Jordan Almanzar > Quotes

“My mom, who was likely not “qualified” to conduct our educations (in terms of public schooling standards), understood the value in these lessons. Her bravery in pursuing our homeschooling path cannot be overstated…Some ponytailed, white, Buddhist social studies teacher could have never made me love Japanese people as much as I loved Bachon, her daughter and my brother.…The positive influence of almost daily contact with the elderly, learning their secrets and traditions brought from their countries of origins, has meant the world to me. I learned from all of this that it sin’t difficult to love one another when we are exposed to the genuineness of individual persons. And isn’t it wonderful to consider that we all walk this earth as foreigners— and on this journey, we learn how to love the foreign as God loves us.”
― Jordan Almanzar, When The Earth Was Flat: One Boy's Life at the Edge of the Millennium

“I’ve also realized that in my function as a teacher of languages I do not actually teach languages. Some students learn and learn well but it is only of their own initiative. I do my best to guide them into the beauty of the thing and try to instill some disciplined habits, but whatever spark they latch onto is not my creation. I show them the well, but it is their decision to drink.”
― Jordan Almanzar, When The Earth Was Flat: One Boy's Life at the Edge of the Millennium

“The distinction, which was immediately felt in those first days, is between the mechanistic and the organic. Due to its nature, public schooling must be mechanistic to be effective. It must cater to the whole and in so doing, it often caters to no one. Home education can be organic. Rather than obeying the arbitrary demands of an external system, we discovered freedom in the personalized demands of our parents, demands that reflected a sensitivity to our individual personhood.”
― Jordan Almanzar, When The Earth Was Flat: One Boy's Life at the Edge of the Millennium

“My daughters hated school. They hated being schooled. I feel sure, however, that they love to be educated. The discrepancy between the two — schooling and education — has become increasingly apparent to me due to this experience. Schooling is teaching someone to be a part of a herd, to be mass-minded. Educaiton is to learn how to be a free and firm personality, capable of living and learning in this world, and capable of loving.”
― Jordan Almanzar, When The Earth Was Flat: One Boy's Life at the Edge of the Millennium

“Many of my students also helped develop the theory, either directly or indirectly, not knowing how much I was benefiting from their questions and observations. And this brings me to the fact that I am increasingly amazed by what high school students are capable of! If students are intersted, they can become experts at anything. As John Taylor Gatto says, “I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.”
― Jordan Almanzar, When The Earth Was Flat: One Boy's Life at the Edge of the Millennium