We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Imagine if we’re heading toward a time when tomorrow is better than yesterday?
It sounds cool right?
The past 4 months have been topsy-turvy– but everywhere you look you’ll see progress, I think, if you look for it.

I was recently interviewed by a young guy who’s doing academic research on the topic of homeschooling, particularly what we can learn from it during the pandemic. The questions he asked me and the thoughts they provoked pretty much made my day.
And, important background: The brave new world of coparenting my children currently involves home schooling. Not distance-learning per se; but home schooling.

The Goal (okay, my goal)
— most concisely, I want to raise children who can solve interesting problems as adults.
I could blather & pontificate on what it means to solve interesting problems but I’ll save that for another post or the ears a random stranger someday.

“Dad, did you know the school system was pretty much designed to train people to work in factories during the Industrial Revolution?”
— boy #001, age 10
“I sorta did know this, yes…. where did you hear about it?”
“I saw it on a YouTube channel I follow about education.”

“Dad, did you know that frequent small breaks are important and can help you learn more?
“Well that makes sense to me… where did you hear about that?”
“I heard it on the Wow in the World podcast.“

The promise of a more comprehensive, open-ended curriculum for these boys sounds very appealing to me.
Satisfy curiosities.
Indulge passions.
Ask hard questions.

Challenges
Home schooling is hard, so far as I can tell. I super sucked at home schooling this last week, and hell it feels like that’s all I did for the week. Not much progress on the work front. I’m hitting a steep learning curve, it seems.

Money– the work front is the elephant in the living room. How can we work less?
I’m not out of the woods on this topic, yet, but I’m encouraged through frugality, practicality, and full application of my own skill set both at work, and at home.
— interestingly, the lifestyle changes we have been making are coincidentally-or-not more responsible environmental decisions, too. So that’s a good indicator, too, I hope.

Socialization– I do feel the supposed problem of “socialization” is to home schooling what “protein” is to people who don’t eat animals– it’s just not really an issue if you’re actually bought in to the program. It’s overstated. That said, it’s perhaps a little more challenging with Covid, but I have a lot of faith in pods and connectivity. I also think that where there’s passions there’s socializing; kinda like those of us who ride bikes all know each other, or really anybody with fire in the belly about just about anything has a way of finding friends who are into these things, too.

— Thanks to my friend Jenn for this add on:
it’s like music, not like traveling: