[Child of the 7th Age]

Littlemanpoet --

If you remember, Tolkien himself was homeschooled by his mother for a number of years. This is where he picked up his love of languages and of botany, to say nothing of his attachment to his Catholic faith.

In fact, if you stop and think about it, you'd have to say Sam Gamgee was homeschooled by Bilbo.

My closest friend in Houston is homeschooling her sons. Their family is Jewish and Hispanic, and they want to make sure to pass along both sides of their heritage. This summer the boys are in Peru with relatives and will be visiting the rain forest as an extension of their studies of biology.

I have thought seriously about this as an option, but have decided not to go that road, although I sometime wonder if I should. We have looked very, very hard to find the schools that are a right match for our two children, both of whom are very different.

Since both of them graduated from lower schools this year, they will be attending new schools next year, and I know we'll have to keep a close eye on things.

You know, there is another factor that bears on this. Even though the human lifespan has gotten longer, we have kept the "period of childhood" at the same length of time. In fact, if anything, we have shortened it. In many respects children are now considered to be adults by age 18. There is, overall, tremendous pressure on children to grow up very quickly.

We feed them a certain amount of facts and skills which we think they will need to be "productive citizens", and we push them on to the next step in the educational mill . They are discouraged from taking time to do very many "childlike" things which are generally defined to include any unorthodox use of their imaginations, role playing, etc. But the desire is still there. So commercial interests recognize that and often include watered down versions of such stuff in computer game, playstations, etc. which is, I guess, better than nothing.

The interesting thing is that in Middle-earth, childhood seems to have been longer, at least among the hobbits (age 33) and Elves (50).

I know you can have arguments about hobbit and Elf longevity, but the basic question is this. Do we push our children too far, too fast? Would we be better off to slow down a bit as Tolkien postulated in his world.

Have we so filled up children's schedules with basic facts and busy work and learning how to use our technology because we're afraid they won't be prepared for the future which is hurtling down the path at them at a very speedy rate? Would we have more time for history and imagination if we could somehow slow down the rate at which we push kids toward adulthood and independence?

I guess I'm asking if the hobbits had a better idea? And, by the way, calculating hobbit lifespan off the family trees apparently gives an average of about 93 years, which isn't so very far off from what we are inching up towards today. That means that more than one-third of hobbit life was spent as a child.......and look how many of them there were!

sharon, the 7th age hobbit

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]