Ha. Actually, I've read tons of books lately. I mean what else are you supposed to do when you spend countless hours nursing a baby? The latest book was The Little Way of Homeschooling by Suzie Andres. It was a good read, and informative to an extent. But it wasn't a 'how to' book, instead it was a pump you up book. I'm not sure I was thinking that I was going to come away with what I did. But I am glad I did.
You see, I'm a choleric by nature. And I know we aren't supposed to put labels on ourselves, but this is what I am. I fight it a lot and sometimes being a choleric is good, it makes things happen when they need to, it helps me be decisive and such. But well, sometimes being a choleric can have some set backs, like my need to control so that there is a sense of balance at least in my head. It makes me play a lot of woe is me games in my head, and maybe well I try to control others too, and well yeah, they don't really like that so much.
The Little Way book pretty much pumps you up about unschooling, and rightfully so. I love the idea of unschooling, to learn for learnings sake versus you have to learn this because its on a test and you need to pass a test. I spent the majority of my education doing things like so, the memorize and dump method. There were definitely exceptions, but I think I failed to really learn a lot of the time within the system, and dude I have a PhD. I must be crazy for saying that then. Oh well, its been said.
Well, unschooling, then. As Mrs. Andres put it, its "Confidence. Love. Gentleness." And wow, as I look at myself, I see that I struggle with all of this. I am so used to wanting to please others, thus, I lack confidence more than I'd like to. I do want to love, but sometimes in trying to love I miss the target by a landslide and then in gentleness, I am so hard on myself that I fail completely at this most days.
Here's the thing, the best path isn't always the easiest. And really these are things that I want my kids to have: confidence, love and gentleness. I'm not even sure that we will be 100% unschoolers, and probably not if I let my nature take over too much. But these three things, these are what ultimately I want for my children. To have confidence in themselves because of Jesus. To love always and freely. And to be gentle with themselves and those around them as God gives us great mercy.
Unschooling may work for my benefit to grow in virtue, but I do believe that it will be of the utmost benefit for my children, the learners, to be happy in who God made them to be.
So if unschooling is the way that we achieve these things, then I guess we might as well consider it so.
