sarah & rose
we live in coastal New Zealand and strange places inside our own minds. the land here, it breaks slowly, dark with memory, and falls back into the wild white sea that once covered it, long-lost lover-like. it's kinda hard to be sensible and stable in a land like this.
how we homeschoolrose has never been to school. we read books, talk about things, go places. she doesn't necessarily like to draw, but she's always done it - her thing. you can see some of her artwork here.
why we homeschool
ten reasons, off the top of my head
1. it seemed unnatural, actually more than a little insane, to send my small child off to spend more than half her life with strangers
2. we will not be duped into the mass indoctrination of nicely lined-up and conforming citizens, and we are not interested in wallowing in one great big infodump with a few basic learning skills that could be imparted in six months, which is two reasons but they come under the one heading of, mama is political about education
3. rose learns outside of, and about a hundred miles away from, the box
4. lice, scabies, herpes, influenza, impetigo, anorexia, idiocy
5. there is an epidemic of physical and emotional abuse ("bullying") in our schools
6. the playground is a wild and lawless society where children must expend all their energy on merely surviving
7. the children shape each other's characters without the loving guidance of invested adults
8. I want my daughter to know there is a debate about evolution, to appreciate why some people think communism is the best political method, to study and consider all religions, philosophies, learning routes, and ways of being that may interest her
9. Shakespeare, Tennyson, Plutarch, More, Cicero, Chaucer, Henryson, Hawthorne, Frost
10. homeschooling works for us
why I write
why I am a writer
it's like asking
why I have bones -
I don't know
I was just made this way
why I write poetry
is the same
I simply
woke up one day
and the poetic voice came
I've wanted to write
almost as long as I've wanted you
(did you know that? did you know
you are worth more
than a million words
and everything else I've wanted
and all the time I waited
for you?)
but I don't want poetry
isn't that funny?
I don't read poetry
and I don't think poetry
yet it comes -
and when it stops -
I can not write at all.
I want to be famous
which I won't get with poetry
of course
even if I was good
so I write novels
for three pages
then smash them
into little jagged poems
because isn't it funny
(again I am laughing)
what the Gods make us do?
Read me steal me see me
one day I'll have a megablog
or a bestseller
or an award
and everyone will know
sarah haliwell
which is not my real name
so I'll have to be famous
incognito
of course
otherwise: my book is available for purchase
why we homeschool
ten reasons, off the top of my head
1. it seemed unnatural, actually more than a little insane, to send my small child off to spend more than half her life with strangers
2. we will not be duped into the mass indoctrination of nicely lined-up and conforming citizens, and we are not interested in wallowing in one great big infodump with a few basic learning skills that could be imparted in six months, which is two reasons but they come under the one heading of, mama is political about education
3. rose learns outside of, and about a hundred miles away from, the box
4. lice, scabies, herpes, influenza, impetigo, anorexia, idiocy
5. there is an epidemic of physical and emotional abuse ("bullying") in our schools
6. the playground is a wild and lawless society where children must expend all their energy on merely surviving
7. the children shape each other's characters without the loving guidance of invested adults
8. I want my daughter to know there is a debate about evolution, to appreciate why some people think communism is the best political method, to study and consider all religions, philosophies, learning routes, and ways of being that may interest her
9. Shakespeare, Tennyson, Plutarch, More, Cicero, Chaucer, Henryson, Hawthorne, Frost
10. homeschooling works for us
why I write
why I am a writer
it's like asking
why I have bones -
I don't know
I was just made this way
why I write poetry
is the same
I simply
woke up one day
and the poetic voice came
I've wanted to write
almost as long as I've wanted you
(did you know that? did you know
you are worth more
than a million words
and everything else I've wanted
and all the time I waited
for you?)
but I don't want poetry
isn't that funny?
I don't read poetry
and I don't think poetry
yet it comes -
and when it stops -
I can not write at all.
I want to be famous
which I won't get with poetry
of course
even if I was good
so I write novels
for three pages
then smash them
into little jagged poems
because isn't it funny
(again I am laughing)
what the Gods make us do?
Read me steal me see me
one day I'll have a megablog
or a bestseller
or an award
and everyone will know
sarah haliwell
which is not my real name
so I'll have to be famous
incognito
of course
otherwise: my book is available for purchase
a little vintage sarah
