Average & Standard or Authentic & Self-Driven

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At the moment I’ve been reading “Dumbing Us Down” by the legendary John Taylor Gatto. Thanks to my dear unschooling friend Leandri for introducing me to him!

What I truly love about him is, he can talk about Unschooling as an authority from the viewpoint of how well he knows exactly where the school system fails…because he won awards as a teacher! What struck me was his language around “averages and standards” and how school is about exactly that!

Producing a cookie cutter “average” or “standard” student, ready to go out into the world and do “standard” things. Well, see, for me that just doesn’t sit well. I, along with everyone else who allows themselves to be authentic…am a Unique Individual! And I do not want my children to be judged up against others for a measure of standardisation. That’s what school about! Comparing and competing and I don’t want a part of it because I see no point.

We are all SO gifted in our OWN unique ways and we need to honour that in order to be happy and have clarity and perspective! If we are judging ourselves against others, we are so to compare and either put ourselves down or on a pedestal! Why? Because according to our own values, they either will or will not be living up to our standards.

Thats just the thing…someone else will achieve according to what THEY want in life! To measure ourselves against that is to fail. Fail in seeing our own unique gifts, failure to see where we are accomplishing things according to what WE want in life!

To say that someone has little wisdom in such early days in life, because you are measuring them against a rule that each student should know a little bit of every “set” subject content, by a certain schedule, is to miss the point, that we are all so differently skilled by DESIGN! Nature has wisdom in making us all different, because whenever there are two people the same, one is not needed!

We need diversity by nature! This is one of my great inspirations for unschooling! Some people misunderstand the meaning of unschooling to be a rejection of education. But that couldn’t be further from the truth! Unschooling is about honouring ones unique passion and supporting their learning in whatever there heart chooses, so it becomes authentic, self driven ,(autonomous and organic) TRUE learning. Learning that is deeply embedded, not imposed memorisation for a test!

Learning that is lifelong and useful! Applicable and insatiable! When that is how a child or person learns, they can’t get enoug and you can’t get in their way! School get’s in the way though…because it hardly allows for self chosen subject study! It’s all laid out! Unschooling is about getting OUT of the way of learning! That’s how I see it anyway! Would love your thoughts.