Wyndee Fields

I'm thinking I must be the last homeschooler on the planet to read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. I have read his website and some of his writing there, but never had the book in my hand until now. I figured I wouldn't read anything I haven't already read elsewhere like public school socialization is an oxymoron, etc.

However, I was taken by surprise by one of his speeches, "We Need Less School, Not More". In case I'm not the last person on the planet to read this book, I will narrate. The key point to this speech is that communities (and their sub-parts, families), have been replaced by networks. We only meet each other on common ground and needs, then we go our separate ways. The result is that we have a lot of superficial "relationships" with a lot of people, but no meaningful relationships with anyone. We become lonely in a crowd because no one really gets to know the whole person. The final result is that we are all using each other for our personal gain. That really hit me hard, as I have been feeling this a lot lately and had not been able to pinpoint the true problem.

Handsome and I have been married for 12+ years and have spent 10 of those years away from our families. Handsome is a family man and finds it hard to be away from them for very long. I find this admirable, but sad. You see, I remember spending time with my cousins at my grandparents' house and learning things I never learned at home. We were included in the baking that Grandma did in her little kitchen. We would sit in the living room for hours and listen to Grandpa tell his corny jokes or talk about his childhood growing up on the farm in Wisconsin. I first found a real grounding there as I learned that my great-grandfather moved here from Norway. I was completely fascinated. Handsome had similar bonds with his grandparents that kept him grounded with his family. It is sad that our children don't have that bond with their grandparents. Handsome and I believed that the problem is the distance between us and our families. However, we have come to the hard realization that physical distance has nothing to do with it. We have started to notice that there is a breakdown of relationship with everyone. For example, the last time we visited Handsome's parents, the children asked many times to help in the kitchen. Nanny repeatedly said, "No, you'll just get under foot." She fussed at them often if they got too rowdy and generally got more and more irritated over the time we were there. My children LOVE to help out in the kitchen. This could have been a real bonding experience, but instead, they were hurt to be rejected. I don't think Nanny had any ill-will towards them, but this is a sad example of what has become of our society.

So, here we are homeschooling in order to bring back the bonds that have been broken in our and our parents' generation, but what do we do to bring back community? The more I ponder this, the more I am at a loss. I'm sure church does help in some cases, but it seems that most of the churches we've been to follow that same networking example, rather than a community. We have not been to church in over a year for this very reason. In fact, the closest we have been to that community feel was when we were going to a home church with several of our friends. To this day, we feel that was the closest to family/community we have been in a long time. I pray that the Lord will bring us to the place we need to be to finally have that family/community bond that is so lacking in our lives right now. It is that very bond that will bring us all (not just my family) to the peace we so desperately need right now.