French Twist & Saying No to Unschooling

http://www.workingmother.com/content/french-twist-my-experiment-french-parenting

I just read an excerpt, linked above, from the book French Twist, by Catherine Crawford. I promptly ordered it from the library. It seems like just the remedy I need! The remedy for what, you ask? Oh, it's a book about an American mother's experiment in adopting the French parenting style, inspired by a French friend of hers. Crawford observed herself and parents in many American cities having lost total control of their children. By trying to keep her children always completely satisfied, and in line with the modern trend toward respecting children to the point of abdicating all authority, she found herself exhausted. While Crawford's daughter was throwing a tantrum in another room, the French mother gave this advice:  If there is no blood, don't get up.

This is what I need--a sense of humor about the whole situation. Now, my daughter is a pleasant person and she doesn't throw fits. But I fear that my foray into unschooling has only been helpful to the extent that I am feeling more and more like it doesn't sit right with me. In the long run, by abandoning the whole unschooling project, I hope to forge a better, saner path. While it provided me with much-needed inspiration, and I am grateful for that, it also gave me some guidelines on how not to parent. Gentleness and peace can be cultivated without subscribing to unschooling philosophy.

With my own child, it's the arguing, albeit with general politeness, that wears me (and especially her dad!) down. And particularly because she is an only child, it's the pressure to be the entertainment committee and alleviate any potential boredom that drives me crazy. How does this relate to why I think unschooling reflects a less than ideal parenting style?

Here is the type of question people ask on unschooling forums: "Should I let my 6 year old watch The Hunger Games?" Um, no, obviously. The scary part is that parents lack confidence to the extent that they go online and ask strangers for advice. And the type of advice they get is to allow the child to watch the movie, perhaps explaining first that children get violently killed, and the movie might cause nightmares. If it is scary, you can stop the movie and discuss it. Then maybe continue on, or maybe the child will decide that she doesn't want to see it. This isn't just an issue with homeschoolers. It is nothing less than a nationwide parenting crisis. My duty as a mother is to teach my child and protect her from harm, not merely to facilitate a child-led learning process.

I agree that it's a good idea to get at the root of undesirable behaviors, to respect children as people, and to give them practice making choices. But this new "partnership paradigm" in the relationship of parents and children, in my opinion, has gotten out of hand. It doesn't simplify life (at least not for me), and it doesn't necessarily make for a more peaceful home (as attested by many FB unschooling group members). It puts too much responsibility on the shoulders of children whose parents should be in charge. There, I said it. Parents should be in control. Control in the unschooling community is a very nasty word. This whole idea of "trusting" kids to know for themselves what they need to learn, when they need to go to bed, and what is okay to watch on TV is a big pile of schlock--like a sandwich oozing with way too much peanut butter and jelly, like Ally Sheedy's lunch in The Breakfast Club. Authoritative is not the same thing as authoritarian. Family relationships and our relationship with God should come first in any notion of education, and the parents should lead the way.

I have another book coming from Amazon written by a Catholic mom in the 1950s. It isn't a homeschooling book, but I need advice on how to raise my child in a Catholic home that makes some sense. Some good old-fashioned solid advice that allows a mother to say, "No. Because I said so." Now wouldn't that be truly radical?

Life, Unscripted.

One great thing that Dayna Martin addresses in her Radical Unschooling book is that there is no radical unschooling script. First let's consider that sometimes it does help to have a few useful phrases on the tip of one's tongue. In conflict situations in the Montessori classroom, for example, we taught the kids to begin with, "I don't like it when you..."  I felt like I got free assertiveness training along with my teacher education! I found that the same things that worked with young children worked with drunk men in bars. "I don't like it when you (name the offense)," was met with amazement and a cloudy understanding. Oh, women don't like that! Good to know. You could see the wheels turning. But I feel that to be authentic, one shouldn't be a walking, pat response. Using someone else's parenting style or scripted lingo will feel uncomfortable and false to both you and your children.

If unschooling results in a one-size-fits-all method of parenting, it is no better than mainstream patterns of punishment, abuse of authority, coercion, or generic curriculum use. In other words, there should be no "unschooling police", no bossiness about what you absolutely can and cannot do when it comes to unschooling. This would be failing to see the forest for the trees, and it would violate unschooling principles! I have discussed my understanding of unschooling as a method of education that does not separate learning from the rest of life. It is open source learning, not placing limits on learning according to time, place, or persons. Anyone in the child's life can be a teacher. Unschooling follows a child's interests and abilities, custom tailoring the education according to his or her needs.

Radical unschooling seems to have as its basic premise the extension of freedom and trust in education to other areas of life. But does this mean that there can be no limits, no rules, that the child should have everything and anything he wants, when he wants it? I think common sense alone would tell us, no.  Luckily we don't have to rely on common sense as Catholics, though. Original sin means that we have a tendency toward disorder in our desires, though we are, as creations of God, innately good. We must not fail to take either of these truths into consideration. We can also rely upon the particular trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us and our children, rather than some nebulous conception of blind trust.

Catholics do not consider immoral choices acceptable. Our freedom of choice is a freedom within limits, within the parameters of a set of definite values and guidelines established by the Church. And these are set forth for the benefit of all people and for their ultimate happiness, both in heaven and here on earth. So I can agree with Dayna that happiness should be the basic goal of education, but perhaps with a somewhat different slant. Radical unschooling for Catholics could still be possible within these boundaries, allowing for flexibility of rules, bedtimes, chores, food, etc.., which are determined according to a family's unique situation, values and principles, and depending upon such things as a child's age, maturity, personality, etc...

Radical unschooling certainly means respecting children as persons. According to Dayna, it is the path of balance, designed to meet the needs of all family members. It does not over-emphasize the rights and needs of the child. When I reflect upon my Montessori experience, the first school in which I taught was entirely child-centered and did not take into account the needs of teachers at all. This was extremely energy draining and spirit crushing.

Radical unschooling for Catholics could mean eliminating punishment. A partnership paradigm between children and adults is still possible along with the understanding that the parent is under the authority of God and teaches her children accordingly. We can establish our authority without being authoritarian. Most of all, I think it means freedom for each member of the family to be who God has created him or her to be. And it means that all families are free to be who they are. Unscripted.