Teaching children skills that are really important

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Instead of worrying whether we should give gold stars for participating or for being the best we should involve children in real world activities where the end result of the activity itself is the reward.

Teaching them gardening, woodworking, repair skills, fiber arts, sewing, leatherwork, cooking, and so on. Those are important skills that are useful. I am not saying that reading and writing and being able to do sums and such are not. Those are essential for self-directed learning but so very many subjects and things that are taught in public schools today are not necessary, let alone essential, for later life. Those subjects are just taught because they are used for the passing of tests and many are as useful in later life as the proverbial bits on a hog.

Getting them out hiking somewhere with gorgeous views. Teach them to raise animals and care something other than themselves. Have the help out an elderly relative or elderly neighbor. Give them age appropriate chores to do in the home, garden, etc. and making them feel important when they have done so.

When they help you in the garden (I know that to begin with such help can be more a hindrance than help) don't give them plastic or cheap “tin” gardening tools but invest in the small version of the real thing. They can be had. Or, with a little ingenuity, make the bigger tools smaller, and suitable for them.

The same goes for woodworking and such like activities. Years ago one could get real woodworking toolboxes, for instance, for children with real, small, saws, planes,, chisels, hammers, etc. Today, alas, they no longer seem to exist. The fear that kids could hurt themselves with those has done away with this, it would appear.

Our society has lost what is truly important in life. It is time to find it again. It teaches the young ones things – in school – that are more or less unimportant and those things that are important for life and in life it tends to neglect. In fact, often the school system makes those things that are not part of the “curriculum” out as unimportant and actively discourages the pursuit of those despite the fact that those are the things that are important in and for life.

The school system, and no doubt not just in Britain, “teaches” children to pass tests rather than teaches them things for life. Good test results put schools in front in the league tables but it does nothing for the students. The only way to change that is if we either demand the system to change, are able to change it ourselves – and I do not think that those two will happen – or take maters into our own hands, as many people do already, and homeschool or even unschool our kids.

© 2017

The most important school subjects

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The most important school subjects are not reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. even though they are important, especially for self-directed learning, as I can ascertain. However, “viewed scientifically the most import school subjects would be music, sports, dramatics, art and handicrafts, the latter is what the Scandinavians would call sloyd”. This is what the brain researcher Manfred Spitzer says and, as far as child development, especially in elementary school children, is concerned that is exactly what is needed.

Children who spend much of their childhood playing (for play is an important aspect of learning), drawing, painting, doing sports, dramatics, and such, are in a much better position later to be taught, to study and to be trained in order to be able to follow a useful profession and calling. Much more useful than learning in Kindergarten already Chinese or having to be worried in elementary school about tests and passing them in order to progress up the ladder, so to speak.

Some may say that this does not do the economy any good and that it is only that which counts, in other words productivity and growth, and training obedient wage slaves.

But today's economy no longer needs untrained docile workers at production lines but highly flexible, stress resistant multi-taskers who are prepared to learn new things to the end of their life. No one needs what the schools of today churn out in the way of unripe non-adults. Nor will the children, as children and later as adults, ever need most of what they have been “taught” in school – generally only in order to pass the tests and exams – in later life.

Yes, reading, writing and some other things are important, as I have already said in the beginning, but you do not have to go to the brainwashing institution called “school” to learn those.

As far as handicrafts, aka sloyd in Scandinavia, and such like are concerned getting hands dirty and learning about traditional trades is what it is all about – kids will be having a ball as long as they are not just be shown how to but are actually allowed and helped to make things.

Also teach them gardening and the growing of food and involve them in this, to the extent of letting them have their own plots where to experiment with growing this or that.

Maybe the best thing would be for children to be taught at home (or other similar setting) rather than in the formal setting of the brainwashing facilities that we call schools where children are but trained to pass tests and regurgitate information in order to pass them.

Many kids are measured on their intelligence base solely on regurgitation of information. Many grow up thinking they are worthless and stupid because they do poorly. This is one of the many factors that contribute to social burden and decay. No matter what anyone says you are not stupid, just a different kind of smart. Also and especially children develop and mature in different stages regardless of age so any standardized tests actually prove nothing and all they do is make some believe that they are failures and will never amount to anything.

That is why self-directed learning, as often is the case with homeschooling, where the kids decide what they want to learn, research, etc., rather than following a set of guidelines, is so much better than any other way.

© 2017

Homeschooling your active child

In today's society, it's not viewed as a good thing for children to be too active. They're supposed to sit still, pay attention, be quiet. School can be nightmarish for energetic, excitable kids.

It's easy to debate whether children should be diagnosed as ADHD or if we're simply not giving modern kids enough time to be active and expecting too much of them, too soon. Whether you're dealing with a child with a diagnosis or just trying to meet the needs of an energetic preschooler, the same tactics can help.

The good news is that kids in homeschool can learn in ways that truly suit their personalities and their needs -- and be healthier for it.

Here's a few tips for homeschooling active children.

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/article/homeschooling-your-active-child

Grow your own – An act of defiance

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Growing your own, as well as making your own, are acts of true (non-violent) resistance and will really upset the applecart – even if you don't grow apples in your garden.

When you grow at least some of your own things and make many of the things that you want and need yourself you take away many of the measures of control from the government and the powers-that-be.

This is true even more so when you do things for yourself also on other levels and, maybe, even can get others to do the same, as individuals, families and groups.

This, however, tends to scare the proverbial excrement out of the powers-that-be and they will go to all manner of lengths to suppress such acts of defiance of the system, as they see it, is not even as terrorism.

Yes, as acts of terrorism for they even likened thriftiness not so long ago as “acts of domestic terrorism” as those that do not spend, spend, and spend even some more, in order for us to spend our way out of the recession, as just that... domestic terrorists, as they are not supporting the economy.

People who can, and are prepared to, provide for themselves, their families, and their communities, are but an anathema to the powers-that-be. They do not fit into the plan (of total control). Where would the world and the economy come to if everyone would be able to provide for themselves, their families and, maybe, even for their communities? The system would (as it should) collapse.

One of the greatest acts of defiance this is as in doing so we basically tell the government and the powers-that-be to “shove it”.

The most dangerous sentence one can ever hear is” “I am from the government and I am here to help you”. It does not mean what most people seem to think that it does but government interference as soon as the “help” is accepted.

Grow your own, make your own, and do things for yourself, including foraging and be as self-reliant as possible, as individuals, groups and communities. It reduces your reliance on the system and thus gets you away from the control mechanism of the powers-that-be.

Government is doing all that it can, though, to some degree disguised, to stop you from being self-reliant, especially in the food department. It is not in their interest, whatever they may claim, and in some places it is being made quite obvious with the banning of people gardening as regards to the growing of vegetables, of food, rainwater harvesting, and doing things for themselves up to and including homeschooling.

In Britain, and many other European countries, we can still count ourselves lucky, compared to the USA and Canada, in that respect, as far as the gardening is concerned (and also homeschooling in Britain), as we are actively being encouraged to grow our own food, harvest rainwater, and such. Albeit with restrictions as to what seeds we can use and therefore what food we can grow by the European Union. Thriftiness, on the other hand, and total self-reliance is an anathema to the governments here as well, it would seem.

When we grow our own stuff, make our own things, etc. we throw a seriously large spanner into the works of government control. Self-reliance is a powerful statement especially if we do as much as possible ourselves. Growing your own is but a part of it, though a significant part.

© 2013

Why unschool and homeschool?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It is not coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children and that they want to, ideally, have the monopoly in doing so. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being.

The real explanation is, however, much less flattering. It is all done to that the government's propaganda can take root in the young minds as children grow up. Those kids will then be no threat to the state apparatus and in fact they will fasten their chains to their own ankles.

And that the UN wants to mandate government education for children all around the world is also no surprise for it has the very same ideas. When children are educated according to the doctrine of the UN's agenda they will, as adults, accept everything that the UN will present as to a global government and all that jazz.

The Prussian school system and the German law that mandates compulsory for all children from six to sixteen/eighteen had and has but one aim. Not to create an educated people but people who know their station in life and to create obedient (wage) slaves.

It was, literally, thus in public schools in Germany but also in those in Britain in the Victorian age, that children were taught that their place in life was to be no more than what their fathers and mothers were and they were told so in no uncertain terms when they had wishes to become something like a doctor, a lawyer, etc. and this was especially thus in the schools for the working and laboring classes.

A child who even as much as mentioned that his aim was to become a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, and such like would not just be ridiculed by peers and teachers. No, he or she would be flogged in class for having ideas above his or her station.

While this, maybe, no longer happens in this selfsame way the aims are still the same as far as creating obedient slaves of the state who will do as they are told because they have been taught to do so in schools.

Schools do not teach children to think. They teach them what to think and that what is whatever the powers that be degree it to be. Children in government schools (and also most private schools who follow official curricula) are also not taught to question everything they hear and read but to accept everything as it is presented.

Any parent or guardian who wishes his child or children to become free thinking people rather than government robots has, in my opinion, but one option, and that is to unschool them and educate them at home.

While homeschooling is possible and easy in most of the USA and also in the UK (despite what the authorities may claim) in other countries it is not that easy or even impossible in the current situation such as, for example, in Germany where homeschooling is against the law and any attempt is being suppressed with the full power of the law, including the placing of children in care and jailing parents.

Why should the state have any right to tell any parent or guarding how the child or children are educated and by who? And this brings us to a question, which I will not elaborate on here today, as to who owns your children, even though no one can, theoretically, own a child. However, the state thinks that it does own your children.

Get them out of the system and save their spirits...

© 2012