The carefully selected stock photos of happy-looking children give parents the
impression that “Back to School” is good for their children and that children should be
agreeable to surrendering their freedom, playtime, bodily integrity and basic needs in
order to conform to the factory process of schooling. Such media bombardment has the
power to sway even Paleo-minded parents into believing that schooling is a necessity.
However, in aligning our lifestyles with nature’s intent, Paleo parents can make the
choice to tune in to parenting instinct rather than to mainstream media conditioning!
Traditional schooling is developmentally inappropriate at all ages and hurts children
on so many holistic levels, including physically, emotionally, socially, cognitively,
intellectually, neurologically and even sexually.
Traditional schooling disrupts and injures the parent–child attachment relationship,
which is meant to be intact until the adolescent child reaches adulthood on his or her
own timetable. The thousands of school children diagnosed with behavioral “disorders”
and learning “disabilities,” and subsequently drugged with dangerous chemicals, are
evidence of these facts.
Nature Has the Answer: A PALEO EDUCATION!
Nature doesn’t put out monthly magazines, newspaper supplements or grocery store
freebie-rack circulars with articles about children and learning. Nature doesn’t put out
cheery office supply store flyers and frenzied clothing store commercials to advertise its
“NOT Back to School” offerings. However, nature has the same educational advice for
September 2015 that it’s had since the first child appeared on the planet: Let children play.
In other words, nature has always “said,” let children at all ages live and learn
naturally, in freedom and in joy, through exploring, creating, investigating, observing,
collecting, inventing, musing, dreaming, running, leaping, jumping, climbing, shouting,
singing, laughing and being. Nature has always intended that children of all ages
spend their time primarily in the loving embrace of close parent–child connections,
family bonds, mixed-age friends and involvement in a vibrant community.
Nature has always intended that children’s time be balanced with the solitude to
metabolize deep thoughts, insights, feelings and experiences. Nature has always
made clear that the needs of the body and the psyche are to be met when those
needs are first experienced.
Through the phenomenon of play, nature has the only “curriculum”
sophisticated and advanced enough to simultaneously meet the
holistic, learning and developmental needs of all children at all
ages. When children follow their own interests and passions and
have intense fun in the process, they learn, excel, achieve, grow
and develop to their highest potentials!
Children living and learning in freedom
and joy was taken for granted by our
Paleo ancestors. However, in our
modern world, this natural state of being
for children has been “unschooling,”
a relaxed form of homeschooling.
Unschooling’s “curriculum” of play and
child-directed learning is congruent with
nature’s intent for children. Despite its
growing popularity, however, unschooling
isn’t a trend, a philosophy or even a
“style” of education. Unschooling is
simply a new name for ancient wisdom.
Learning through interacting physically,
emotionally and mentally with the natural
environment, following interests and
passions—or, playing—is how children
lived for thousands of years.
With the onset of agriculture, adults
began to interfere with childhood by
forcing children to work for them. At the
dawn of civilization, adults also began
to force children to train and apprentice
for military and religious purposes.
At the height of industrialization in
the mid-1800s, the United States
government began confining children to
developmentally inappropriate, prisonlike schools in order to produce obedient
military, factory and labor forces.
In the consumeristic new millennium,
most citizens are addicted to material
objects, electronics, digital media and
toxic “food.” The obsolete, 1800s-style
obedience training system is still
maintained to ensure the perpetuation
of a global society of heavy consumers,
workers, political soldiers (of all types)
and media watchers.
Despite what the trendy commercials
and smiley magazine articles tell you,
school isn’t about your children’s
education, learning or healthy
development. In fact, nearly everything
about schooling runs contrary to
supporting a healthy, Paleolithic return
to nature’s intent. School’s purpose is to
separate your children from their families,
friends and communities and from
themselves in order to train them to take
their place in the global marketplace, as
both workers and consumers.
“Back to School” should be appropriately renamed “Back to the Conditioning Cell.”
I encourage Paleo parents to look past the grinning stock photos, bubbly commercial actors and flimsy, child-denying articles and
realize that “Back to School” isn’t a holiday, a celebration or a fun time for children. It is a marketing goldmine for those who profit
from the materialistic, academic and social anxieties it triggers.
After the September fashion show fades and the