Gerta

I got sidetracked by Lane’s book – I read it years ago, the bits about babies. I had a thing for old books and fusty writing.

….. but that they (students) learn something, that they learn it for a reason, and that they learn it from someone.

Gerta writes about three domains of purpose:

qualification, socialization, subjectification (how I am)

Interestingly, these three domains are exactly what people bring up in their objections to homeshooling.

Qualification is the easiest to dismiss as you actually do not need to have such a thing to enter the workforce, especially on your own terms. University can be entered qualificationless just at a later date, which I would argue is  better educationally anyway.

Socialization is a weird thing to associate with a school. Especially if we are talking about it in a bigger sense than just making some friends. School friendship socialization is limiting due to the age of who you are socialized with. It is true that in some (I wonder what percentage) situations, you can be exposed to a wider range of groups of people –  physically diverse, ethnicly diverse, social status, money, etc but mostly schools are stratified – to the catchment, socioeconomic area. Socialisation should happen in a wider range of contexts, wider range of people…

Subjectification is harder for a school than it is in a homeschool environment. This is where people say “she can’t do what she wants for ever.” The implication is that only school can get us, compel us, to do the stuff required to be able to do the other stuff that we have to do! This is a total misunderstanding of what the freedom homeschooling my child means. I think what I am aiming for is her subjectification. It is making the decision to be taught, including being taught something one can not as yet see the relevance of to the end goal, the “hard” stuff and even stuff that one isn’t naturally interested in.

Schools, particularly secondary, as they are set up now act as a way of limitation on this becoming as there is so much external pressure -grades, being told what is important, less space for you to come to your subjectification.

Actually, maybe it is not just secondary. I have met many providers of education, Science alive, Libraries, other external (to school) educators who have made comments on ‘teaching’ a homeschool group and the different dynamic of the way the children participate. I noticed this as a new entrant teacher in the difference between children who came from playcentre as compared to other ECE. Playcentre kids were “not ready for school” in the sit down on the mat way but were already asking different kinds of questions, were less accepting of adult direction. Had more initiative? confidence in their own interests, more of a sense of what they were interested in! Using their interests to engage in what was offered….

Quotes I liked..

.. I think that what Neill tried to do at Summerhill was precisely to give young people time, particularly the time to encounter their own freedom, because only once they had encountered that “point” would more formal education become possible and meaningful for them… 

Summerhill sounds to me like heaven.

Responsibility — and here I follow Levinas — is not something we choose but is instead something we encounter. And it is in such encounters — when a responsibility comes to me, so to speak — that my subject-ness, my existence as subject, actually begins to matter or comes into play.

The encounter with responsibility is therefore the “moment” when I encounter my freedom and thus my unique existence as subject — unique in the sense that it is up to me to determine what to do, which no one can do for me.36 This is uniqueness-as-irreplaceability, which is very different from the idea of uniqueness-as-difference that characterizes the phenomenon of identity.