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Home Education Magazine
July-August 1997 - Columns
Reflections
The Door is Wide Open -- Come Out and Play
The late Spring sunshine shone relentlessly through my windshield as I waited for the light to change across from the Middle School. Absently, my eyes wandered over the structure and I noted the flag pole and gray cement walls of the new section of the building. The old wing hung lamely off the end, a relic of a past when schools still had windows, windows, windows - just the right size for daydreaming students. But these windows were blank, unlike my mind which had leapfrogged through the door of my education memory file.
When I was in elementary school, going outside was limited to recesses and weekends. Storytime was twenty minutes right after lunch and a half-hour library period once a week. The wind was my enemy, snatching homework. The night was for sleeping. Students who stared out of windows were punished with public humiliation and extra homework. The door was never open.
I was a child of the earth, a child of dirt and stones and bugs and the woods. While at school, I did my lessons quickly and daydreamed away the rest of each hour. At some level I sensed there were other ways to live. I passed days, weeks and years staring at the clock, at the door, at pages blurred blank with boredom. I grew older but not up.
I don't know how many miles down the homeschool road I had traveled before I discovered that we were living the life of my daydreams. My children never sat in desks yearning for more. Although our homeschool had plenty of windows, the door was never locked. Free to come and go, Becky and Andy went. Their daydreams had no edges, no frames, no hard barrier between them and the real world I had only watched as a child.
When the wind began to blow and the trees tossed their arms in the wind, Becky and Andy raced outside to toss about with them. They donned plastic grocery bags like inexpensive backpacks to catch the wind and "lift them."
At night, when other children were going to sleep to get ready for school, mine were still up learning, dashing around in the darkness, or using flashlights to make the rain turn to silver streaks. They stood still and listened to the great horned owls calling to each other. They lay on their backs and watched satellites traverse the sky overhead. When they finally went to bed, they often spent time reading the maps on the wall beside their pillows, tracing rivers and touching mountaintops before they drifted into sleep.
In the morning, as the neighborhood children trudged past headed for the school bus stop, Andy, Becky and I were snuggling in bed with a stack of storybooks. Frosty mornings meant early adventures to check on the ice-edged world. Pouring warm water into the chicken waterer made exciting clouds of steam. The goat's alfalfa smelled sweeter in the cold winter air. Early mornings were also good for camp and fort building.
A chorus of frogs was an invitation to come find them. A trail of ants was an unraveled string to be followed. A creek was for damming. Grasshoppers were for catching, looking at and releasing. Waterstriders were magic insects standing on water. An assortment of animals to pet came through our household. The hens raised from chicks, the goats, the pony, the hamster, the bird, the guinea pig, the rat and the cats.
Academics could be learned anytime, but the wonder - the thrill - the absolute joy of the natural world was inborn and only needed the opportunity to flourish. I worried unnecessarily that Becky and Andy would miss something important - a verb here, an algorithm there. Everything falls into place. Everything worth learning begins with the sense of excitement and discovery that motivates outdoor play.
A light honk behind me jarred me back to my traffic light world. Startled, I lurched forward and turned left. As I shifted into second gear, I glanced sideways, involuntarily... as though my heart heard someone calling to me. In the last window of the old wing of the school, a small oval face peered out. In an instant, I saw the brown bangs and bright hair clips and big smile. As long as children still stand at windows, there is hope.
© 1997, Kathleen S. Creech
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