Deschool Yourself: Things School Taught Me

By Lisa Bentley, author of children's homeschool book series Wright on Time. You can read this original article at her website Do Life Right.

In no particular order, with my additional sarcastic comments after each semi-colon:

Lisa and her family

Procrastination is good, preferred even; Putting off doing homework and projects until the last minute is well worth it. Work done under pressure takes less time and is usually graded better. Nevermind the stress of it all, stomach aches are good…

Don’t share information with anyone under any circumstances; It’s called cheating in school, collaboration in real life.

Allow those bigger and stronger to have all my possessions; Those with strength should always win.

Blend in, don’t get noticed, never make waves, don’t show your true personality under any circumstances; You didn’t want to be the kid that got noticed, or you’d get made fun of. If you stand out, you’ve opened yourself up for ridicule. This is known by every kid that has ever gotten beat up for wearing something “weird”. You could never possibly make the other kids happy with you, so you might as well help others become the target rather than yourself.

Never tell your whole, honest truth, especially to your elders; Telling the full truth was cause for the adults and other kids to hate you with their whole being. Either you became a “smart ass know-it-all” or “the freak” by doing this. Nevermind the fact that you were

probably correct. If you told the truth in certain circumstances you were then the “tattle tell”, another reason to have the other kids hate you for the rest of your life.

Follow rules; Everything will be rewarded in the highest if you just follow all the rules. In real life, this gets you to mediocre at best. What the world really needs is original, free thinkers, that shake up the world and help it become a better place. It is those free thinkers that have statues and autobiographies read by the masses. Interesting that we force our children to never be that way…

Respect Authority; This is a basic Girl Scout tenent that always makes me cringe. Egads. Respect needs to be earned, especially in a school situation! What school kids are feeling and showing is fear, not respect, don’t delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

Be scared of public speaking; What other opportunity affords you to stand up in front of your peers just to have them very publicly humiliate you. If they hide the remarks in front of teachers, don’t think they aren’t happening — they are. Stick and stones may hurt my bones, but the evil words said to me when I was seven will never be forgotten. It’s no wonder that I had elementary school nightmares at least every few weeks well into adulthood. I still have them every once in a while.

Hide intelligence; No one likes the “smart kids”, need I say more!

Hide possessions; Lest you don’t want to own them anymore…

Think of yourself as unattractive, geeky, and any other negative adjective you can think of; This is not a natural part of growing up or living in the real world. In fact, I go to Weight Watchers meetings and various other organizations on a regular basis and most of the people there would be qualified by schooled kids as “butt ugly”. Honest to God, I don’t think of them that way. If they are kind, nice, and have a good personality, they are liked by all. As adults, the ugly ones are the mean ones, no matter their outward appearance. Some of the ugliest people I know are the snooty perfect bodies beauties, and vice versa.

Family and social lives should be completely separate, lest your fellow schooled friends think you actually like your family; If you say you like your mom or dad, you’ve immediately cast yourself as a “Mama’s Boy” or worse. You don’t want to know what happens to those kids (you probably already know if you haven’t blocked it out of your memory).

Younger siblings suck; Anyone younger than you is a baby, anyone older is either a bully or someone you wished you were (and who would thus, never in a million years talk to you unless you had something they wanted, like a cute older brother).

Younger people have nothing useful to contribute to your life or society; You don’t grow a useful brain until you turn 18, and lately that’s been changing to 22+. Did you know that there was no such thing as “teenagers” until 1941? Until then, people in their teen years were considered worthwhile to society and capable of adult ideas. Funny that my children have always been…

Older people should always be deferred to — always; The opposite corollary to the idea above. If under any circumstance you don’t defer to the eldest, you will either be beaten up verbally or physically or both. Or, if you are lucky, just shunned for the rest of your life.

Real life doesn’t begin until you are done with school; Again, you don’t grow a brain until you have that degree!

People are only worthy of being talked to if they are wearing the latest and greatest styles; If you aren’t wearing cool clothes, then you must not be cool.

Other people should be in charge of when I am allowed to eat, drink and use the toilet (holding urine in is a sign of good obedience); Nevermind that this causes health issues (dehydration, constipation, bladder infections, etc.). Surely, I was lying if I asked to use the bathroom at a time other than in between classes. I was fond of the constipation issues school (and my very poor school lunch diet) gave me.

Food should be eaten in large gulps in as short of a time frame as physically possible, then a little faster; School lunches are not only not healthy, but the time allotted to eat is not nearly sufficient. Gulping should not be seen as the ideal.

Teachers know everything and their authority on topics should never be questioned; Yeah.

Children are to become well-rounded while having their lives segmented into sections and subjects torn apart; It wasn’t until I was grown up that I realized there are no “subjects” in real life. Mathematics actually has a history and “Language Arts” has a science!

It is only possible to learn between 8:00AM and 3:00PM local time; Nothing is learned on weekends, school vacations, or summer break — ever. It just isn’t physically possible, because schools and teachers are the only entities that contain true knowledge. Your friends, parents, and favorite television shows absolutely do not contain any useful knowledge. In fact, all of those things (especially summer break) suck knowledge out of your brain, making it so everything you learned in the last few months before summer break has to be repeated ad nauseum during the first month or two of fall…

As can be evidenced by this list, I never really fit into school. Outwardly, I managed. Inwardly, I counted the days down until I could be released from the tortuous experience. How many kids do you know that hooray at summer vacation and feel sick on the night before the first day of school? It isn’t learning they don’t like, it’s the methods and the madness of the school environment. My conclusion: school sucked! I was the straight A student, graduating two years earlier than I should have, hating every second and my husband, too, was the valedictorian of his class and hated school. We vowed early never to put our children through that.

I make this list in my head mentally whenever I am reminded that Unschooling ideals aren’t the norm in this society yet. I strongly believe they will be some day, just as women’s rights and racial rights are now the norm — we just need more Unschooling pioneers to show our society the way. I fully admit that my family and I live in a glorious bubble of goodness most of the time. We surround ourselves with other people that live similarly, so it is only when we are shopping or otherwise in public during evenings and weekends that we are thrown aghast at the treatment of the children around us.

What can you do? Start treating your children as good as you treat your spouse. Demand that their teachers treat them better, too. Better yet, take them out of school!

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