After my first day of school in Victoria, my mother was walking me home
and I asked, "How long do I have to keep going there?" She said, "About
12 years." I burst into tears and was inconsolable for the rest of the
day.
from a blog which someone linked to on Facebook yesterday. Is Hilary Jane Margaret White not a magnificent name?
Quite a good blog, too!
Yes, it is. I read half a dozen or so posts after I got there, including the school one, which wasn’t the one at the Fb link.
I like both Hilary and her name!
I am feeling terribly anxious about the prospect of sending my older children to school soon. One of them is probably “below average.” I think he’ll hate it.
I would much rather he had an apprenticeship and went to night school for anything else he might need. I feel like a fish out of water regarding education in the USA. It was bad enough back in Oz.
Did you read the link about the kids all going to university at the age of 12! I’m not at all surprised – I bet my daughter could have done it, but I don’t want her to go even when she’s 18 b/c I believe it’s such a grossly immoral environment. Why else do most Catholic teens lose their Faith in College??? It’s not b/c of a deficit in apologetics, I’ll bet. The question I’m dying to ask that family is “how did you preserve your young ones from the degradation of the place?”
I’m left wondering – maybe the “unschoolers” have got it right.
There was a family of four sons who all went to Harvard. None of these boys did the usual stuff for highschool graduation (and might not even have sat for the SAT) but submitted a portfolio of the things they had been studying passionately during their teens.
I’m afraid I have no counsel to offer. Our efforts in that line came pretty much entirely to naught, so I just stay out of it. Every child and every family is different, so what worked for one may not work for another, and vice versa.
“Our efforts in that line came pretty much entirely to naught.”
No one sees all ends.
I probably unconsciously remembered reading this eight years ago.
Eight years!!
I was more thinking aloud as it were, given all these things on my mind. I’m always happy to receive good counsel when it’s ther, but as you say, Maclin, every family is different.
What has “got it right” is love, freedom, clarity, gentle firmness (when necessary), trust, and grace (prayer).
And a classical liberal education.
Just kidding, but not completely.
The “problem,” if it is a problem, comes with the second item. Because of it people wind up in life stories that we wish they weren’t in.
Light On Dark Water 
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