Thursday 4 September 2008

The Road Not Taken

One of my favourtie parts of our Home Ed schedule is Poetry Tea. Yesterday, we make peanut butter cookies and had our first tea time of the year. The children brought some poems which they had written and I chose a couple from books. I had to share one of my all-time favourites, 'The Road Not Taken' and I tried to explain to them that this, for me, speaks of my choice to Home Educate.
I asked my children if they had any idea what it was about. My little girl told me that the man wanted to chop himself in two so he could walk down both paths. My middle son explained that you couldn't go to school and be Home-Educated. Seems to me they got that pretty well.

Having looked for the link to post here, I found in Wikipedia that my literal understanding may be naive and that there is an ironic interpretation - oh shucks!! However, I still prefer to think of it as a 'a paean to individualism and non-conformism' and it still inspires me as I walk the path I have chosen.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Also one of my favorite poems ever and I like your interpretation, too. Was surprised to see that Frost maybe had others ideas when he wrote it.

Whittier's Barefoot Boy is another of my all time favorites -- you can see just how idealistic i really am. Especially the lines:
for eschewing books and tasks,
nature answers all he asks...

Gaynor said...

What a lovely poem! It's not one I've read before - thank you for drawing it to my attention!