I’m the Problem…

 

Doesn’t it always seem that way?  I have been looking at our homeschooling routine and noting weaknesses and flaws in execution.  Unfortunately, it isn’t the kids that are lacking, but me.  We routinely accomplish the subjects that are necessary or core, such as Math, History, Literature, Latin, German, and Grammar.  Our My failing is in fitting in the fine arts and other things that should be being done.  Art Study, Composer Study, Nature Study, Folksongs, Hymns, and so on.  These subjects aren’t crucial to their education, but some would argue that they are crucial to who a person “is”.  The ability to participate in the finer things in life…..to appreciate the complexities of a symphony or the playful interactions of light and shadow in an oil painting isn’t necessary to survive, but it is to live.  So why do I find myself challenged to include them into our daily routine? 

 

I think the real challenge is that I don’t approach these subjects as a quantifiable necessity, but rather as a necessity that must come to each of us individually.  I can present a piece of artwork to the kids and have them look at them, but am I qualified to analyze that same piece from a technical point of view?  Should I even try?  As I ponder this dilemma I procrastinate even the presentation of the subject.  This is my failing.  What I should be doing is to present the subject, piece, topic, etc. and let the kids learn that to appreciate something doesn’t take a college degree.  You would think that my love of wildlife would motivate me.

Since a child I would sit and just be still, waiting for life to crawl, scamper, and ooze around me.  Playing in the creek and collecting Crawdads was a great pleasure of mine when I was six years old.  Lying on the picnic table in the woods and waiting for the Star-nosed Mole to make an appearance near the woodpile was heaven on earth…even if it took more then 20 minutes for him to feel safe and expose himself unknowingly.  Running after and catching a Garter Snake or Ring-necked Snake and feeling its cool scales slide through my hands was exquisite and will always put a smile on my face.  No one had to teach me to appreciate these cohabiters of my world, I didn’t have to learn their names and biostatistics to see that a snake moves quite different from a squirrel and perhaps it is the underlying structure that makes the difference.  I was a child, innocent and free, free to observe the world around me.  School didn’t teach me to love poetry, classrooms didn’t teach me to smile at the flight of a Bald Eagle over the city dump, textbooks didn’t make my heart and thoughts soar at the funny face of a Tiger Salamander found in the bushes near my Mother’s house.  Classical music….all music…is just as sweet without a study of the composer.  I hum and sing everyday….even if I was kicked out of the Choir. 

 

Certainly education can help someone appreciate these subjects, but perhaps the love and respect for these “lesser” subjects comes from something else.  I am beginning to think that these subjects are more difficult for me to “teach” because I don’t want to “teach” the love out of them.  These subjects, the very act of living and loving the world around us, cannot be taught….they must be lived.  Music, Art, Life, Literature, all should be lived….. experienced…… weighed and balanced in our own thoughts….accepted or rejected.  I have a hard time scheduling these subjects because they are much more important then the Math or the Grammar that comes from textbooks.  Those subjects are important in their own way…they are the tools, the  skills, that let us appreciate the other subjects.  …but, to me, they are only tools….. the important subject is the observation of the life around us.  The appreciation of that life, and not the over analysis of it. 

I think I just need to change my perspective.