“Roll The D8″
This strip leaves off on the topic of homeschool. Interestingly I ended up marrying a girl who was also homeschooled. I hated school. Almost every bit of it. I was this sensitive kid with major anxiety. Before I knew my times tables I knew exactly how many days I could stay out of school sick before they legally had to expel me. (The answer is 30). Every year I stayed out of school for 30 days, which means that in the 12 years I was in school I missed about a years worth of my state mandated education in culmulative sick days.
Am I proud of that? Not really. Ironically, as an adult I have dedicated myself to the field of education. I feel like no kid should hate school as much as I did. I lucked out because outside of school I had a mother and father with graduate degrees and a grandfather who was a practicing physician. I had educational influences that had nothing to do with state mandates. I am incredibly grateful for that, especially now looking back. I learned as much staying out of school as I did within, maybe even more.
When I found Ian I was drawn to him because he was anxious, awkward, and different like me. He hadn’t been in school and really didn’t know how to fit in. In him I had found someone who had the same fears as me, a kindred spirit. My wife has a similar disposition in her perception towards social norms and culture. Not all homeschool kids are the same, but the two that I love have very similar traits. They both see the world and have not been crushed by the drum beat of propriety. They operate to their own drum beat, and it gives them a power that I am in love with.
Because of both of them I have learned how to operate to my own drum beat, whereas at the time I met Ian I was lost.
School makes you march to its own drum beat, one that prepares you for the drum beat of American citizenry. School loses something in enforcing this drum beat onto all of it’s pupils. It loses the embracing of originality, of creativity, and it loses itself.
When learning becomes a machine… Well, it loses me.
I love to learn, and I hate being told to learn.
So this moment, when Steve tells Hawk what homeschooling is for the first time, it is a very important moment. It is the moment I learned that there were other people in the world grappling with similar problems to mine.
-Patrick
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Song of the Day:
“Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd
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