#intergenerational relationships outside your own family are not only healthy but important

[tomwambsmilk]

I think the worst thing about the modern take of “age gaps in non-familial relationships are always bad, even in friendships” is that as a person in my 20s I think it’s actually really really important to have adult friends who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s. Real friends, not just casual work acquaintances. I have a few I held onto that I met at my last job and those friendships are deeply enriching in a completely different way than my friendships with other people in their 20s - plus, it gives me an advice circle and safety net that I can turn to when shit goes wrong or I fuck something up, which has happened more than once bc I’m in my 20s. I get that not everyone is in a position to meet and befriend people from other age groups, but it pains me to see people actively avoiding those situations because there’s so much to learn… please do not restrict yourself to just being friends with other dumb fucks who know nothing bc they’re in their 20s. You need a friend with life experience, and no, your under-30 friend who SEEMS to have it all together actually doesn’t count because, like you, they haven’t been alive long enough to get the kind of life experience that gives you wisdom

#there’s a larger conversation to be had about the disintegration of communities where this would happen organically #but that’s for another day #intergenerational relationships outside your own family are not only healthy but important #and were a staple of everyone’s life for most of human history

[smileystudies]

I'd be super interested to hear your thoughts & experience with homeschooling! (based on the tags from that post haha not just randomly asking)

hey anon, thanks for asking me about this! sorry it took me so long to reply but I wanted to do this some sort of justice. my answer has turned into a bit of an informal essay, so add a cut here.

my experience

first, a little background. I was homeschooled with my siblings from preschool to the end of eighth grade (fourteen years old) in a moderately wealthy and predominantly "white" (largely Anglo American) county in the US. this was not the typical "homeschooling" where kids are left to their own devices a la Island of the Flies. instead, I was "enrolled" in a program that provided some in-person classes, textbooks, and teacher-advisors who made sure I was on track with my education.

there were a lot of things I liked about being homeschooled. after I finished my math exercises and some science or history chapters from the textbook, which was usually around noon, I was free to do whatever I wanted. for me, this usually consisted of minecraft (our play time limited to thirty minutes), playing in the mud, creative writing, and rereading the same books. we also had lots of opportunities to pursue arts--for instance, I took acting classes and had piano lessons from the time I was four. I also got to go as fast or as slow as I had to, which was great for subjects I loved like literature and also subjects I struggled with like math.

there were also a lot of things I disliked. for instance, when I was in seventh grade, I started feeling cloistered, trapped. it wasn't that I wasn't allowed to leave--I visited friends and had classes a couple times a week--or that I lived in an abusive home, but more that I felt like everything big and important was happening outside. part of the problem, I think, was that, due to various types of cultural dyspohoria and intergenerational trauma, I grew up without a sense of real community outside my home.

spending every day around my parents and siblings probably compounded whatever gifted child syndrome I had going on, which made it difficult to transition out into the world. when I started at in-person high school, I was playing catch-up in terms of not only social skills, but also pop culture. on one hand, that insulated me from racism, ableism, and the toxicity that american culture can be sometimes, which allowed my parents to transmit more of their values to me. one the other hand, I was unable to connect with a wider Latino community outside my household, which left me feeling like a bit of an imposter.

in some ways, I legitimately feel like I've only just finally got up to speed. now, while I still feel a disconnect with mainstream american culture, I understand it and can engage with my peers in a healthy and rewarding way.

that's not to say I don't love my family. I really can't say whether I'd have the same close relationship with them if I'd attended traditional school in the US. there's also a lot to be said for assimilative and colonizing pressures that affected my family, and I appreciate how homeschooling shielded me somewhat from them. at the same time, the experience deepened a perceived divide between my home culture and the world outside--a constructed reality that has many pros and cons.

generally speaking

once upon a time, I thought that if/when I had kids, they would definitely be homeschooled, too. I used to think that it was the reason why I maintained a love of reading and learning.

I don't think that's true anymore.

maybe being fully used to school would have set me up to be even more proactive with my studies in college. maybe I would have grown up with a healthier relationship to failure and being "gifted" and finding my passion in the world. these are imponderables, though.

there are still reason I think well of homeschooling. I think it allows kids to have more experiences in their childhoods, maybe as an actor or traveling with their parents (though these situations are usually reserved for the wealthy). from what I've seen, it's also been helpful for students who are struggling with school (from bullying, learning disorders, self-esteem, etc) to have a breather.

on a more ideological level, I would argue that, by centering learning in family and community, homeschooling can be a truly anticolonial practice. it's the inverse of boarding schools. done properly, it could be the future of our pre-university educational systems.

then of course I'd have to define "done properly", but I think that's beyond the scope of this post.

seeing what schools are like in my city in spain has also helped transform my opinions. there are students with strong social connections (to peers, teachers, their neighborhoods, their families, and beyond), an interest in learning, something that seems more difficult in the US. the community connection seems to be stronger for my students, though that could also be a more general divide between the social realities of urban and suburban spaces.

once, I had felt outraged about laws requiring children to attend school. now I know so much more about abuse and religious cults, and so much more that I firmly believe that homeschooling should be regulated. for this reason, I sometimes really worry about US american homeschooled kids I meet these days. the question, then, is: how do we regulate it? how do we provide freedom and flexibility while also preventing extremists from brainwashing and abusing children?

for me, the bottom line is that education MUST be centered in community, whether it's at a formal school or in homeschool system. that, I think, is where you gain a lot of power. where there is no community, there is a dangerous vacuum that can be filled with all kinds of toxicity--ideologically, psychologically, physically, etc. we can still use homeschooling to reimagine the way we teach our kids; it's simply not enough on its own.

now I know I haven't captured everything and I know I'm just starting to unpack my own experiences. if you're reading this and have a different perspective, I invite you to chime in as long as you're being civil. education reform is a dialogue!

xo

isabel

#ask #anon #homeschooling #personal