Today, as promised, I am going to share with your some amazing stories. A few will be from the lives of historical figures, a few will be people I have known personally.
As you recall, we have been on a bit of an odyssey, a voyage of self-education so we will be better equipped to make decisions as to what we will do with our children in the upcoming year.
Actually, I think what I am sharing here means I will never be allowed to speak at a homeschooling convention. If I spoke the truth, not a few of the boxed curriculum producers would protest.
But I digress, as usual.
I hesitate to share these narratives as “success” stories without defining that term. A person can be successful in business, or politics, or science, etc., but there is more to a human being than that. True success should have positive answers to questions like these:
“If you were to lose everything tomorrow, do you have family and friends who would stick by you?”
And,
“If you were able to live to a ripe, old age, would there be someone available to care for you or at least check up on you, even if you are a bit grouchy and smelly?”
And,
“When we end up in heaven, will there be people there who will thank you?”
I hope you will keep these things in mind when assessing the following stories, and any other stories you may hear.
As a backdrop to today’s subject, let’s begin with a quote from John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education:
Here’s a principle of real education to carry you through the moments of self-doubt. Education is a helix sport, a unique personal project like seatless unicycle riding over trackless wilderness, a sport that avoids rails, rules, and programmed confinement. The familiar versions of this are cross-country skiing, sailing, hang-gliding, skateboarding, surfing, solitary mountain climbing, thousand-mile walks, things like that. I think of education as one, too.
In a helix sport the players search for a new relationship with themselves. They endure pain and risk to achieve this goal. Helix sports are free of expert micromanagement. Experts can’t help you much in that moment of truth when a mistake might leave you dead. Helix sports are a revolt against predestination.
Bringing children up properly is a helix sport forcing you to realize that no boy or girl on earth is just like another. If you do understand this you also understand there can exist no reliable map to tell you all you need to do. Process kids like sardines and don’t be surprised when they come out oily and dead. In the words of the Albany Free School, if you aren’t making it up as you go along, you aren’t doing it right.
The managerial and social science people who built forced schooling had no scruples about making your kids fit into their scheme. It’s suffocating to the spirit to be treated this way. A young lady from Tucson wrote me, “Now that I’m nearly 25, 1 can hardly remember why I began to be afraid to go to school.” I wrote back that she was afraid because her instincts warned her the school business had no use for the personal growth she sought. All pedagogical theory is based on stage theories of human development. All stage theories of child rearing talk in averages. The evidence before your own eyes and ears must show you that average men and women don’t actually exist. Yet they remain the basis of social theory, even though such artificial constructs are useless to tell you anything valuable about your own implacably nonabstract child.
Now we can start sharing stories.
First of all, let’s examine people connected with the early years of our Republic. The first will be David Farragut.
Here is how Gatto relates his story:
When I was a schoolboy at the Waverly School in Monongahela, Peg Hill told us that David Farragut, the U.S. Navy’s very first admiral, had been commissioned midshipman at the ripe old age of ten for service on the warship Essex. Had Farragut been a schoolboy like me, he would have been in fifth grade when he sailed for the Argentine, rounding the Horn into action against British warships operating along the Pacific coast of South America.
Farragut left a description of what he encountered in his first sea fight:
I shall never forget the horrid impression made upon me at the sight of the first man I had ever seen killed. It staggered me at first, but they soon began to fall so fast that it appeared like a dream and produced no effect on my nerves.
The poise a young boy is capable of was tested when a gun captain on the port side ordered him to the wardroom for primers. As he started down the ladder, a gun captain on the starboard side opposite the ladder was “struck full in the face by an eighteen-pound shot,” his headless corpse falling on Farragut:
We tumbled down the hatch together. I lay for some moments stunned by the blow, but soon recovered consciousness enough to rush up on deck. The captain, seeing me covered with blood, asked if I were wounded; to which I replied, “I believe not, sir.” “Then,” said he, “where are the primers?” This brought me to my senses and I ran below again and brought up the primers.
The Essex had success; it took prizes. Officers were dispatched with skeleton crews to sail them back to the United States, and at the age of twelve, Farragut got his first command when he was picked to head a prize crew. I was in fifth grade when I read about that. Had Farragut gone to my school he would have been in seventh. You might remember that as a rough index how far our maturity had been retarded even fifty years ago. Once at sea, the deposed British captain rebelled at being ordered about by a boy and announced he was going below for his pistols (which as a token of respect he had been allowed to keep). Farragut sent word down that if the captain appeared on deck armed he would be summarily shot and dumped overboard. He stayed below.
So ended David Farragut’s first great test of sound judgment. At fifteen, this unschooled young man went hunting pirates in the Mediterranean. Anchored off Naples, he witnessed an eruption of Vesuvius and studied the mechanics of volcanic action. On a long layover in Tunis, the American consul, troubled by Farragut’s ignorance, tutored him in French, Italian, mathematics, and literature. Consider our admiral in embryo. I’d be surprised if you thought his education was deficient in anything a man needs to be reckoned with.
Later, Farragut became an Admiral in the United States Navy, and is credited with saying, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
Then there are the stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, among a host of others, but when I was a schoolgirl I barely knew of Lincoln’s lack of schooling, and was never taught that Washington had no schooling whatsoever until he was eleven, and even then he arrived knowing how to read, write, and cipher at what we consider today college-level.
Benjamin Franklin had only two years of schooling and taught himself the rest, as he describes in his autobiography.
Gatto has a number of stories in his books which add anecdotal proof that we have too much schooling, but I would like to end with my own stories.
Please keep in mind that I am not sharing all the tiny details here, and I wouldn’t want to, either. I am going to keep to the positive highlights as they apply to this discussion, but I will go no further, mostly for privacy reasons.
Having said this, I would like to share the story of one of my daddy and the atmosphere I grew up in.
My great-grandparents, on both sides, were ranchers and farmers. They did not take big stock in college education; they worked for a living.
My grandparents were all self-educated to one extent or another. Voracious reader, they not only enjoyed novels and the classics, they read the encyclopedias they owned for fun. I enjoyed eavesdropping as they spent hours sitting around and discussing everything from the stock market to natural medicine to the shame of the “hippies” (it was the 60’s and 70’s, after all).
My grandma on my dad’s side was easygoing. She believed in letting kids alone to figure things out for themselves. If my dad came home hungry from school, my grandma would tell him to fix something for himself. So he did—he took whatever was in the cupboards and made all sorts of creations, and she didn’t seem to mind (her nephews and nieces called her “Aunt Fudge” because when she watched them she’d let them fudge on the rules).
That experience alone seemed to form in his mind the idea that he could learn to do just about anything he wanted if he tried, so, he tried, and he did. These are the things he accomplished in his life:
- He began as a lath and plaster worker, but then moved to drywall, eventually becoming a foreman on projects as big as hospitals.
- He was a licensed scuba diver and worked helping put kayak racers right-side-up
- He was a certified welder.
- He was a master carpenter (once we needed a picnic table, so he took out a business pad, made some calculations, and then disappeared into the barn. Two hours later he came out with a finished, painted table for dinner).
- He was a master leather tooler (we still have examples of his intricate scroll work).
- For a short while he broke horses for a living.
- He painted realistic ocean scenes in oils.
- He was a hunter until he found it wasn’t challenging enough.
- He was a member of the southwest mountaineers.
- He restored old trucks and farm machinery. He even arranged payment for his own funeral with a restored, 1960’s backhoe.
- He bought 40 acres on top of a mountain in Arizona and went off-grid. He was able to power his home (with appliances like washer and dryer, microwave, etc.) via wind and solar power with a series of golf cart batteries.
- He built two ocean-going vessels, one from the scraps of old boats and the innards of an RV, the other one started from boards laid out in his back yard (this one was a shrimping boat, and he used the engine from an old car to power it).
- He was the Southwest Bluegrass Association Chair. He was always involved in music and bands and played multiple instruments.
Beyond all this, he was an avid reader. At times he read a book a day. I can’t remember ever not knowing how to read, and my dad told me it was because I would crawl onto his lap and he would read aloud while following the words with his finger.
He was a warm, likeable person, and folks flew from across the country to be at his funeral. He also loved and feared God, and I know I’m going to be thankful for him when I get to heaven.
Our kids called him Cowboy Grandpa.
The story of his life inspired one of our own sons to become a sort of “renaissance man.” He was among our “experimental” children, meaning we were pretty unsure of ourselves in the early years of homeschooling. We wanted to go the route of more freedom, but we had relatives (and our own fears) to deal with, so we stuck to textbooks.
Our son learned to read easily, and he comprehended at a high level. He had a great desire to please me, so he read the textbooks I provided and answered the questions in the workbooks obediently, but I could see he was bored to tears. When he was barely eight years old I learned about Charlotte Mason. This is when I threw out the textbooks, handed him a book about Lafayette and a Big Chief writing pad, and told him he was to read one chapter and then write a narration, continuing this way throughout the book (I still have that book, with his name in his eight-year-old handwriting in the front). He was so relieved!
Besides this, his daddy and I would write math problems on a huge chalk board in our dining room and have the kids copy and work them in another notebook. When he was ready we tried Saxon, but he moved too fast for it, so we let him explore math on his own. (Later, he learned physics equations so he could plug them into programs he was writing for video games. While he worked as a cart-pusher for Sam’s Club, his mind would be working on physics problems, and as soon as he got home he would turn on his computer and plug them in to see if they worked.)
We were not wealthy, but we were able to afford the latest computer available because my husband worked for a computer company. Our son was keenly interested in this computer, but because it was so expensive, he was only allowed on under his dad’s supervision. This wasn’t often, so he proceeded to take the manual for this computer and read it during daily quiet time and before bed at night (something that would put me to sleep!). This was back in the 1990’s when we weren’t too far from MSDOS, so our son not only learned Windows in this way, but coding as well.
In the next few years, we were able to provide him with his own computer, on which he furthered his skills. By 15, we helped him get his first job working as a computer repairman in a local shop. This is when he stepped into a public school building for the first time; as a repairman for the school’s computers.
That same year we graduated him so he could enter into college (dual enrollment was not a thing back then).
With his interest in computers and programming, we originally thought to put him into college for computer science. We actually scheduled a meeting with a counselor at our state university.
This counselor let us in on a secret; as soon as courses are created in this arena, the industry has already moved so far ahead that it becomes ridiculous. Our son did not look forward to being hampered by the slow-moving college system.
So, we abandoned that idea. Instead, his major was multimedia graphic design, with the side benefit of learning carpentry as a grip for stage productions the college put on (during play performances with an audience of high school students, he would peer out and realize that he was actually younger than they were). Not long after he received an associate of arts degree, he started his own business. Ironically, his major client was one of the largest school districts in our area. He was tasked with designing the brochure for the yearly school budget.
When he submitted the draft of his brochure, he also suggested the entire printing job could be done quite affordably by outsourcing to a private sector firm.
This is when we were handed first-hand proof of the inefficiency of bureaucratic schooling.
Seems the district had an official printing office of their own, and this printing office charged the district an exorbitant amount for every job it undertook. When our son dared suggest the same job could be done for a tenth of the cost, the bureaucratic system of the district was upset, resulting in angry phone calls, and so the school printing office was used after all.
Along with running his own business, he worked for different firms as a web and print designer, including a real estate magazine and Navigators Ministry. Eventually, he landed the job of overseeing the website of a college system offering more than 150 programs in liberal arts and sciences transfer and career technical education. This included the online courses, admissions, etc. He competed for this job against applicants with PHD’s in computer science.
After being hired, he assessed the entire system and saw that it needed an overhaul, but he had to convince the overseeing board.
In order to communicate this, he devised a system where he used a huge white board and a series of different-colored sticky notes. These were placed in different configurations to show the flow of information as it was, and the efficiency that could be if he were allowed to make major changes.
He was in his early 20’s at the time.
Meanwhile, he was a youth leader and a musician in the praise band at church. Already able to play classical guitar, he went on to learn keyboards and drums. Today he also preaches regularly.
There was not a time in his entire childhood that he did more than two to three hours of schoolwork a day.
He wasn’t even an avid reader, but he did have a great heart for people and enjoyed working with his hands, bicycling, and the regular things kids enjoy.
He is definitely one who could answer the above questions with a “yes,” so we consider him to be a successful individual.
Among our children there are numerous stories like his. It’s hard for me to pick just a few. One that you may enjoy is the account of our daughter, Nikki. I share her name because she actually has an Instagram account and you can have a peek into her life.
This daughter was educated at home, partly with the McGuffey’s readers and Ray’s Arithmetics as most of the rest. From a young age, she was a highly motivated creative.
As she approached her teen years, I did not assign anything to her, I let her explore and experiment.
In her experimentation, here are a few of the things she learned:
- Human anatomy—because she wanted to draw the human figure, she learned all about the skeleton, muscles, etc., mostly via the book, Cyclopedia Anitomicae, which we found by accident at a local used bookstore.
- Sewing and fashion design—she took my rinky-dink sewing machine and made that baby shine! She didn’t need patterns to sew clothing, she researched on the Internet until she found out how to design her own. She used her anatomical drawing skills to visualize what she wanted to create. Then she invested in the necessary tools for creating contours, darts, etc.
- She had a few online businesses, one in reselling used books to homeschoolers, and another selling baby clothes she had created.
- When her older brother got married, funds were tight, so we bought some flowered sheet sets from Ross and she used them to make wedding party dresses for her sisters and herself—ones that were tailored and lined.
- She bought some classic books for herself and read through them; things like Cervantes, Dante, and Dumas. She found a copy of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and studied it, taking copious notes and memorizing portions.
- She came to appreciate the poetry of Christina Rosetti and proceeded to write poetry like it herself.
- Her visual art skills increased incredibly as she had lots of hours to spend in drawing and painting. Our walls are full of her framed artwork.
Eventually, she went to a local college in a program for illustration. She was shocked at how little her classmates knew about basic things she had taken for granted. Because her self-led learning had been so extensive, only a few portions of the curriculum benefited her. She found the rest to be boring and obsolete, so she quit (with our blessing).
Soon after this, she became enamored with Korea. She decided she wanted to take her art skills and break into the Korean comic illustration industry.
So, she bought books on the Korean language and used a website to find someone who could help her learn it (this someone eventually became related to us, but I’m skipping ahead).
She got a job as a waitress and saved every penny towards flying to Korea. She ended up flying herself over there twice, and just the travel was an education itself. The second time she went through a very hard time, and the person who had helped her with her Korean came to her rescue.
Long story short, he is now our son-in-law. Today Nikki is doing her best work ever; being a stay-at-home mom to two amazing babies. You can find her as @mrsus_mrk on Instagram.
There are so many more stories I could tell you, and I hope our other kids don’t feel slighted I didn’t include them! There is simply not enough time to fit them all in. I’m sure there are others reading this post who have similar, or even more remarkable stories they could relate.
Wouldn’t it be fun to sit around and share them together?
Anyways, I am so excited about this current series. I have already been forming ideas on what will be included in our next installation. I hope you will be there to enjoy!
Or, would you rather we dove deeply into Unschooling next and then discussed that later?
If you have any amazing stories to add, please share them with us in the comments below!
Here is the podcast for this post:
