by Ben Hewitt
I glanced at the boys, their faces awash in the soft light. I’d thought that perhaps I might try to articulate what I was feeling, and wondered if they’d understand even if I could express it. But seeing them standing there, mesmerized by the scene unfolding before them, I had to chuckle at my naïveté. I didn’t need to say a word. My children understood better than I ever would.
At Thanksgiving, only a few weeks prior, a friend of ours had told me that humans are able to perceive only 1 percent of what’s out there. In other words, there are another 99 percent of sights and sounds, smells, tastes, and textures that we know nothing about. I was not sure how she knew this or if I should even believe it. But just as I cannot know it to be true, I cannot know it to be untrue. If there really is another 99 percent of experience I will never understand, there is much I cannot know. More than I ever before realized.
Here, then, is the antidote to the flawed hypothesis of human exceptionalism: a moon, white and bright and pushing through the ether so fast that its movement is actually discernible on a moment-by-moment basis, a soaring bird etched against a wedge of sky. Two children ages nine and seven, heads tilted toward the sky, faces half-lit by the strange, milky light cast from above, enthralled. A rolling field, all hummock and sag, stretching in all directions toward its borders, ill defined in the soft luminescence. And beneath it all a gathering, almost viral sensation of insignificance, the awareness that everything my senses tell me to be true might be only a fraction of all there is to know.
For fifteen minutes or so, we watched and then, cold and hungry, we skied home. I stoked the fire and we ate.
Note to the Reader
I did not want this book to be overtly prescriptive. Partly this is because so many aspects of how my children learn and live are dependent on circumstances unique to our family. But it’s also because the choices all parents make about their children’s education are incredibly personal. Finally, not everyone who reads this book is willing to relinquish certain expectations for their children’s learning.
Still, anyone who’s read this far may be curious about granting their children the freedom to self-direct a portion of their learning. Perhaps in the process, they will be encouraged to reconnect with their natural surroundings. With these parents in mind I offer the following ideas for starting this process, even in the context of a more conventional educational path. Because it is difficult to liberate one’s children without liberating oneself first, some of these ideas are geared toward adults, too.
Play hooky.
If you have school-aged children, take them out of school for a day. Take the day off work yourself. Unplug every screen in your house. For at least part of the day, go with your children to the woods, or to a park, or to the middle of a hayfield. Have no agenda, bring no toys or games. Lie on your backs, or lean against a tree. Close your eyes. Open them. Talk. Be silent. Smell. Hear. Be.
Turn off the news.
Turn off the Internet news, the television news, the radio news, and the print news. Turn it all off. Do this because there is nothing in the news—no matter how tragic or unsettling it may be—that truly matters in the here and now of your life. Do this because any emotional energy you expend fretting about news that doesn’t truly matter in the here and now of your life is not energy you have to expend on the things that actually do matter.
Stay home.
Cancel nonessential plans or, better yet, don’t make those plans to begin with. Don’t stay home forever, but do stay home long enough that leaving home feels like something to appreciate and savor, not just something that makes your life more complicated, and not just something you do because you never considered not doing it.
Make something with your child.
It does not have to be complicated, but it should serve a specific function, and its making should necessitate the use of tools that require skill and good judgment to handle safely. You might build a catapult from scrap lumber, or carve a spoon from a tree branch. You might construct a weather-tight shelter or a tree house. And when you are finished making whatever it is you make, use it.
Grow something with your child.
Organic vegetable grower Eliot Coleman told me once, “It’s important for democracy to have a certain percentage of people feeding themselves so they can tell government to go f**k off.” So grow something. I’m tempted to say “grow anything,” but frankly, there’s already enough zucchini in the world. So, anything but zucchini, OK?
Go outside. Stay outside.
Some early morning very soon, walk outside, close your eyes, tilt your face to the sky, and stay that way for at least one minute. If it’s sunny, feel the sun. If it’s raining, feel the rain. If it’s cold, feel the cold. If you are uncomfortable, be uncomfortable. It’s only for a minute. You’ll be OK.
Sleep outdoors.
Not in a tent, but in the open air, so that when you awake you’re damp with morning dew and just a bit chilly. Helpful hint: Wait until autumn, when the mosquitos have beaten their annual retreat. Because it’s one thing to wake up a little wet and cold; it’s entirely another to be kept up all night by ruthless pests.
Step away from your children’s play.
Allow them to play with no expectation of learning or results, and furthermore allow them to make their own rules (even if the rules make no sense), to have their own arguments (even if the arguments are loud and silly), and to find their own path toward reconciliation (even if the path is long).
Equip your children to be of use.
Find ways for your children to help around the house. This applies even when their helping isn’t helpful. Let them work with you in the garden, even if they pull the carrots before they are ready. Allow them to help you clean the house, even if it the house ends up messier than when you started. Humble yourself to the reality that you will not be as productive as you’d like, but remember that some of what you’re producing is a child with confidence, skills, and resourcefulness. A child with these qualities cannot help but share them with others, and that’s worth a whole lot more than a few carrots or a clean house.
Trust more.
Remember that children cannot be expected to be responsible if they are not granted responsibility first. They cannot be expected to be trustworthy if we do not show them they are worthy of our trust. These correlations are perfectly logical, but the logic has been lost in an institutionalized educational system that lacks the necessary resources to grant meaningful responsibility and trust to our children.
Make choice matter.
Think of yourself as not merely faced with decisions to which you must react, but as being proactively at choice. And when a decision is difficult, consider what you are agreeing to with each choice, and what it says about the world you wish to inhabit.
Do not fear conforming.
Sometimes, conforming is exactly the right thing to do. On the other hand, do be afraid of conforming without realizing you are doing just that.
Notes
Chapter 1. The Reckoning
1. John Holt, Growing Without Schooling, no. 2 (1977).
Chapter 4. Drive
1. Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
Chapter 5. The Early Years
1. “F.D.A. Finds Short Supply of Attention Deficit Drugs,” New York Times, January 1, 2012.
2. Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics, 2009.
3. Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph McLaughlin, with Sheila Palmer, “The Consequences of Dropping Out of High School: Joblessness and Jailing for High School Dropouts and the High Cost for Taxpayers,” Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, 2009. www.northeastern.edu/clms/wp-content/uploads/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf.
Chapter 7. The Downside of Convenience
> 1. Gray, Peter. Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (New York: Basic Books. 2013), p. 218.
Chapter 9. Hay and Responsibility
1. Liedloff, Jean, The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1975), p. 103.
JESSE BURKE
BEN HEWITT is the author of Saved, The Town That Food Saved, Making Supper Safe, and articles for magazines such as Bicycling, Discover, Gourmet, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, the New York Times Magazine, Yankee, Taproot, and many others. He and his family live in a self-built, solar-powered house in Cabot, Vermont, and operate a forty-acre livestock, vegetable, and berry farm. To learn more, visit www.benhewitt.net.
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