Exploration

How much do classes let you explore?  When my kids were in one of their several primary schools I was forever frustrated, especially by the last one attended by my youngest.  Recently, no surprise, it was given one of the worst ratings in Scotland.  The school was on one side of a park and we are on the other.  The children should have been learning outside all the time.  

Learning outside is not just exploring the physical area, it is testing your limits, following curiosity, exploration in all its senses.  

Even though we only home schooled for a year and flexi-schooled for six months or so all through the primary years we were out a lot. It wasn't that they roamed the way kids did in the seventies and earlier, We just went places, often with friends and explored, after school, weekends, holidays. Mostly local, once or twice to England, camping, nothing flash.  

Holidays in Egypt or Turkey seem to be normal now but the most exotic we got (and that only eventually) was Spain. The things they remember are not some luxury resort with could-be-anywhere international entertainment, but the small, weird stuff  which is what exploring is. Getting buses in foreign cities, asking for things in Spanish, trying churros or callos [tripe].   

I can't get them off their screens and out of their bedrooms these days but even if all that time spent outdoors has no lasting effect, for that time that it lasted, it was wonderful.  I have zero regrets choosing to do this. to grab all the (dryish!) opportunities there were, instead of prioritising paid work and was grateful to be able to do so. 

There is a whole movement now, ludicrously still considered alternative about how wrong it is to coop kids, especially primary age children up in classrooms. Sometimes we are still so limiting as a society I want to cry with frustration. Physical exploration so suited to children is just one aspect of exploration, which is also intellectual, psychological, emotional, spiritual.