Well then what is "Education"?

I am truly honored that my cousin visited this site and left a comment. It truly put the wheels in motion as I thought about what he had to say. I encourage you to go read it. It is under Let Freedom Ring. He says in his comment
"As Bourdieu puts it, individuals without capital are "condemned to live in a time oriented by others (which is truly alienated). This is the fate of the dominated."

I totally agree, but how do we get these capitals, and how do we free ourselves from this bondage of being the dominated?

We have incredibly different views on what education is. It may have something to do with the fact that he is well into his PhD and I am just starting my Bachelors degree.
But as such I am in a quandary. What is education?

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain

Are schooling and education the same thing?
I am one of those people who went thru 13 years of formal "Education" and came out the other end with the Happy stamp of graduated and wondered to myself "what have I learned?" I could add a bit (I have gotten much better by working with my kids in arithmetic), I couldn't write very well, I couldn't take direction very well, I couldn't balance a check book. But yet whose responsibility was it to teach me these things? I can answer that question now, I was, I was responsible to teach myself those things.
"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." - Isaac Asimov

It has only been recently as I have studied what will be the best “education” for my children that I have learned that self education is the best kind. Never in my schooling career was I ever told it was up to me to become “educated”. It was up to me to memorize the facts that were going to be on the test, it was up to me to learn the teacher’s behavior so I could conform to it, it was up to me to care if I got my homework done that I cared nothing about and it interested me very little.

I can remember a time in high school when I believed I could write and I wrote a lot. Then came grade 11 English class. All I remember about grade 11 English class was that was the year I learned I couldn’t write because the teacher was anal about the form instead of the content. She never took me aside and said here’s how you do it. She just kept failing me. I still have issues about that to this day and it is 11 years later. I could have started over and been in her class again.

So I ask you what is education? Is it schooling? Is it memorizing facts to regurgitate for the test? Is it higher test scores? Is it learning social skills from the bully down the street? Is the law of the playground the best place to learn how to cope with other people?

These are questions I have at the moment. These are the things I think about a lot.

But this morning I had a bit of a ray of sunshine in my rather hectic day. I woke up to see my 8 year old daughter reading Charles Dickens. She was reading “Great Expectations” and she was asking me questions about it and I was asking her questions, and we had a discussion about Pip and all his money and it was phenomenal. So perhaps that is education. Reading, writing, discussing.

Now I am not saying public school is the root of all evil. I know some really great people who were public schooled and came out educated, but these were the people who still had their love of learning intact and didn’t care what negative things a teacher had to say. But some of us whose only objective was to please and the teacher saying “not good enough” is very hurtful and discouraging. Public School is good for some and home school is good for some.

If “socialization” is your only objective to home schooling I ask you to ask yourself what are you socializing them for? If the job force is your answer than how is it that kids of the same birth year being put together in a class where everyone is competing for the teachers attention and affection similar to true life. It is as artificial as it gets. I have had many, many jobs where the people I worked with were not born in the same year I was. And guess what we still got along. I am venting now. I have been attacked a few too many times on this same note and have had to defend it one too many times. I have had too many negative responses to the comment “we home educate our children”. Why do people get so incredibly defensive about their choices? So you public school your kids, I home school so what? Why can’t we all just get along?

“I’d like to buy the world a coke in live in harmony.”

OK so to sum it all up what I am trying to say is make the right choice for your child because you studied it, not because that’s what everyone else is doing, or because, its what your parents did, but because you studied all the options and came up with the best choice for that particular child, be it home school or public school.

You are the expert in your home.

Let Freedom Ring

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Is Education the answer to maintaining our freedoms?
I was reading the book "Education Of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter very late last night because as usual I drank too much caffeine. His Granpa says to him "If ye don't know the past, then ye will not have a future. If ye don't know where your people have been, then ye won't know where your people are going." This rang very true to me. The importance of learning history can truly help us on where we are going.
What I find interesting right now is the word Freedom can have so many meanings. Some people seem to think that freedom means anarchy and that the answer should be "yes" to everything. It is against someones constitutional right if they were told "no". How can this be? Can we not retain the right to refuse?
I live in Canada. There have been some laws past that go against my very core belief system, because it was against their rights to be told "no". At what point do we draw the line between freedom and anarchy? Why should someone else's rights be so incredibly against my beliefs?


A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
Welcome to Canada.....

So can education help? I believe it can. When we study the classics and the founding generations of our civilization we can learn much. We can learn where we have been, mistakes made, and where we want to go. I think that as a divided society we do not know where we want to go. We all have differing agendas that we are trying to further. It seems to be Left against Right, Good against Bad. Where do you turn for truth?
I believe that is where education can help. With a great liberal arts education we are able to discern truth. By standing on the shoulders of the great thinkers of history we can look further. There is a really great quote by someone on that exact topic, but I can not find it right now and my kids are getting hungry. So I will find it later.
One more quote and I will be on my way to make food for my masses. Ohh the life of a Liber Mom.....

"It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens...."
Flannery O'Conner

Charlottes Web

We finished the book. We read it as a family. The movie has come to the dollar theatre here in town and we are going to go see it. I have decided that if a book becomes a movie we must first read the book.
I cried. I have read the book before, I have seen the cartoon movie that was made in the early 90's But for some reason I was touched by the sadness of the idea that this great character, Charlotte, dies, alone, in unfamiliar surroundings and is cleaned up with the ferris wheel and garbage of the county fair. It was very moving. My 8 year old daughter cried as well. I asked my 8 year old daughter "What can Charlotte teach us about being a friend?" She said "that we should die for our friends", Charlotte didn't die for Wilbur, but she was loyal. She sacrificed, but it was the circle of life that took Charlotte. She laid her eggs like good spiders do. It created a superb conversation.
We are inspired now to study spiders. We will probably start tomorrow by going to the library to get some books. At least I am inspired, and I will teach them what is mine.
I obtained a copy of the Thomas Jefferson Home Companion, by the Demilles, and Dianne Jeppson. I like the idea of it but I am finding it hard to read it and still feel confident. There are many many great ideas in it. I was warned though to keep in mind that it is the Jeppson plan, and therefore it is hers. I still need to make my plan mine. I can take good ideas from her book but use them and my ideas and come up with the plan for my family. But, WOW, do I feel inadequate. Dr.Demille then wrote an article on is GWC website

http://www.gwc.edu/pdf/statesman_10_12.pdf

I hope the link works.
It explains a few things and takes some of the pressure off. But also The Demille plan is not my plan. One of the great things this has inspired in me is to get a plan. I hosted a Face to Face with Greatness this past month and was truly inspired to want to do better and be better. Along with this book and the 55 ingredients
by Rachel Demille, I have created a very very rough draft of what could some day be a plan. It is in its very humble beginning stage. The incredibly sad part is we have been working at this for almost 2 years now and I finally realize the importance of a plan. Its pretty funny. But time is my best friend, and when I watch my daughters reading independly, and write all kinds of stories, and make up their own service projects I realize I am doing something right. I am on the right track. Even if it did take 2 years to get an inkling of an idea of how this whole thing works.
I guess Charlotte had to spend a lot of time upside down to get an plan on how to save Wilbur. Maybe that's where I went wrong. I need to spend more time on my head.
To watch my children connect things and make epiphanies of there own, I tremble with Joy.

The First Post

Well today is the beginning of my Blogging adventure. Does that feel like it should be a dance to anyone else? Maybe out there in cyber space there is a Clogging Blogger.
You may be asking yourself why does she call herself the Red Neck Liber. Well I shall explain. First we need to understand what Liber means. Liber is tree bark. In ancient times this tree bark was used to write upon. Those people who were able to read and write were considered to be liber, those who couldn't were slaves. There where then 2 classes the slaves and the liber. Liber is obviously the root word for many other words such as, Liberal, Liberty, Library. All these have to do with freedom and education. So maybe just maybe Liber is a free educated person, or a person who gains education to remain free. Oh, the epiphanies a firing off right now.
But why Red Neck? Well I have decided to home school my 6 children, a true test of patience that borders on insanity. They are all under 8. I read the book "A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders For The Twenty First Century" by Oliver Demille. It struck a cord within me. I felt very moved and inspired and the comparison of public school to a conveyor belt awoke something in my mind and I pulled my kids from school. I believe they are individuals and a one size fits all education is not for them. So therefore I home school. Since I started the adventure of homeschooling I noticed a bit of a stereo type. I do not fit this stereo type at all. I eat sugar, I eat meat, I love white flour, I watch TV, and I immunize my kids. I don't think I am better or worse than anyone. It was an internal struggle to believe I was still a good liber person and still do all these things. If you choose the opposite of the things I wrote above then good for you, you will be healthier for it. But I just gotta be me.
The Home schooling is going well. we have been at it for about 2 years now and I just figured out what Core Phase at my house looks like. And for me it is a lot of consistency and spending time in the same room with the kids. a very simple thing for some of you, but for me it took 2 years. I guess I am on a slow learning curve. I have one Love of Learner who is devouring every book in our house at the moment and with my new found consistency maybe we can attempt the library. First I have to pay off their new wing with my late fees.