Unschooling families for peace and nonviolence?

[Alina Stefanescu Coryell]

Most homeschoolers in my state do so for religious reasons, and maybe I fool myself thinking that my ethical reasons are somehow different from their religious ones. School is a coercive hierarchy filled with violence to the spirit and souls of little folk. I don't want my kids to learn a history that celebrates warriors and war as the highest aspiration for gendered males. And I don't want my daughters to grow in an environment that judges them based on their appearance and makes them hyper-conscious of things that don't matter. 

So my personal ethics of nonviolence and mutual respect enter the picture. I wonder if there are any other parents here that struggle with the decision of how to expose their kids to ethics with which they disagree. Fine. I'll admit it. I'm a pacifist with anarcho-syndicalist highlights. It seems unfair to expose them only to my personal minority views on the world. I don't want them to grow into carbon copies of me. And I don't believe any values are genuine unless freely accepted on an individual basis. 

How do you balance exposure with personal ethics? How do you encourage individualism while cultivating empathy? Gee, while I'm at it, how do you save the world from human beings? I'll be quiet now and wait for you guys to give me ALLL THE ANSWERS. :)

[Alina Stefanescu Coryell]

Meredith, you hit the nail on the head of my concerns with your second paragraph. That is exactly what I want to avoid- Max telling me that he shares my values to please me or because it seems like the thing to do, the new "convention". He's 8 and the girls are 4 and 1.999. But he is not "little" in an emotional sense- he has strong feelings about people who are unfair and a strong sense of justice (which he has no fear of expressing directly to me, especially when I am the unfair one).

So, that's comforting. He isn't afraid to criticize me. But you pegged it with the false dichotomy. Thank you. It cleared my head fog a bit.

[Meredith]

I'm guessing your kids are still pretty little - a lot of those questions fall away as you  and your kids live your lives together. Unless you live in a very narrow environment, never take your kids into town, no tv, few and strictly regulate books and magazine, little outside contact - your kids will be "exposed" to a range of ideas which run counter to your own. That's the easy part. The harder part is living by your values without trying to teach them.

 

I think you're mistaken to set up a dichotomy betwen individualism and empathy. Kids Grow into empathy when their needs are met - so taking the individual seriously has the happy advantage of promoting empathy. If there's a scary dichotomy to watch out for, it's the individual versus Our Family. It can be easy to slip into framing your own ethics as "Ours" for the whole family and leave kids feeling like they need to at least pretend to buy in in order to be loved and accepted. That ends up biting parents back later, as often as not, as kids will rebel or flat out reject the established family values because those values have become synonymous with disregard for individual needs and feelings.

 

You might want to ask this in the group "Unschooling for Social Justice" if you don't get a lot of replies!