I got out of bed to document this train of thought. It's morning, not the middle of the night or anything, but it is early for me. The cat was meowing and the baby was stirring, but I could have nursed the baby back to sleep and stayed in bed. Instead, she and I (and Nokomis, the cat) are the only ones up. The baby, my one-year-old daughter, is humming a nursing song, "Mmm-mmm, Hmm-hmmm. . .," punctuated with sweet smiles.

I'm trying to get back on track with this wonderful life idea. It started with the thought that unschooling is a joyful life. I said that in my introductory post. Then my mind jumped to the Christmas movie title, It's a Wonderful Life. Unschooling fully allows us to exercise this brain hyperlinking of one idea to another.

An unschooling lifestyle is a life full of wonder (see how I worked in my website title).  Children, otherwise known as us when we're young, lead lives full of wonder. They approach life with wonder. Reportedly, a few years on the educational assembly line squashes the wonder of the unschooled, pre-school, years. Nowadays, even preschool is school.

Last year, I participated in a debate about whether or not universal preschool would improve academic achievement in the long term. Having chosen unschooling, obviously, I wouldn't vote in favor of mandatory preschool to go with all those other mandatory years of schooling. Unschoolers, and other homeschoolers, are outlaws, you see, but most of us continue jumping through those legal hoops (learning requirements, testing, and other regulations), as if our children are on loan to us from the government.

I don't even pretend to own my kids. They definitely own themselves. They know it, too. (My middle daughter, 4 years old, has joined us and has made a little bed for herself on my office floor.)

Back to mandatory preschool for 3 and 4-year-olds:  I started my argument with the following.

"There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7."

This is how a recent article described early education in Finland where students are considered the "smartest in the world." Officials from over fifty countries have visited Finland to learn their secrets. What they found: "A relaxed, back-to-basics approach," a "no-frills," low-tech curriculum, and, of course, no preschool (San Diego Union-Tribune, March 1, 2008).

I also referenced a great article, Much Too Early!, by David Elkind, who points out the differences between memorizing those 123s and ABCs early and actual comprehension and understanding of the concepts, which comes with later brain development.

Along the same lines, I wrote an article titled, Putting Pressure on Preschoolers, about how education gets in the way of learning, well-intentioned though it may be.

I did not set off to argue preschool, but here I am. I suppose it came to this, because preschool is the beginning of the end of wonder.

(This post is part of the Carnival of Unschooled Life - December Edition.)