"They said I HAVE to attend every session for the rest of the week." 
That was what my 9 year old son told me at a Christian family campground we were spending the week at.  He misunderstood the message, but nevertheless, it made an impression on me.  That is, how impressionable he was, even if he was misunderstanding it.

"No, honey.  You do not.  You only have to do what I say, or what your dad says." 

"You mean, I don't have to go to every session?"

"Did I say you did?"

"No."

"Then, you don't."

When there is a classroom setting, there is an air of authority.  Suddenly, the child is faced with a voice that is telling him how it is, and he takes it to heart.  He is just a child, after all.  It causes the child to leave thinking behind.

The campground we visit every year has the ages segregated for a morning session, and classes/games for the different groups.  I feel pretty good about the materials, and the people in charge.  However, I don't like age segregation.  In our family, we allow the child to decide if they want to attend with their age group at camp (a portion of the morning), or stay with us during that time.  This year, our youngest decided to stay with us, but went to one class one time - and mistakenly thought that he now had to attend each one.  Then he told me that "when [he turned 11 he would] have to go with the Jr. group."  (Please take note here that he was not being told that - he was misunderstanding what was being said.  But that is just as dangerous.)

"No you won't.  You can still stay with us in the adult group."

Isaac smiled.  I had set him straight.  But he questioned me. 

"Are you sure?"

"Honey, I'm your mother.  THEY don't get to say.  I get to say!"

Isaac smiled again.  It was not lost on me, how he seemed to think that these people had authority over his parents.  How quickly he made that transfer - in just one session.  It's that voice of authority.  Isaac's perception of that "voice of authority" made quite an impression on me.

He LOVED being in the adult group.  He LOVED the speakers.  He tried very hard to keep up with the changing bible references, and I found him getting better and better at finding his place in the bible.  He understood the humor, and looked at me and laughed along.  He asked me questions afterward.  I loved having him in our group. 

School takes children away from parents, and leads them away from learning on a higher level.  Age segregation tends to bring things to a lower level than children need.  The games, the "learning in a box" mentality, the voice of authority that tends to cause children to leave thinking behind.  I don't feel that most adults really understand what it is that children need to attain optimum learning.  It is all very superficial.

I came across this website that lists different Nobel Prize winners, and their thoughts on school.  It was timely, with my very brief experience this week with my youngest.  I think he would (with his very brief experience of something that resembles school) agree with these Nobel Prize winners and their thoughts on government school.

From "Learn in Freedom"

Rabindranath Tagore -- born 1861; died 1941
Winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature

Tagore was a superb writer and one of the founders of modern Bengali literature. He was the first non-Western author to win the Nobel literature prize.

[School] forcibly snatches away children from a world full of the mystery of God's own handiwork, full of the suggestiveness of personality. It is a mere method of discipline which refuses to take into account the individual. It is a manufactory specially designed for grinding out uniform results. It follows an imaginary straight line of the average in digging its channel of education. But life's line is not the straight line, for it is fond of playing the see-saw with the line of the average, bringing upon its head the rebuke of the school. For according to the school life is perfect when it allows itself to be treated as dead, to be cut into symmetrical conveniences. And this was the cause of my suffering when I was sent to school. . . . I was not a creation of the schoolmaster,--the Government Board of Education was not consulted when I took birth in the world. But was that any reason why they should wreak vengeance upon me for this oversight of my creator? . . . So my mind had to accept the tight-fitting encasement of the school which, being like the shoes of a mandarin woman, pinched and bruised my nature on all sides and at every movement. I was fortunate enough in extricating myself before insensibility set in.

"My School," in Personality: Lectures Delivered in America (London: MacMillan and Co., 1921), pp. 114-115

Go to the link above and read what some of the other Nobel Prize winners thought of school.  Seems it took them away from real learning.

Homeschooling parents often question themselves, and their ability to teach their own at home.  We really need to question what the schools are actually doing for our children, and more importantly what they are taking them away from;  home where they belong.

Deb Turner (Homeschooling From the Heart)
The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
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