We took the kids on an impromptu walk today. It was an unseasonably warm sunny afternoon and we live five minutes from a beautiful park on the shore of a Great Lake. These are things it's good to take advantage of.
Because our oldest is a few months from her fifth birthday, we've been discussing the direction we want to see her schooling take in the next year. We haven't formally started yet, but she's in the process of teaching herself to write and it looks like she might be ready before we are.
One thing we aren't going to do is send her away.
While we were walking, I saw another reason why we can't. She and her younger sister got out of the stroller and walked ahead of us hand in hand, singing together.
If we send her away, it won't be long before we stop seeing that. Because she and her sister will be separated and begin living different lives.
The Cost of Separation
When my parents kept me out of the school system some thirty years ago, there were a lot of things they didn't expect. One of them was the closeness that developed between their children. Separating kids from their families at such a young age causes them to begin to forming their own life very quickly. Compound that new autonomy by splitting kids into grades by age and there is a subtly destructive effect on the closeness of sibling groups. Even those who remain decently close have lives that continue to diverge as they grow, to the point that many often become embarrassed by their younger siblings and prefer to do things with their friends alone. In my family, we did everything together and grew together in a way we could not have done had we been sent to school.
Of the many things we could lose by sending our daughter away for her education, this vibrant, precious bond between her and her sisters is one of the most heartbreaking. It might not happen. Some such relationships survive intact. But so many don't.
Education has become a religion, not just in our country but across the world. Religions all call for sacrifice and this one is no exception. The sacrifice of familial bonds isn't obvious and is usually denied, but over and over we've seen it happen: you can't send a child away from his or her family to form their own life at age 5 and not see that child gradually become separated from their family. Sometimes completely, sometimes only a little. But it happens.
It's not worth it. The education she'd get from someone else isn't worth it. Those moments are too important, the relationships too valuable.
Staying Together
A long time ago, someone told my mom, "You're the kind of mom who always cries when her kids get on the bus for the first day of school."
My mom thought, "Nope, I'm the kind of mom who won't even put her kid ON the bus for the first day of school."
Amen, Mom. Today I saw why I'm thrilled and relieved to be following the trail you blazed. Because I heard my children singing together and we're not going to have to give that up.
