What do I do now?

Christian asked me the other day why he had to "do school". I didn't have a good answer for him.

He said that very little (if any) of what I "make" him study is actually committed to memory - not because he doesn't want to, but because he is my child and I am the same way. If I am interested in something, I research it, study it, learn about it, live and breathe it until I know everything there is to know, or I get bored and move on the the next obsession. If I have to learn something, fugetaboutit! It just isn't going to happen. Not that I don't try. I do. I have the student loans to prove it. It just isn't the way our brains are wired. Darn recessive gene.

He gave me an example. He wanted to know how something worked, so he looked it up. That lead to an interest in something else, and that led to yet another interest. He is still looking up things he has become interested in because of that original Google search.

Why is it that I just can't let go of the idea that I know what is best for them to learn, and if I tried to unschool them they would end up jobless and homeless? Why is it that I can read story after story about successfully unschooled kids, but can't trust my own kids enough to think that they wouldn't just end up majoring in video games?

I have always thought that unschooling is a scam. Why would a child pick up an algebra book or biology book without having been told to? I guess that speaks volumes about my own education.

When we were on vacation, the small resort we stayed at was family run. All of the grandkids in the family were homeschooled, until last year. One of the sets of grandkids - seven kids in all - had gone to school for the first time, with the exception of one who had graduated from homeschool. I talked to the dad and he said that they weren't unschoolers, but "lazy homeschoolers." They only managed to get school done 1-2 days a week and usually only for 2-3 hours, but all of his kids tested at or above grad level when they went to public school last year. The daughter who graduated tested out of a handful of classes at college.

Alex has read just about every book at the library, and has a list a mile long of books on hold being sent from other libraries. Christian used to be that way, but now most of his time is spent on school work. Any time he has left at the end of the day he sure isn't going to pick up a book.

So, I have no good answer for him or myself.

(Photo from lugatso at flickr.)