New Post at LWOS
A fun post, about the effects of the family’s Jackie Chan obsession on Rowan’s education.
New Post on LWOS
It’s clear I haven’t been blogging much by how my LWOS announcements stack up. And lest anyone harangue me for working on those posts instead of Aurora’s birthstory, I wrote the LWOS posts up while I was still pregnant. So there. Anyway, this post is a fun one, about something astonishingly cool that Rowan did.
http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2008/07/upside-down-and.html
Unschooling the Music
A mom on a local unschooling group I’m part of recommended a singing program, boy’s choir, that was gearing up to do auditions. She has two sons, one not much older than mine, one 14, in the program, and they were both loving it. Sure, some schoolish aspects, but both the boys were learning tons about music in a way that really inspired them, and left them talking after class for hours about what they’d learned. So, since Rowan has expressed strong interest in singing, we decided to check it out.
After the first session, I ended up with flashbacks. Hideous school flashbacks. Ugh ugh ugh. But that’s not the point. I was sitting next to this other mom, and she was every bit as horrified as I was. It was like in the last two sessions, it had gone from a freeform, kids-on-the-floor doing breath work and learning music, to being this weird, sit-in-your-desk, let’s give out tickets for the most obedient and compliant groups, kind of nightmare. Rowan’s not even enrolled (I made it clear that he was going to take a few sessions to warm up to deciding if he was even interested), but the teacher was already correcting Rowan. And that’s the part I need help/reassurance with.
They were going over material. And over it. And over it. Rowan was clearly bored senseless, and so decided to improve on the drawings in the notes they’d been given. So he was corrected for drawing, not singing. Then they started singing, and again, the teacher wanted to know why he was writing. Turns out he was keeping track of all the items in the fill-in-the-blank song they were singing. Finally, she called his team up to sing the piece, and he had it cold. And I could
see from his look that he was just unimpressed.
So here are my questions…
- The voices in my head are telling me that it’s somehow wrong to be absolutely delighted in how your kid chooses to entertain himself, and that’s it’s not OK to be so pleased at his ability to maintain autonomy in the face of authority. Tell me there’s a way to shut that voice up? How long until I can strangle my Inner Compliant Student?
- The other mom, and some of the significantly older boys I talked with, say that the experience we’ve had the last two sessions is aberrant, and we should stick it out, because everything will change, and once it does, it’ll be awesome for him. Rowan’s unimpressed, and talking about moving on to other things, but he’s clearly disappointed, because what he wants to do is become a better, stronger, “more musical” (his words) singer. Having had a great-grandfather in opera, and a grandfather in rock n’ roll, he’s got pro singing in his blood, and he’s very interested in that. He was
asking for training when we found this, and it seemed like a great opportunity. Am I damaging him by encouraging him to stick it out based on the recommendations of folks who know what I’m upset about and looking for? Or do we just walk away? Rowan’s not sure, neither am I.
Thoughts? Comment below…