Hello steemworld!!
This is my first long form non art related post since... well a couple days ago! Anywho in my #introduceyourself post, I offhandly mentioned that I stopped going to public school after middle school; specifically after 7th grade, and today we're gonna talk about that.
I couldn't find an old kindergarten doodle of my family and myself unfortunately, so I'm presuming it's lost. But I'll add in this really cliche homeschool banner in its stead!
Sauce of photo: http://www.classichousewife.com/about-homeschooling/
So you could say I was your typical and 'normal' student for the first years of my life, I went to school, and did my homework. And probably the best years of my public schooling were when I was in a charter elementary school. Everything was as perfect as anything I had known, we got to paint, play games, do fun projects like making volcanoes and dissecting squids and there was very little monotony. My teachers actively fostered my creativity and drive, and I am so grateful for them all these years later.
But that all changed in middle school, because the charter school finished in 6th grade, and my parents could not afford to send me to a private school. So I got hauled off to my districts standard ol' middle school, and my experience totally flipped. It felt like I was going to prison instead of school; formal greetings, annoying titles, plaster white walls, rows of fluorescent lights and bars on the windows. The classes I had been taking went from explorations of creativity to lecture halls filled with mindless drones penciling away at monotonous material. In one of my favorite classes: art, the painting and doodling was gone, replaced with PowerPoint presentations about art form and history. In science, the hands on dissections and experimentation disappeared and were replaced with printed out handbooks showing us what a lab WOULD look like or how an experiment was SUPPOSED to go. It all felt very draconian. And while that may sound horrifying or pleasing - depending on who you are, the worst part about it, were the kids.
At the time I thought these 'children' were nothing but a bunch of angry, creatively starved and egotistical prepubescent devils, I am now convinced they were this way because of the education system. Anyways it was sad that I had to leave my elementary school friends behind, because these new people were nothing like them. This new bread of peer, traveled in packs, and if you were judged to not be popular enough, well, OFF WITH YOUR HEAD. Since I only owned a couple dresses and much of my clothing was handmade by my mother, I looked somewhat out of place, and in middle school looking out of place is a death sentence. I mostly kept to myself and stayed in the library for much of my free time, but sometimes a clique would wander in, see me and then proceed to mock me, often for not being 'one of them', or being 'lame', because I didn't have the newest purse or whatever else was hip at the time. In retrospect the reasons for the mocking were petty and insignificant. Though unfortunately, I often went home crying to my parents after school, and eventually enough was enough and my parents decided to pull me out.
I should say here that my Mom and Dad are total tiger-parents, both being immigrants they wanted me to be fully accomplished so I could make my own way in this country. So on my first day of home-8th grade, my dad sat me in front of his computer and told me to analyze what I was seeing (he still does that). It just so happened to be a series of algebraic problems, so I did what he asked and thus began a long, long, long process of him teaching me how to teach myself.
Rest assured, my parents did teach me facts and figures but they were more focused on having me build skills. Here's what my average day looked like: In the mornings I did gardening, botany and crafts with my mom, in the afternoons if my dad was home from work, we would do humanities and the sciences and in the evenings I would do languages with my Mom. In every spare minute of time, I was always reading, book after book, and laboring away at whatever assignment was thrown at me.
One of the greatest gifts of homeschooling is the freedom for you to take your education into your own hands and to go at your own pace. So over the course of my middle and high school years, I learned many spoken languages, programming languages, sciences ranging from astrophysics to genetics and much more that you would never see in a public high school! So if you're reading this and your children are currently in a public prison... er.. school, consider taking them out. Sign them up for a YouTube account, get them a library card, encourage them to teach themselves! Maybe even create a Steemit account for them and make them follow all the fantastic scientists, artists, linguists, educators, writers and programmers that we have here on our lovey little platform. If anyone needs more convincing
just take one look at @papa-pepper and his @little-peppers. I rest my case.
As always, much love and many toodles!
Kara