Archive for the ‘Methods of Home Education’ Category
Willa, one of my favorite bloggers and favorite people in general, pointed her readers toward this post at Dumb Ox Academy the other day. Faith’s blog is new to me, but I like her already. It appears we have a lot in common; like me, Faith sees good sense in both traditional classical education and unschooling. Faith writes:
I am drawn to two dissimiliar methods of home educating my kiddos. One is the structured, rigorous and time-tested method of classical schooling, complete with chanting declensions, and in depth analysis of ancient classics. The other is unschooling, following one’s bliss and trusting in the Lord to provide the pilgrim with everything he needs.
Now, I would characterize unschooling a bit differently, since my vision of “natural learning” involves a good deal of behind-the-scenes path-strewing on the part of mom and dad; and from what I’m seeing on Faith’s excellent blog, I get the impression she works this way too. This post goes on to share a terrific idea for using the fridge as an “unschooling bulletin board”:
So far the categories I have come up with are: Quote of the Week, Latin Phrase of the Week, Root Word of the week, Spelling Rule of the Week, and Math of the Week. I showed them to the kids at lunch time (I was very busy setting it up yesterday morning and they were getting curious about what I was doing!). So I showed them each category. My 11 yo immediately said, “get me a pencil and paper!” And then got some himself and wrote E=MC(squared) and posted it up. I’d forgotten science! And apparently when he and his dad were attending a baseball game on Sunday, dh had explained Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to him.
Read the rest of the post to see what Faith has chosen for her first week of Fridgeschooling. She promises to share each week’s selections on her new “On the Fridge” page. I love her first Quote of the Week. It’s from A Thomas Jefferson Education, a book I found useful and interesting, living as we do in Mr. Jefferson’s backyard. (And I have just remembered with a terrible pang that I promised to send my copy to a friend ages ago. Cindy, I’m so sorry, do you still want it? Mea culpa.) Like Andrew Campbell’s superb new book, The Latin-Centered Curriculum
, Oliver van DeMille’s A Thomas Jefferson Education
makes a case for an education steeped in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with the parent serving as mentor, accompanying the student through the deep, unrushed study of a few key works. Multum non multa, as Campbell puts it: “Not many, but much.”
Willa herself has written several thoughtful and eloquent posts exploring the seeming oxymoron of “classical unschooling.” My own explanation of the concept is that classical ed informs the what, the content, and unschooling describes the how.
It’s time for another Carnival of Homeschooling, hosted this week by one of my favorite blogs, The Common Room. In one particularly good entry, Shannon of PHAT Mommy suggests that the word “homeschooling” conjures up an unflattering and unrealistic stereotyped image—which is the same thing I was saying yesterday!—and she wonders how people would react if she started using the word “worldlearners” instead of “homeschoolers” to describe her family’s educational-choice-slash-lifestyle.
How do you think people would react if I said, “Oh, my kids don’t go to school. They’re learning how to think for themselves out in the world. They read and write and research their interests on the internet and at the library. They travel and take field trips and, my gosh, their schedule is just so full of social activities that they simply aren’t able to spend entire days in school! Homeschool? No, we’re not homeschoolers. We’re worldlearners!”
I told Jane about this post, and she said, “That’s PERFECT!” When people ask her where she goes to school, she usually tells them we’re unschoolers, but that, too, is a loaded term that frequently meets with skepticism or disapproval. It also confuses people who’ve heard me talk about how we study Latin, math, sign language, or history.
It’s not that we need to label ourselves, but the question does come up almost daily, and it would be nice to be able to answer it with a word that really fits.
Over at The Lilting House we’re having a discussion about why people choose to homeschool, and why people who don’t shouldn’t be worried about those of us who do. Come give your two cents!
I always appreciate it when someone who isn’t familiar with the real whys and hows of homeschooling takes the time to try to get a handle on the subject. That’s what Elizabeth of Table for Five has attempted to do, after encountering a few of us wacky homeschooling folks here in the ClubMom blogroll. Since Amalah linked to Elizabeth’s post and mine in her roundup today, I thought I’d further the discourse by responding here.
Elizabeth writes:
I don’t know why this topic gets me so worked up. Whether or not someone Homeschools their kids has no bearing on me, or my family at all. I just know that whenever I read a description that starts with “So and so is Homeschooling her four children…”, I wonder, why?
I could write a book in answer to that question, but for now, I’ll restrain myself and just give the short answer: Why not?
It’s a great way to live. We’re just like other parents: we want our kids to be happy and informed and decent and pleasant to be around. We want them to grow up to be good people who can take care of themselves and others, fulfill their obligations, love and be loved, and enjoy the work they do to earn a living or care for a family. And, having pondered and researched, we’ve come to the conclusion that home education is the right way for our family to pursue those goals.
Sometimes it strikes me as funny that in many fields (business, technology, medicine, to name a few), the ability to think outside the box is seen as an admirable quality, an asset; but people who think outside the box when it comes to educating their children are often viewed with some suspicion.
Amalah jokes about skeptics assuming homeschoolers “are turning their children into anti-social, overly-sheltered hermits,” and joking aside, I think that’s actually quite an accurate characterization of the skeptics. A lot of people do think that. It’s a misconception that makes some of us chuckle as we watch our children run around with a passel of (not necessarily homeschooled) kids at the pool, the playground, the dance class, the karate class, the soccer team, the…you get my drift. I’ve talked about this before. Most homeschooling bloggers have, at one time or another.
But I appreciate Elizabeth’s openminded attitude. She acknowledges that she “didn’t realize how many different alternatives there are to traditional schooling” and seems to be making an honest effort to educate herself about the possibilities. I think the huge range of options often comes as a surprise to people. A lot of folks hear “homeschooling” and envision dining rooms converted to mini-schoolrooms, with a cursive alphabet poster above the chalkboard on the wall, two or three little desks in a row, and a big round clock ticking off the minutes as Mom (that’s Mrs. Mom to you, kid) gives a spelling test. And that scenario does exist, in some homes—but it is just one of myriad possibilities, and probably not a common one, truth be told. An awful lot of homeschooling happens on the couch, in the garden, in the car, at the concert, in the kitchen, at the museum, in the library, across the dinner table, at the beach. We are out and about; we’re busy in the world; we’re learning from doing and digging and smelling and reading and encountering. We are mix and match; we are taste and see; we are get your hands dirty; we are amble and dash; we are show and tell; we are watch and listen.
Elizabeth mentions a few of the many educational methods—Charlotte Mason, classical ed, correspondence schools, Montessori—and there are of course many other options as well. I’ll return to this topic in a future post. For now I want to focus on some of the other questions Elizabeth raises.
…I do have to question whether or not the education a child receives as a result of some of the more alternative methods of homeschooling will translate into an ability to handle college, or life in the working world. Should a child really be allowed to decide for themselves how and when to study, or whether to study at all? What happens when they get to college? I know none of my professors ever wanted to “observe” me and then allow me to choose for myself what to study. Won’t these kids have a hard time transitioning into a set schedule of classes and subjects?
It sounds here as if Elizabeth is referring to unschooling, which is a hard word to define but generally boils down to allowing kids to follow their own interests rather than telling them what they must learn when. Unschooling generates a lot of controversy even among homeschoolers; many structured, scope-and-sequence-following homeschoolers express the same concerns as Elizabeth. Unschoolers have thoughtful, reasonable answers to these concerns, and they have practical evidence of success as well. Autodidacts do very well in college because they enjoy learning and are used to taking responsibility for their own education. Nowadays, many college admissions offices recognize that home-educated kids make exemplary college students: they are eager, articulate, and self-motivated. Also, one mustn’t assume that an unschooler never encounters a schedule or classroom until his first day of college: these kids are taking classes at community college during their teen years; they are doing internships or volunteering at the the animal shelter, the newspaper, the nursing home, the ballet studio. They are running their own landscaping businesses and home bakeries. A non-traditional schedule doesn’t mean they don’t keep any schedule at all. Giving a person freedom to choose how he will spend his time doesn’t automatically mean he will waste it—far from it.
Elizabeth asks:
And what happens when they get their first job? Are there employers who give their employees a choice of which report to write first, or whether they should return a client’s phone call or take a walk outdoors first?
Well, yes. Lots of them. All the employers I’ve ever known actually preferred their employees to be self-motivated, to be able to juggle a variety of tasks without being walked through every step. As a staffer at Random House and HarperCollins, I had a big ole pile of work—manuscripts to read, reports to write, cover copy to write, filing to do, writers to call, copies to make, galleys to proof—and my boss sure didn’t tell me what order to do them in. That was part of my job: knowing how to prioritize. And how about now? My job is to hit my deadlines. No editor is looking over my shoulder, tsk-tsking when I leave the computer to play Scrabble with my kids. Or how about my mother? She works out of her home office for a company in another state. She can decide when to call the client, and when to take a walk. As long as she meets her obligations, everyone’s happy. Self-motivation, like innovative thinking, is an asset.
What I find most interesting about concerns like those Elizabeth has shared is that the doubts about the wisdom of home education seem to contradict themselves. On the one hand, there is the worry that the parent is too controlling, sheltering the children from contact with different ideas; and on the other hand, there is a fear that the children are not controlled enough: they are given too much freedom to choose their activities or structure their own time. Perhaps the reason such self-negating concerns arise within a single mind is because there are so many ways to educate a person, so many ways to live. And most people’s concerns do seem to have more to do with social and cultural matters than educational issues. Almost everyone acknowledges the advantages of one-on-one or small-group learning experiences. No, most people’s misgivings are about social issues that really have more to do with parenting styles than instructional methods. In any event, I think open and rational discourse can lay such misgivings to rest, and so I appreciate it when people like Elizabeth ask questions and go looking for the answers. If there’s anything a homeschooler approves of, it’s autodidactism.
Updated: The discussion continues in the comments—some great stuff there, like this remark by Julie:
“What I think helps me understand educational choices the best is trying to get behind the criteria we use to make those choices. If we believe that we aren’t naturally inclined to learn, won’t be interested in science or math unless someone requires it, if we see foreign language as a college prep hoop to jump through rather than for the joy of speaking to natives of that language, or if we consider mythology and classic literature too difficult and boring for the average kid apart from requirements, we will think homeschooling a risky proposition.
“However, if we begin by examining all the things we eagerly learn as adults, how we teach ourselves about politics, religion, cooking, gardening, accounting, writing, painting, parenting, biology (sex and child bearing), and more due to our keen interest and time to learn unhurriedly, we might be able to trust or imagine that kids would flourish if given a similar opportunity with involved parents who invite the world into their homes and share it with their children.”
If the kind of education given to Shakespeare and C. S. Lewis appeals to you, you might want to swing by the brand-new Latin-Centered Curriculum website and forum.
Unlike the neoclassical approach to education favored by Susan Wise Bauer and Laura Berquist (whose books I consider extremely useful resources but whose systems or curricula strike me as bucket-filling instead of fire-lighting), “Latin-centered” or “traditional classical” education involves an intense focus on, in the words of author Tracy Lee Simmons, “Greek, Latin, and the civilizations from which they arose.” Simmons’s book, Climbing Parnassus, which I’m currently in the middle of, lays out a case for a simple curriculum revolving around Latin, Greek, and mathematics. (You can read an excerpt of his book here.)
Andrew Campbell, whose new book, The Latin-Centered Curriculum, is hot off the presses and shipping this week, describes the elements of a traditional classical education:
* Limiting the number of daily core subjects to a small number, typically Latin and/or Greek, math, and perhaps one or two others, such as Bible or music.
* Presenting English grammar and vocabulary through the medium of Latin.
* Making Classical Studies an ongoing subject, rather than approaching “Ancients” as part of a four- or five-year world history rotation.
* Teaching most subjects, such as composition, science, and history, on a weekly or semi-weekly rotation.
* Approaching science and history informally in the early years.
* Favoring writing programs based on the progymnasmata, such as Classical Writing or Classical Composition.
With its emphasis on slow and deep study of a particular few subjects, Latin-centered education lends itself nicely to a Charlotte Mason approach: one might begin the day with lessons in Latin and math; follow those studies with fine read-alouds in fiction, history, science, or poetry (perhaps rotating through several books in the course of the week, and having the child narrate some of the readings); and leave the rest of the day open for free play, nature walks, art, music, and curling up with good books.
Likewise, folks with unschoolish yearnings but who have reservations about completely letting go of structured pursuits may find that LCE offers just enough disciplined study to maintain Mom’s comfort level while allowing lots and lots of free time for a child’s interest-driven explorations.
Intrigued? Here’s more good reading on the subject:
An Apology for Latin and Math.
Multum non Multa: an excerpt from The Latin-Centered Curriculum.
Decluttering Education.
Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home education, unschooling, Charlotte Mason, classical education, classical homeschooling, Latin-centered education
Innovative, I call it, and yet the curriculum is as old as it gets. A new private school is opening near Charlottesville, Virginia, offering a course of instruction that makes a classical homeschooler’s heart go pitty-pat: Latin, Greek, math, logic, music, drawing, history, and literature. St. Bede’s Latin School will open next fall with classes for students in 6th through 8th grade. Its founders intend to offer one additional grade each year, eventually rounding out a complete middle and high school program.
Modeled on Highlands Latin School in Kentucky (founded by Cheryl Lowe, who is familiar to many homeschoolers as the author of Latina Christiana), St. Bede’s is “committed to restoring the Great Tradition of the West by immersing students in the languages and literature of the past—those founts of wisdom that have nourished the western intellect for centuries.”
Like young C. S. Lewis, St Bede’s students will find themselves immersed in the study of Latin and Greek language and literature. “Until very recently,” states the St. Bede’s curriculum summary, “most thinkers and writers in the Great Tradition of the West were schooled in both Latin and Greek. Only a few generations ago, Latin was a standard discipline even in public schools. While many are beginning to rediscover the importance of Latin, we should not continue to discount the importance of Greek. Aside from being the language of the early church and of philosophy, Greek is the most exacting and precise of all the European tongues. The study of Greek prepares the mind for any intellectual discipline.”
The rigorous course of study will include readings from The Iliad, The Odyssey, Theogeny, and The Oresteia, as well as writings by Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, and Arrian. Particular focus will also be given to music, logic, and mathematics. Rather than attending separate classes for each grade level, the sixth through eighth grade students will learn together in mixed-age classes.
“The model of the one-room schoolhouse,” says St. Bede’s co-founder Arthur Rogers, “is a more natural and saner one than the practice of rigidly dividing children according to age. The younger students need older ones to admire and to follow, the older students ones to help and to guide.”
What is innovative about St. Bede’s is its schedule: students will attend class only three days per week, Tuesday through Thursday. “A school,” states Mr. Rogers, “should not usurp the authority and responsibilities of the family.” He maintains that “small classes and very little coming and going from one room to another will eliminate much of the wasted time that characterizes the public school (and many private schools).”
I poked around a bit and was only able to find a handful of schools in this country which observe a shortened school week. (The aforementioned Highlands Latin School is one.) It is a striking concept, however, one which may appeal to school-educating families and home-educating families alike. As a matter of fact, Highlands Latin School grew out of a homeschooling co-op. Mr. Rogers explains that Cheryl Lowe’s school “developed from a co-op she was running one day a week for a few years. As she attracted more students, she decided to go to three days (with the fourth day of optional enrichment).”
St. Bede’s School, too, will offer an optional half-day of Friday enrichment activities. The combination of a challenging classical curriculum and a non-traditional three-day schedule is quite an intriguing notion. One so often hears complaints from school-educating parents about how overscheduled and overstressed their children are; a shortened school week would seem to ease that problem, and the vision behind St. Bede’s and Highlands Latin suggests that this can be done without shortchanging academic pursuits.
I would love to hear from readers about other schools observing a three-day school week. When it comes to education, less (so we homeschoolers say) is so often more.
Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home education, education, classical education, Latin, private schools.
Related reading for home educators: The difference between a traditional Latin-centered classical education and a neoclassical education.
The Deputy Headmistress has written a lovely and concise Charlotte Mason tutorial. I’m going to put this link in my sidebar for easy reference for those who are curious about what CM is all about.
I would also recommend a visit to Mater Amabilis and the purchase of Elizabeth Foss’s excellent book, Real Learning.
Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home education, Charlotte Mason, education
Homeschoolers talk a lot about the reactions and comments they get (so often negative) from people who don’t know much about homeschooling. Nearly everyone has encountered a critic in the extended family, a naysayer in the neighborhood, a cross-examiner in the grocery store. Then there are the articles and editorials, a handful every week, in which some “expert” wags a warning finger about the disadvantages of home education.
This fascinates me. Ten years ago, when we decided to tread this path, people’s negative reactions often upset me. Now I am simply amused and somewhat perplexed. It puts me in mind of the stern admonishments I used to get from the little old ladies in my Queens neighborhood who were appalled that I wore baby Jane in a sling. “It’s not good for her to be squished up like that!” they would scold. “She can’t be comfortable!” And I’d look down at my contentedly snoozing child and have to stifle a laugh. Babies are really, really good at letting you know when they’re uncomfortable. Discomfort generally evokes a different reaction than the blissful slumber Jane slipped into when I walked around the neighborhood wearing her in that sling.
At first the old ladies’ disapproval bothered me, but eventually I decided it was an interference borne of good intentions. They genuinely cared about the well-being of every random baby on the street, including mine.
And over the years I’ve decided that it’s that same genuine concern that prompts a lot of the negative responses people have about homeschooling. I just wish these folks would stop and think about what is REALLY bothering them, what their concerns really are. Usually, their objections are based on assumptions they have never seriously analyzed.
Like this one. If I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, “But you’re not a scientist. How are you going to teach them biology, chemistry, trigonometry?” I could pay my mortgage and have change left over. I always answer, quite seriously, “Well, I took those classes in high school. Didn’t you?”
“Of course,” the skeptic will say, “but it’s not like I REMEMBER any of it.”
This cracks me up. Sometimes I’ll say, if I’m feeling snarky, “Then surely I can do a better job than your teacher did!”
But I’m not really slamming the teachers. I’m slamming the skeptic’s ill-considered argument. You can have the best teacher in the world, but if you don’t have a reason to use the knowledge, ten or twenty years later you’re probably going to have forgotten it. Since none of us can predict exactly WHAT knowledge our children will need in their lives to come, many homeschoolers approach education not from the perspective of “What do our children need to know?” but rather “How can we help our children retain the love of learning they were born
with?” There’s a reason that Yeats quote about education being “not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire” is so popular with the homeschool crowd.
The skeptic’s question presumes I’m going to be teaching in the textbook-and-test style that has been deemed most efficient for classrooms full of many students at various ability levels. I think most people who come at homeschoolers with the “are you qualified” argument are imagining a scenario in which Person With Knowledge imparts said knowledge to Student Without Knowledge (Yet). And that’s just so different from how home education really seems to work—no matter what method, philosophy, or curriculum is applied. We’re working one-on-one—an unbeatable student/teacher ratio—with a teacher who knows the student intimately, knows his interests, abilities, moods, sense of humor, learning style, sleep patterns, and diet, a teacher who has the strongest possible attachment to the student. This creates a whole different kind of learning environment. School vs. homeschool becomes apples vs. oranges. They are such very different experiences that it becomes nearly impossible to compare them. But I think that when the skeptic says, “Are you qualified to teach subject x,” he’s looking at my orange and thinking what a misshapen apple it is.
Rarely in these encounters is there an opportunity to explain in glorious depth what home education is REALLY like: the freedom to explore, the excitement of following rabbit trails, the lack of testing or administrative pressure, the absence of certain social pressures, the luxury of time in which to immerse in a subject, the spontaneity, the opportunities for hands-on learning, the lightheartedness. It’s a really delicious orange, see. But if you’re expecting it to taste like apple, then of course you’re going to look askance at it.
Other critics will allow for the academic advantages of a low student/teacher ratio. After all, there are all those statistics about high test scores among homeschooled students, all those geography and spelling bee winners, all those dazzling science fair projects. “But,” comes the objection—that persistent, prevalent, popular “disadvantage” you see in almost every single editorial about home education—”what about socialization?”
Honestly, I’m amazed that people are still beating this particular dead horse. Homeschoolers packed it off to the glue factory a long time ago. (That’s how we stick together all those sugar cubes for our model Egyptian pyramids.)
When I hear this question, I always want to ask right back, “What exactly do you MEAN by socialization?” Because I don’t think most people who toss the word around are really thinking about what they do mean by it.
Do they mean, “How will your kids learn to get along with other people if they’re holed up in your house with only YOU all the time?” Because if that’s their question, they’re leaping to the assumption that most homeschooled children ARE “holed up at home” all the time. I have yet to meet one family for whom this is the case—and between real life and online, I’ve met thousands of homeschooling families. The person who harbors this concern could lay his fears to rest by doing a quick bit of investigation. Homeschooling blogs, websites, books, and magazines are jam-packed with examples of kids getting out in the world and encountering other people in all sorts of situations: co-ops, clubs, sports teams, orchestras, drama groups, church groups, animal shelters, internships, apprenticeships, gym classes, volunteer groups, museums, nursing homes, playgroups, and on and on and on. We can hardly walk for tripping over opportunities for social interaction, both in peer groups and mixed-age groups. Two minutes of conversation with my kids, and the person who was worried they were stuck with just MY company all day, poor things, can breathe a sigh of relief. Good luck catching my kids to ask them the question, though, because they’re out playing with the neighborhood schoolchildren who flock to our yard every afternoon. (The neighbor kids must not realize how unsocialized my children are.)
But maybe the Socialization Worrier meant something else. Maybe she meant, “See, I know this family who homeschools, and their kids are just plain weird/socially awkward/obnoxious/wild/[insert unpleasant adjective of choice].”
To which I must respond: And you’re saying that there are no weird/socially awkward/obnoxious/wild/etc. kids in schools? Because, um, I beg to differ. They were there when I was in school, and I know they’re there now because I hear about them (or read about them in the news) all the time. Some of the weird ones—the nerdy guys in the computer club—grew up to become multimillionaires (and usually really nice people—but then, they were nice all along, just weird). Some of the obnoxious ones now draw huge crowds at the comedy club. Others are in jail.
Maybe, dear critic, that family you know does have some really weird kids, total Napoleon Dynamite types. Are you saying those kids would be better off in a school situation, where their awkwardness will be rubbed in their faces all day long? As for the obnoxious/wild/rowdy/ hooligan kids—are you saying you’d PREFER to have them in your kid’s classroom, causing disruptions? Do you really think they’d be less obnoxious in a school setting?
That’s what I’d like to ask the “I know a homeschooling family and I don’t like them” skeptics. Because I don’t believe that if they really thought the matter through, they would believe that the problem with those kids would have been avoided by “socialization” in a school setting. The obnoxious kids would almost certainly be just as obnoxious (what our skeptic is really objecting to is probably a parenting issue, not an educational one), and the weird kids would be just as weird and probably a whole lot more miserable. After all, “weird” in this context just means “different,” doesn’t it? Kids who just don’t fit in? How many times have we seen the school misfit blossom and thrive as soon as he finishes school or college and is finally freed of the pressure to squeeze into a mold that doesn’t fit him? Heck, how many of us experienced this ourselves?
Sometimes people say, “Look, everyone has to learn to deal with unpleasant people sometime. One of the things you learn in school is how to put up with difficult personalities.” To which I am tempted to respond, “And you think my kids aren’t learning that at home? Have you met my husband?”
KIDDING, honey! But really. Does anyone truly believe that home educated children are growing up completely free from exposure to “unpleasant people”? Because if there are kids like this, I’d love to know where they live so I can move there too.
The “you might as well get used to putting up with bad stuff now” argument is perhaps the weakest homeschooling criticism there is. I don’t think anyone who utters it really means it, not REALLY, not for their own kids. No one wants his child bullied. No mother tucks a lunch in her son’s backpack, zips up his windbreaker, and thinks, “I hope he gets picked on today because that’ll make it easier for him to put up with jerks in the office he’ll work in someday.” No father watches his daughter climb on the bus and hopes she’ll be called names all the way to school in order to accustom her to receiving verbal abuse so that it won’t come as such a shock when her future husband inflicts it upon her later in life.
Mind you, I’m not saying that every kid who goes to school will be bullied or abused (or that no homeschooler ever will). I’m not saying anything about school at all—I’m just saying that the “learning to deal with unpleasant people” argument against homeschooling doesn’t hold water.
As for “learning to deal with unpleasant experiences“—surely life outside school affords plenty of practice at that, whether we want it or not? The dentist’s office, the doctor’s office, the death of a pet, the stomach flu…Again, I don’t believe any parent sends a child off to school actually hoping he’ll have an unpleasant experience that day in order to toughen him up for future adversity. And I don’t think the people who offer this glib statement as a criticism of home education are really thinking about what they’re saying.
What else do people mean by socialization? I’ve actually heard some people say, “How will homeschooled kids learn how to stand in line and take turns?” That one is my absolute favorite. Um, ever been to the post office? The grocery store? Or, gee, how about the line we stand in for Holy Communion every Sunday at Mass? I have to say, despite the lack of institutional training, my kids have picked up that skill just fine. As for taking turns, well: one mom, four kids—yup, plenty of turn-taking opportunities here. Then there’s the Common Room family, who until this week shared one bathroom between nine people. I bet those kids are REALLY good at taking turns and waiting in line.
I’m not out to convince the world that homeschooling is for everyone. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe it is. I have plenty of friends who have no interest in living this lifestyle themselves—and it is definitely a lifestyle choice. Mind you, I’d love to see schools enjoy the educational freedom we homeschoolers have; I think schools would work much better if they were giant resource centers where kids went because they wanted to know about stuff. I’m against grades and standardized testing; I think those things form a barrier between the student and knowledge, and most of the teachers I know (including some very close friends) spend a lot of time and energy working darned hard to get around that wall. I most earnestly wish those hardworking teachers had the freedom to spend their time lighting fires instead of filling buckets.
But modern American institutional education is what it is, and it doesn’t happen to be the choice I’ve made for my kids. Happily, the state acknowledges my right to make that choice. The grocery-store skeptics and the newspaper editorial writers, on the other hand, are uncomfortable about the choice I’ve made. If just once they expressed a concern that actually held water, I would relish the discussion. Until then, I’m savoring every juicy bite of this orange.
…it must be time for a new Carnival of Homeschooling. This week’s edition is hosted—amazingly, since she’s in the process of moving into her new home—by The Common Room‘s Deputy Headmistress. I especially enjoyed the post from Bruggie Tales on “Sibling Non-Rivalry.”
