School.
Reading Jo's post today brought back memories of my own children's time at 'baby school' and how one seemed to live constantly in a state of worry about 'crucial' things, like their not grasping the four times table quickly enough. Why was it so hard to have a sense of perspective? I lived constantly in the present and each new problem, tiny in the great scheme of learning, was vast and desperate. You would think that by the third child you would learn to relax - but no. As each one managed to have a new and untried set of difficulties.

It started off very differently as I was living in remote N0rfolk when my two daughters were tiny and, for fun, started my own minute school in my house for them and about five friends' children. It had a playing with dolls quality and I especially liked setting up the 'classroom' and making timetables and choosing what they would eat at break. I had been to an 'Etre et Av01r' type school myself for a year when I was seven and wanted to re-create it for my own children. I often try to imagine how they would be now if they had never moved on to competitive, class ridden London private sch00ls. But then again, in England it isn't very comfortable to be a complete outsider and their now huge network of school acquaintances has given them a lot of social fun and job opportunities.

When I taught my son at home for the year that he was twelve we had a really good time and were very tempted to keep on with it but we were too isolated and sanity prevailed. (He had started trying to live as a cat and also spent hours lying with his face a foot away from an ants' nest, totally involved in their world - 'Get him away from here, now!', said my daughters). When he arrived at boarding school he was unnervingly unlike the general run of boy. His housemaster assumed he was two years older than his actual age because of his mature attitude and that he must have been put down into a lower class because he was stupid - not an ideal start. He found the other children horribly babyish and couldn't understand the jockying for position and macho posturing. 'Why on earth do they all have to be so NASTY to each other?', he said in naive wonderment. He got used to it in the end and even learnt to be a little bit nasty himself. He often says that he would rather have stayed at home, with some extra tutors and a lot of foreign travelling but I think he might have become a total misfit with no friends of his own age.

How I long to be able to go back and bring them up all over again. How relaxed yet tough I would be. How unhysterical about their learning their times tables and how firmly I would refuse the sobbing requests for cello lessons. How I wouldn't insist on two years of basic German 'Because it is not a language you will ever teach yourself' but go with Spanish instead. How I would encourage every single outside activity including 'f1ves' and pottery and not say 'But have you got time for that when you should be studying?'. How I would not see Oxbridge as the ultimate goal as everything has changed so much since I was young and Oxbridge is so watered down and dreary now that there are many better places. Anyway, I am boring myself and someone is creaking up the stairs towards my hunched figure.


- posted by Iris @ 6/29/2004 09:47:00 AM comment