Planning each academic year for my son has developed, since about 7th grade, into planning with my son. This is as it should be. If homeschooling is about anything, it is about people taking hold of their lives and finding what inspires them. Of course, because Waldorf is also about health and because we recognize that we are all flawed human beings, real education also often means having to do what one does not wish to do - to push against ones walls and "stuff" to get to the other side. As adults we have this challenge from time to time (more often for some of us!) and as parents we can keep our eyes open for these challenges for our children.
To truly develop the will forces, one needs to push against resistance - one's own, preferably. Nothing is more satisfying than trying again and again and again to master a skill - riding a bike, playing the piano, dribbling a basketball. Math can provide such experiences - the sheer agony of learning multiplication tables and the prolonged determination needed to master long division are two examples.
But.... it is also true that when children are not motivated and loathe a subject that there is just no way that they will be able to learn it. Thus igniting the determination to push through resistance and get it done (whatever it might be) necessitates enthusiasm and engaged will forces in the child. Simply saying "you need to learn your 8 times table - or else" is not igniting a flame. It is coercion. But finding a way to set the bar high and keep it there in the face of a child's necessary whining and complaining is not coercion. It is helping a child identify his own resistance and get over it. There is a delicate balance that must be found - and this is by no means easy. It is one of the heardest challenges of parenting.
And of course, all parents have this challenge, whether they homeschool or not. How much soccer practise is necessary? When is practising the piano necessary and when might it kill any joy in music? As homeschoolers we share these dilemmas with the rest of parent-kind. But..... we often have to deal with it a good bit more as we are the teachers and face these questions every day. And if our child tends toward the sluggish or ethereal and is especially reluctant to set his or herself challenges to overcome, then we have our work cut out for us.
In my family math provided an overwhelming abundance of opportunities to challenge both my sons to dig deep and get over it. Tears, screaming fits, out and out refusal, hours of whining.... math, in all our years of schooling, has almost never been tackled with any semblance of willingness or grace in my sons. But we have persevered.
My eldest, who now lives back in the UK, is about to start an engineering course. He phoned me up to tell me about a test he had to take to get accepted onto the course. He of course aced the language arts part - and then, I could hear him grinning as he proudly told me that he had passed the math part. No great honors involved - but he passed. It had been worth it and he was satisfied.
Whewf - was I glad! And Daniel will use math in the work he wants to do and has the ability to learn what he needs to. This is a rather utilitarian relationship to math, but it will do. He has perseverd and he has come out the other side.
Gabriel on the other hand, has no intention of using math past being able to balance a check book and other similar tasks. But because the Waldorf approach to mathematics is not purely utilitarian but also appreciates mathematics as a rigorous way of training the mind and thinking, we have pushed him to go beyond just skills-based math. But he is digging his heels in.
It came to a head at our pre-semester planning meeting when the question of "what is Gabriel doing this year for math" came up. He basically said he would do what we "made" him do, but was sure he'd hate every minute of it. Paul and I looked at each other - was this one of those parental moments when we needed to just make him push through his stuff or was this a time to step away? We decided to do the latter. Knowing how stubborn our son is, we knew that at this point in his life, it would be futile to make him do math in the hope that he'd come round. Rather, at 15 years of age, it is time for him to have to make such decisions himself - and, because we know that he is a basically sensible person, we figure that at some point before he finishes high school, he will, undoubtedly, return to math.
So we said "ok. No math this year."
He looked surprised, to say the least. And after a few minutes started talking about that this would be his "rest year" for math.... and maybe during his junior year he'd do some math. I wasn't expecting that and his willingness to articulate that possibility made me feel even more certain that we'd reached the right decision.
And this is where another truism in education comes in - when a person is motivated, they can learn whatever they want, often in a very short time. We have always, of course, known this, not just because it is a main tenet of unschooiing (one of John Holt's biggest arguments for unschooling) but because anyone who has his or her eyes open and observes human behavior knows this! But.... we are not unschoolers. We are Waldorf educators and although every Waldorf educator will also agree with this position, we also again add in the fact that education, as a holistic practise, also needs to take into account developing the will forces and qualities such as perseverance and determination. And, back to what I said earlier, opportunities for this usually come in the form of things one doesn't "want" to do. Over time, hopefully, a child and then a teen learns to have insight into her resistance to things and can transform "don't want to" into "yes I will". But that takes years and a path of following whims and inclinations in childhood is not the best path, I would say, toward this goal.
So we shall see. We shall see where Gabriel goes next. And we will keep you all informed!
