I’m borrowing the title from the latest episode of The Harmonious Homeschooler.
We haven’t “homeschooled” in years. Before my wife died, we were trying to figure out how to explain our educational philosophy briefly. “Unschool” fits by definition, but denotes a negative. Although we intentionally discarded many of the assumptions of twentieth century schooling, our focus was not merely against the status quo. We were focusing on a love of learning fueled by our love for each other as a family. We discovered that our philosophy was greater than educational, it was holistic. Or it aspired to be, at least. We came up with “learning lifestyle.” It’s not very good as a conversational shortcut; but then again, nothing in the realm of home education lends itself to shortcuts.
Two years after losing my wife, I was embracing child-led learning and ambition more each day. My sons continued to train in jiu-jitsu and desired to compete in tournaments, where they learned how tough winning and losing can be. They took theater classes and learned discipline, history, narrative, and the nuts and bolts of production. This led to a taste of bigger stages and an urge to pursue professional acting, so I took them to an open audition where they earned a spot on a talent agency roster. Road trips, nature hikes, museum meanderings, gymnastic classes, quidditch…the adventures were countless.
Then the restrictions of governments in response to fears surrounding a novel coronavirus shut down all of our pursuits.
Our Learning Lifestyle changed over a course of days. The grounding consistency of training sessions at Elevated Studios, the new challenge of classes at Olympiad Gymnastics, hosting a growing Lego Club in our home, church services and Sunday School, and the excitement of getting ready for their first professional acting auditions…all gone.
For four weeks I have sought some reordering of our lives. Most of that time has been in search of meaning. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” I was searching for the wrong why. I wanted to know why the world had gone mad with irrationality, forgetting that the world had never been rational. To expect that now was my own madness.
The why I need is, “Why the Learning Lifestyle?”
The answer is within me, in need of revisiting, refreshing, and retooling. It’s exciting and scary to work on the fundamentals, especially when you’ve already built so much on the existing paradigm.
This isn’t homeschooling, this is something new.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason