The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
My sons slept in.
I celebrated 32 coffee-free days with an affogato with my girlfriend.
The boys joined a friend’s birthday party for slip-and-slide fun.
We turned our brains off and enjoyed a sunny pre-fall day.
We generally have very busy Satudays. It was nice to take one off and rejuvenate ourselves.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason
This one is not for Doomers.
One of the reasons I have trouble thinking COVID-19 is a global conspiracy is what is happening in the public school system.
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Caveats:
1. I listen to conspiracy theorists, they often share information that injures the gatekeepers of knowledge (government, corporate media); and therefore, will not make it into “reputable” sources.
2. I don’t need a conspiracy to know that government will take every opportunity to assume more power. This is a basic human desire and when alternative incentives are reduced, it is driven by the survival instinct.
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At the very least, this is a terribly thought out conspiracy.
With school shutdowns, many people are being forced to consider homeschooling. This has never been the case before. Almost every pre-COVID discussion I’ve had with parents who have chosen public/private school starts with a remedial course on homeschooling.
Now, people are being exposed to the principles every day. Some are engaging to varying degrees and many more are seeing their friends and family try a different educational path.
Ultimately, fewer children will be returning to the classroom. Whether it’s those who love virtual/remote learning, radical unschoolers, or the infinite rainbow between, schools will look differently.
I’ve been concerned with what that will mean for the home education community, but as our ranks grow, we are sure to gain strong champions for the cause of educational freedom.
This postive change of perspective was inspired by the following conversation:
Tom Woods Interviews Jeff Deist on Silver Linings from the COVID Dystopia
“You know they went after King when he spoke out on Vietnam/
He turned the power to the have-nots
and then came the shot”
-Rage Against the Machine, “Wake Up”
Rage and my father planted the seeds for my unschooling journey. Those high school years were where I started to turn away from the ways of this world and seek my own path.
My father told me I’d be an N-word as long as I was dependent on the system. As a sensitive teen, it was hard for me to hear, much less understand. Rage Against the Machine said much the same, but with a religious ferocity that I felt in my soul.
I’m not the only kid who felt the Holy Spirit move me in a mosh pit. Those were religious gatherings, whether we admitted it or not. For all the anti-religious fervor I heard from metal stages in the 90s, those experiences opened my mind to power that was beyond the physical. Music in itself is a mystery of connection that runs deeper than our understanding of it.
Hearing this verse tonight as I shared The Matrix with my sons for the first time, I was inspired by the memory of my rebel self being encouraged by lyrics I often disagreed with. Even Rage can’t seem to get it right as they lionize a deeply conservative religious leader such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
But the second line is what has both lifted me in recent years and yet, weighs on me, “He turned the power to the have-nots / and then came the shot.”
Unschooling turns the power to the have-nots. It’s been my greatest honor to get out of the way of these amazing humans growing before me.
We’re in an amazing age of educational discovery. As optimistic and outspoken as I am about the learning lifestyle, I never imagined a flood into homeschooling such as we’re seeing now. It is wonderous to see so many families discovering the joys and it is heartbreaking to witness the inevitable turmoil as educational paradigms shift.
And then came the shot.
There is danger in empowering the have-nots. Politicians, bureaucrats, and those who profit from their systems do not want their power diluted by free minds. People are learning that they do not need the government to educate their children. As I went through this exact realization, I asked myself, “What else can regular people do without government?” This dangerous question is never asked in school, but millions of families may be asking it right now.
There is no Federal legislation on homeschooling and in states like Delaware, parents are left without burdensome regulations when it comes to educating their own. It’s not easy, but there is freedom in that. The diversity (of all sorts) in the home education community is a testament to how people from all walks of life can work together without being forced to do so.
I’m here to sing the praises of that freedom and defend it. I’m here to honor the homeschool community and cheerlead as it grows. I pray to God that He will give me the strength and the voice to turn the power to the have-nots.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason
My sons know where I stand on many issues, but we don’t have a teacher-student relationship. We work a student-student model where one student happens to be older.
In this way, we test each others ideas and try to pry up the loose bricks, replacing them with a stronger foundation. They have influenced me as much as I’ve influenced them.
I believe strongly in making a steel man argument for opinions antithetical to my own.
Nah, not that kid. He was beautiful in my arms this morning as I did my Wim Hof Breathing and listened to a 25-minute Louise Hay meditation.
Then something went sideways. I was fought on going to the grocery store, cleaning up, eating, you name it.
I was spent by afternoon, useless. It’s these days when I really don’t think I’m cut out to be a widower and or an unschooler.
We recovered the day and calmly discussed how we can work together to make our lives as full of the adventures we love much. We’ve had these days and these discussions before. I don’t know if tomorrow will be different, but I do know they weren’t impressed with what was available for dinner tonight.
Anything that is worth the outcome has to include struggle. After *nearly* saying some nasty things to my boys, they still wanted to hold me and tell me they loved me before bed. I trust that as long as we keep our relationships in a loving place, we’ll be okay.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason
We don’t share this part enough. Road trips, camping, and adventures contribute to a disordered home life. I’m writing this quickly so I can get to cleaning today, but it’s okay. All of these pictures have books, puzzles, projects, and evidence of our learning lifestyle.
As you embark on your #unschool, #homeschool, or #virtuallearning journey, remember to give yourself grace.
We had tastes of normalcy this week.
My sons played and watched music; viewed, talked about, and interacted with art; and made some art of their own.
I was reminded of how much the term “essential” has been misused in recent months. The arts were discarded for orbitrary biological necessities.
To live is to learn amd adapt. It is not to eat and sanitize. An animal knows precisely how much food it needs and how clean its body needs to be.
Humans have souls and minds that need to be nourished no less than their bodies.
Our obsession with Science has turned the trinity of our existence into a hierarchy of convenience. We have gotten very good at observing and explaining the physical world, so that becomes a comfort zone for us, a place for experts to tell us what our body needs while ignoring the mind and soul. We boast a bit of knowledge about the mind, so it gets a place in the hierarchy just below the body. Many reduce the mind to a physical phenomenon, nesting it neatly in our familiarity with the material.
The soul doesn’t fit into our obsession with the concrete. It can’t be summarized in a textbook. It can’t be generalized and categorized. We can only understand it on an individual basis. Science can help, but it can’t find the answers we seek.
We found a little more balance this week. We had homemade smoothies; pushed our bodies on the jiu-jitsu mats; learned about the Holocaust, Caravaggio, and cinematography; and and fed our souls with yoga, prayer, music, and art.
As tricky as it may seem, it can be made simple: the learning lifestyle is primarily learning about yourself. As you nourish yourself, you will expand your understanding of the physical, non-physical, inner, and outer aspects of existence.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason
The learning lifestyle happens everyday. Sometimes it has its greatest power when there are no plans at all.
This morning we grabbed some friends and headed to Ashland Nature Center in Hockessin, Delaware.
During hours of hiking and playing, we learned about spotted lantern flys, Willys-Overland Motor, sycamore bark, archeology, jewel weed, stinging nettle, and much more. We climbed, threw off clothing, dug for treasure, and took our time to observe spotted lantern flies at work on a tree and a redtail hawk hunting in the tall grass.
Once you get in the rhythm of unschooling, you realize more and more what you have accomplished at the end of a day.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason
Your child’s failures are not your failures. Your child’s successes are not your successes. How your child defines success and failure is entirely up to him or her, and those definitions will differ from your own.
For months our casual relationships were strained. Divisions grew between us as differing media accounts, risk assessments, political positions, and governmental measures formed.
We were limited in our contact with one another. Impersonal, online slights were never softened by social contact or context.
The truth of my homeschool community is that it thrives on social contact. No matter how much our politics or approaches may divert, we come together with our children and recognize in each other the fundamental focus of our educational choices.
Without those meetups, many fell victim to their own ideology and entrenched themselves in easily-accessed online communities. Carl Jung said, “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.” We let ourselves be possessed by our ideas.
But for all the bonds that were stressed and broken, there are new, stronger bonds forming. Bonds based on the same focus on our children and a recognition of each other’s good will.
Those who are willing to meet in person and allow each individual to choose his or her level of assumed risk are forming new tribes. Not based on ideology, but a love for our children and fellow man. These tribes are based on grace for those who choose not to join us, as our arms remain wide and welcoming.
It is these tribes that will preserve the things we all love. Music, theatre, sports, homeschool meetups, martial arts, family reunions, parties, weddings, and even memorials. These tribes will not let the paradigm shift away from a social existence among social animals.
In this mad season, “social” falsely preceeds “media” and “distancing.”
I prefer this definition of “social”: living and breeding in more or less organized communities especially for the purposes of cooperation and mutual benefit : not solitary.
I’m grateful for the new tribes. There’s excitement in this wave of meeting new people. I can hardly keep straight the soccer players, homeschoolers, jiu-jitsu practitioners, and yogis I’ve met in recent weeks. We see each other and share big smiles as we dive into the things we share and love.
God bless, I appreciate you, and thank you for reading,
Jason