Cultivating Ways of Seeing

I was Googling "strabismus" the other day and came up with this article, about how the condition (where both eyes cannot work together in stereo, and so compensate using the visual equivalent of context clues to navigate the world) is actually a great boon to visual artists. Why? Because instead of seeing the world primarily in objects, which the brain translates to icons, people with strabismus pay more attention to the actual colors and contours in front of them. But of course this is a trait that can be and is learned by visual artists, over the course of many years. 

In many ways, we often fall into perceiving circumstances, events, and people around us icons rather than the unique and significant collection of traits that we are actually encountering in a real-life moment.

(A closeup of the painting "Spring," by artist Bertha Gutierrez. 2016)

"My child is a real tough cookie." (Oh, I hear you on this one.)

"This house is always a wreck." (One of my biggest small failures as a human--housekeeping.)

"She's not learning anything playing with Littlest Pet Shop all day." (The obsessions might be different, but the sentiment is familiar.)

These statements represent seeing your children and your homeschooling in stereo, as icons. Let's put on our strabismus glasses and see if we can look again in a different way.

That kiddo may well be a tough cookie about getting in the car, taking a bath, and putting his toys back when he's done playing with them. But he might also be tender and nurturing to a young cousin, cuddly and gentle first thing in the morning, and joyfully at ease when palling around with his pet dog.

Your house most certainly looks like people live in it, yes? Homeschoolers live in their houses more than the average family--a lot more. A good portion of our learning happens here, and that means stuff out on tables, stuff out on floors, stuff picked up and carried around and left and forgotten. Unlike a true wreck, though, I bet there is a story to the seeming disorder. I bet, walking back through our houses, we can recall the play pretend that resulted in that heap of duct tape and cardboard. And the 16 ponies who were not too long ago arranged by favoritism, now a jumbled pastel heap catching dustbunnies in their shiny plastic hair. 

And the not-learning. Whew, that one's tough. When we have this thought--they're not learning anything--often what we mean is "She's not learning what I'd hoped she'd learn," or "This doesn't look or sound anything like school, or like anything that would be on a test (i.e. is worthy of the term educational)." And while it's true that much play doesn't look like school, and wouldn't be on a test, there is often more to it. What looks to those of us who were schooled as "not learning" is often rich with trial and error, problem solving, risk taking, creative and critical thinking, cooperation, and testing of personal limits. 

Our third UU Principle calls us to accept one another and encourage one another in our spiritual growth. In order to accept and encourage someone, you have to be able to see them as they are, not as a projection of yourself and your own biases and insecurities, but as independent beings with their own worth and dignity and unique guise. 

Similarly, in our fourth Principle, we are urged to undertake a disciplined search for truth and meaning. In doing so, we need to be ready to see our circumstances with a radical, open-hearted honesty. In Nonviolent Communication, we learn to see as a dog sees, unencumbered by layers of our own experiences. In seeing the truth around us, exactly as it is, we can act in accordance with our ideas of right and good.

In shifting our way of seeing, we can embrace the much more complex and nuanced realities that we share with our children as homeschoolers. It's kind of like doing a Magic Eye puzzle in reverse, moving from the simplistic and familiar characterization to the messy and intriguing shapes and colors.

There's work for us to do here as parents and partners, but cultivating an artist's way of seeing has a lot of value in and of itself. Check out this Visual Arts advocacy poster for reasons to consider exploring art with your homeschoolers, and talking points to use when you write to your Congressperson about keeping art education well funded in our schools.

(Schools? What? We're homeschoolers! True enough. But what lifts up one of us lifts up us all. Art education in schools is good for our whole community. Plus, lost of homeschoolers take a class or two such as art, band, or a sport, at their local high school. We want to be sure that our public institutions are reflecting our values, too.)