One of my favourite books in Learning all the time, by John Holt. Here he relates accounts of how children learn from everyday life, and how that delight in learning is conditioned out of them at school. I have been
privileged to observe this learning process in my son, James, who will be 3 in November.
James is now of the age where we are being asked" When does he start preschool?" every time we are out. It gets wearisome,
butI don't really want to get into the intricacies of our
family life with the woman from the corner shop, or the bus driver, so, for now I just answer - "He's only 2!".
But he will not be going to
pre-school or nursery. He will be continuing this marvellous expansion of his learning at home, directed by his own needs, interests and desires.
Today, learning happened at 5.30 am, when he just had to get up and play some game with his diggers and trucks.
Fortunately, my husband volunteered to get up with him, and when he brought me a cup of tea, he
commented on how he could almost see the neurons firing in
James's brain - he was full of it. Talking his game out loud in long, complex, sentences, he was obviously working something out that had been on his mind.
I took over at 7.30, and the learning continued. We read a couple of comics -
Roary the Racing Car. We made a cut-out tool box from the magazine, and then played a complicated game of fixing cars and buses - the sofa cushions being the cars. All this was entirely instigated and directed by James - I was there purely as a facilitator and gofer - it was such fun too!
The whole day has been like this. One
learning event after another. Going to the
DIY store with Dad, coming home and making a seesaw with bits of wood, making his own sandwich for lunch, playing the piano and singing along to his own tune, helping make dinner, picking plums, dividing pastry for the pie, using the leftover paste to make yet another birthday cake, singing all the words of Happy Birthday - all these
activities were a small part of his own agenda for the day.
He is still going now, I hear him pretending to be a snake "I'm gonna eat
oo Dad"
Now, thankfully, a 5 am - 10 pm full on day is relatively unusual here, but sometimes it
happens. If we were shackled to other timetables, this day would have been so different, so I am truly
fortunate that we have that freedom. I imagine how stressed I would be by such an early start. I might have lost my temper and shouted;
harassed and nagged everyone into getting ready for work and school, cutting short any play or fun. "No time, no time!", in the rush to be out the door, far too soon. James would not have had the opportunity to do all the things he did today, unless he was at home. No-one would have played with him for hours on the living room floor, in just the way he wanted to, or let him help cut mushrooms for the risotto that he asked me to make for dinner. He might have come home, tired, clutching a piece of paper with blue paint slapped on it as evidence of his creativity, but would he have been told to be quiet when he began to play the piano and sing joyously as he did after tea today? Would he have been laughed at or ridiculed for playing with his Barbie
campervan - organising a trip to the beach for some of his toys?Would he have been able to do these things anyway, or might he have been told to do some other box ticking activity instead? I do not want to endanger his gentle unfolding in any way by subjecting him to the
shoulds and should
nots of this society and certainly not by it's clock.
Instead, we were able to forget time and just go with the flow. It was only place to be. Seventeen hours of present moments - learning all the time.
Please visit
Debs at Muddy Bare Feet, who is hosting Home Education Blog Carnival today for International Freedom in Education Day. There are so many inspirational posts there, much more coherent than this sleep deprived one. Night Night!
James had a great time on holiday. He played in the park,
watched some interesting construction work going on (while Dad pretended he had a Toyota crew cab - lol,)
spent a lot of time gazing into puddles,
played on the beach,
and played on the beach some more.
And a boy really needs a trailer for all those little essentials.
The work is really intensive right now,with the construction of the station, the car park, and all the attendant bits of concrete laying that seem to go on with such projects. James is in his element and he likes nothing better than to go to the farm road adjacent to the site and watch the diggers do their stuff - and there are some seriously heavy duty pieces of equipment trundling up and down our road. A sign informs us that the first train will depart in December 2010.
Now - this is a good thing. It's what we all want - a decent public transport infrastructure - taking polluting cars off the road - connecting communities, more opportunity for all. Not to mention the knock on effect of elevating the house prices in the area. We will live within easy walking distance of the station, 20 -30 minutes until we are in the centre of either of our two major cities.
But... we are losing too. The redundant railway had become a much used and loved cycle path and walkway. A wildlife haven and just a place to escape. Setting out for a walk we would decide which way to go - east or west - always reminding me of Proust's dilemma - the Guermantes way or the way by Swann's. West was always better in the summer and winter - the territory was open, the skies huge, and the verges covered in wildflowers. Spring and autumn was the time to head east. Long sweeping avenues of beech trees, fields of baby lambs, or silent sheep, blackberries and rosehips were the treasures to be found there. Artworks were dotted along the way, - it was sad to see one of them dumped and broken at the back of the site huts.
I walked here most days during my pregnancy with James - normally towards the west, as my favourite tree was there, and I would touch it's trunk and talk to it. The morning that I discovered I was expecting a baby and the age of 45, I met 4 magpies on the trail. My husband's tree was on the eastern path - an old beech that looked like Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings. Walking with James - either in the buggy, or the sling was an almost daily pleasure. We threw autumn leaves in the air and tried to catch them, played inside the hollow tree, listened to the music of thewind rattling the broom seedpods, watched a hairy caterpillar cross the path in front of us, and played for hours in a flooded low lying section. All this is gone, save the memories; the trees cut down, the water drained, the wildlife concreted over. Our paradise is being paved.
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Check out the blog of the very talneted Shell at My Handmade Haven - a very lovely and creative lady.
