When we started on this educational journey, we only knew the words “home school.” We got desks set up and slowly began to transform part of our house into a school room. We didn’t recognize it right away, but major problems were there from the start. We weren’t being rigid, but we were looking at education as a mere “part” of our lives. Even worse, narrowing it to a physical area of our home. “School” was the other problem. We were trying to replicate an environment of learning that hadn’t been satisfactory for ourselves. Every time we left the house to go to a museum, park, arboretum, music venue, or even the store, our children’s curiosity led us down unexpected paths of enrichment. We were slow to learn from these experiences that the excitement of life and knowledge was out in the community. Engaging with new ideas and experts in their own environments.
These engagements often produce much more than expected. They cascade into different disciplines and new places of wonder. From the first time I spotted our older boy’s “birthday painting” (Howard Pyle’s The Fight on Lexington Common taught us when the American War for Independence began), Delaware Art Museum has been a frequent source of these moments. After having the pleasure of meeting Brian Selznick at the opening of the From Houdini to Hugo exhibit, we had a chance conversation with a security guard who had become familiar with the boys. He introduced us to the work of filmmaker Georges Méliès, the inspiration behind Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. As we sought out his films at the library, we learned about early film, World War I, and how onscreen special effects were born from Méliès’s live stage act. I also learned about who was behind some of the fantastical science fiction film clips that had charged my imagination as a child. Our boys grew a love for silent films and we returned many times to that gallery to explore early paleontology, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the art of historical storytelling.
A few years later we would read Selznick’s Wonderstruck, about a boy who just lost his mother, and that same security guard would attend Mary’s memorial service. Delaware Art Museum has been central to our educational life, a life that doesn’t keep attendance Monday through Friday, but a life that is with us always and everywhere. It’s a life where learning and community are interlocked and essential to one another.
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/G1fb75f2WN8?rel=0″ title=”Mister Rogers – Human beings learn best and most from other human beings” description=”Mister Rogers – Human beings learn best and most from other human beings” /]
God bless,
Jason