Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Homeschooling and Cohousing -- and hybrids

[Michael Mariner (maikano]

Adding on to what people said about coho & homeschooling going together:

Any coho site where a few families have children instantly lends itself 
to collaboration on behalf of the kids:

-  After-school care and evening baby sitting exchanges -- in people's 
homes or in the kids' room at the common house.

-  Kids taking part in all appropriate activities - gardening, building 
things, repairing things, cooking, music, theater, nature walks.

-  I don't know of any cohousing sites that have a school (some older 
intentional communities have them), but how about various combinations of 
school and homeschooling.  Call it homeschooling as far as the 
authorities are concerned (each family register as such) but then find 
ways of pooling resources - people and learning resources to where each 
set of parents wouldn't have to have the kids full time.  And you could 
certainly ask other childless people to teach/apprentice the kids for 
certain skills.
Obviously this would allow each parent to either work part-time, take 
classes themselves, or do other tasks in the community.

Conventional schools frequently cost so much in both time and dollars, 
that parents might as well homeschool/unschool.  Better for the kids, for 
family unity and community spirit/togetherness.

I'm for decentralizing big institutions of all sorts.  Ivan Illych (sp?) 
wrote a book called "Deschooling Society" a few years back in which he 
said that large institutions, especially schools were responsible for the 
unquestioning, passive herd mentality among so many people.

As Karen Chrysostom noted, interacting with people in your community is 
highly valuable in people's personal development.  You don't just sit 
there listening to the authority figure, you collectively have to 
negotiate what your reality is going to be.  What greater, more 
democratically engaging process could there be?  Ain't easy some of the 
time, but what truly transformative process is?

Michael Mariner
Boulder