Today is the last day that A is in school. We don’t know if he’ll ever be back in a school environment - what we can imagine right now is home educating until the time seems right not to, although the only thing I can honestly imagine happening to end our home educating would be starting up a parent-run Montessori school at some point in the future. For now, the future looks a lot like the present does, on the days he’s not been at school: lots of reading good books, Montessori materials on his shelves, and time for exploring outside, making music, and building ever more complex contraptions out of washi tape and household objects.
Although A is only 3 and a half, he’s been in a traditional Montessori classroom since he was barely 2, attending 3 days a week. We’ve been in between ‘school’ and ‘home school’ for this whole time. He has a prepared environment at home, I observe his work and plan what to present him with on a biweekly basis (and I have done this since he was about 7 or 8 months old). On the days he hasn’t been in the classroom, he has still very much ‘done school’ with me, in the sense that I think carefully about his daily experiences and work to craft a cohesive approach that meets his developmental needs and abilities. And while he has been very young during his whole school tenure, his time at his Children’s House has very much been ‘school’ - he has been presented with the traditional series of works that are in a 3-6 classroom, and has been introduced to valuable concepts like the Silence Game and Walking on the Line which are common to all Montessori classrooms.
Compulsory school age is different in every country and is set by cultural norms, including governmental agendas on work, women and families, so I don’t really take too much notice of whether or not my idea about when education begins or ends lines up with the culture where I’m currently living. I am here to follow the child that is in front of me, my own children, who have been developing according to their own plans from the day they were born. My job as a parent who takes responsibility for their educations is to observe, prepare their environment with tools and materials that meet their developmental needs and stretch their minds, and to protect their sense of wonder. No matter whether my child is one, or seven, or seventeen, my job is more or less the same.
I had dreamed of a peaceful, child-centred, liberatory Montessori community for my children for about a decade before they were born, but also knew in my heart of hearts that we would probably, most likely, be a home educating family. I realise now looking back that I have considered myself a home educator to some degree since I was a teenager, when I was autonomously educating myself alongside my state school education so that I could learn the things that I felt were useful and valuable to me - things like philosophy and feminist theory which, unsurprisingly, aren't taught in American high schools. I believe that you can use childcare which looks an awful lot like school and still be a home educating family. Not everyone who wants to take responsibility for their children’s education has the financial ability or social privilege to give up paid work, or to structure their paid work so that children never need care from caregivers outside the family. I will surely need to use some kind of paid childcare in the future, and I don’t know what that will look like at the moment. Working, childcare, and home education aren’t all mutually exclusive things.
Do I think school is terrible? Definitely not, especially Montessori classrooms. But I believe that mainstream schools are a safe haven for many children, who need the consistency and love of their teachers and peers. Plenty of people have a great time at school, and find community and friendship with their classmates. I wish school were more universally a place where children were listened to, valued for who they were, followed instead of led. I wish that school was a place where children were allowed and expected to remain children. But I have learned that even in a delightful, well-prepared, rigorous Montessori setting, the institutional nature of school opens up gaps for negative socialisation. I am aware of the incredible influence peers have over even very young children, particularly when it comes to understandings of gender, race, and social power. I’m not happy to turn over the role of social educator to a group of young children who are attempting to formulate their ideas about the world based largely on the unspoken biases of the adults they’re around. I am committed to raising feminist, race-conscious children who can interrupt the systems of unearned privilege that our society is based on. I want as much information as possible about what it means to be a boy or a girl, to have a particular racialized identity, to come from me and the other adults who I know share our values.
I will feel a bit sad when we leave the school garden today, even though it is our choice to go. It was the first ‘institutional’ place where I left A on his own, and he’s done a tremendous amount of developing and growing since that October day. He’s made some beautiful friendships, and been loved and cared for by fantastic guides. The routine of our weeks has become comfortable and familiar, and I won’t lie: it has been a relief on many days to drop him off so that I can focus on the baby and have a bit of peace. But I am also very, very excited to wake up next Monday as a home educating family, off on our adventures together.
