I have been meaning to start this blog for some time now.... Over the summer I read a book by John Holt called Freedom and Beyond, as well as Grace Llewellyn's Teenage Liberation Book. I loved both of them. They both spoke to me. School was very oppressive for me.

I was a sensitive, shy, somewhat consciencious child and very self-conscious teen-ager. I was always in with the in crowd, but felt an enormous amount of peer pressure. I hated school, I know so many people who love their high school days. I hated them, I couldn't wait to be done with school. I finally made the decision to go to college and hated it as well. I almost dropped out of high school at the end of my freshman year, but my mom and the asst. principal(disciplinarian) talked me out of it. I got into a lot of trouble that year, all the while telling my mom that I didn't want to go to school anymore. At one point she actually took me seriously and asked me how I would make a living not going to high school. I told her that I could go to nursing school, I just needed a GED. So we went to an open house the nursing school had and I think my mom had talked to the counselor ahead of time so the tour that I went on made it look like grueling work. I never fully made the decision to go to nursing school because my mom made it seem like I would be throwing my life away by quitting school and becoming a nurse. She thought that college would give me options, that was her plea. So I decided to stick it out in high school, but I could not go back to the same high school for sophomore year, I needed a break. So I went to an all girls catholic school under the agreement that when I was having a bad day I could stay home or leave school if I needed to. My mom stuck to her side of the bargain, I didn't have too many bad days but if I needed to leave school she would call the office and tell them to let me go. That year was much more peaceful at school, not too many people knew me, so I had to keep up appearances, it was like starting over without anyone knowing my past. They just all figured I was a decent person and showed me respect as long as I showed them respect. It was a college prep school, so I had lots of free time during the day, that helped too. I had time to relax and reflect, away from the bad influences at my old school. Yet as soon as school was out I would go back to the old influences, but at least I wasn't dealing with them all day long. I had some space. I straightened out that year. Did my mum proud.

So then the following year, my Junior year, I was ready to go back to my old school. Most of the bad influences were gone and I immediately seeked out my old, old elementary school friends. They welcomed me, it was good. Not everybody trusted me or welcomed me back, but my old friends did. I had gotten into a lot of trouble freshmen year and hurt some people and they never really wanted me to come back. High school was just hard. I didn't really find myself, I lived off of everyone else, through them. Peer pressure was really hard for me to deal with. I didn't really get involved in anything extra-curricular. That bad freshmen year sort of made me feel less of a person. I forgave the things I did, but was so certain others hadn't that I didn't really get involved. I just wanted out. I wanted to be a grown-up, to be responsible. But I never really figured out my interests or what the heck I enjoyed doing. Grace's book spoke magnitudes to me! I was so self-conscious and so worried about how other people would see me, that I never really tried anything out. I had no self-confidence. If I could have quit high school and been left to my own devices, maybe I could have at least figured out some things that I enjoy and that I am good at. So I had my life back together it seemed. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and was so scared to grow up, and yet wanted to grow up so darn badly. I took chemistry my Jr. year upon returning to my old high school and loved it. Totally understood it and was applying it in lab! It was so awesome, a light was switched on. My sr. year I took AP Chem, I didn't sit for the exam, but the class was awesome, it was sort of small and everything we did in the classroom we would then take into the lab and do experiments to see the concept in action. It was amazing. I totally got it! So I thought, okay I will study Chemistry in college.

When I got to college I found out that a Chemistry major was required to take up to Calculus 3, but I thought it's okay I will give it a try, maybe it won't be so bad. My first semester of Gen Chem was awful, nothing matched up, what we did in lab had nothing to do with our lecture class. It was awful, all the things that I understood the prior year in AP Chem no longer made sense. It was an awful eye opening experience. I suffered through it. I suffered through Organic chem, and calculus and then gave up and became a biology major.

Looking back over my many years of school there could have been so many opportunities for me that I had no idea about because of compulsory schooling and because I was shy and not sure of myself. I got a complex about math from going to school. I also got a complex about my reading from going to school. I didn't feel like I was good at either, to this day sometimes I freeze up doing math because of my experiences. I did not start reading for pleasure until I was almost 30 years old. I now love to read, can't imagine my life without reading. But that was not the case as a child and teenager and college student. I hated reading, I always felt like I was such a slow reader and would forget what I read because of it. I was pushed by all those basal (or whatever they were called) readers, with the comprehension questions. Stories about people I didn't know, and didn't care about, that were so uninteresting. Uggh, I hated having to do that in second grade.

There's my educational background. Tomorrow I will write about my sons education.

So that being my background..... I pulled my son out of the 1st grade, I pulled him out in October of 1st grade. I saw him going down the path of hating learning, of behavior modification of completely tuning out just to make it through the school day. It was both scary and eye-opening. I was never able to stay home with him, so from about 10 weeks on he was always in home care or daycare and then school. He loved it until 1st grade. Kindergarten was still fun, even though they had done away with centers, there was still fun, even if mundane things to do during the day, there was play. Learning to walk in a line and not touch your neighbors was there too and he worked on that but he loved the playing and the being told stories and such. And then 1st grade came........