Tag: Unschooling

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The Age of the Autodidact – Self Learner

You are replaceable if all you ever do is learn a single skill for a single application. Machines do this, AI does this. You must actually be educated to adapt to this new digital age. Education is the knowledge of principles and potential applications of them, in all facets of human experience…

In order to learn anything, the skill or concept must have a bucket to be placed in…a place in your mind, in your experience. You could read 100 books and take copious notes, but if you do not have buckets to place the ideas into, you won’t remember a thing. It is when we make connections in the ideas we read about, and find connections to things we have already experienced that we actually retain what we have learned.

Science: Organized Body of Knowledge Developed to Understand a Given Subject

There are many sciences, but unless we actually know what science means in its original context, we begin to view science as an esoteric set of skills and knowledge that has gate keepers in white coats, whom we believe without question, because they are the clerics of the new religion. We never blink an eye when tomorrow they pronounce new dogmas that completely contradict the dogmas they pronounced yesterday. It is of great importance that we understand science as a means to understanding, not the definitive end to understanding.

Here are some buckets to place all you learn into, these are ancient buckets, developed by the Greeks and given a rebirth in the middle ages:

The Trivium and Quadrivium can be broken down further into new arts. These additional arts emerged since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas. None the less they are simply connections between the original arts or sub categories of them. For example, Arithmetic and Geometry are connected by Logic (Dialectic) and the mathematical sciences. Furthermore, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Geometry are necessary for Physics, which is the science of our shared experience in the natural world; this includes biology, chemistry, etc. Ethics (study of morality), and Metaphysics (study of being) are sciences heavily dependent on logic, grammar and rhetoric and inform our spirituality helping us know what is good. These are the arts that inform the science of the humanities. Finally music touches the soul with beauty as does the visual arts, which both can and do inform architecture, design and our experience in the natural world…thus they are understood through physics and experienced through creativity and spirituality. All is connected and none is mutually exclusive, therefore an educated person can never be specialized, unless this person be disintegrated…unbalanced…disconnected.

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Are Our Youth Capable of Recognizing Evil and Their Own Voluntary Enslavement?

The time is upon us when the truncated vocabularies we all have make it nearly impossible to recognize our own ignorance and lack of freedom due to it. In George Orwell’s 1984 in chapter ten, a scene expresses the very consequences of dumbing down a civilization.

During a film shown at a hate rally, a helicopter is shown firing on a lifeboat full of refugees. A woman in the audience begins to protest, but is quickly silenced by those around her.

She begins to yell amidst the audience:

“They didn’t ought to have showed it not in front of kids,’ she said. ‘They didn’t it ain’t right not in front of kids, it ain’t.'”

This scene is significant because it highlights the Party’s control over information and the suppression of dissent. Even though the woman is clearly upset by what she sees, she lacks the vocabulary and power to effectively express her feelings.

Today our schools create enemies and a false sense of oppression and victimhood to keep the children’s eyes focused anywhere but where the actual oppression finds its genesis. In the process less learning about how to think, write and speak is happening, and the only learning is telling students what to think, how to speak about it, and possibly write a semi-coherent explanation of, why they were born a boy and how society is keeping them from being the girl they have been convinced they are. These false narratives keep minds enslaved to the Party line…whatever it may be…today…tomorrow…or years from now. The only revolution for the Party is to maintain a constant revolution.

It is easy to pick on public schools today…I do not think free public education is bad, in fact I believe it is necessary…if it is actually free, and by that I do not only mean it costs the student nothing, but that it allows for dissenting opinions and views among the students and enables student’s to actually engage in debate to find Truth. This includes and depends on Teachers who teach socratically and demand students support their conclusions logically and coherently.

It is the goal of The New Peasantry to provide guidance on how to educate our children to be deep thinkers, impervious to vapid and shallow contradictory newspeak spewed from the Party….those who promote constant revolution and create oppressed classes from thin air.

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Education or Training? Your Child May Not be Getting Either of These

You walk up to your Child sitting on the couch with a school iPad, and ask, “What are you learning?” and the response most undoubtedly is, a shrug and head shake, or if you are lucky you may actually get a spoken word.

“I don’t know…ugh.”

Today’s schools, and for the large part of the past 20th century, had a singular goal of preparing your child for a career, in which they have to go to college to qualify for jobs they would need, in order to pay the debt they would most definitely accrue. This system has been very lucrative, as the schools get tremendous funding per enrollment, and they give the hope of a merit scholarship. The reality…after graduation, your child is sent with a federal aide application, and they get a large loan. The college gets the money, and it matters not if the child finishes, the money is already in the college coffers.

As I went through this system, as I am sure many of you did, and ultimately taught for six years in this system, a pattern emerged in what I saw. The content was not the actual goal of the school, it was teaching kids to complete tasks on time, following the directions as prescribed, and maintaining order…this became the most apparent when I began working in the corporate world. The corporate world is an extension of rows and columns, group think, group work, specialization, and never questioning the status quo…at least not in earnest. The rebellious urge is satisfied with pointing to anyone or anything other than the school system as the source of tyranny.

All this being the current state of free public education, I want you to know, there is a way out. There is a way to raise your child to be a free person with a creative and deep mind, who can adapt to the world, not be a victim of it.

The New Peasantry has a mission to rebuild families, to support going home, and building community, through: Subsistence Homesteading, Homeschooling, and Family Business. We provide guidance on educating your child, balancing the needs of a home and the ever necessary cash flow to fix and progress the home based business.

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Homeschooling: Consider the Whole Person

Continuing on the homeschool series, I want to address something I discovered later than I would have liked. How do you support and tailor learning to your child’s interests and strengths? Should we point out strengths and weaknesses?  

I would say I discovered this a bit late, but I have tried to remedy this with older children and begin this earlier with younger children. Right now, I have two graduates and eight children homeschooling. My older kids, I see, can be a little unsure or insecure about those niches that interest them. I attribute this to my lack of support and my closed-minded tendency to want to pump out well rounded upstanding students as was my goal in the public-school classroom. 

In all of that, the most striking piece you may be taking away is counting the children. My family size does color my perspective and experience as it relates to homeschooling, but I hope that the content I provide can be applied to a general audience. It will, however, perhaps benefit the large family mom who finds herself going a little bit crazy. Maybe it won’t? As large family moms may tell you, the dynamics of the family changes with each new child, as well as age gaps between siblings, gender of the children, and personalities. But, just to get it out of the way in case you are wondering just how large the family is… I’m expecting baby 14 in the summer. 

Now back on track, encouraging curiosity, independence, and self-awareness in building on child strengths is so important and underutilized as an approach in brick-and-mortar school. I’ve had children who absolutely love reading and creative writing and hate math. Most school years it was gritting teeth to just get through the harder, disliked subjects. Survival of requirements is something that’s been recurring in our homeschool. I’m bound by my state requirements, as many homeshoolers are. Some states have a larger freedom in homeschooling. I’ve had to find a balance to ensure my kids meet requirements, but can be creative and explorative in their own interests, which usually are extracurricular. I have some children who have a talent for music, some for handcrafted art, others for building, some farming. All of these interests are pathways for learning and building confidence in a skill or talent.  

When I began to ease up on academic expectations, I enabled my children to enjoy learning and it became meaningful; almost like play, not school. That’s not to say I want my children to be mediocre in core subjects, but I’m not gung-ho about having an academically rigorous exceptional child. I’m raising a whole person. The reality of adulthood is that there are successes, there is failure, there’s sacrifice and there is enjoyment. Focusing on academic excellence prepares them for a world that, by observation, may not be all that fulfilling. So if you have that academically robust mindset and goal for your homeschooled child, this likely is not the blog for you. This is raw, real, and unscripted. It’s self-reflective in nature, balancing and adapting to people not being solely dictated by a curriculum.  

Homeschooling has taken a different path from year one and that’s my message to you. Don’t be rigid in how you approach homeschooling. What works for one child, won’t for another. What worked one year, may not the next. One thing, though, that will be ever present and enduring is your child’s strengths and interests. Teaching them how to try again after a mistake or failure is equally important and that’s something I’m still learning how to do. I’ve been ingrained with the idea that failure is not an option and that bled into my expectation as a mom. Big mistake. I don’t want to get upset if they don’t get something right. Rather, I want to teach them healthy disappointment and build resiliency so they aren’t afraid to try because their attempt may end in failure. 

One of the largest benefits to homeschooling, in my observation, is to have the time and environment to encounter self-awareness and emotional intelligence. In a school environment there are too many eyes and stressed adults to hone in on the importance of a sound spirit. School is a hell-hole of bullies and judgement, pressure and scrutiny. That’s not a safe environment for forming a sound spirit and a healthy soul. Kindness, empathy, and many other virtues are seen and attributed to weakness. Survival of the fittest prevails. This can be true of a home environment too, but you can make the conscious choice to provide a safe space (yup, I used the woke word) to build up the person. I no longer believe in tough love. I don’t think breaking a person builds them up. That may work for muscles, but although my child’s heart is a muscle, it doesn’t work that way. Brokenness leads to problems in self-esteem and self-worth. The little voices in their head when they are young, become the loud negative screams that sabotage their future successes and relationships.  

If you take anything from this post, it’s that you’re forming a whole person…a mind, a heart, a soul. Math isn’t going to make my child a healthy and successful adult. It may be the means of their livelihood, but as most adults can attest; once you have long lasting relationships, your career has little to do with your core person, ability to resolve conflict in a marriage, or raise a child. In fact, careers often become stressors to family life, some companies touting that you should have work-life balance while demanding most of your time and loyalty. So, consider for yourself what kind of person you hope your child to be. That will be the largest influence in the approach you take as you homeshool. 

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A Broader View of Unlearning

 Unlearning Part 1

In the homeschool sphere there has been more and more attention given to unschooling. What is unschooling and why is it important, you make ask? I think the foundational reason many parents choose this approach is to help their kids unlearn bad habits of rote memorization and unmeaningful school habits. Instead, the unschooling approach becomes an attractive alternative in order to produce a holistic approach to learning, leaving children with the freedom to explore and find opportunities for learning that are organic. 

I’ve wrestled with this approach for my own children and while I love a Montessori approach to learning for primary grades, which tends to be more hands on, it’s not fully unschooling. I’ve not fully adopted the absolute unschooling approach in homeschooling, but it has permeated other aspects of life. Baby steps, people. I’m trying to get myself together, first.  

You see, unschooling would require much unlearning on my part. Redirecting my core beliefs, values, and approaches to life in all its complexities. I’ve been on quite a journey of unlearning and reforming pathways that I believe will serve me and my family well. Even with buy in, and support, it can be incredibly overwhelming and exhausting. As mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been homeschooling for about 12 years, having taught public school 7.5 years before that, in addition to college training to be an educator following a public school education K-12. That’s a lot of habit forming and much society pleasing routes to achieve “success” that I have to break down, unlearn and rebuild. 

There are questions I’ve had to consider in how to reroute my parenting approach, my own emotional healing, and holistic living which involves lots of toxic purging.  

Toxicity comes in many forms in life. The wakeup call usually comes in the form of illness, or a mental breakdown. For me, it became obvious postpartum right after we begin homeschooling. I don’t think I want to share the details of those moments, they are quite private and painful, even now. However, my diagnosis came as an autoimmune disease, which altered my ability to think and function. Everything was exhausting and humbling. In these moments I have to consider lifelong habits of eating, household purchases, and lifestyle. I had to grieve for a while. I grieved my health and the fact that my once comfortable daily normal was no more. Grief is a journey and in that journey my toxic purging began. 

I begin with what I thought would be the most obvious and quick, which was detoxing my physical environment. It took several years and many baby steps, but eventually I did a huge overhaul of purging toxic cookware, dishware, glassware, utensils, food storage containers, bedding, mattresses, cosmetics, cleaning products, laundry detergent, footwear, toiletries like shampoo, conditioner, lotions, deodorant, toothpaste, bar soaps, even to a certain extent linens for clothing and bathing. I hyper fixated on endocrine disruptors and arming myself with as much information as I could. The Wellness Mama podcast became a daily staple. My hyper fixation on detoxing the home became so prevalent that one of the toddler’s most common question was “Mama, is this toxic?” The word toxic was frequently and familiarly used.  

I then transitioned to trying to mitigate our toxic load in food. Through the years we’ve cut out and added back certain foods. Convenience and expense of food has played a significant part of our family menu and with a growing family, growing in age and size, along with economic fluctuations has made affording a healthier lifestyle challenging. Not impossible, but oh, so challenging. Enter homesteading. That’s become more of my husband’s realm. He loves homesteading. He’s craved the lifestyle for much of his adult life, but like me, was programmed to believe certain truths. One of those falsities was that homesteading wasn’t a viable or lucrative lifestyle to call yourself accomplished by society’s standards. Nowadays, it’s not easy to make it solely on homesteading or farming and many engage with the land and raising food as an additional job to a conventional career. Homesteading, no sugar coating it, comes with its stresses and hard work, but it’s healthier and gives peace of mind to know your food source. We’re still only a couple of years in, having overwhelmed ourselves with a little bit too much sometimes, but it’s become engraved into our family identity. 

These are some of the practical changes that we’ve made, most of which we all assume have an effect on our physical health. They have, but not fully. I still don’t feel amazing or healthy. Living with an autoimmune disease that cripples fertility, while being pregnant with baby 14, makes me think some of those changes have had an effect, but I still feel unwell. It’s become obvious however, that we are a whole person. Health comes from a sound and balanced mind, body, and soul. We’ve been on a spiritual roller-coaster, the most significant part of that so far has been in probably the last four years. Additionally, the journey of addressing mental health and unlearning unhealthy emotional approaches to interaction and relationships is part of our current journey, the next level of unlearning, detoxing, and healing. I’s like to continue this series touching on emotional intelligence, emotional trauma, and spiritual growing pains. For now, let’s recap.

If you are on your own health journey and want to start a natural living approach to life. One that values and promotes a whole food diet, farm fresh food, regenerative farming and ecological healing, low-waste living, functional medicine health approaches, and biohacking my recommendation is to delve into a couple overarching topics listed below. 

• Light Hygiene and Red Light Therapy

• Grounding/Earthing

• EMF exposure and how to mitigate it 

• Anti-Inflammatory diet

• Non-Toxic Household swaps (I will have a post on some ideas)

• Non-toxic cleaning products

• Natural Remedies 

Eventually, the goal of this blog is to provide consultation services. I’m not a medical professional, nor am I offering medical advice. This is my own journey and experience and what I have personally learned and implemented. Any consultation would be practical advice from my lens of experience.