A Guerrilla Education

How to give your kids a real education with or without school!

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained, to be prepared for surprise is to be educated." — James P. Carse

Before Anne and I married we understood our calling to minister as a couple and we believed that would involve lots of travel. We are now in the midst of fulfilling this vision. God spoke to Anne’s heart years ago that we would be “moving and schooling.” Our children are gaining what some people call a guerilla education. John Taylor Gatto, a teacher of the year for New York who became an outspoken advocate for alternative education gives many examples of teaching your children through life experiences. He mentions one father who had given up on his daughter after being kicked out of so many public schools that he offered to give her the equivalent of what a college education would be or buy her a sailboat to travel around the world solo. She chose the boat and cheated on the test to navigate it out of the harbor of New York. She quickly learned how to navigate when she learned of a hurricane coming towards her and had to find shelter in the Bahammas. She ended up successfully sailing solo around the world and has written a book about it. Another girl dropped out of college to go to South America to study on her own the effects of industrialization on the tribes who live in the jungles. She became the expert on this subject and was awarded an honorary doctorate from a few universities for her research. She now speaks as an authority around the world.

Albert Einstein stated, “It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquircy.”

Along the Way or In the Way?

I am determined to train my children as we rise up, walk along the way, when we sit down and when we lie down. This means I have to be alert to every opportunity to involve my children in the affairs of life. Taking them with me when I go to the store, answering their questions along the way instead of considering them as getting in the way. My good friend Todd shared with me an insight God showed him one day as he was riding in his truck with his son. Ian kept asking him questions like, “Dad, would you take that farm if someone gave it to you? Would you give them $10,000 for it?” and on went his questions. After answering these questions Todd realized that he had the opportunity to impart his values into his son as he answered these questions along the way. It is not during the formal training times that are children learn the most, it is during the times that their curiosity leads them into asking questions. Self-education is when a child is interested and searches out the answers for himself/herself. These are the answers that stick with them for a lifetime.

Schools decontextualize information, children don’t relate what they are being taught to their lives and why it is important. “Real education, in contrast, prepares one to think critically and comprehensively, argue effectively, and find one’s singular, irreplaceable calling in life and the skills to pursue it.” A real education prepares us to trust and lean on God’s understanding, align ourselves with His principles, and commmit our ways unto Him. It prepares us to take responsibility and not rely on the approval of man, on social institutions or on ready-made ideologies.

I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education." — Mark Twain

John Taylor Gatto had this to say about a guerrilla education, “Bit by bit, I began to devise guerrilla exercises to allow the kids I taught – as many as I was able – the raw material people have always used to educate themselves: privacy, choice, freedom from surveillance, and as broad a range of situations and human associations as my limited power and resources could manage. In simpler terms, I tried to maneuver them into positions where they would have a chance to be their own teachers and to make themselves the major text of their own education.” from his book Dumbing Us Down

The term guerilla is used because John Taylor Gatto was operating within the school systems of New York and he had to find ways for his students to experience real life outside of the walls of the school so he used this term. Guerrilla – a member of a small defensive forse of irregular soldiers, making surprise raids.

Posted by Chris Hogan on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 09:47 AM