The unschooling of Caiman D

Thankful Friday

“There must be a way to educate young children so that the great human qualities that we know are in them may be developed. But we’ll never do it as long as we are obsessed with tests. At faculty meetings we talk about how to reward the thinkers in our classes. Who is kidding whom? No amount of rewards and satisfactions obtained in the small group thinking sessions will make up to Monica for what she felt today, faced by a final test that she knew she couldn't do and was going to fail.

"Pleasant experiences don’t make up for painful ones. No child, once painfully burned, would agree to be burned again, however enticing the reward. For all our talk and good intentions, there is much more stick than carrot in school, and while this remains so, children are going to adopt a strategy aimed above all else at staying out of trouble. How can we foster a joyous, alert, wholehearted participation in life if we build all our schooling around the holiness of getting 'right answers'?”

~John Holt~ How Children Fail

Most people call it dropping out. But Grace Llewelyn calls it rising up.

I’m going with Grace.

I’m so tired of Caiman’s six hours a day in school, six hours a day that are a complete waste of his time. School is merely a holding pen for him: nothing about it inspires or motivates him, and he’s labeled a failure for that. If I’m tired of it, he must be just sick to death of it.


We recently got a letter from BUSD saying “your son is being referred to Berkeley Technology Academy,” and at first I was actually excited. Berkeley Tech, formerly known as Berkeley Alternative High School. Maybe he’d learn some skills, and become an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter. Maybe it would be radically different, a learn-by-doing sort of place. In fact, the school’s website made it sound just fine.

But it didn't take much poking around on the internet to have my hopes dashed. An API ranking of 1 out of 10, for starters, and a description somewhere of the place as a "pre-prison," had me just about ready to cry. No way would this be a better place for him.

I set about looking for alternatives: charter schools, private schools, vocational schools, but my search was half-hearted. It's not that Berkeley High isn't the right school for him, it's that school isn't the right place for him at all!

I'd thought about homeschooling in the past, and I'd read a little bit of John Holt. But a lightbulb went off when I found this Grace Llewellyn book online. The title alone was enough to make me dance -- The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.

It reminded me of something a teacher of Caiman's said to me at an open house once, something that made me cry with joy and relief. I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something along these lines:

Caiman is great just the way he is. He makes me laugh more than any kid I've ever had in class. Yes, he's smarter than his grades show, and that's something you need to figure out if grades are important to you. But if that's not what's important, don't worry about it. He's going to be fine.

~ Ms. Searle, King Middle School teacher extraordinaire

I ordered the Grace Llewellyn book that same night. Caiman started reading it the night it arrived, and the next the morning he said, "WTF have I been in school for? I remember when I used to want to learn things, and now I'm mad."

Is Quitting School Really the Plan?
So... yes! The plan is that Caiman is going to take and pass the CHSPE in the fall so he can legally quit high school and take his education into his own hands.

So many obvious questions, right, about what he'll do all day and whether he'll really be motivated to learn anything and how he'll ever find a job without a normal high school diploma?

But I'm only an eensy bit nervous about these things. Caiman wasn't on track to head straight to college after high school; he wasn't even on track to graduate. He's not going to suddenly become a different kid (the kind of kid I was in high school who felt inexplicably motivated to Get Good Grades), make up all his failed classes and catch up with the other kids. It's just not going to happen.

Let me reiterate: high school has been a waste of his time.

If we stick with the plan, then obviously the unschooling of Caiman will be a frequent subject of this blog. So I won't try cramming every thought about it into this post. But I do want to provide at least partial answers to the questions I raised above. I'll answer one, and then give the floor to Grace Llewellyn and (posthumously) John Holt.

How will he ever find a decent job without a high school diploma?
Um, I don't think my high school diploma from Bonita Vista High School -- or my BA in film studies from UC Berkeley, for that matter -- had much if anything to do with the temp job I got that led to my job in marketing communications that led me to where I am now.

Not as far as learning the skills I need to do my job anyway. They did, I suppose, send me down the path of "knowledge worker" -- which neatly landed me in my soul-crushing cubicle. Maybe I should’ve risen up at 15 and taken the time to think outside the box about what I really wanted to do with my life. What I really wanted to learn and be and how I could change the world.

(For more on knowledge workers vs real workers, read Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. Or at least read his most excellent article, The Case for Working with Your Hands.)

Sure, "no high school diploma" could make things more difficult. But no way is it going to stop an amazing, intelligent, charming, all around awesome boy-man from finding work. There are alternative paths to most other careers -- even President of the United States (Andrew Jackson did not finish high school).

Here are a few other people you may have heard of -- artists, businessmen, billionaires -- who did not finish high school:

Quentin Tarantino
Johnny Depp
Dave Thomas (the Wendy’s guy)
Jack London
Sydney Poitier
Peter Jennings
Richard Branson (Virgin Air/Virgin Records)
Ansel Adams
George Carlin

Oh. And Albert freakin' Einsten.

What will he do all day? Will he have the opportunity to overcome or do things he thinks he doesn't want to do? (question adapted from here)
Answer from John Holt, in Teach Your Own: I'm not sure what this question means. If it means, will unschooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such requirements. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of school usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you'll be punished if you don't. Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it.

Will he be motivated?
Grace Llewellyn includes a section in The Teenage Liberation Handbook that addresses the reservations of kids who are considering unschooling. She writes:

But I'm lazy! If no one makes me learn, I won't.

How do you know you're lazy when you've never had the chance to choose what to work at?

If you call yourself lazy, your biggest job in unschooling will be remembering, glimmer by glimmer, how much you loved to learn before school took that love away. Frogs, wheels, words, blocks, dogs -- when you were a little kid, the world dazzled you. Also, you will need to allow yourself to admire ("learn") the things that still sparkle in your kaleidoscope, whatever they
are.

And laziness shouldn't be confused with zen-like tranquility--"lazy" travelers who hang out in a little Peruvian village for a week will soak up the life and ambience of Peru far more than the typical tourist who in one week sucks in Macchu Piccu, three market towns, four museums, two ancient ruins, and one horseback ride along the Urubamba river. People who find ways to get out of the 'rat race' or the obscene commercialism attending Christmas improve the quality of their lives by deliberately avoiding frantic, mindless activity. The same goes for learning: watching the sky for two hours will do mre for anyone's cortex than a harried afternoon of longitude worksheets.

But it's easy to go to school -- I don't have to think for myself!

To you, I have nothing to say. Stay right there at your graffiti-adorned desk. When you turn eighteen, proceed directly into the army. Be all that you can be, according to somebody else.

72 things

Thankful Friday
It's the Third of July today, and you know what that means tomorrow is! That's right...

Mom's birthday! In honor of her 72nd birthday, I'm starting a list of 72 things for which we're grateful for Ginger.

1. The sandwiches she makes me on Wednesdays
2. The rolls and butter patties she used to bring home in her purse after going out to dinner with Dad
3. The b'zillion games she came to when I was a kid, and the seasons she helped coach
4. That she said YES to our Italy trip!
5. The blue, blue eyes she gave to my kids
6. The way she clicks around on the internet these days after 70 or so years without ever touching a computer
7. How she feels rich having a few extra dollars a month, and how generous she is
8. The way she can turn a room boisterous in a matter of seconds
9. What a hot ticket she is
10. Every cheesecake she ever made

So, that's a start. I'll be back with more in the comments later. Meanwhile, feel free to add your own, starting with #11...

The boring things

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Pixar's UP, don't read this yet! Go see the movie first -- I swear you'll love it. Check out the preview:



Thankful Friday
I invited my mother to see UP with us, but she didn’t come. Five minutes into the movie, I was wildly vacillating between regret and relief that she wasn’t there. Since you've already seen the movie (Right? I told you to see it before reading this!) and since you know a thing or two about my parents' marriage, you know why: it would have resonated deeply, and she would have been bawling.

For our six tickets to the 3D version of the movie, we paid $72. Nobody had eaten dinner and half of us had missed lunch, so we also bought six hot dogs, a tub of popcorn and a bottle of water: $37.

But the first 10 minutes alone were worth the hundred plus bucks. That part of the movie did a fine job of setting up the story, but also, all on its own, it was a rich, complete love story with an inevitably sad ending.
You've seen it, so you know: shy, clumsy Carl meets Ellie -- a rambunctious, wild-haired little girl with dreams as big as his own -- after following the sound of her voice commanding an imaginary airship. They're instant comrades, both feverishly devoted to following the adventures of world-famous explorer Charles Muntz. She shows Carl her top-secret adventure-chronicling scrapbook, with the blank back pages she's saving for "Other Stuff I'm Gonna Do."

Flash forward to their wedding, and then scenes from a long, happy marriage. They're always saving for the big adventure they've always wanted, but again and again something gets in the way. They smash their savings jar to fix the car, for example, and to pay doctors' bills, and they're old before Carl finally realizes it's now or never. He buys tickets to Paradise Falls, puts them in a picnic basket and leads Ellie toward a picturesque spot on a hill. But she's too weak to finish the climb, and the next thing you know she's in a hospital bed. She dies with their lifelong dream unrealized.

I couldn't help thinking about my Dad, and that saddest thing he said to my mother before he died: that he'd never done anything.

So as you can imagine, I was crying behind my 3D glasses, and no doubt Mom would have been, too. But she would have liked it anyway, I think, because Carl and Ellie were such a lovely couple and that would have hit home, too.

Without wrecking too much more of the movie (not that you should be reading this if you haven't seen it yet!), I’ll skip ahead to Russell -- the eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer who ends up, by accident, on the grand adventure at the center of the film -- talking to Carl about his absentee father. He tells a long, wandering story about how he and his Dad used to go to Fenton's after Wilderness Explorer meetings, and after their ice cream they'd sit on the curb outside Fenton’s and play a game where he’d get a point for every red car and his dad would get a point for every red car and ---

“I know it sounds boring,” he tells Carl, who's not paying much attention. “But it’s the boring things I remember most.”

And of course at that point you know Carl is going to realize one way or another that his life with Ellie was NOT a disappointment for having never made it to Paradise Falls. That it was rich and wonderful and, well… an adventure.

But then again, the message of the movie isn't to let go of your dreams for those things. It celebrates the spirit of adventure, too. That's why you love Ellie from the moment you meet her. And what's more beautiful than the shot of thousands and thousands of multi-colored balloons popping out of Carl's chimney, tearing the house from its foundation and oh-so-gracefully lifting the house into the wide blue sky?

It's a happy moment when Carl learns how much Ellie appreciated all the small, ordinary things about her life with Carl.

But it's still sad that Ellie didn't get to go to Paradise Falls.

Carl's adventure with Russell is wonderful, but it's also sweet that they share "the boring stuff" when they get home.

It breaks my heart to know my dad said that he "never did anything."

But it's a no-brainer, and a comfort, to know how deeply he appreciated all the years he spent with my mom -- the more adventurous ones and the ordinary.

As for me, I still crave adventure. Trips with Hugh when we were younger, the family vacations we've taken to Hawaii, Mexico and Lassen, my Italy adventure with Mom... I remember those times like they were whole eras even though they were just weeks apiece. I can't wait until we go to Yellowstone this summer, and I want to go somewhere amazing for our 20th anniversary (2011!). And... I still dream of hiking the John Muir Trail, or even the entire Pacific Crest Trail.

But dreaming of adventure, craving it, doesn't mean you don't appreciate, as Russell says, "the boring things." It just means you have to try a little harder, sometimes, to give them the props they deserve.

And as you know, that's the reason I write this blog in the first place. To make sure I'm mindful of the little things I love.

Like sitting next to Caiman on the couch and resting my head on his chest.

Like driving, wherever, with Hugh, listening to the Giants on the radio.

Like visiting mom on Wednesdays. Sitting, eating a sandwich, talking, watching Ellen on TV.

Like painting the kitchen and building IKEA furniture with Hugh.

Like working at home the other day, with the most comforting backdrop ever: Kai curled up on the couch reading. Putting her book down after a while and sitting down to draw… so intent and quiet and peaceful.

Like turning a double play with Hugh.

Like leaning over the deck railing to say hi to Cathy and Raechel.

Like my bedtime routine with Eli and Taavi (while Hugh takes Kai): after reading to them, I make 10 circles on Taavi’s back, then give him a big hug and a big kiss. Ten circles on Eli’s back, then a big hug and a big kiss.

Like doing dishes while Hugh plays guitar.

Like taking the kids to a movie. Ordering six hot dogs and a tub of popcorn. Donning our matching 3D glasses (and having Taavi cry out during the opening credits, "Hey! That almost hit me!"), and watching in wonder as those balloons fill the sky and lift that old house and dear old Carl Fredrickson, up, up, UP.

The world shrinketh

Someday I'll be in a rocking chair telling my grandchildren that when I was a kid and wanted to talk to a friend I had to dial the numbers on a rotary phone -- which was much too big to fit in my pocket and was actually connected to this thing on the wall called a phone jack anyway. My other option, I'll tell them, was to write a letter -- on paper, with a pen or pencil -- and put it in an envelope with a stamp on it and put it in a box so a "mailman" could pick it up and drive it to the post office and...

They'll be bored by this point, but I'll still be shaking my head in wonder at whatever newfangled communication devices are the norm for them. Something faster/better/more unbelievable than Facebook and smart phones? Are they going to have all this technology built into their sunglasses and operated by brain waves, so they can read tweets just by thinking read tweets and shifting their eyeballs up a wee bit?

Trying to imagine the future of communication and social networking and technology in general sort of hurts my brain. I'm a late adopter in the first place (no iPhone for me; maybe by 2015...), and in fact I've been tripping all day over the fact that someone in India fixed the problem I was having remotely accessing my work email via a server that sits (I think) in San Rafael, California.

I spent about an hour on the phone with this guy. His English was fluent and he barely had an accent, and if I hadn't already known that our help desk had been outsourced the only clue I would have had that he was Indian was that instead of saying, "Hold on a sec" when he neeeded me to wait he said, "Please permit me."

And there was plenty of waiting. He asked for my employee ID number, and then had me log out, log in, try this, try that... He changed my password for me, twice, to see if that would work, but nothing. My mind drifted as he worked, and I wondered how the weather was in India, and whether he liked his job, and how old he was. I started feeling sort of friendly.

"Please permit me," he said. "My system is very slow today."

"You should call the help desk," I joked.

Silence. Dead silence.

It's a long way off, India.

But during a subsequent pause he asked me how my day was going. I told him it was only 10 a.m., and he said it was 10 p.m. where he was. Somehow, before long, he knew I had four kids, and that I was working from home because I'd hurt my knee. And I knew he worked the night shift and was looking forward to the weekend, hoping to see a movie and do some cooking at home.

My access problem was not getting fixed, however. Nothing seemed to work. He said he needed to open a fix ticket, and that he just needed to confirm my contact information.

"Is your phone number still (818) -- "

"That's not my phone number."

I gave him my cell number and he entered it into the record.

"Am I talking to Lisa?"

"Lisa? No. I --- do you have the right employee ID number?"

He read me what he had. It was one digit off.

"You just messed up Lisa, didn't you?"

"I did."

Once he had the correct employee ID number, it took him about 10 minutes to hook me up. We had a good laugh at poor Lisa's expense, and I had this fleeting urge to ask the guy if he was on Facebook so I could friend him.

How silly, right, and yet how many FB friends do you have that you barely remember from grade school? One of the draws of Facebook, I think, is that we (meaning most people) crave even the most tenuous human connections. Some would argue that social networking connections aren't human connections at all, but I would disagree. But that's another post.

It would have been embarassing, though, right. Maybe even creepy. So I didn't ask him about Facebook. But I did ask him his name.

Ajay.

Ajay from somewhere in India, working the night shift while I was just starting my day, fixing my computer from halfway across the world.

My grandkids won't think it's a big deal, but it kind of blows me away.