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View Our Latest Posting Below! Updated 04/04/04 |
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Alchemical Bakery Homeschool Newsletter Everything we needed to learn about homeschool, we learned in homebirth.
By Jeannine Parvati Baker My international friendship circle queries me about what it is like to live in America now, after September 11th? They assume we feel terrorized and extend compassion. Aware that terror is the main menu Americans are being fed by our corporate media, I was especially heartened by this recent experience we had. Seems that at the Alchemical Bakery, we partake of the side orders rather than the specialty of this nation, the harvests from the Victory Garden. Seduced (or led aside) we are not - our patriotism is instead fed by the Peace Garden. What truly feeds my soul, now more than ever, are the moments when fear is embraced and rendered into love. Here is the scene - Quinn, Halley and I are driving to Richfield to do errands. As we turn off of I-70, Halley noticed a spider crawling by Quinn's foot. She has a tone to her voice that makes the hairs on my neck stand in attention. Next she exclaims, "It's a big spider" and follows immediately with "it's a black widow!" Ah, the adrenaline rush of fear, my ally. I have to wait until we have made the left turn to pull over from the flow of traffic. I jump out of the front seat and command Quinn to move as he attempts to track the spider's scurry beneath a towel. My perception, now enhanced by the rush of fight or flight, hormones streaming through me, brings me into the raw moment. Only one purpose exists as I look for the spider: to protect my children. No room for any other thoughts in my mind as I begin the search for the black widow. Spider is the still point, a mantra, my koan - a meditation on fear. The terror I feel links me to those living in war zones anywhere. Imminent death by surprise attack - the daily fare for Afghanistan citizens at the moment. While I looked for the spider with all the focus of a devoted philosopher seeking the alchemical gold, the key to mortality, I wasn't likening devastating bombs with spider bites. Again my simple aim was to save my children from harm. Gingerly lifting the edge of the white towel, the black spot appears and instantly hides again. Yet I am relentless and find a cup with a lid in the back seat to capture the spider. Halley debates with me if this is safe enough - can I get the lid to close easily, etc. Quickly I seek an alternative yet decide this is the best option. With cup in hand, I lift the towel and talk to the spider, coaxing her to come into the cup for re-location. Some might consider the move a sign of rising success - moving north from Joseph, a town of 243 to Richfield, the county seat and the biggest city in central Utah with 5000+ people. 
Drum roll, please -- She does crawl into the cup and I place the lid on
it. A short walk into a field and the black widow finds a new home,
grateful for her upward mobility. (Though this might be my projection.)
All of this time, I feel the pulse of life beating me like a drum. I am
totally alert in the way that veterans talk about their war experiences.
"Never have I felt more alive than when patrolling in 'Nam". My best
high school friend Hank who lives in Israel, told me that being on the
edge of death brings out a passion for life in people. My NOCIRC
Egyptian colleague also implored me to look again at the war from the
Palestinians, perspective, not just the Israelites, with an intensity
that pounds my eardrum to this day. I know this drum that fear sounds so
clearly and dance it through to celebration.We search the back seat for any more spiders, though we reason this is highly unlikely, as black widows tend to be loners. We've read that after mating, the females eat their partner. We didn't think that females ate each other, yet not being sure, we examined the towel and all the other family clutter before driving away. As we said goodbye to the lone spider, the hairs on the back of my neck were still attentive (in case the web of fear might ensnarl me again) yet soon they were 'at-ease'. Driving home the realization hit me. The obvious solution to the situation, any parent with common sense would have employed, was to merely kill the spider. Quinn confessed that this thought had crossed his mind but he summarily dismissed it. I hadn't even considered this as an option. It seemed to me that the best way to protect my children was to remove them first from harm's way. Precisely what the Afghanistan immigrants are hoping to do. Then next, to place the threat in a field away from people. I wonder where this field is for the terrorists? Just as I had done with the spider, I signed petitions to our government to do likewise with the events of September 11th. In other words, I urged by letter and phone calls to respond in a way that is best for life, without violence and with understanding. We never expected to be traveling with a black widow in our caravan. Yet when it happened, the response was one of fear transformed into gratitude. First I was grateful for our safety. Next I was grateful for my altered perception and the opportunity to hear the inner drum. It was like the call to a feast of love. I loved that spider for bringing me the raw moment. I love Quinn and Halley for being aware and responding peacefully to a real threat. Last my gratitude is immense for life itself and to remember that I am caught on its web with the spider and the terrorist, entangled inextricably through fear. As a mother, I do my best to keep my children safe from harm --yet the threat was within our own vehicle. The lesson here is obvious - the enemy is within. Wish it were so easy to remove the enemy from within, as it was (in retrospect) to re-locate the spider. Fear summons me to feed the hungry ghosts and what my children and I served up that day driving to Richfield was respect -- an understanding that though this wasn't supposed to be happening, it IS happening. Life is precious -- even when afraid, we can be reverent. Fear sometimes may be the prayer before life's banquet. May the closing prayer be one of peace.
Time Magazine reported in November of 2003 on the front cover, "Are we giving kids too many drugs? A medicated generation is growing up with quick fixes for mood and behavior. Here are the benefits and the risks." Below is my response to Time's query. Dear Editor, The wound reveals the cure. Cover “Story Generation Rx” (November 3, 2003) asks the right questions yet misses the healing one. Amidst all the probable causes for post-modern children being unable to cope with life, is a primal one – a source event. Where did our children first learn that life is overwhelmingly stressful and drugs are the solution? Let us think outside of the box. For the last few generations, the medicalization of childbirth has effectively turned a natural family event into a potentially dangerous emergency in need of expert help. This happened despite the lack of evidence that hospital based childbirth with medically trained professionals produced a healthier outcome. Most babies in countries that prescribe psychotropic medications for children have been drugged while they were being born. Indeed, a “natural childbirth” nowadays is considered to be anything short of abdominal surgery and drugs are the standard fare. Children learn what they live. Mom couldn't “cope with” childbirth without drugs and this is the example given to the baby: Life is so inherently painful that medication is the socially sanctioned way to get through the ordeal. Health researchers concerned about the effects of drugs on children will find a fruitful field of study to be in how drugs given at birth to the mother affect the baby who eventually becomes that child in need of more medication. For over half a century, we have been experimenting in hospitals on newborns. Yet unlike the experiment of drugging our older children, we already have a massive volume of evidence based research demonstrating that drugs given in childbirth are dangerous. The scientific evidence is readily available -- active management of childbirth, particularly the administration of pharmaceuticals, has immediate and long-term negative effects upon the adult that the baby has yet to become. That your writers missed this data is literally a no-brainer: The danger of medically managed childbirth isn't common knowledge. There is no vested interest or economic motive for the research to be disseminated to the public. Parents naively trust their childbirth professionals who likewise have not been educated to the devastating effects of drugs on the baby and mother. Why not? Could it be as simple as the same companies that make obstetric pharmaceuticals also make the drugs given to Generation Rx -- and their mothers? No wonder our children's hearts are to the ground. It is depressing (physiologically and psychologically) to be rendered non feeling at birth, separated from a drugged mother, and submitted to the normative obstetric and pediatric abuses of modern medicine. Jeannine Parvati Baker Joseph, Utah 
Jeannine,I just checked out your website and it's wonderful. I was particularly interested in the homeschool section as I have been struggling with this lately. We are homeschooling our children and I have just started to realize that what I have been doing is simply - doing school at home with a Waldorf twist. Some of this the children love but, all the same, I am starting to understand what unschooling is really all about. So I just wanted to say thank you for those articles on homeschooling as they clarified and helped me connect further with the truth that is now starting to be heard in my heart. The funny thing I just quickly want to share is that prior to reading visiting the website, my 8 year old got really angry with me a few weeks ago. She stormed out of the house and said "mum when are you going to understand that I teach myself, I know what I need." I started to feel frustrated and angry too, as I had spent hours the night before "preparing". But then I suddenly decided to just let go. I decided not to stress, to argue - but just let go. She went a short way up the road for a walk.She soon returned in a calm manner. She gave me a hug I hugged her back sasked if she was alright. She nodded then I said "How about we just do life instead and forget the "school" part- she smiled and we laughed and she said that sounded good. That day she discovered how to subtract numbers and borrow through working out a scholastics book order she wanted to make. She made dinner following a recipe she had never tried. She read a short play with me and ended by flopping onto a bed and reading some myths and legends. My six year old sat at the keyboard for about 45 minutes and played from an "I can learn piano" book. Today the kids found catapillars that they are totally enthralled about because they have seen the crysalids they become that are pure gold in colour. (The interesting thing is these crysalids of pure gold and the former catapillars are hanging in the trees encircling a flagged memorial in our local american memorial park. Candles have been placed and a candle light vigil was held there a few days prior regarding last weeks tragic events. Their presence to me was a great symbol. They were saying events at this time are allowing us all to move forward into the "golden age". The children felt they were a sign of magic beauty and something wonderful happening. They are watching them closely and noticing all the little changes that are occuring as we brought some carefully home. They are thoroughly excited. I am starting to see the wonderment in allowing the natural learning of the child to unfold.I still have a long way to go in letting go. It wasn't until I read the articles on your website that I realized that homeschooling is so much like natural birth and the statement about "Everything we need for homeschool, we learnt in homebirth" has given me such a tremendous boost in confidence and "tools" in getting this into a more balanced natural perspective. Thank you for such wisdom and showing such natural yet profound connection. Of course it follows - We trusted our children and the process in birthing them. I always said to everyone my baby knows what to do. In utero and out and have followed that in their upbringing thus far and now - Oh wow!- Why didn't I see that of course it follows - the rest of their learning about the world and being in it would follow the same course. Why would it suddenly be different? Somedays are still obviously frustrasting - more opportunities for us to learn...... Anyway now that I have made my short message long I shall sign off. I feel so honoured to be on the earth at this time and feel so honoured to be able to connect with so many beautiful people and conscious thought as you are and put forth. It truly is the magic that life is. With much LOVE, Blessings and Thanks- Jane from Saipan (an island in between Japan and Guam).
- from Circumcision in the US: 229 - from School Shooting: 36 A child is 6. 4 times more likely to die as a result of circumcision than as a result of violence at school. The ratio is even greater if we only consider male deaths in school. Violent school deaths are decreasing, circumcision deaths are not. School Report Genital Integrity Awareness Week, 1-7 April 2001 17 March 2001 A few years ago our HOMESCHOOL took a big field trip. Quinn, Halley and I went to Europe and we visited with a family who lives near Bern in Switzerland. The mother of the family is a Hygieia student and her children and my children became fast friends. The eldest daughter, a teenager, keeps in touch too, and she wrote to me today. Her raw, beautiful letter was irridescent and so deep that I was prompted to respond the same day. Allow me to quote myself; "With great pleasure I read your letter which arrived just today. Your English is getting quite good and your feelings were expressed very well. I am happy that you chose to share with me what has heart and meaning for you now in your life. "We all became excited here imagining that you would come to visit with us. I had just been saying how I am almost ready to have a live-in apprentice (again) and then your letter arrives. So please know that we are open to this idea. Time will tell. Perhaps when you have finished with your schooling you may feel differently, yet if you still want to come visit, please consider us another home for you. "I hope that you will be patient with your mother. She is doing the best that she can. I have raised four daughters and so my learning curve is now quite high with my youngest, Halley, who is doing wonderfully in her life. Therefore we get along better than perhaps if she had been my first daughter? We do not seem to fight though we do make ourselves angry at times by something one or the other has said or done. However in our family we agree to be real with our feelings and express them in a way that does not hurt one another. It is one thing to be angry yet quite another to be cruel and say things or do something which is harmful. Your mother asks you to not be so loud as it is a courtesy for your neighbors. This is correct thinking and yet it does place a strain on you. What we have done when we live close to other people is do our screaming into a pillow rather than out loud into the atmosphere. This way the feeling can go through and not make us sick! My friend, you are so right!! If you do not express your feelings then they will find a way to express through your body one way or another. However your mother is also correct -- it is like learning to use the toilet rather than letting ones urine or feces fall wherever they may. There is a way to let feelings go that is learned over time so that they don't make messes to be cleaned up later. It is a task for a lifetime, learning about our own souls and being close enough to our inner truth so that we can express our feelings BEFORE they get to an intensity that becomes rageful and disturbs others. 
"One way to know ourselves better is to meditate. Then we can listen to the
stories we make up about ourselves and our relations. So much harm in the
world and in our own homes is done because we believe the stories that our egos
invent. It is ideal to know the truth of ourselves rather than be blown about by
emotions which create more karma (or consequence). However, this is the ideal.
What is real is that emotions can help us understand ourselves and the stories we
believe. "The truth is that your mother loves you. This I know. And I think that you also love your mother. All else that comes in between this love are stories the ego makes up to keep you separate. Ask of yourself the next time that you notice yourself becoming upset HOW DOES THIS FEELING SERVE? Is there any good reason to believe the story that is motivating my feeling? If there isn't, the feeling will change. Investigate the stories and you will see your feelings transform. "This is my advice and yet I can only pray that you will come to an awareness that your life is yours to experience -- indeed, to invent. I like what you wrote about the work you are called to do. I hope that I can help you achieve this. "You asked about Quinn so I now report that he is well and busies himself with writing and reading and inventing things. He likes to play MAGIC (a card game) a lot and each day he makes me happy just talking with him. His voice is getting deeper and sometimes I think that it is his older brother talking instead! His hair is still long yet rarely does anyone thinks he is a girl anymore. He has fond feelings for you, I know, and yet he is shy. Please do not take his silence personally. "You also asked about Halley -- she is maturing into a lovely young woman. She can hold a position of power in our circles now when we do ceremony. She has a gift for not saying too much or too little, just the right amount! I am proud of her and she has many admirers around the world. One of my midwife friends said that when she looks at Halley talking, it is like watching flowers fall out of her mouth. "Please do give your family our best wishes and hopes that one day we will all meet -- May Grandmother Spider spin our webs together sooner than later!!
"Blessed Be and Blessed Do, Jeannine Parvati"  Everything we needed to learn about Home Education, we learned in homebirth! And the utmost HUMILITY, or groundedness in the EARTH. Just as bringing the hospital based fears, the "what if's?", and all the medical equipment into the home setting for natural birth did not serve, so are the ideas that life needs to be "taught", or that we must push our children to learn by bribes and punishments -- furthermore, that any curriculum need be brought into a home school, is likewise ironically ludricous. At best, our own educational careers are a handicap and at worst, an near impossible background from which to appreciate what authentic self-didactic education is all about. The most often voiced concern from parents considering home school is that their children won't be grade level and socialized properly to succeed in the world. Let's look at these concerns, for they distill the fear-based motives of our post-modern group consciousness. At the most primal level, we as parents, are expressing our fear of our children, not so much as "succeeding", as personally being out of control. Schools "socialize" and control our children for the most part, most days, most all the year. If parents were to assume this responsibility, what would it be like? Anyone who births freely knows that the process is out of egoic control. This is imprinted and then as parents, we do not expect that our babies will be under our personal control either. Ideally in a freebirth, we learn how to let our babies live freely, expressing themselves fully and responding as appropriate. However, when a baby is born in hospital, or at home for that matter with a "birth enforcer", that is a medically entrained midwife, the parents lose this precious imprint. They have paid someone to be paranoid for them and lose their own innate response-ability. Now extend this to home schooling. If we are fear-based in motive, our children will never succeed, as there is no end to fear. We will instead condition their experience of education to be one of extrinsic motivation ~ based on avoidance of pain (shame) and seeking future reward (or pleasure). This limits a person's capacity to attend to all the possibilities. Simply stated, when one is in love, we learn at an astonishing rate. When one is recoiled in fear, we diminsh our capacity to be open and learn. "Grade level" is a mental
construct maintained to keep the cult of the expert employed. If some
are "behind", we have the remedial experts to fix the problem that
they created in the first place. Like birth, where doctors or
medwives give "due dates", so some babies are already "fast, slow or
right on time" from birth on, we sustain the illusion of linear
reality and "progress". " Progress", is not our most important
"product" in America. Consciousness is. As a mother, my experience
is that all my babies have always been with me. When did they
"come"? Certainly before birth, and even before conception as a
potential. This consciousness connects me with the great round of
being - not some assembly line of production. By the way, who
ultimately is grading anyway? Regarding socialization -- what are our children learning in schools nowadays? As I write, reports come from Colorado, the latest "senseless" massacre by high school boys of their fellow classmates. To place children in the concentration camps called public schools, is tantamount to inviting a revolution. This is no justification for violence, but an example of the anguish almost all students feel in public schools. (Remember?) By my senior year in high school, I, JP, realized that school was definitely interfering with my education . . . . . I also realized that, who wants to succeed in a society that is killing Vietnamese babies, South American freedom fighters, and lately, Kosovians? Moreover, who wants to be successful in a country which is leading the way to ecological disaster? A few years back, several lifetimes after high school in Van Nuys, California, I was interviewed on a prime time TV show about my work in pre and perinatal psychology. The producer rehearsed me with two questions. I was told that I could not say either of my first responses on daytime network TV. He asked me first, if mothers needed to be psychic to apply my prenatal yoga program successfully? I replied that all mothers are psychic with their babies, yet may not realize it just yet. He told me that I could NOT say this, as it is too big a stretch for women who watch TV to imagine themselves as "psychic" with their own babies. Next question was, "To what do I attribute the large proportion of child prodigies which result from my prenatal education program?" My response was, that it was not my intention to produce children who succeed early, in a society that is killing the Earth, but rather to TRANSFORM society. The producer informed me that I couldn't say that either as, "The sponsors like society just the way it is. " So it is with a grateful pride, that I report that our fifth child Quinn, when but 11 years of age, won not only the local but the county fair blue ribbon prize for his clay-animation video, totally of his own creation. When asked, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Quinn's response was, "My career has yet to be invented. " This is the result of a home-based education. Our youngest son can choose what will not only serve his own soul in terms of his life work, but the world soul as well, as he listens for his calling. The primary focus in our
home-based education is to often ask oneself the question, "What is
best-for life? What does the Earth want of us now?" |
