I've just attended a homeschooling conference at Adelaide University. After several years of attending no conferences at all, I've been to three just within the last few months and I can honestly say that is enough! However, they've all been very timely, and although vastly different from each other, reinforced my lifestyle decisions in the same way. I feel reassured in my own heart that writing and homeschooling, although both slow and sometimes frustrating occupations, often with nothing tangible to show from one day to the next, are valuable and worthwhile things to do.

I had to jump out of bed early to get down to the city by 9.00am. The previous night had been crisp and clear, the perfect ingredients for a bitter cold morning. I had to pour water over the windscreen before I could even go. The whole car was covered with brittle frost like some sort of massive crystal. The whole world looked icy white and when I passed the digital thermometer thing on the road out of town, I saw that it registered minus zero! All this coldness was just a bit of fun and didn't deter anyone from the hills from attending, because one of the main keynote speakers was John Taylor Gatto, who we were all anxious to hear.

It was quite a weird feeling as I walked through the Uni grounds to get to the conference in the Union House block, because I used to walk it every single day in my past, and haven't done so for many years. As I passed the Psychology office, I remembered how often I used to step into the foyer just to check if the results of some major essay or other had been posted on the bulletin board.

As I'd expected, John Taylor Gatto was fascinating to listen to. I choose homeschooling four years ago because I had a shy son who was unhappy and I was convinced that the teachers couldn't possibly care as much for his welfare as I could. Yet Mr. Gatto has so many more interesting facts to say about what he considers the corruption underpinning the whole public school system that I didn't even know way back then! He spoke in several two-hour blocks but here are a few pertinent points.

1) Schools keep stating they are going to "change" and implement all sorts of fantastic, revolutionary programmes, yet they never do.

2) An astounding percentage of  "history changing" individuals  (and he rattled off a whole list) were "C"-average students. He thinks that the "A" and "B" students have been conditioned to spout the rhetoric that the education system has been spoon feeding them. It was a very entertaining spiel, especially from a former award-winning public school teacher. I've purchased his book entitled "Dumbing Us Down" and I'm looking forward to reading it. 

Do you know, his first point was driven home to me in an interesting way during the lunch break. I took a browse in the Uni bookshop downstairs and discovered that the English section is still full of many of the same dreary old books I'd studied in my time there. And keep in mind, I began my degree in 1988! In almost twenty years, the Adelaide Uni English Department has apparently been meandering along simply repeating whatever it'd done the year before.

And what was wrong with so many of those books? I've come to see that many of them present a bleak world view. They used to make me feel depressed whenever I read them because of their content. Having had more time to think about writing over the last decade, I have to say I prefer texts that build you up and make you feel richer, happier and more optimistic for having read them. But someone in the Education Dept. once told me that this "rosy" view is short-sighted and unrealistic. But is it any more short-sighted than the one they present?

I think both world views are true, simply if you believe them to be. Some Biblical quotations I've been pondering lately spring to mind regarding this. God told the Israelites, "I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him." Deuteronomy 30: 15, 19-20. I think the people at the top of the public education system may often "choose" the "curses" instead of the "blessings". And this is another very good reason why I'm glad to have my children at home instead of trying to live up to the education system on those terms. I'd rather choose the blessings every time.