From Reflections on Fat Acceptance: Lessons Learned from Privilege, Linda Bacon, PhD, some excerpts:

Thin privilege only exists, of course, because fat oppression exists – because we have this sick cultural
idea that there is something wrong with fat and that a fat body is a marker of a defective person. This
idea is so strong, so deeply entrenched in the culture, that we absorb it, it gets lodged in our psyches,
and most people, fat and thin, come to believe and act as if this oppressive idea is reality. Most people
want to be thin – and view thin as better. The internalization of this belief drives the body anxiety most
people – fat and thin - experience. It fuels our preoccupation with trying to obtain or maintain that thin
weight - and the feelings of shame if our bodies don’t measure up.

[...]

No, my motivation for working against fat oppression has little to do with being a caring or fair-minded
person. When it comes down to it, working in this field is really about my own survival. I fight fat-phobia
because it’s ugly and mean and I need to save myself from it. I do what I do because I’m really afraid –
because I believe that the costs of not challenging this system are too painful for me to bear. My whole
world shifted once I understood that. The war that was originally waged against my self – the fat on
my body – was more appropriately waged against oppressive attitudes about fat.

Let me share a little more about why fat oppression feels so painful for me, because it may not be so
patently obvious given my body size. The cultural perception of fat bodies as “wrong” hurts those of us
in the “right” bodies too. In fact, most thin people suffer from anxieties about their weight. An
individual’s weight tells you very little about whether it feels problematic to them.

[...]

Most people have internalized fatism and believe that there is something wrong with fat, from the
perspective of appearance as well as health. We’re all subject to what psychologists call “confirmation
bias.” Once a belief is in place, we screen information in a way that ensures our beliefs are proven
correct.

Also, because we like to believe that our values are derived from a well-reasoned thought process of our
own volition, there’s a natural resistance to the notion that we’re basically pawns who have absorbed an
oppressive system, actively complicit in our own oppression and that of others. It makes sense that
people have a strong defense system – denial - that prevents many people from seeing this.

[...]

But another lesson I’ve learned over time is that resistance isn’t valuable only when it sparks an
immediate and visible change. The power of resistance is to create a safe zone – even if it’s just for a
moment - where fat-phobia isn’t tolerated, to set an example. You may not necessarily change the
other, but you plant a seed. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me over the years that
they heard this message once, but it wasn’t until years later that some other event catalyzed a new
awareness. Without those earlier seeds, the later events wouldn’t have had their impact.

[...]

It may just be that we don’t eradicate fat oppression. I’d like to have faith in the inevitability of justice
being done, of good triumphing evil, but I need to be honest here and acknowledge that I’m just not
confident that’s going to happen. The civil rights movement based on race began long ago, and while
some of the more explicit forms of racism are less tolerated, racism still permeates our psyches. [...]
But before you get down on me for pessimism, I challenge you to look at it in a different way, because it
can be very liberating to reframe it. Maybe the point isn’t victory, as much as we would like to see that
done. Maybe the real issue is that through the effort to achieve freedom and equality we get our
humanity.

Now, please, go read the whole thing.

What I think of as the eras of my life had completely different feelings to them, and I think of them as different eras because of this. I am not remembering as well anymore what they felt like, which saddens me. It makes me afraid that I may be losing individual memories as well, so I think I had better get some of it written down before I forget everything.

The earliest thing that I am aware of really remembering -- not just seeing the images from photographs in my mind's eye, but the actual sense of being -- is being at the zoo. That makes sense, because for an experience to stick in my head it requires having been different in some way from the usual routine of life. For a long time this memory of being at the zoo was one of my favorites, that I would go to time and time again because I could feel the experience of being there and because it was so wonderful.

This memory of the zoo had nothing to do with the animals, but with the sensation of my being in the place. There is a concrete walk, round and expansive, and a curving low concrete wall. The air is hazy and cast in a golden hue, everything a watercolor blur, warm and bright. It is at the height of summer and I am running, playing. My mother is there; there is a stroller that my brother must have been in, which makes me think that it must have been in the summer of 1969. It is my most enduring impression of the happiness of the beness of childhood.

Another memory that stands out for me that has not been produced by or survived because of photographs is that of kissing my mother on the cheek. I would press my lips into her cheek as hard as I could and she would say, "Linda, you can't do that, it's hurting me!" I didn't mean to hurt her, it was just that my ardor was so physically intense! I had to. I loved my mom so much. I thought she was the best mom in the whole world. I called her "mama". She was sweet and loving and took care of me perfectly. (My friends has mothers and mommies, one too formal and the other too silly for me. Later there was the perfunctory and detached "mom". The word "mama" still calls forth for me the maternal goddess archetype; lucky for me that that is what my children call me.)

When I was three and four years old I went to preschool. My mom tells me that I was wildly desiring of being able to go, and that she was able to get me out of diapers by telling me that I could go only if I used the toilet. It was a rectangular room in the daylight basement of a large old house. It was not a room that they simply used for the preschool, the room belonged to the Preschool, as if it had been there from the beginning of time. At one end was a long table where we made things and had our snacks; in the middle against the wall was a climbing structure/fort made of heavy wood beams painted with a glossy red and blue paint that had a distinctive smell that I loved. The climbing structure was important to me primarily as landscape; it was part of the identity of the room. The opposite end of the room was a little play and storytelling area with a rug and low book shelves and puppets and dolls. I was never much interested in listening to one of the teachers or mothers reading a book to us, as we were expected to do. I was fidgety, bored. Though I loved books and was already reading, it was not enjoyable for me to have to sit there and listen to a story not of my own choosing when I could be doing something I wanted to do. I'd rather have looked at a book by myself or continued making things.

And the main thing for me was indeed the making. One project that stands out in my mind is the pasta Christmas tree, macaroni and wagon wheels glued to cardboard and spraypainted gold. We made beautiful designs by folding paper and dipping it into water dyed with food coloring, something that I've never been able to replicate; there was something special about that paper, a cross between the crinkliness of onion skin paper and tissue paper. There was the spatter paint over a maple leaf onto construction paper, and blowing through a straw at ink to make a tree shape on paper.

I don't remember any of the people. I have a vague sense that some of the adults annoyed my mom, but I was unaware at the time of any of their personalities. They were like the out-of-sight generic mwah-mwah-mwah grown-ups of Charlie Brown cartoons.

Despite attending the preschool for two years of my life, that is all the memory I have of it; it too became part of the routine of my life so is now unrememberable as distinct, separate events. It was enough though to shape my expectations of life, because it was so nice. I am wanting always to get back to the feelings of security and wellness and warmness and engagedness and beingness that were characteristic of the place. I have a preference for hand-made things and solid wood toys and glossy bright colors and polished concrete floors and children's books from that era. It does make me wonder how much of the current crafting DIY movement has to do with all the crafting we children were exposed to in the early 1970s in schools. It would be interesting to see if the type of crafting favored by people corresponds to their age. I bet it does. 

I think a lot about what I would like to be. I look at Swiss Army Wife or Soule Mama or Purl Bee (or, ironically, Amanda Palmer,) or a hundred others I appreciate, and I think, "I want to be that, I could be that, I will be that," and then of course I don't because I'm not. I think what it really is about -- why I can't just let these people be without dreaming of putting myself in their place, but in my own way of course -- is envy. I would like some attention. I would like some accolades.

But not just that. When I was a little girl I would draw a picture that I thought was just so good and show it to my mother, and her response was always positive, but I knew that it was not really true. She was supposed to tell me it was good, you can't tell a child you don't like her picture. I knew (and I know now how that feels) that she didn't feel it. No fault of hers, I have a pretty strong pretense sensor. But I wanted desperately for her to share in what I felt with me, to be with me in it. It was soul-crushingly disappointing to me that she didn't. I hounded her about it, asking her over and over, more and more aggressively, Do you really like it? Do you?, (as if by intensity I could awaken some primordial passion in her, wake her up to the reality I lived in,) until she became exasperated and angry.

That story illustrates a large part of the nature of my envy: I want what I am to be what others are. That a blog has great numbers of followers demonstrates that they get it, whatever it is that the blogmaster puts forth. They are with her. This is what popularity means: that something about you is something that others recognize. And this springs from a deeper place still: the desire to truly fit, to have sympatico, to have comfort and ease in being with people, the people to whom you truly belong. Who hear you, who see you, who understand you.

I know, intellectually, that at least in this world a price is often paid for that in loss of privacy and expectations of leadership, and that what looks like sympatico may be something else entirely, and that even if it is real, people change and people move on. But I still want it, and I still imagine sometimes that this is a way I could have it, even if just a little bit of it.

Clearly, I'm not in a position to. I'm not showy, I'm not clever, I'm not a salesperson. I'm earnest and sensitive and too serious for most. I think to myself that I am that song: I am a rock, I am an island. And then I think of anything that C.S. Lewis has ever written about friendship and love. Somewhere he writes (and I paraphrase probably very badly) about the astonishing moment when one realizes that there are others out there very like oneself. That one is, in fact, not alone. And how else am I going to find them except to keep allowing myself to be what I am, and not wasting energy trying to make a village for myself where none would exist naturally? What that leaves of course is hard and scary in its own way, because it involves doing what I am really excited by, what makes me sing inside, which perhaps no person I ever meet will understand, and that's a lot of not fitting, a lot of rejection. I suppose the answer lies in letting go of it. Like they say (infuriatingly) to people who are desperate for someone to love them, when you're least looking and least expecting it and paying the least attention to gaining it, that's when you will find it. At least for real. Or, you don't, because there is no magic equation by which we can guarantee that we get what we want. Which is why, I figure, I've just got to get on with being who I am. It's the only real, good thing that I can guarantee.

I doubt I would ever lose weight without becoming ill, but the possibility worries me. I think about factors that may have put me at the upper range of my normal, like pregnancy and breastfeeding, lifestyle changes that come with having children and living in the suburbs, toxins in the environment, lack of nutrients from soil depletion, etc. As some of these factors change naturally or by intention so that I no longer need as much fat to function and be well, my body may respond by changing its composition. I also worry about wearing form-fitting clothing occasionally because it does make me look smaller. If I wore it all the time it wouldn't be a problem because people would be used to me looking that way, but I like to be comfortable so I usually wear looser clothing.

What do these two things have in common? That people are inevitably pleased by the perception that I've lost weight (based in reality or not) and feel the need to comment on it. My fear of this is not unfounded; it has happened to me countless times.

And it is so, so, so problematic for me. I know that the intention is good. I know that people feel it to be somehow intrinsically good to be thin and that they assume that this is universally agreed on, and that it is a friendly, happy thing to praise and congratulate someone for it. But from my perspective, knowing what I do about the body and psyche and social control that they probably have not even guessed at, it is incredibly offensive and harmful.

Imagine living in a culture in which a woman's work is understood to be taking care of the home and catering to the husband, and in which the ideal woman is to be not too smart or concerned with the workings of society. It's not too hard to imagine because we're not yet very far off from that. So, imagine that. Now imagine a woman who has a natural aptitude for, say, mathematics. I will tell you a story about her. When she was young, and before she knew it was bad to be smart (because the common wisdom in her society is that it interferes with being a proper homemaker and wife,) this woman was scorned and shamed and ostracized for it. Her teachers and parents, feeling bad for her, gently (and sometimes somewhat coercively, but always for her own good!,) tried to get her to make choices that would make her like the other girls (some of whom were naturally inclined toward homemaking, some who as of yet had no obvious inclinations other than to play, and some who did have other inclinations but quickly learned to keep quiet about them.)

She tried very hard to get the approval of those around her. She studied what it was that the books and magazines and movies showed proper women doing, and her parents helpfully put her on a regimen of those behaviors in the hopes of making them into habits. She tried very hard not to do math, or to think critically and logically, or really to think much about anything at all. Her own mother had done it successfully, and the girls at school were constantly talking about ways to master the temptation to think. You needed to do it a little to survive, but too much would make you undesirable. This was obvious because the girls who didn't look like they were thinking were the ones that got the attention from boys and adults, which they of course wanted because it felt good. For most of the girls, the older they got the more developed their brains became, and so the harder it became to conform to the ideal, and they spent much of their time worrying about it and hating their brains for wanting to think, and consequently secretly hating themselves.

The protagonist of my story wasn't aware of what the other girls were going through for a long time. She thought she was part of a disgusting minority in her failure to mold her brain into something society approved of. She thought she would never be at peace. But when she went out into the world, on her own, she started to meet people who had also failed but who did not see it as such. They said that while it was fine to be a homemaker, not all homemakers are unintelligent and need not eschew intellectual pursuits, and that women who make careers out of their intellects are wonderful too. The most important thing, they said, was to be true to what you are and to love what you are.

She could see the rightness of this and forged ahead, rebellious, to become a mathematician. She felt great anxiety at going against the grain, and felt heavy-hearted every time someone exhorted her to do the right thing and be a proper woman, or just said mean things because she wasn't. She lapsed a few times, buying into the hype that her life would be better if she wasn't so smart. Reason and self-preservation eventually won out, and she felt emboldened and morally obligated to speak out about the discrimination and bigotry, yet all the while harboring a wistful desire to not be the way she was so that people would love her and she would be allowed to be at peace.

As a grown woman, talented and therefore employable by those who are not so bigoted, she found work as a mathematician. Most people didn't understand. They thought she had to work because she didn't have a husband. After a time she and a man fell in love and got married, but she continued to work which they attributed to his flaws -- he must be desperate, there must be something wrong with him and nobody else would have him, or perhaps he couldn't support two people on his own wage.

Now we come to the present. They have a daughter who is well loved and cared for, and as the daughter grows it becomes clear that she too has a mathematical mind. The woman, knowing full well what society's opinion of that is, works very hard to normalize it as much as she can for her daughter, through her speech and her actions and who they associate with, in the hope that the daughter will not have the hard road to self-acceptance that she did. Then one day she loses her job. For whatever reason, they cannot employ her any longer. It's a small town so soon everyone knows, and nearly every person she comes across says to her, "Oh, how wonderful! You must be so relieved! You finally get to be a housewife!"

Now, this isn't a direct analogy, obviously. But it does explain how it feels to be a person in a situation in which she is being praised for something she doesn't believe to be praiseworthy, and how loaded that situation is for her. When someone compliments me on appearing to be smaller than I looked to them previously, a number of things are going through my mind: being led to believe all my life that there was something wrong with my larger-than-average body and me for having it and the misery that was a result of that, the long struggle to liberate myself from it, the goals of the kyriarchy and how convincing women to associate their worth with their appearance serves that, how appraisal of others' bodies implies ownership of them, how current praise implies previous negative judgment, the weakening and deleterious health effects that dieting has on a body, and my concern for the psychological well-being of my daughters, who have inherited a large body type, and what message it sends to them about their bodies when someone says to me, "You look great! Have you lost weight???!!!"

How to respond? I can't say "thank you". But I can't very well condense a whole lifetime and formation of ethics into a polite acknowledgment of their well wishes that also makes clear that I don't appreciate them one bit.

"I'm sorry, you're not in labor..."

"In labor", "not in labor", these are such loaded terms! With all kinds of definitions. For me, "in labor" means that this is different from the previous nine months of the baby growing inside of me. My body has finished growing it and is now in "getting it out" mode; a significantly different process is going on. I have shifted into a special awareness and alertness. It is imminent in the sense of "the next day or so," which it is not when it is "the next few months or weeks." Granted, in the early stages I may not be technically laboring in the sense of doing hard physical work, but it is quite different from the rest of pregnancy nonetheless. And please note the use of the term "early stages", which implies that there is something to be in the early stages of.

Midwives tend not to like to define it that way. Arbitrarily, according to this or that birth attendant: I am "in labor" (or alternately "in the birth process") when my contractions are four or three or two minutes apart and not before, or I am dilated to six or eight and not before, or other such markers (the mother not being able to converse during contractions, for example.) Or, subjectively: when I start having to work hard. But, you know, some women never do hard physical work to birth their babies (and I suspect that if not for modern birth management, that would be true for most women.) I didn't, in three out of four of my births. I walked around, I floated, I rocked, I howled in pain when the baby's head pressed on my sacrum, and I bore down a bit. Whatever it was, I did not regard it as hard physical work. Does that mean I was never "in labor"?

Of course not. But when a midwife says, "you're not in labor", she is not really talking about some objectively measurable thing, despite what numbers or signs she throws at you, or even about how hard it is. What she really means is that she doesn't want to hang around for something that is not very interesting to her that looks like it is going to take a long, long time, she's got other things to do and a life to live, and that in her opinion it will not help the mother for her to be there at that time anyway and might actually hinder her.

Now, I am all for being clear and honest about boundaries (thinking mainly of the care provider in this context,) and it is for me a great annoyance to have anyone around me in labor *at all* and I have a huge bias against social birthing, as well as guided and observed birthing for that matter. So trust me, I'm not of the mindset that midwives should never leave the mother's side. But I do want the midwife to consider what it is that is going on behind this request of her presence when the mother is, in the midwife's estimation, "not in labor."

When a woman wants her midwife in the early stages of... whatever this thing is that she's in that is different from plain old gestation but that midwives do not like to call "labor", what that says to me is that she is either scared and needs information and reassurance, or that she is not getting her emotional needs met by others in her life (extremely common in our culture) and is relying on the midwife for that and feeling like that is part of what she is paying her for, or that she has a mental picture of birth that has been fueled by culture that women are supposed to be attended from the moment that contractions start. What a surprise, then, that she has this expectation!

What is the remedy? Well, at the very least it is something that really needs to be hashed out before the birth. Just saying "you're not in labor, bye" is dismissive of what the woman is experiencing and feeling and can feel to her like abandonment, and can also be demoralizing, especially for those for whom "not labor" is hard work ("what the hell have I been doing then??") Sure, some people are tough and will say, "she's right, what a weenie I've been, I'm going to be a big girl now and do this all on my own until it's really hard and then I will be justified in having her support!" But I'm guessing that's the exception. Human beings are complex, and birth is a BIG DEAL. It is not the time to expect that people work out all their issues, it is the time when they should feel unconditionally supported. So yeah, boundaries need to be made clear, philosophy explained, terms defined, and expectations examined, BEFORE the birth. Please, don't just spring a "you're not in labor" on her! And consider, also, what other words might be used that are realistic about what will best serve the process, without being minimizing of what she has already experienced and done.

I've been playing around with what would constitute a good school curriculum, to my mind. Not because I wish to institute one in our 'homeschooling' (which we do not, technically, do) but because it's an interesting exercise. When someone asks, "What curriculum do you use?," I say that we don't and try to explain my disdain for the idea of curricula made up by people I don't even know, who think that people are standard, or should be, and that they learn best by reading someone else's boring textbook summary of some thing that they have no interest in.

Although I think I could make a better curriculum than any developed by the so-called "experts", I wonder how people would like being subjected to the things that I think important, aka Queen Linda's Curriculum. They wouldn't of course, because it has to do with personal interests; it's not "core". I respond that "core" as presented by curricula-makers is an illusion; it's all someone's personal preference, but over time we've been trained to regard these "core" subjects as the objectively accurate base of the skyscraper of knowledge. It also artificially compartmentalizes the information (so that we are trained out of awareness of the true, messy interrelatedness of it all) and presents it in a very specific format that implies that there is only one correct way to approach it, undermining creative and critical thinking, and divorcing it from the actuality of the thing in the real world. The result is that it is regarded as "just something we have to do" rather than something valuable and useful, and accordingly quickly forgotten (hence the need for repetition, in order that the school can have good test scores to prove to parents and government that it's "doing its job.")

But all right, I concede that in our school system things can't really be done any other way; parents need babysitters, teachers are understandably concerned with the organization and management of many children at a time, administrators are concerned with keeping their jobs, government is concerned with numbers, social engineers are concerned with keeping the class system as it is, and all this adds up to what we have, and it will stay that way until our society completely falls apart and there is no longer any funding for the schools.

What I don't understand is this: why do homeschoolers, who have the freedom to do just about anything they want, seek to imitate a system that has so little to do with true learning?

So, going back to my curriculum, I think it would be a fun prop to whip out when the conversation starts up about homeschooling, i.e. school at home. However, my interest in creating it waned pretty quickly and I couldn't bring myself to finish it, because it's essentially bullshit and my mind was distracted and wanted to go enjoy what isn't bullshit: my and my children's actual learning.

And god, it's fun! So much fun! How many kids do you know who get to learn in a way that makes that true? I ask the question not to be smug -(ha ha, we get to enjoy ourselves while you poor slobs continue to suffer!)- but because the answer matters. People will huff, "well, the point of learning isn't to have a good time." No? Try to tell my unschooled kids that. :) But all right, I'll concede at least that fun isn't all that learning is for. Regardless, there is no denying that learning happens best when it is enjoyable because that's when it really sticks.

That's not to say that the answer to getting kids to learn is to entertain them. If you are trying to teach someone and they don't really want to be taught, certainly the ability to entertain is a very good tool for keeping them engaged. The mistake though is in assuming in the first place that learning is something you have to get kids to do, when actually that's true only for institutional learning and imitations of it. The desire to learn, to take in information, to parse it, to apply it, is intrinsic to being human. And that intrinsic desire, when allowed to dominate, feels good. And you don't have to work to keep people engaged with something that feels good.

Granted, if you leave them to their intrinsic desires they probably won't learn what you think (or have been led to think) is important. They won't necessarily put themselves on a path to be doctors or lawyers or take over the family business. What they certainly will do is play for a long, long time. There's a reason for this, and it is that human children (and mammals in general) are wired to learn through play. Play contains purpose and thought and is characterized by a feeling of timelessness and being inside the thing of compelling interest, with it, flowing along with it. Play is creative and does not have an ulterior motive or goal outside of itself. Einstein's best work was a result of play of the mind. Play is not efficient, but it returns ultimate value, if what you value is creativity, innovation, and a sense of rightness of being in the world. Play loves the thing for itself, wholly. As a consumer or client, I'd much rather deal with a doctor, for instance, for whom her/his work is the end result of all of the previous, than one for whom it is simply a job that confers status and pays the bills, because that is the one who gets what it means to be a doctor and therefore the one I'd be getting the best care from.

What does this play-but-not-necessarily-what-you-want-them-to-learn look like? Often, just about every parent's greatest fear (at this time in our culture.) A perfect example is my twelve-year-old son, who spends a lot of time on the computer. If he's not visiting friends, going to the park or river, going to the library, shopping, making food, playing piano, watching movies, playing Magic the Gathering, etc., he's absolutely glued to the screen. I'd estimate, oh, at least the same amount of time every day that most kids spend in school. He used to spend much of that time playing video games on game systems, but he's mostly lost interest in that in favor of the internet. If I glance over, it usually looks like he's playing a game or watching a video, and if that was all I bothered to do I might develop a superficial judgment of what he's doing. Just playing! "Mindless" video games at that! But. When I sit down and talk to him, for even just a few minutes, here is what I discover that he has been thinking about when I was otherwise occupied: artificial intelligence, what constitutes consciousness, and something called "The Millennium Prize Problems". Which, once I ask, he wants to tell me all about. He then brings up something that reminds me of a video I saw earlier in the day that I think he might like, and we end up talking about conic sections, real-world applications of algebra, and the difference between objective reality and symbolic representations of it.

Earlier (which was about 11:30 pm actually, he is a night owl and while I am not it is good for both of us that I put off my preferred bedtime once in a while to spend time with him at the time of day when his mind is at the height of its machinations,) he and I happened to be sitting together surfing the internet, and as he thought and asked questions, we sped through flowcharts, algorithms, the electromagnetic spectrum, perception of visible light, the color wheel and color theory, base number systems, binary, and binary digits (i.e. "bits"). My brain was getting sloggy with the late hour, but his brain was going ping! ping! ping! ping! It is exciting to be around. And he has the mental energy to do this because he isn't bogged down by homework in the "proper" subjects, and because (this applies only during the school year, obviously, but still,) he hasn't been forced to sit all day in a place he doesn't want to be listening to a person he doesn't want to hear talk.

Now, I'm lucky in that my kids want to talk to me. Or maybe it's not so much luck, maybe it's that I've never tried to school them, or insisted they perform, or belittled or disparaged or restricted their interests (which, yes, include video games,) so that they see me as a comrade in learning. Certainly, though, there are children who are not ready to articulate certain ideas, or they might just be not interested in group learning, preferring their inner minds. So it's at least partly luck that I get to receive this very obvious evidence that children are learning all the time even if they play a lot of video games and assuage my society-induced imaginary fear to the contrary. I understand that fear. I just no longer believe, intellectually, that it's legitimate.

I also realize that there is danger in this type of example, because in this culture we revere math and science knowledge, we put it way up at the top of our created hierarchy of impressive and important things. The reason that most homeschoolers use a pre-packaged standardized curriculum is not because it's so fantastically educational and perfect for their kids, but because they're scared. They look at what we're learning about, and they think to themselves, "Well, we're not like that. It's all well and good for them, but we aren't academically-minded and that's why our kids are better off with a curriculum/being in school." But they are missing the point. This science-y stuff just happens to be what we like. It's not what anyone else should necessarily be doing. What you should be doing and learning about might be sports, building things, theater, tumbling, decor, feng shui, horseback riding, volunteer work, the paranormal, mythology, religion, organizing, bibliophilia, fire rescue, care-taking, aging, pottery, dancing, clothes-making or design, therapeutics, photography, old things, chemicals, movies, baking, retro advertising, auto mechanics, flying, animation, cake decorating, dirt, knitting, the paleolithic, bearded dragons, D&D, romance novels, rafting, Japanese culture, dolls... there is literally a whole world of full-on living that isn't inherently academic and doesn't need to be made academic to be important and worthwhile to you.

Because it's not all math and science here, either. Other examples from my children include lots and lots of screen time (problem-solving, strategy-making, sociological assessing!,) singing (mostly made-up songs,) piano playing (mostly video game songs,) imaginary play, writing and reading fiction, swimming in the river and finding agates, looking at pictures of arts and crafts, drawing, sewing, board games, going on walks, riding bikes, loving chickens, government and civil liberty issues (prompted by listening to NPR news in the car,) money, humor, Adobe Flash, spending the evening with no electricity, making cookies. And talking, talking, talking, always talking, about a million things under the sun. (People vastly underestimate the power of simple conversation between people who are really interested in what they're talking about.) None of these are less important or interesting or of potential value in their lives than awareness of how science-y people describe light, and all of these interests and states of being interweave with each other and spawn curiosity in myriad ways. When I think about the kids being made to trade even one minute of all this for dully simplistic and questionably relevant and certainly uninteresting exercises of "core" subjects, my heart goes heavy and black. Not while I have any say in the matter will anyone get to do that to them.

What happens though, when the child shows interest in something you don't feel you have the capacity to understand and have no interest in? I can't imagine that that isn't true to some degree for any parent. But here's the thing: people don't need someone standing over them dictating their learning for them, or even someone to provide all the answers. What they do need are resources and support and encouragement. I have zero interest myself in voice-overs for advertising and film, but one of my children has demonstrated skill and interest in it, so I am genuinely excited about it for his sake and will help him work toward it if that's what he wants. He doesn't need me to be his teacher for it, though, and I definitely don't need to give him assignments and prompt him to learn about it. All I need to do is support him and help with logistics that I (with the money and car) have the power to help with. What if it's more "academic"? Well, I can tell you right now that despite my love of math and science (and to be honest it is mostly the pretty, sparkly "pop" stuff that I love) my 12-year-old has already far surpassed me in the more cerebral aspects of it. He is doing fantastically well progressing on his own (and I do not mean to the school system's standards, just to be absolutely clear); a teacher would not be useful to his purposes at this time, but might be in the future and if that were the case I'd back him in finding a good one. Or he might decide to work with a mentor or group of people with the same interests. If you have a love of something, you go where other people have that same love. Most importantly, he's growing up knowing that he can make that happen, that he doesn't have to wait for someone (parent, school, university, government) to tell him what to do, who to learn from, where to go, when to do it. He gets to decide and he has the right to seek that out for himself. The confidence to self-direct is an empowering and powerful thing.

Really, I'm just here, simply communicating in word and action, "You have a wonderful mind and spirit and I love being around you. I know you know the world is a fascinating place and I think so too. Let's go be in it." That sort of thing is not hard if you really believe in it. And from that, effortlessly, flows everything good about learning. I wish so much that people could start believing it. Of all the damage that the our culture's system of schooling has done to people, that is some of the worst, that people have been conditioned to believe that their own drives and interests are unimportant and not useful, so that simply following them is not enough to create and live a good life; that they need to spend years and years putting all that aside to accommodate some arbitrary and irrelevant curriculum. So the spark is buried and we forget it. Do you begin to see that this is what this is really about? My kids will never have to forget it and never have to fight to find it again. Never.

What today has looked like so far at our house:

Topics:
anarchism
the concept of "laziness"
what it means to be "free" in our society
social engineering
planned helplessness
the class system
Greek mythology
the diet of ancient humans
the difference between "diet" and "dieting"
types and causes of eating disorders

Activities:
sleeping until awake
talking to and holding chickens
making an alphabet book with faces and names
asking and answering spelling questions
making up imaginary scenarios with dolls
making cookies
playing outside
singing
playing piano
having friend over
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Mine Craft