Introduction
An Unintentionally Intentional Education
“I wasn’t compelled like most people to have someone else be an influence on you all or take your joy,” my mom said when I asked her recently why she chose to home-school us. I’d always assumed it was because, at the time my brother would have been reaching school-age, it was the 90s and there was a lot of violence in Baltimore City as well as in the schools.
“No, it wasn’t that at all,” my mom said and then she laughed. “I was having fun! I loved being at home and talking with you guys and playing with you guys, and doing things with you guys and didn’t want to give that up. It didn’t start off as a religious thing, or any of that. Just wanting to have us at home.
“And when your brother started getting closer to being five and everyone was saying ‘Oh, you’re going to be a big boy and go off to school’, and I was like- I was having so much fun with him and then I found out about home-school in Baltimore’s Child. . . an advertisement that said:
“School your child at home? Yes you can. Give me a call!”
“I’d never heard of it, I didn’t even know it was possible. So I called and we talked for a long time. I deeply wanted to keep having fun with my kids. And the idea of putting him in some institution where someone else would get to have fun with him- it was a turn off. He was my little cutie and I was his mama.”
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Freedom looks different for different people. For my parents freedom seemed to look like teaching their kids at home. Free to offer their kids a combination of curricula to suit each of our differing ages and learning needs and desires.
Free to teach their kids that they are loved. Day in and day out.
Free to be Black and curious.
Black and playful.
Black and creative.
My parents manifested their idea of freedom before manifestation was a mainstream term, and were often highly criticized by our relatives for their choice to “keep us all at home”. All eight of us by the time I was an early teen.
All of this sounds great, maybe even radical, when I describe it to progressive friends of mine, but as a kid, I didn’t always see being home-schooled as a means of freedom. If I’d known the word oppression I’m sure I would have overused it to describe how un-free I felt at different times.
Sometimes being home-schooled was awesome, sometimes it was rough.
I loved getting to count cooking and baking towards my math, science, and social studies credits. I liked that I could create outlines for my morning routine and daily study schedule with my mom and follow it loosely. I liked that I could play with my siblings when I was tired of studying. I liked hearing my mom tell stories of her scandalous youth. I liked getting to take a break from my studies to make my dad a sandwich and bring it down to his animation studio, where I could also see the animator I had thee hugest crush on.
I hated that I didn’t get to ride a bus to school like I saw kids do outside my window. I hated that my parents got to chose who I could be friends with and hang out with. I hated that the kids, often Preacher’s kids, that we were matched up with bullied, teased, and dared me and my siblings when our parents left the room. I hated that I didn’t always feel “normal” when I went to after-school programs at the library. I hated that my identity was often tied in with my sisters under the title of “The Girls” (e.g. “Leave that, The Girls will clean up after everyone.”).
Although I grew up with very clear gender (obedient and demure girl) and sexuality (pure and hetero) expectations, my parents’ decision to home-school seemed to have been intended to free their children from the mainstream behaviors and expectations of society. When I moved out at eighteen it was in the hopes of escaping my parents’ rigid expectations and vision, to find my own freedom. However, I walked right into a mainstream society that was under its own illusion of freedom. I still wasn’t free to be myself. Certainly not without people joking or being performatively concerned about my home-school education.
In retrospect being home-schooled is the main reason I have any relationship to myself, and thus food and farming. It’s not a part of myself I can deny anymore, at least not without denying so many other parts simultaneously.
These days, for me freedom looks like not being ashamed of my education nor proud of it, but simply grateful for it.
Grateful for my parents’ intentional decision to home-school me and my siblings, and grateful for that rippling into how intentional I was about pursuing college. I went to culinary school because I’d thought hard about something that would be meaningful to my growth, something I knew I would stick with and enjoy.
After I got my GED, I remember one of my caseworkers telling me that she thought I was bright, and that I should go straight to a four-year degree at Brooklyn College and study early childhood education since that apparently offered job security, as opposed to some 2 year culinary school. I remember telling her I was afraid I’d get bored of that major, that I needed more time to adjust to the rigors of public school, and promised that I could do much more with a culinary arts degree.
In retrospect I’m really glad I stood up for myself in that moment, because self-advocacy was highly uncharacteristic of eighteen year old Maya. However, despite my typically submissive personality, I remember feeling really strongly about what I wanted to study, and was totally right.
I don’t know if I’d have had that sort of introspection about myself if I hadn’t been home-schooled.
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This gallery is a celebration of the intentional education that has given me the tools to visualize and self reflect. What does that mean, what does it mean to intentionally educate? To me it means that I don’t educate myself for the sake of a career, I educate myself for the sake of having a better understanding of myself and my community, and my role in my community. One quote I really appreciate from my favorite book on overhauling education is:
“The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter but mastery of one’s person. Subject matter is simply the tool.”
And while I’m not a fan of using the term master when it comes to anything, the essence of what is being said here is how I feel about education being intentional.
This gallery is a celebration of my parents attempt at giving me and my siblings that. A celebration of what I ate as I learned and shared space with my siblings and my parents. A celebration of learning how to read on my daddy’s lap with his encouragement and tenderness, and cook by my mom’s side with her curiosity and excitement. A celebration of learning to love education and my definition of Blackness in the safety of my home.
Thank you mom and dad.
Table of Contents:
Prologue: What Homeschooling Is. . . What Homeschooling Isn’t . . .
Chapter 1: Oodles and Noodles
Chapter 2: Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup
Chapter 3: Mary Stansberry’s Chili with Butter Crackers
Enjoy :) . . .
