The [Adventures] of How We Learn

[Adventure 244]

No, my children are not going back to school. They're not online learning. 

They've never been to school. They won't be going to school unless it's college, but even that is up to them.

I'd rather my children learn as they learn best - by living lives full of learning opportunities. My children learn to cook, clean, shop, plan, organize, do minor repairs, change oil, check fluids, play instruments, make art, sing, dance, and whatever else they want to learn. They learn how to find the information they need, to follow their passions, and to seek to learn more. We go to museums, science centers, historical sites, aquariums, hiking, and exploring. We talk about addiction, religion, politics, social justice, science, homelessness, equality, equity, hunger, life, death, gender, sex, language, and all the things. We volunteer at church and in a refugee resettlement ministry and do what we can to advocate for others. We talk about and deal with physical and mental health issues. We play card games and board games and inappropriate games and Dungeons and Dragons. 

No, my children aren't going to college just because they're 18 or 19 or whatever age you think they should be in college. They are instead going to get through this pandemic as mentally and physically intact as they can. They're going to get jobs and explore passions and figure out life and who they are and what they want to do before deciding whether or not college is a path they need to take. 

For us, learning is an adventure. I never want my children, no matter what age, to lose their love of learning, their passion for exploring things they're interested in or love doing to the fullest. I never want my children to think they can't do something or learn something. I don't want my children to define success by what degrees they have or what awards they've won, but instead by the passion with which they live their lives and the kindness and compassion they show themselves and others.

Through the years, people have said that my children can't possibly be learning enough to get by as adults. I beg to differ. When I first lived on my own, I didn't have basic living skills. I didn't know I had to check (and change!) the oil in my car, could only cook a handful of things, and had rarely done a load of laundry. I didn't know how voting or elections work. I was unaware of much outside of my white Catholic Connecticut upbringing. My children know a lot about a lot of these things.

And they say my children can't possibly be socialized. That's a completely different conversation, but let's just say that they do plenty of socialization through theater and the arts, through church, through volunteer activities, and because we're out in the real world socializing with people of all ages (true socialization) while other children are in school with very limited socialization opportunities.