Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention - Edited
A Short Proposal For A Community Peer to Peer Education Network
Many years ago I developed an extended prenatal education program for expectant parents. I did so out of a frustration with the inadequate programs for prospective parents at the time.
In my opinion and experience the short and uninvolved classes seemed more to be a profit center for the teachers. Not that many or most did not mean well but they simply were not getting results. I felt adequate meant less medicated births, happier parents and healthier babies. Certainly it meant fewer medicated births and only an infinitesimal number of C-sections.
Was it a threat to the local medical system? Of course. But the smarter physicians caught on. Many of them were in my classes.
Other than medical professionals there were lawyers, computer technologists, music professionals and a few local hippies. The classes were highly dynamic. I learned more from the students which is how it should be in a Socratic, peer to peer based educational experience dictated by the needs of the students.
I bring this experience not because I personally want to engineer a new system of education. I am a grandmother who specializes in music production now and would not have time for that sort of responsibility. This being the case and with nearly everyone else stressed to the breaking point I envision a way of doing this without anyone taking charge in a managerial way.
I stand ready to commit to a decentralized grassroots effort. I am motivated simply by what is happening to our children today. As in earlier days, I am inspired because of the inadequacy of what is available. Our USA education system is a failed one. This became so much more evident during the Covid years and it is even worse today.
Today our kids are still being massively undereducated. Their lack of knowledge of history is massive. As we all know, people and cultures who have an inadequate understanding of their history are dangerously weakened. A thorough and accurate understanding of history prepares kids for citizenship. Without this a Democracy is really not possible.
My students in prenatal classes went in prepared for the potential experiences they might have. They knew how to articulate their needs and desires for the kind of experience they wished to medical professionals. They knew how to dialog and negotiate - seeing the medical professionals as partners.
Among my students there were no surgical births, little need for pain medications, and great joy. If any students had been among the small 5% of births requiring a C-section I am confident they would have managed the experience well. I taught the possibility of giving birth “normally” in a subsequent pregnancy.
One student experienced a still birth and it was handled in such a way as to be as dignified and fulfilling as possible. One couple gave birth to a son with a severe heart problem known as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. They experienced the death of their child while surrounded by a loving and supportive community.
Primarily however I taught how to deal with pain. These arts apply to all of our lives and are not restricted to the literal process giving birth to a baby. In many ways we are all giving birth to new selves at every moment. Pain is a part of this process. Learning how to cope with this helps us all.
The focus of all this is to illustrate a possible art and science of education managed within a community of concerned human beings. We teach each other, have each other’s backs, stand for what we believe. We arrange to teach and support our children in such a way that our efforts are immediate effective. Children learn what they live and the effects are obvious and rewarding from the start.Real education is a living, breathing, rewarding act of trust.
Parents and grandparents are rightfully the arbiters of what is included in their kids education and sometimes more importantly in what is not included. They are frustrated by the woke agenda prevalent in the schools now. They were frustrated by mask mandates, by remote learning and are now threatened by the transgender policies directed at children. Inappropriate materials which threaten to inappropriately sexualize our kids outrage them. The actions of school boards to dictate policies have been seismic. They have already set in motion vast political change.
The need is great the moment is now. Carpe diem. Seize the day.
To keep this short I will close with the following list of things which have occurred to me. I would appreciate your constructive thoughts in the comments. I would prefer not to get comments at this early stage as to why it may not work. Of course it would be a vast experiment - a process. Nothing in this life is a given.
Besides history there is a vast need for more intelligent education on all subjects important for educated humans.
Kids are little sponges with rapidly growing brains and bodies. They need and will respond to a highly intelligent educational interchange with competent adults. If that is not present they simply turn off, act out and decline to engage.
Because we are all reeling from a slew of stresses right now it is important to narrow any focus to what is necessary. This would not be the right place to hash out political, religious and medical concerns. There are other forums for that.
It could begin on the internet as a place for parents to bring their own resources as a contribution to the whole. Because many parents are now engaged in home schooling I know there is a tremendous ground swell of enthusiasm and need for better answers.
No one has time for meetings except maybe locally if participants choose. A grassroots focus would help keep these efforts local.
It would seem important to keep the efforts as decentralized as possible. We all suffer now from the effects of centralized, government and corporate power in what is a top down system dictatorial in nature. Ideally we would embody an alternative to that top down system.
There would be a tremendous amount of work to be done. Any journey begins with one step. I look forward to constructive comments.
I am building a homeschool curriculum from scratch. Would love to be a part of any parent community that shares our values.
I have been homeschooling my younger daughter since the Covid pandemic started. I use Acellus learning, which I think is pretty good as it just sticks to basics of reading, writing, math, and science, but it does require supplement teaching from me. Right now my 4th grader is really struggling through math, with both long multiplication and long division set up with so many steps to the process that I can't follow it and she seems to forget. But trying to teach her the more simple ways I learned how to do it adds more steps and confusion and often leaves her in tears. I think a broader community outreach should involve learning things about fixing, building, growing, harvesting, cooking and preserving. There needs to be a move away from corporate dependency and a move towards community. Both my daughters were born via C-section in Thailand. In both cases my cervix never dilated beyond 0 a midwife told me later that I likely had scar tissue which prevented it. There are so many things to rebuild in so many ways