The Teenage Liberation Handbook

On a whim because I randomly saw it at the library, I recently read The Teenage Liberation Handbook, How to quit school and get a real life and education by Grace Llewellyn. I'd heard of it before but it didn't register on my radar until I saw it sitting on the shelf. I walked past it a few times until my curiosity got the better of me.

Overall, the book was basically in two parts. The first was a rather scathing condemnation of the public school environment - not the subjects learned, but the methods of lecture and regurgitation with no allowance for creativity or choice at all. The author finds it odd that we say that we're preparing our children to contribute to our democratic society by squelching any and all freedom of anything (even to use the toilet when your body needs to). That was a rather compelling argument.

The second part of the book is about how to "unschool." Now, this term has never sat well with me - my introduction to the idea of unschooling was that children do what they want, when they want, and parents do not provide any rules of any kind. That radicalization of this idea is alive and well, and yeah, I'm a lot more "free range" with my kids than I probably should be but that goes way too far. Kids need limits and guidance. This particular book's take on unschooling was not that extreme. It was "learn stuff by methods other than a textbook unless you personally choose to use one."

And that was the most interesting thing to me about the book. Llewellyn's proposal for how teenagers should live life without public school is exactly what AC and I envisioned for our children when we first discussed the possibility of homeschooling 4 years ago. Kids learn their basic skills in real life situations rather than made-up assignments - write a real letter and mail it, rather than write some random meaningless sentence. Learn to count money with - wait for it - MONEY! rather than pictures of coins on a page. Teenagers learn specific career sets through "apprenticeship" type jobs and internships - the doing to learn rather than sitting and reading a book about it (whatever "it" happens to be). There we go.

She cites this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it hit a nerve with me: "We are always getting ready to live but never living." I don't want that attitude for my kids. This IS life - being together as a family, reading, growing our garden and eating all those yummy strawberries, traveling, visiting museums ... Not to get introspective here, but "life" in our modern Western culture seems to revolve around one's career or their job. Kids and teenagers are "getting ready" for their "life" through school, which is to get them ready for a job. Make money. Buy a house. Make more money. What???? That's not our life. Our life revolves around our family, and money-making ventures are merely the means to support that. Jobs are only part of life, not the whole of it with family as a random sidenote on the periphery.

Live life through your whole life. None of this constantly "preparing" bit. Bleh.