Thinking Back...

Recently I stumbled upon some old journals of mine.

I was reminded of just why I quit keeping that kind of journal.

I wrote the very same things over and over and over again.

Okay, so maybe not ALWAYS the same thing, but definitely a theme.

Especially the years I homeschooled Oldest Son.

Or, he 'unschooled' himself. It's really hard to say what happened.

But, as my journal laid out, I had DEEP fear that he was going to grow up to be a blathering idiot and it would be all my fault.

At first, we set out to follow a loosely based curriculum. I was called for jury duty. Good thing unschooling was in our plan. I missed the first six weeks of school.

I'd already heard threats - when we did not send him to kindergarten. THGGM's grandmother threatened to call the authorities. We said, "Fine. Go ahead." Kindergarten wasn't required.

By highschool we heard tons of critical remarks. How would he be socialized? Good grief. What is a family, if not a social unit?

He worked. That was in the larger circle of society.

He acted in community theatre. It isn't called 'community' for nothing.

Our other choice for high school was an inner city public school. It was large, and he could have easily been lost in the crowd. He didn't want to do that.

Many of the people we know who worked in education had scathing things to say. How could I, a high school graduate teach him?

Oh, well. We did it anyway.

One thing I remembered from high school was that it wasn't really required that you LEARN, it was just required that you completed tasks. So, when I completed the tasks required for high school, I left and went on to LEARN.

We did our schooling without many bells or whistles. We went to the library often.

I scrimped and saved for what I felt was necessary.

For four years of high school, we spent well under $3,000.

We read great books. We read good books. We read comic books (so shoot me).

Things went very well. We both learned much.

But, when I went to bed at night and hauled out my journal, my fears came out to haunt me.

Yes. I knew this was best for us. I felt God had led us to do this. But I still had that nagging fear of things going badly in the end. And, it all being MY fault.

We didn't do much math. I hate math. He hated math. Not doing much math made me feel incompetent (although, for over a year my job was balancing checks and deposits from five different banks every night - and, i was darling at it).

After four years of high school, during which time he took not one test of any kind, he went on to get his GED. He done good.

He worked full-time for a year, THGGM taught him to drive. It was a long ride to work (they worked together).

I will never forget (and will mention it over and over on my blog, because it is MY blog and i get to mention stuff over and over if i want to!) that I had to guess at a GPA on his college application. How do you guess at that? I figured that we didn't move on until he had mastered something, and the only thing he hadn't mastered was Spanish (although he could say with mastery 'the king and queen are crying in the bathroom'), so I guessed at 3.8.

He was accepted.

His first report card in college had a GPA of 3.8. This included a math class. His only college level math class.

During college, he married Daughter-in-law, who would not have married him were he a blathering idiot.

They studied for a semester at Oxford. They both studied literature. Both graduated with awards and degrees in humanities.

He graduated summa cum laud with a GPA of 3.8.

Today he worked his first full day at his new job.

He is a personal banker.

I feel as if I should write my final journal entry on the subject.

"Oldest Son, at the age of 25, has a job.
He works at a bank, as a personal banker.
He applied because it was close to his home
and he hadn't been able to work for a year
due to a severely broken leg. His early life
prepared him to write, draw, speak in
public, act, cook and do just about any
thing but be a personal banker. Yet.
a personal banker he is. And, he is not
a blathering idiot. Truly educating a
child seems to be more showing him the
benefits of learning than it is forcing him
to complete assigned tasks. If one knows
how to learn one can do just about
anything necessary for survival. It also
helps to be a very good actor!"

There. Now I ought to be able to sleep in peace tonight.