Wednesday 17 June 2009

Writing, HE and autonomy

I feel a little ramble coming on.
I'm not sure that this post is going to make it to the publishing stage but we'll start and see how it goes!
I usually start a blog entry knowing what I want to write about and it is usually sparked by a certain event, activity or photo. But today it isn't like that at all.
I felt the need to write. I can remember feeling like that as a child. Sitting down at my desk (a heavy duty shelf at the right height, across the alcove in my room) with pencil or invariably fountain pen in one hand, with either a clean sheet of paper or a new little booklet I had just made from scrap paper on the desk in front of me. And I wouldn't know what to write about. Occaisionally I sat down because I had something I wanted to get down on the paper before I forgot it, but usually because I wanted to write. I enjoyed writing. Creative writing. Writing letters to penfriends in various countries, some English and some...not!! Writing thank you letters. Writing an informative and funny letter to bring a smile to a relative that spent a lot of her time living in hospital. And sometimes when the urge to write was so great, but the creative juices were simply not flowing, I copied things out of books. ( Incidentally, I hated writing essays for homework)
I realise now that had I been Home Educated, had I not spent so many of my days being forced or coerced into doing things I either did not want, or did not enjoy doing, had I been able to always sit down when I had the creative urge and write what I wanted to, I probably would have written a whole lot more and maybe would have learnt more about myself. Beatrix Potter springs to mind here.
Instead, I was at school like the majority of children and forced to think far too early about 'What you want to do with the rest of your life' and I made so many bad decisions.
Writing for me stopped in my teenage years when I felt writing down things could be providing evidence for my extra curricular activities, and that was not a wise move!!!
So here I am at 35 still learning about myself. Still working out what makes me tick. Trying to mend a broken part of me that just doesn't seem to want to heal. Looking back and remembering some of the things that I dreamt about when I was a child, and realising that they aren't so different to what I dream about now. Wanting to write and share our life stories with other people and not knowing where to start!! I have almost come full circle and what was it that made the the circle break, or distort somewhere in between? Not having the time to learn about myself whilst growing up. School.
So here I am, wanting for my boys the chance to learn about themselves and not to be forced into making decisions about their future until they are ready. Working out what makes you tick is so important and can save years of fumbling around in the dark so to speak.
Only an autonomous home educating life can give them that. Time and space to just be.

4 comments:

Liz said...

Hear hear!

Big mamma frog said...

I was nodding all the way through your post.

I know so many of my contemporaries who are having their 'mid-life crisis', who don't know what they enjoy, or who they are, or what they want to do, or where the real 'them' has gone. All they want to do is to try and find themselves again, find something that means something. Not knowing where to start, almost all of them pick on something that they enjoyed as a child, perhaps something they didn't feel able to - or weren't allowed to - continue with. This is where they start.

Sometimes it's dancing, or theatre, or (in my case) writing, sometimes it's an interest in the environment, or working with plants. It's like they have to scrape away 20 years of themselves and go right back to the basic thing that used to give them pleasure and fulfilment.

And I've often wondered to myself whether - if left to their own devices, and away from the pressure of school and family coersion with school - they would have continued with their passions, developed them into a natural career, rather than doing something because they just happened to step onto that particular treadmill and couldn't get off!

I suppose that's what I want for my kids. I'm not expecting my kids to continue on the same path that they are on, I expect they will dabble in stuff and change their minds often, but I would like them to feel totally able to follow their passions and interests. I'm pretty sure they will have more chance of finding out what inspires them and persisting at it than the average school child.I guess we'll see.

Carolyn said...

Thank you to you both...lets hope that we are all able to carry on in this way.

Big mamma frog said...

p.s. just wanted to say how fab it was to meet you finally! May the blogging continue!