So, I believe in unschooling. Have you noticed? But it is hard, brothers and sisters, it is hard to believe and your faith will be tested! As a youngster I was a typical rebel. I pierced my nose. I dyed my hair. I refused to wear any shoes in highschool (my personal favorite). I (cringing and ducking here) smoked - everything - once or twice unfortunately even candle wax. See? Clearly I was an astonishing free thinker. But at least I am used to coloring outside the damn lines. However, nothing has challenged my actual perspective like the decision to unschool. All that previous non conformity taught me was that many fine and intelligent people are also non conformists. This new non conformity of unschooling is changing the way I look at our society. I don't really have conclusions but I feel a sea change inside of me. In the short term, I love feeling myself on a windy brink and I love seeing how the children seem to flourish for the moment.

There are different kinds of wealth. My family seems to run the gamut. Some of us have had to hunt to put meat on the table. Some of us have walked in a moneyed society way beyond the ken of average folks. Some of us have done both. To the very last particle of DNA, we do seem a consistently stubborn group of sons of bitches. I can say that plainly, yet I digress. There are different kinds of wealth and it does not escape me that I get to sit around contemplating a different way to raise the children simply because I live now, and in this society, and I am lucky, and also because my husband is brilliant. John Adams said a thing. He said that he studied law and politics so that his son could study math and science so that his son could study art. That takes my breath a way. Was he freaking prescient or what? I guess he was kind of smart. To me, he was thinking about sea change and society. He was describing the circle of sustenance and leisure and vision. And he was clearly valuing that circle. From his austere (opulent?) cabin, he saw the deeper importance of creative vision.

Holy Moly. Did anyone notice that I am actually trying to write about the process of learning to read as an unschooler, because that is my intention here. Two days ago there was a miracle. Or a normal unschooling occurrence, depending on the goggles you wear. And I guess I see how the whole shebang relates to wealth. My daughter is 7. She, ummm I think literally, she reads "on grade level". Snort. As if. Put another way, she does not know how to read yet. But she is beginning to want to read to herself very very muchly. And she is beginning to sit down and try to learn. (Can you feel the wind in my face?)

I have mentioned that my son is a gifted reader. He learned to read for two reasons. He absolutely HAD to know what kind of hell that little blond rascal Calvin was up to with his tiger Hobbes and I refused to read it for him. It is not funny when read aloud. But more importantly, my son was bored. That is why he learned to read. He understood that no one in this world was planning to entertain him and he did not have the option of TV.

But my daughter has always had my son ahead of her. She is never bored. They play constantly. In her world someone will entertain her, or so she thinks. Then one day last week two things happened. Another homeschooling mom realised that her son did not believe he could read. So she said, "But you do know how to read. You read this and such and thus and such and that is reading." Then he began to think about the reading he can do. And of course, that is what we all do. That is reading. When I heard this I went right home and said to my girl, "Darling, do you know you already read?" She was in disbelief. "I can not read, Mom." Meaning, I can not read Plato. I said, "Oh, but you can. You read all of Dick and Jane with no help. That is reading." She considered. She percolated.

And then, drum roll and cue the wind shear, her brother went outside to play with out her. She was suddenly alone. I was up here blogging away. I was writing that piece of nonsense down below about the Zen of Potty. I got to feeling hypocritical because I was completely ignoring my daughter at the very same time I was writing about all the close and careful attention I pay the children. So I went downstairs to look for her. The house was so quiet, in fact, that I was constructing a very severe lecture about leaving the house without telling me first, when I rounded the corner.

Us unschoolers like to do a thing called strewing. We strew and dangle and flash rich and choice information in front of the children. We think we are slick about it. Possibly we look like fools. None the less, we strew. We use a rolling suitcase (a bookmocase?) for our library books and we keep them all there on the floor in the living room. The last time we went to the library I spiked the suitcase with easy readers leaning heavily toward Dr. Seuss. I did this and said nothing. If you point it out, it is no longer strewing, it becomes teaching.

When I rounded the corner there was my daughter sitting on the couch completely absorbed in "Hop on Pop". She had herself a ball of yellow cotton yarn and the kitchen scissors. She was going through the book and marking all the pages she can read. People, she was studying. And she has kept it up. Last night after bath and brushers she came down looking for "more books I can read".

Do you feel me here, Dogs? My exhilaration? My exoneration? And do you want to know the part that pleases me most? The wealth she is amassing here, not the reading. Right now my daughter is in the process of learning how to learn. She is finding out that the power is not located in a teacher at the front of a class room. The power is located right inside of her. Who will judge her? She will. Who will test her? She will. Who will own her soul? She will. Who is wealthier than that? That is the power of unschooling and the leap of faith I took in announcing that my children will never, The Good Lord Willing And The Creek Don't Rise, my children will never be handed over to an institution for schooling. I am completely aware and humbly grateful that this is our greatest wealth.