Homeschool Learnings: Why I love homeschooling
/It may be someone evident by now I am a bit of an academic, a bibliophile, an intellectual, a lover of thoughts, ideas, history, and curious to learn more always of humanity and our shared history. All of these traits are continually being fed as a homeschooling momma. I was taught to always go back to the original documents. With a 3rd grader in the house we have explored Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream, Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a woman? speech,* and The Declaration of Independence for the 4th of July - to name a few.
Going back to these seminal texts and reading them through my lens of adulthood and experience is amazing.
They are beautifully written and stunning in their scope and intellect.
A few choice passages for you to enjoy (see if you can guess which goes with which):
seared in the flames of withering injustice
still crippled by the manacles of segregation
where they will not be judged on the color of their skin but by the content of their character
with this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope, with this faith we will be able to translate the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood
I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.
I cant read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.
And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part?
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Such eloquence… such clarity of thought and beautiful words.
Unfortunately I have had many opportunities in the last week to incorporate “fatiguing them into compliance” into my daily life.
I am thrilled to report that utilizing such beautiful language does take the sting off the fatigue.
A bit.
*Which, it turns out was written 12 years later by a man without Ms Truth’s input. According to the Sojourner Truth Project the more accurate version was published a few weeks afterward by a gentleman who consulted with Ms Truth before he printed it. The interesting question is whether the later version has more of an emotional impact than what was printed originally. I will leave that to your own reading and thinking pleasure.
