When I was young I responded pretty well to school. The other kids were awful but the education system itself worked well for me. I was generally a compliant kid, I wanted to do well in school, and academics are easy for me so all of that worked nicely.
By the time I was in university that had ended. I didn't care about marks, I didn't care about degrees, and the idea that I needed to prove my worth by doing a bunch of completely unnecessary stuff seemed ridiculous. Why do assignments on things everybody already knows?
Pinkie Pie has reached this point too, but she did it a lot younger than me. She struggles because she understands the fundamental pointlessness of most of the tasks she is assigned at school. She doesn't get why she should care about working to the marking scheme and turning things in on time.
Part of me thinks that to be a good parent I need to convince her that school is super important and getting good marks is a big deal. It is hard to convince her of that though because I don't agree with those statements and I won't lie like that.
You know who cares about your marks in grade six once you are an adult? Nobody. At some point you have to care about doing the stuff for your own reasons or be the sort of person that just accepts society pointing you in a particular direction. Pinkie Pie doesn't do either of those things and never has.
I hate the idea of sending her to a place she hates to do stuff she despises for reasons she doesn't accept. I spend a lot of my life giving the finger to society's norms and demands so it feels gross to try to push her to just fit in and do as she is told.
This has all led to us considering homeschooling. I have often said that I couldn't do homeschooling, and indeed I don't know if it will work at all. Staying around a kid, any kid, for 23 hours a day is the sort of thing that fills me with existential horror. But right now school is being terrible for her and is effectively just warehousing for my child. I find myself in the bizarre position of having to decide to do what society suggests is normal and leave my kid miserable in a place that does not work for her, or taking it all upon myself instead and likely making myself unhappy.
It is especially difficult because there is no one to blame. Her teachers have all worked hard to try to make things in the classroom work for her and the school administration have done everything reasonable to try to help. It just hasn't been enough. I have nothing against schools and nothing against homeschooling - it is just that schools don't work for Pinkie Pie and I am pretty sure homeschooling won't work for me. But we need to choose one of these things.
I don't quite know what to think. It would be easier if Pinkie Pie just wanted to obey and do what other people tell her. I don't know that it would be *good*, but it would be easier. I guess I want her to be independent and find her own way, just not this way exactly. I suppose that is a core part of what parenting is - accepting that your kids will ask for things you don't want to give and you have to give them anyway.
I went through this in high school where all the work just seemed like a huge waste of time, and not educational in the least. The biggest part of why I choose to homeschool my kids (at times when my kids are not going to school primarily to learn Spanish and the Spanish culture). My Papa always said not to let schooling get in the way of your education, and I really feel that's becoming more and more of a danger in the educational system. And when homeschooling, you have the luxury of tailoring the content to focus on strengthening your child's weak areas, skipping altogether the busywork that they gain nothing from, and choosing methods that excite them the most.
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