Scholé news April 2020

All children are still in state-decreed home lessons.

That has nothing to do with voluntary homeschooling, let alone unschooling. The current situation is more like the menacing caricature of home education that the media like to spread.

Children locked away, not allowed to see friends or do interesting things with others, but at the mercy of their parents day in, day out, who have to teach them the school material. I read and hear about families who are already at their limit, which does not surprise me. Quite a few children and young people can no longer be dragged away from the internet, which in corona times is their only window on the world. There are also families who manage to gain something positive from being so close together despite all the restrictions. They try to be considerate of one another and discover with amazement how much creative potential each individual suddenly unfolds when the usual distractions are no longer available.

Immediately before the outbreak of the corona crisis, an Austrian court took away custody of their freely learning children from a couple entirely, even though the psychological and educational expert reports clearly showed that there was no threat whatsoever to the children’s welfare. The ruling is explicitly meant to deter others. Where does this vehement rejection of free learning come from, when it corresponds far better to all the findings of modern learning psychology than the stubborn cramming of material that is still common in mainstream schools? The only justification the Supreme Court gives for its ruling is the fear that freely learning children could expect serious disadvantages in their later working lives. Since the scientific studies on the careers of former unschoolers and homeschoolers that were before the judges prove the exact opposite without exception, this argument is hardly credible. So what is such a draconian measure really meant to prevent? Or, to put it another way, whose welfare is really at stake?

Reality gives a clear answer: it is about the welfare of the authorities. From childhood on we are trained to submit to an outside, “higher” will. Getting up when the alarm clock rings, not when we have had enough sleep. Learning what is on the curriculum, not what interests us. Answering questions that are put to us, not asking questions ourselves. Regurgitating prescribed content, not looking for new solutions. Believing what the authorities tell us. Doing what they tell us. Having a bad conscience when we doubt what the majority considers right. Reporting rule violations by fellow pupils / fellow citizens to the authorities.

In the current crisis, these learned behaviours come to light particularly clearly. The authorities can demand obedience without having to give watertight reasons for their drastic measures: those at the top will surely know what is good for us! Statistics, facts, half-truths, assumptions, projections, opinions, measurement data – we let the media serve us all this, jumbled together, just as willingly as the politicians do. Who demands a clear distinction between facts and their interpretation? Who asks about connections? After all, we are not experts! Since our school days we have been drummed with the idea that the world is divided into neatly separated subjects that only the respective experts know about. So we content ourselves with mockery or hair-splitting debates about the choice of words, the tone, the hairstyle or the clothes of authority figures. Or we take sides highly emotionally for or against individual rulers, declaring one a potential saviour of the world and the other the devil in human form, in order to get rid of the unbearable pressure that fear and helplessness have built up in us…

Only a small minority defies the general code of conduct. These rebellious types do not find it reassuring that all the major media report more or less the same thing and that the same experts are given a voice everywhere. Weren’t divergent opinions once one of the basic features of democracy? In times like these, deviations from the officially approved reports are branded as dangerous fake news, and citizens who loudly stand up for compliance with the constitution have to expect to be treated like criminals.

As an incorrigible free spirit, over the past weeks I have allowed myself the luxury of comparing a great many different opinions and approaches from a variety of sources, in order to form as nuanced a picture of the situation as possible. My fear of Covid-19 faded quite soon in the process. At the same time, however, my concern for democracy and freedom of expression grew so great that I had to try to escape it upwards – towards the “corona chakra”! – to the level of vision. And seen from a bird’s-eye view, the menacing shadows of a digital dictatorship can be made out in the foreground, but behind them shines the dawn of a free world of togetherness and reverence for nature – nature outside and nature within the human being, which is so much wider and richer than our ingrained subservience allows us to dream…

Please do not let yourselves be frightened! Do not let anyone make you believe that obedience, competition and global control are without alternative! Wake up and actively commit yourselves to realising your brightest visions of a free and fairer world! Whether and when it becomes reality is the shared responsibility of each and every one of us – through our individual decision for fear or for love!

With the feeling of being “wonderfully sheltered by good powers”, as the resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in prison at the turn of the year 1944/45, a few months before his execution and the end of the Third Reich, I send you my warmest greetings

Alexandra

P.S.: As newsletters are not easy to forward, here is a link where the Scholé News have been published as posts for some time now: https://gaia-energy.org/tag/schole/

Book tip – “Lernen ist wie Atmen” (Learning is like breathing)

Together with two unschooling mothers, Gudrun Totschnig and Sigrid Haubenberger, we published it ourselves.

We all feel that the time is ripe for this many-voiced account of how unschooling can be lived in practice. Order your own copy on the GAIA marketplace, with a 10 % discount for members. The book is in German.

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