Feature

"Are you taking orders or are you taking over?" - The Clash

Josh Hooten

The other night I was reading a book about Free Schooling and Unschooling and thinking about my own kid who will be entering the/or/an education system soon. As I lay on the couch reading I was rubbing and probing my head feeling the little dents and dings. I'm not surewhere they all came from but I do recall a few of the more exuberantcrashes, falls, and blows that helped reshape my head when I was younger.

You come into the world nice and smooth and soft and the worldimmediately starts mashing you up. First is the umbilical chordgetting cut, your own flesh, getting cut with scissors. No really,scissors! I cut my daughter's. And it's not like a ceremonial ribbon getting snipped at some fancy groundbreaking for some new public school named after some minority historical United Statesian who got nothing but a raw deal from our government and would have surely beenground down by either racism, classicism, sexism, or all three hadthey attended the public school now bearing their name. Cutting an umbilical chord takes a couple of snips. Imagine cutting a tube of wet, slippery, human skin. Then they clamp off the part still attached and everything on the world side of the clamp dies and falls off,everything on the you side of the clamp becomes your first scar.

And they just keep coming. For me it was bike wrecks and missed baseballs crashing into my skull that did most of the work on theoutside. Skateboards pitched in, as did flying down various driveways in little red wagons I couldn't steer. I fell from a few things liketrees and rooftops. All the mishaping that happened to the outside of me was the direct result of wild little kid freedom. The bumps on myhead I was rubbing and tracing as I read about wild little kid freedom happened because I was unconstrained in my want of higher, faster, funner.

I spent a lot of time as a kid being completely free to do as I pleased. We'd ride our bikes out to the middle of the woods or some farmland and we could be whoever we wanted. We would sneak into the houses being built in our housing development and sit in the skeleton structure and do whatever we wanted. Our only master was the dark. When it got dark, the party was over and it was time to go home. Had you tried to take away our weekends or our summers, we would have battled you to the death.

The only time I didn't feel free was when I went to school. I wasn't free. I had to be there at a certain time that was not of my choosing, I had to go to a room that was not of my choosing, sit in a desk I wasn't comfortable in, be quiet, sit still, do this, do that, repeat these words, when this time comes, get up and do this, when this time comes, sit back down. After doing a million things I had no say in, I could then go home. Here is work to do when you get home, you are still not free, even in your room, even with your headphones on and Earth, Wind, and Fire playing in your ears. Every time I wanted to move or sing or run but stopped myself because I didn't want to get in trouble was one more micro scar inside of me. Dozens a day everyday.The scars on my outside were worn as badges showing things I'd done ortried—scars born of freedom. The scars on the inside were doubt, fear, embarrassment and frustration. Those scars came from giving up my freedom in hopes of pleasing the authorities in my life.

You can get lost—really lost—in the music in the heart of the summer,once you've had a few weeks to deprogram yourself from school. Once you're are absolutely certain you don't have to go tomorrow, and you don't have any homework to do. You have to spend a few weeks letting that weight slide off your back. Too late in the summer though, you start dreading going back and the doubts creep into the headphones, keeping you from really getting down while "Sing a Song" takes youhigher and higher.

If we went back to my old house in North Carolina, the one that backed up to the woods and was the fifth house built in the sprawling Lakes development, I could walk you to a dozen old friends houses blindfolded, even now. Same goes for the countless foxholes we dug inthe woods, and the BMX jumps we made. I'd remember every turn because I learned those routes in the summer, when my mind was free. I do not remember anything I learned in school. I barely remember any of my teachers. I don't remember the books I read. I don't remember what room I sat in for hours on end nine months a year. I don't remember any of it because I didn't care and I was not free to learn what I wanted, or follow my natural curiosity or interests. I had no input orcontrol over my time. I did fine in school because I was afraid of doing badly. But I didn't like being instructed in that setting. I did love learning, however, and I learned best when I was allowed to pilot my own brain.

As I watch my own kid get closer and closer to what for most kids is compulsory education, the further and further away I feel myself pulling her from it. There is a public high school near our store. The sign outside proudly says "Preparing young people for college and life." College and Life, in that order. Learn to take tests, sit still, follow schedules and directions, get a good application together, look good on paper. Once that is taken care of, what, you learn how to communicate with other humans or resolve conflicts, or behonest, or be creative, or make art? Is this why kids show up to college and completely come unglued? Because they were so busy learning how to get into college they didn't get around to learning how to manage their non-school selves?

Why is what we learn in school valued so much more than what we learn in life or what we teach ourselves? For me, I don't even remember what I learned in school (save college, when I was free to learn as I chose and follow my own interests.) And why do many of us assume we can't learn something unless we are taught? Or why do we feel like we don't really know how to do something "the right way" if we figure it out on our own?

I spend a lot of time with my daughter. She is learning every second she is awake. We put things in front of her, like books, and blocks but we don't make her use them in any particular way and we don't correct her when she tells me the block in her hand is cake and pretends to eat some with me. If she says it's cake, it's cake. If it's part of a house she's building in five minutes, so be it. She is so much more engaged and curious when we let her figure out the world than when we tell her what is what and how do to everything. She learns to please herself when she is free, when we dictate and lead, she learns to please us.

School's function is to train children to please others, not themselves. School's function is to create an obedient workforce and citizenry. School's effect is the stamping out of wild little kid freedom and getting you to accept that only the weekends for the rest of your life are your time to do as you please.

All I see is destruction in that system. If I send my daughter down the chute and our system of compulsory education, mandatory testing, homework, and punishment for poor performance stamps out her inner-wildness and freedom I will have destroyed something meaningful and beautiful and replaced it with an obedient servant of our government and society—both of which I find painfully flawed. If she makes it through that system with her inner fire still burning bright, it will have been because she fought back and perhaps found a few allies along the way, but it will have been a struggle. Why would I set her up for a, minimum, 12 year fight to keep her individuality in tact? Why would I hand her over to forces designed to alter, reroute, or dismantle that?

No, government and society, you cannot have her. We'll find our own way.

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