Life Without School

The team of writ­ers at Life With­out School con­sis­tently deliver well-written, thought­ful arti­cles about all aspects of home­school­ing reflect­ing their belief that “no mat­ter how we come into this lifestyle, the pur­pose we most com­monly share is reflected best by this one ques­tion: ‘What is right for my child?’ Life with­out school is not for all fam­i­lies or all chil­dren, but it is a valid and val­ued lifestyle choice for many.” They describe them­selves as “real peo­ple liv­ing real lives with­out school. We share a com­mon belief that life with­out school is a valid and valu­able lifestyle choice.”

Unlike many peo­ple who strongly believe that one option — tra­di­tional school or home­school — is supe­rior and advo­cate for that approach, the writ­ers declare that their site is “not a plat­form for school choice or edu­ca­tional choice or lifestyle choice other than life with­out school, although diver­sity of lifestyle is wel­comed as a part of who we are and thus may be reflected in our post­ings.” In other words, their site is a breath of pure, fresh air — an oasis apart from the some­times mean-spirited debates that rage at other sites.

The Post of the Day Award goes to Missy who, iron­i­cally, was a teacher before decid­ing to “deschool” her chil­dren, about which she also writes at her own site, caf­feinated jive.

On Sep­tem­ber 8, 2008, she observed that Some­times It’s Just a Shirt. Although, on its sur­face, the post is a reflec­tion upon the man­ner in which home­school­ing chil­dren and their fam­i­lies inter­act with and relate chil­dren who attend school, it is actu­ally much more.

The post was inspired by a chance encounter.

We were at a swim meet last week­end, and a lit­tle boy, maybe five or six, was play­ing in the sand­box. His t-shirt said, “Home­school Rocks!”

Cool, I thought. There are only a few home­school­ing fam­i­lies in our swim league, and in the midst of an activ­ity per­me­ated by school cul­ture, I was excited to find another family.

So I asked, “Hey, are you homeschooled?”

And he looked at me like I had five heads and said, “Nope.”

Oh.

“Ummm, okay. I just thought maybe since your t-shirt says some­thing about homeschooling…”

“It’s just a shirt.” And he walked very quickly away from the crazy lady who reads t-shirts and actu­ally, I dunno, believes they say some­thing about the peo­ple wear­ing them.

After you read the rest of the arti­cle, you will see how Missy’s per­sonal cir­cum­stances and expe­ri­ence pro­vide the back­drop, but her mes­sage tran­scends those particulars.

We all seek con­stantly to fit in, be accepted, feel that we are part of some­thing big­ger than our­selves. We avoid alien­ation because of our uniqueness.

But in our strug­gle for iden­tity, some­times we over–ana­lyze, over–think, and ascribe mean­ing to the triv­i­al­i­ties of our daily lives that is incon­sis­tent with reality.

As Missy teaches her read­ers, “some­times a t-shirt is just a t-shirt.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Missy!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Life With­out School, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

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