Good thing we're so compliant around here!

My husband and I have quite a bit in common, but this is one of the most obvious ones: The surest way to make certain that James will not do something is to tell him that he has to.

If there is, say, something on his coat and I want to wipe it off so he doesn't get it all over himself and his car, if I say, "Take off your coat!" he would much rather dirty up everything. If I say, "Would you mind taking off your coat?" or explain why, or frame it as a personal favor in which I am desperate for his acquiescence, he will go for that.

I'm slightly more compliant than that about little things... well, outwardly, anyway. Okay, that's false. I'm just stubborn about "have to"s in a different way. For instance: I watched 24 minutes of "Napoleon Dynamite" and hated it. I gave it to the 40 minute mark to get better, and when it didn't, I stopped. People have told me that it grows on you after two or three viewings. I'm sorry, but I rarely watch movies I like three times. I'm not wasting time watching a movie I don't like multiple times. But what's worse is that people tell me, "Oh, you HAVE to watch the whole thing." Oh, I do? No. I don't. I will never ever watch it. Or Community. Or Parks and Rec. Or Battestar Galactica.

Lately, as Daphne and I have been listening to Ally Condie's "Matched" again, I've begun to see how this knee-jerk "Oh yeah, says who?" applies to my homeschool philosophy.

When we lived in Sherman, the library had a bunch of books along the lines of "What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know." I checked one book out, I believe when Daphne was in "first" grade, and remember looking through the suggested reading list. I thought, "Whatever. Why does my six-year-old need to read these books?" She was reading Harry Potter and Calvin and Hobbes at that point. I didn't feel like she was missing out on anything. I reject the notion of cultural literacy. I mean, I don't deny that it's a "thing," but I don't aspire to be relevant in random morays.

The book "Matched" takes place in a future where there are only 100 books, 100 history lessons, 100 movies, 100 songs, and 100 poems that the government deemed worthy of surviving. Everything else has been destroyed. Humans have lost the ability manually to write letters, only typing on "scribes," which are like tablets. Everything that they write is recorded. There is no paper, no pens, nothing private. The government runs a utopia based on customized food portions, early proficiencies pointing to early job placement (jobs that can largely be done my computers, but people have to stay busy and to be trained in case the computers go down).

While I realize that there's a long way to go from where we are to there, and that might never happen, I don't want anyone teaching my daughter what to think. Common Core is something that seems to be hated by parents and educators alike, but it's still in place. I don't want my daughter homogenized. She is a special person. She might be a little weird. I mean, let's face it: she's my daughter. It was genetically likely.

So I feel no pressure by the fact that my daughter probably can't locate Colorado on a map. The fact is, she can look that up. She can draw a billion times better than I can. She spends the majority of her "school" day creating: drawings, skins, worlds, talking to friends all over the world. I won't have her tested, because I reject that anyone else has a right to tell me what she "should" know at any given age. She is her own person. She learns what she needs to know. And if all I accomplish in homeschooling is giving her the space to think for herself, then I'll be happy.

I don't think that my attitude is virtuous at all, nor do I think that it needs to be parroted. But I know so many homeschool moms who are stressed, held captive to the "they should already be..."s that other parents, professional educators (even those with charitable intentions), books. in-laws, and even spouses hurl at them. "Says who?" If the answer isn't God or someone who's going to pay my kid for knowing something, then I am not particularly interested.

Then again, I may have some issues with authority.