are getting progressively worse, but they get a job and spend their lives working for the system in any case: perhaps because the idea of making their own decisions in life was drummed out of them when they went to school.

Making Money: Quite a lot of people assume that there is little that they can personally do to help the state of the world. Sometimes they then adopt the rather cynical attitude of trying to earn as much money as they can, by whatever means possible, and not worrying too much about people that they are hurting along the way.

Many people finish their education with apparently limited options: large numbers of young people are told that they have essentially failed at school and that the only choice open to them is to accept low-paid work which may not allow them to afford a home of their own, or even to run a car, but will involve them in working very long hours in unpleasant conditions. Others think that they are doing well in the education system but when they eventually leave university they find that there are no jobs suited to their particular qualifications. Faced with such difficulties, it is not surprising that large numbers of people give up on the idea of earning their own living or having a career and simply drift from one thing to the next.

Changing the System from Within: A large proportion of young people who train for specific jobs and careers start out with quite a clear understanding of the problems associated with their chosen field of work, but entertain the idealistic notion that they will be able to change the system from within.

The danger inherent in this strategy is that you may have to make so many compromises in order to get into the position from which you imagine you will be able to start doing good, that you become indistinguishable from the people that you had been hoping to reform.

There is an approach to choosing a career which has proved to be effective in all sorts of situations, and for all sorts of different people, and continues to be so.

It involves firstly gaining a reasonably-rounded education, and then using it to make a living.

The first part of this – a reasonably-rounded education – is difficult, or maybe even impossible, to achieve whilst one is still at school or university because, in such institutions, one is not allowed to develop in one’s own way but is judged and monitored by other people. Once you leave the education system, it is therefore advisable to take some time out before rushing into a career.

A proper education ought to provide you with both practical skills and the ability to think and reason about life. Practical skills are gained by doing practical activities that you personally find interesting and useful – cooking, gardening, painting, drawing, making things, playing a musical instrument, and using modern technology, make good starting points – and acquiring the ability to reason about life comes from reading books by people whom you consider to be wise, thinking about what they say, discussing things with people whom you respect, and having the courage to come to your own conclusions.

If you do things because you are interested in them, you will become good at them, and if you are good at them, sooner or later you will find that there is a demand for your services, and you will start to earn money. This could lead you into working for yourself, getting a job, or taking the time to get a recognised qualification. From the outside, this may not look any different from anyone else's career but the important thing is that you do what you do because you enjoy it, and that you have the freedom to change what you are doing when you feel that there is something wrong.

Admitting that one does not have a career plan mapped out to cover one’s whole working life, can produce quite an antagonistic reaction. People often want to know what you are going to do for a pension, how you are going to pay for a mortgage, and how you are going to support a family. The truth is, however, that even people who do have career plans cannot answer these questions: conventional careers do not allow either men or women to spend enough time with their families, and no one can be sure that pension arrangements made now will be of any use decades into the future.

Furthermore, most of these concerns centre around money, but anyone who takes a step back from the stresses and strains of daily life would never suggest that the only purpose of life is to make sure that one can pay all one’s bills.

Over the long term, the work that you do ought to allow you to fulfil your aspirations, express your creativity, be yourself, and, perhaps, help to make the world a better place.

This may seem to be a particularly difficult time in which to grow up, but another way of looking at the current situation is to see it as one that offers incredible opportunities. Anyone who is able to stick to their principles and manages to do something really worthwhile with their life, in spite of receiving no support or encouragement from those in authority, will be rewarded with a sense of achievement that could not be attained in any other circumstances.

Also New to the Jamboree:
Hiawatha and Deganawida

When hatred and feuds, battles and cannibalism, anger and revenge, brought despair to the native peoples of America, it was going to have to take something even stronger than these to put an end to the chaos.

This is the story of Deganawida and Hiawatha who single-handedly persuaded the cannibal warriors to bury their weapons and live in peace...

www.jamboree.freedom-in-education.co.uk

The contents of this newsletter appears in the Quarterly Freedom in Education Magazine, the Freedom in Education Magazine can be purchased for £12.00 at www.nezertbooks.net