"A Problem Page For All!"

Maybe I should go back to being "Zib"...or it could be my pen name...or my alter ego, like Calvin has from Calvin and Hobbes!

Education. Whooof. Well, let's see. It is true that the more education you have, the better your chances are of getting a good job (i.e., high paying, or to your exact specifications, or both). However, if you don't have grand plans for what kind of job you'd like for the rest of your life, you don't need an education – certainly not one beyond high school. A high school diploma/GED certification is a really good thing to have; even the most basic jobs (working at fast food places, gas stations, super markets, etc.) prefer that their employees have a GED/high school education. When I’ve recently been applying for jobs it’s very handy for me that I have one college class under my belt, because I can check the box saying “some college” and leave behind the whole question of whether I have a high school diploma. I know that my high school education is just fine thanks, but I don’t have proof and it’s handy to just skip to the college question and not worry about proving my high school status. Stating that I have “some college” implies that I have a high school education. It’s true, to my academic sense, and I don’t care about certification. I might feel the need to care later on, but I doubt it. For all intents and purposes, I’m in the college zone now. People don’t need to trouble their pretty heads about how nor where I got my high school education.

I can get into college without a high school transcript; what most colleges would ask for is either SAT or ACT scores from me. If I wanted to apply to colleges right now, the easiest thing would be to take either one of those tests and then write up my own "high school transcript" outlining my "education" throughout the past four years of my life. Homeschoolers all over the country write up their own transcripts; it's not hard and they're perfectly suitable for the purpose. It helps if you did a lot of series of workbooks and used a curriculum because then you can say, "In twelfth grade I finished Saxon Math level 99 with honors in super-advanced trigonometry", and, "I received a 107% score on my biology exam in tenth grade". Unschoolers have to be a little more creative and count balancing their parents' checkbook every week for three years as "math", reading Les Misérables cover-to-cover five times in a row and then directing and producing a garage theatrical production of it one summer as "literature and fine arts", and blowing up the kitchen whilst baking Christmas cookies as "chemistry". I don't mean to be flippant, really, but unschoolers are used to taking the most day-to-day tasks and turning them into learning experiences. So my scenarios really do count, and if you write them up in academic jargon and certainly if you accompany your written-up transcript with SAT and/or ACT scores, you should be happily admitted into the college of your choice.

That is, if you want to go to college. Me, I don't have plans to go – at least not in the near future. The careers I'm currently interested in are writing and mediation/counseling. The latter might or might not require me to have a degree, depending on what kind of stuff I want to do with it. If I want to go into practice as a psychologist/counselor, my patients might very well not trust me unless I had some kind of certification (the higher the better, so we’re looking at a Ph.D. or at least a master’s degree). On the other hand, there are tons of ways one can practice mediation/counseling without being in practice, per se. Volunteer work springs to mind – with people who can’t afford to pay for it, at homeless shelters or anti-violence centers, etc., etc., etc. That idea excites me, although naturally it wouldn’t be earning me money. But, when it all comes down to it, I don’t much care about money. I’ll work that out. I refuse to let money concerns get in the way of me doing what I really feel drawn to do.

Writing, of course, doesn’t require any degree at all. If I can manage to land myself a million-dollar contract with Tor Books, who the hell is going to care if I’ve got a GED, BA, MA, Ph.D., or nothing at all? If I can write well, that’s all they’re going to care about. If you can sell your writing, nobody cares where you learnt to write – in a college classroom, in your backyard, through self-help books, or whatever else. It doesn’t matter to them. It’s the manuscripts that matter.

Of course, education often helps one to write better. I’m interested in taking some writing classes down the road, just for the fun of it and because professors are often wise people with stuff that they can teach one. But I am wholly confident that I can also teach myself all I need to know about writing, if that’s the path I wish to take. I’ve managed to self-educate myself up until now, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I write very well. I have a mother and a father who are college professors and excellent writers themselves and who are always willing to share advice, lend an ear, or help me find resources when I need them, in regard to my writing. Reading, of course, is the best way to teach oneself to write. I used to read a lot of junk when I was younger (the Babysitter’s Club books spring to mind) – I do still read cheap paperbacks that aren’t really high quality – and I think, in doing so, I learnt and continue to learn what to avoid doing in my own writing. I also did and do read a lot of wonderful books. When I read anything at all, I constantly critique what I like and what I don’t like about how it’s written. I’m educating myself in my writing.

If I do find that I want or need a college/university degree, there’s one place that I’m very interested in looking into. It’s a new institution started by a couple of people from the unschooling community. It’s called Imagine University (I think) and it’s a fascinating, brilliant way of getting a higher education. It’s based on the unschooling philosophy. Basically, they work with you to find resources to educate yourself or find the people who can help educate you. They help you find classes, mentors, internships, etc. that will help you learn your skill. After you and they have decided that you’re educated in your field up the standard of the degree you wish, they get their professors to sign your diploma. And that’s it! You’ve got your degree! I think it’s an absolutely fascinating idea. I want to learn lots more about it. I just heard about it at NBTSC earlier this month.

My parents are fine with any decision my siblings and I make about college, no college, whatever. A year or so ago Rachel and I had a tough time convincing Dad that we weren’t going to jump into the college scene – it was at a time when she and I were just reforming our ideas (from the assumption we’d had as kids that of course we’d be going to college, to the newfound idea that we might not like it as much as we’d thought we would), and Dad wasn’t thrilled with that. But after arguing and talking and letting the thoughts settle in, he’s come round to supporting us in whatever decision we make. I think some part of him would still like to see us all marching down the aisles with college diplomas (not to mention university diplomas) clutched in our hands and the tassels on our black caps waving wildly – but he’s not going to be wounded or disappointed if that never happens.

I honestly don’t know if Rachel or Jimmy will go to college. Rachel’s seriously looking into naturopathy schools right now, some of them mail-away courses that she can do at home, to be a board-certified naturopath. Jimmy is still fascinated with meteorology and it wouldn’t surprise me if he went to college (and possibly on to university) to get a degree or two in that, most likely because he’d need one to get a job in the field. Of course, he has dreams of playing the stock market and becoming a millionaire, and he just might end up doing that. Jimmy’s got hidden depths and a deep practical sense about money that is nowhere to be found in Rachel or me or either of our parents. So who knows. I wouldn’t mind vacationing on my rich brother’s yacht…!

The final point is that unschoolers are ingenious about coming up with official- and academic-sounded terms for the things they do in the course of their busy lives. It’s all perfectly legitimate (reading all of Emily Dickinson’s works and writing a series of in-depth critiques in response has got to count for something, even if the project was never assigned and was quite a lot of fun to a poetic unschooler) and although this kind of documentation often confuses traditionalist teachers, it just as often intrigues college admissions officials or grandparents worried about their grandchildren’s education or strangers on the street who stop you and ask you why you’re not in school on a sunny glorious April morning.

I think that’s my answer. Do you have any more questions? Alternative education is one of my absolute favorite topics – I could talk about it forever! Also, I’m used to talking about it, due to inquisitive grandparents and meddling strangers.

Hugs, Zib