It really is too long for a blog post, yet unlike last year's talk, I really don't feel like this one can be broken up into multiple posts. So, I shall simply post it all despite it's length, with a "read more" option so people who aren't interested don't have to scroll forever to get to older posts... So, here it is!
Against the Current
Introduction
When
I was six, I went to a street fair with my mother. My little sister was probably there,
too. There were booths, from different
companies and organizations, as there are at every street fair I’ve ever been
to. One of them was about the meat
industry—it was probably PETA—and I think that’s the first time my young self
made the connection between those furry and feathery creatures I so enjoyed
spending time with, and the food on my plate.
Right then and there, I decided I was no longer going to eat meat.
I
don’t even truly remember this incident.
When I try and pull it up in my mind, all I get is the shadowy
almost-memory of a story told so many times, you can almost see yourself there. My mother is the one who always told me this
story, until I got older and started repeating it myself to those who queried
me in-depth about my dietary choices.
I
didn’t stop eating meat right away. As
determined as I was at six, Chicken McNuggets and hot dogs proved too much of a
temptation right up until I was eight and gave those up for good, too.
But
the decision was made at six, the summer after my parents pulled me out of
kindergarten, and looking back now, I feel like that was probably the first
major decision I made in my life that went against the current. It seemed like everyone else ate meat, but
this was not something I wanted to participate in. This is yet another time when I’m so grateful
to have parents that supported such a decision, despite my young age.
Now,
this isn’t meant as a morality tale.
Though I still don’t eat meat, I’m not interested in convincing people
to change their diets, and that’s definitely not the point of this speech.
It’s
just an interesting example of how making decisions counter to those of the
dominant culture started early on in my life.
Just
by virtue of unschooling, all of us here have made a radically different choice
in how we live and learn than that of the mainstream. Whether you chose to never send your kids to
school, pulled them out later on, or decided yourself to leave school, it was a
huge decision, likely accompanied by much soul-searching and thought. Possibly also a large amount of reading and
researching and discussion. Maybe you
just followed what felt right. But
whatever path lead you away from schooling, I’m sure the impact of that choice
was felt in a profound way.
Yet
as big a thing as unschooling is in our lives, sometimes I think it isn’t
apparent to others just how very many choices we’re making differently in our
day-to-day lives. Not only does the
unschooled child answer with a shrug and a “why on earth should I know that??”
look when asked what grade they’re in, the unschooled parent winces when they
hear a parent, as so often happens, threaten to leave their child (who is very
much enjoying themselves sitting on the plastic pony in the mall) behind if
they don’t come right now! The
unschooled parent likely doesn’t understand how parents can scold their
children for getting dirty, or rejoice at the beginning of each school year, or
if they do understand, they shake their head sadly at their memories of a less
enlightened time.
As
an unschooling teen, one may make sympathetic noises when their friends
complain about being grounded yet again, while secretly just not getting
it. Not allowed to go anywhere? Why would parents do that? And why are they listening, anyway? Can’t they just… walk out?
Then
there are the news stories on TV about back-to-school, the article in the paper
about the importance of preschool in a child’s later “academic success”, the
advertisement on the bus shelter about the failure a person will be if they
don’t go to university…
In
a hundred different ways or more, day by day, the society around us is telling
unschoolers what they’re doing is wrong.
And
that’s just unschooling. If you’ve also
made other different and radical choices in how you live, if your views on many
other things are very different from the dominant culture, it gets even worse.
So
how do you navigate in a world where you live so differently from those around
you? How do you find and maintain
community? How do you deal with the
constant pressure to conform to the edicts of the dominant culture? These are questions I think a lot about in my
own life, and am continually attempting to answer.
