"And now, as you see, this story is nearly (but not quite) at an end. These two Kings and two Queens governed Narnia well, and long and happy was their reign. At first much of their time was spent in seeking out the remnants of the White Witch’s army and destroying them, and indeed for a long time there would be news of evil things lurking in the wilder parts of the forest — a haunting here and a killing there, a glimpse of a werewolf one month and a rumour of a hag the next. But in the end all that foul brood was stamped out. And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.”
-from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
It will probably come as no surprise to my readers that I seek out opportunities to take my school-age son out of School. This is not because it is a “bad school” or that he’s unhappy there. Much to the contrary, it is a dear place of learning and community, one for which we are grateful now. Good teachers, good aims. My heart is especially full after last night’s Science Fair where the projects ranged from constellation stories to chromatography, and my own son’s programmable Lego candy machine. All the same, I think it’s important to remind myself and my children of other realities and adventures beyond those walls. As the storyteller of Narnia reminds us above, young dwarves and satyrs have other fish to fry. (Perhaps literally.)
Sometimes I ask myself if it’s a bit perverse, this tendency to celebrate being out of school. It certainly rubs against the grain of the cultural norms where I live, and some of the commitments I’ve made. I think it comes down to the fact that I don’t want to accept School as an unquestioned Good. It can be a good. We all have to learn how to wait our turn and tie our shoes and to not hit the kid who took our toy and to rattle off 8x8. (I’m torn on that last one.) But life does not mainly consist of being in a group of people our exact age governed by a set of arbitrary rules and one or two powerful authority figures. (If it starts looking too much like that, I might just buy a camper van and go on the road, God help me.)
Lest this get too edgily polemical, I just want to point out that gentle movements like observing snow days, quietly leaving homework untouched in favor of time with a sibling, and choosing to take kids out for family hike on a particularly luminous day are just a handful of ways we’ve tried to enlarge our vision of Life with and for our children. And let’s just say if we find ridiculously cheap tickets to California even though School’s not out yet, we grab ‘em. The classes for that week will be named Campfire Building and Tide Pooling instead of Mathematics and Literacy.
These decisions are part of a bigger question I’ve had for nearly my entire life about what it means to know something. What does it mean to learn?
And what, for that matter, is teaching? I have so fundamentally, consistently and for so many years identified with being a Teacher, but recent events have shoe-horned me out of my comfortable faculty room chair and left me wondering whether that’s a title and role I can really lay claim to anymore. I don’t mean that in any self-pitying or gloomy way, just factually. It’s actually challenged me to rethink those particular roles and not just accept them without thinking, as with School. What if we are all Teacher and all Student and it simply depends on context?
After a long hike we find ourselves in a clearing. Who will take the lead and who will follow? Somewhat further down the trail maybe the roles will be different. But if I find myself simply grabbing the first branch to make a shelter and the others follow it might be my turn. I am probably most frequently in this position now with my own children though certainly they take on Teacher quite naturally — with lovely results. How to be a good Guide in this case?
Charlotte Mason, the 19th-century British education reformer, was fond of invoking a train metaphor for explaining the kind of structure young people need for future growth and flourishing. She uses the phrases “laying down the rails” to describe the role of parent and educator:
“It rests with him/her to consider well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and pleasure; and along these tracks, to lay down lines so invitingly smooth and easy that the little traveller is going along them as full speed without stopping to consider whether or not he chooses to go that way.”
In other words, good habits save us (and especially the child) the exhaustion of continual decision. This seems to me to be a truly loving act. I remember how zealous I was to inculcate basic human freedom in my eldest when he was really little and tried to give him Choice in everything. These shoes or those shoes? This vegetable or that one? It’s a fine way to sidestep toddler stubbornness from time to time, but the constant pressure to decide ended up wearing us both out. We both experienced relief when I began to simply “lay down the rails.” Or, as I prefer to say, “lay down the trails.”
What is it about a trail? I’ve lost count of how many times my neighbor and dear friend has exclaimed this over the years as we set our children loose in the woods. The kids just want to run and run forever! And they follow the winding turns instinctively. I feel this too as a longtime lover of trail running, up and down and all around. A path inspires forward movement in a meaningful direction, natural boundaries from dangers like poison ivy, encouragement over and through obstacles, and respect for the forest where we are guests. The trail offers young and old students alike opportunities for problem-solving, exploration, autonomy and teamwork by turns.
Wait a minute.
What if the Trail is our Teacher?
Or the Bike?
Or the Pocketknife.
Granny and her Sewing Machine.
The Paintbrush.
I don’t have any easy answers. But let us observe. Let us search. Let us find ways to re-attach Hand to Tool, Idea to Embodied Life, Foot to Trail.
More reading:
For more interpretations of School, I invite you to explore some of the people who have redefined Teacher and Student for me recently.
and her husband Pico’s community of learners exploring different ways to live outside our given Systems. ’ lovely meditations on learning from rocks, skins, movement, and other found materials. ’s ongoing gathering of minds and bodies to think about living in our current historical moment of ruin and rebuilding.-Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality and Rivers North of the Future by Ivan Illich. He’s a bit of a firebrand and utterly challenges me. I will probably have more to say about him soon.
Lovely meditations. Makes one want to come to your class wherever it is (preferably a trail). I am sympathetic to the notion we are all students and teachers and guides and whatever all along the trail that is our lives woven together in a community of those coming to know. May we come to knowing.