Posts Tagged ‘Homeschooling’

Books about the Middle Ages

May 22, 2010 @ 4:16 pm | Filed under:

Earlier this week, Phoebe asked me to recommend books about the middle ages. Jane and I went around the house pulling things off shelves. The timing was perfect, because I’ve been on a bit of a middle ages jag myself, ever since reading The Perilous Gard (so good! read it!!) which though set in Tudor times, at the cusp of Elizabeth’s reign, is a retelling of the medieval Tam Lin ballad. I’ve listened to perhaps a dozen different renditions of Tam Lin over the past few weeks; this one by Bob Hay and the Jolly Beggars.

Here’s a list of the middle-ages-related books we found around the house. There are many other wonderful books about the middle ages, of course. (Rosemary Sutcliffe and Susan Cooper novels come to mind.) Feel free to leave your own lists (or links to your lists) in the comments!

Disclaimer: Not all of these are appropriate for younger children.
** indicates my family’s favorites

HISTORICAL FICTION AND FANTASY

Black Horses for the King by Anne McCaffrey (YA novel; Arthurian legend–how “Lord Artos” got horses strong enough to carry knights in full regalia)
Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
What Happened in Hamelin by Gloria Skurzynski (middle-grade novel; Pied Piper)**
The Minstrel in the Tower by Gloria Skurzynski (chapter book; brother & sister on perilous quest)
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (middle grade novel; knighthood, woodcarving; battle)**
The Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett
The Apple and the Arrow by Mary & Conrad Buff (William Tell)
Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray**
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager (set in 20th century, but the children wind up inside the Ivanhoe story, sort of)**
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg (middle-grade novel about Eleanor of Aquitaine, mother of King Richard the Lion Heart and King John)
Catherine Called Birdyby Karen Cushman
CLASSICAL MEDIEVAL STORIES including Arthurian tales

Medieval Romances edited by Roger Sherman Loomis & Laura Hibbard Loomis (Perceval, Tristan & Isolt, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, etc; this was the text for my college Medieval Lit class & has a highly quotable intro, which I shall indeed quote in the next post)
Favorite Medieval Tales by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Troy Howell (Finn Maccoul, Beowulf, Arthur, Song of Roland, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight; Robin Hood, Chanticleer)**
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White (Arthur)**
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck (based on the Malory)
The Story of King Arthur by Tom Crawford (Dover Children’s Classics)
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (of course!!)

NONFICTION

The Story of the World, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages by Susan Wise Bauer
How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
Living Long Ago (Usborne Books, lots of pictures: clothes, customs, housing)
Famous Men of the Middle Ages by John H. Haaren & A. B. Poland (Attila the Hun, Barbarossa, Clovis, Justinian, etc)**
A Medieval Feast by Aliki (picture book)**
The Life of King Alfred by Asser, Bishop of Sherborne (written in Latin around 888AD, translated by J.A. Giles)

NONFICTION, SORT OF (contains legend or considerable fictionalization)

Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall
The Sailor Who Captured the Sea by Deborah Nourse Lattimore (picture book: Book of Kells; illuminated manuscripts; monasteries; Vikings attack Ireland) (This maybe belongs just under fiction)

SAINT STORIES

Around the Year: Once Upon a Time Saints by Ethel Pochocki (not all the saints depicted here are medieval, but many are)
Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman
Patrick, Saint of Ireland by Tomie de Paola (picture book; early middle ages)
Tomie de Paola also did picture books about St Francis and Sts Benedict & Scholastica, but I couldn’t find those today)
Brigid’s Cloak by Bryce Milligan, illustrated by Helen Cann

FOLK AND FAIRY TALES WITH A MEDIEVAL FLAVOR

Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (picture book; although St George predates the middle ages, the dragon legend comes from Spenser’s The Faerie Queen [1590] and is based on medieval writings–the Arthurian stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth [1136]; Hyman’s illustrations have borders reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts)
Chanticleer and the Fox by Barbara Cooney, based on the story from The Canterbury Tales**
Heckedy Peg by Don & Audrey Wood (picture book; fairy tale; setting is a medieval village)**
The Irish Cinder Lad by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Loretta Krupinski (picture book; Irish fairy tale; dragon, castle, princess)
The Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin by F.M. Pilkington (Irish fairy tales; Children of Lir)
The King of Ireland’s Son by Padraic Colum (novel-length Irish folk tale)**

OTHER WORKS OF NOTE:

Twain’s bio of St. Joan of Arc
Heaney’s translation of Beowulf
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Stories about Robin Hood (we have several versions

Good Sir Boy of Wonder

California Homeschooling Case Updates

June 27, 2008 @ 4:02 am | Filed under: ,

Links for June 23, 2008

June 24, 2008 @ 4:02 am | Filed under:

UPDATE: The court heard arguments all day and now the ball’s in their hands. They have up to 90 days to make a ruling, but I doubt it will take that long. I read a good summary of the oral arguments that were presented and will post a link when I find one. (The summary came via email.) Sounds like there were no surprises.

Good News for NY Homeschoolers

In March I reported the distressing news that the NY State Board of Regents had announced public special-education services such as speech therapy and occupational therapy would no longer be available to homeschooled students. Private school students, they ruled, would continue to qualify, but not homeschoolers.

Well, it looks like common sense has prevailed. Today the New York State Senate passed a bill reinstating these services to homeschooled children. The Assembly passed the companion bill on Monday. Now all that remains is the governor’s signature.

This is great news. These are public services available through the public schools which ought to be available to all children, not just those enrolled in the schools. Working with the school district to receive these services is not always an easy task, but for some families, for some children, it’s a vitally important option.

I wrote a fair amount at The Lilting House about my family’s (sometimes rocky) experiences with receiving speech therapy and audiology services from our school district for our hard-of-hearing son. I had to learn a lot about navigating the IEP process, and some of the lessons came at a price. (You may recall the one IEP meeting where I was sandbagged by “the team” and had to fight hard to persuade them to agree to what I knew to be the best course of action for my son.) This past year we’ve been very pleased with the way things have worked, and I couldn’t be happier with our current speech therapist and the district’s awesome audiologist.

And not having to drive up to the children’s hospital for these services (where Wonderboy already sees eleven different specialists on a regular basis, and NEVER on the same day) has made a huge practical difference in my family’s quality of life. I run him over to a local elementary school for speech therapy, hearing tests, new ear molds, and such. All these services and supplies (including hearing aid batteries, which aren’t cheap) are provided free of charge by the school district—just as they are, here in California, for every child in the district, whether public-schooled, private-schooled, or homeschooled. Our tax dollars are helping fund these programs.

One of the potential pitfalls we’ve skirted is that once your kid is in, it can be hard to get him out if you decide the services in question are not a good fit, after all. Here in CA, Wonderboy is stuck in the system until he reaches legal kindergarten age. He misses the cutoff for next fall by one week, and ordinarily I’d have been delighted about that: no need to fool with paperwork for him for an extra year. (Not that there’s much paperwork to fool with, here in sunny Cal.) But if I wanted to back out of district-provided services and seek them through the medical venue instead, I’d have a devilish time doing so until he reaches kindy age. At that point, I can simply “enroll” him in our family’s private school (since that’s the option I homeschool under, the private-school provision) and decline any or all district services I might wish to disengage from.

We’re quite satisfied with our current level and quality of service, and I’m content to maintain the status quo next year. But the libertarian in me (Scott says he notices an increasingly large streak, year after year) bristles at being bound to any status quo where my own child is concerned.

But I bristle even more at the notion of services being denied to some children for arbitary or prejudiced reasons, which seemed for a while to be the direction NY was headed. Bravo to the legislature for letting justice prevail. Now sign that baby, Governor.

Is Knowledge Relative?

March 26, 2008 @ 8:09 pm | Filed under: ,

I just spent all my posting time writing another really long comment in the patience/unschooling thread. Is it cheating if I post it here as well? (Cheating what, Lissa?)

Maybe not cheating, but nepotism perhaps. (Can nepotism apply to one’s own self?) There have been so many good, wise comments on that post, and I keep pulling excerpts to paste into a post—two posts, one on parenting and one on learning/unschooling—but the posts would be almost as long as that comments thread. Besides, excerpts are not as good as whole comments, in context.

This comment was a reply to one of many questions asked in that thread.

Wendy asked,

“Does unschooling mean we give equal weight to everything our children are interested in? For example, is reading a Star Wars novel (which my 10yods is now doing, aloud, for his 8yo brother) just as valuable as reading, say, Scotland’s Story? I know I must be missing something, but it seems like relativism to me to say that it is.”

That depends on what you mean by valuable, and by relativism. Relativism in this context sounds bad, like moral relativism. (You can tell I’m not a moral relativist because I think moral relativism is bad.) But I don’t see how it could be moral relativism to say “this bit of knowledge is just as valuable as that bit of knowledge.” Valuable for what purpose? In what context? Here are some things of value I see in a boy reading Star Wars aloud to his brother:

learning to read with inflection (useful in many professions)

gaining deeper understanding of dialogue including how to punctuate it, how conversations unfold

deeper understanding of pacing, rising action/falling action, conflict, character development, description, subplots, metaphor and imagery (all very valuable in my particular profession!)

deepening of bond between brothers; warm happy memory for them, shared knowledge for games and in-jokes

experiencing the good feeling of doing something nice for someone, discovering the joy of charitable acts

science stuff about space, planets, gravity, engines, weapons, etc

Star Wars usually conveys a message that is decidedly NOT moral relativism: good is good, evil is evil; good fights evil (and prevails: hopeful message); it’s not ok for a good guy to do something bad even if he has a good reason (ends do not justify means); even the worst of bad guys can repent and try to make amends

other Star Warsy themes are the importance of working as a team, playing off each other’s strengths; perseverance; sacrifice

And probably a lot of other things I’m not thinking of.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be either/or with Star Wars and the Story of Scotland (not that Wendy was saying it did; I’m just developing a thought)—both books might capture a kid’s interest at different times, or at the same time. Jane had a three-year Boxcar Children passion; she read that series so many times she could identify all 100+ titles by number. At the same time she was reading lots of books from the classics lists. If there wasn’t something valuable about formula fiction, there wouldn’t BE formula fiction. No one would buy it; it wouldn’t get published (by the millions). There is something deeply satisfying about reading a story that unfolds in a reliable way. It’s comforting, but it can be exciting, too, knowing that the next twist is due and making guesses about the plot, puzzling out the mystery or solution to the conflict.

And in a way it’s impossible to put a value on knowledge because you don’t KNOW what you’re going to need to know in the future. (If you don’t know it already, and a pressing need arises, you’re going to learn in a hurry. I knew next to nothing about the War of 1812 when I was offered the Charlotte books. The first book was set in the middle of the war, and I had four months to write it. And historical accuracy was imperative both to the publisher and to my sense of integrity. So you can bet I took in an enormous amount of knowledge at a rapid pace!)

I think it is so, so hard for all of us who were schooled to break down the boxes that school put knowledge into. School has to decide what information to present when, and to whom. It says “this is important for all people of X age to know.” (But though it can present the information, it can’t guarantee that all the students will wind up “knowing” it.) School says that certain knowledge is more valuable than other knowledge. But you know what? Knowing how to fix a toilet would have saved me a lot of money, but school never presented *that* potentially valuable knowledge. I can draw really pretty circles with a compass, though. I’ve had more plumbing problems in my life than occasions requiring perfectly round circles.

In typing class I learned to put two spaces after every period. That was a valuable piece of information when I took timed typing tests for temp agencies during college. Later, when employers needed word processors instead of typists, I had to “unlearn” that habit. Only one space after a period, in computer typing. Knowledge that formerly had value became disadvantageous. Circumstances change.

The value of knowledge *is* relative, isn’t it? “Is this important” depends on “for what?”

That isn’t the bad kind of relativism, moral relativism. It’s practicality.

I place a very high value on beautiful prose and well-crafted fiction. I value some types of poetry (Elizabeth Bishop) over others (Hallmark greeting card). Hallmark sells millions more greeting cards than Elizabeth Bishop sold books. And yet, I say her work is “better” (a relative judgment) than a Hallmark card. I say it, and I believe it, and I can tell you why, syllable by syllable. But it’s possible that my grandma (if I still had one living, that is) would be far more moved by the sentimental lines on her birthday card than Elizabeth Bishop’s rapturous meditation upon a very ugly fish.

Another way to think about it is: who is learning more—the kid who is passionately interested in Boxcar Children, or the one who is patiently enduring Great Expectations?

(That same child might, however, find herself captivated by Great Expectations a few years later—her appreciation of suspense fiction having been honed by dozens of Boxcar Children books.)

Charles Dickens knew the “value” of words—he got paid by the word. When he read his own work aloud, he stripped out most of the adjectives; he’d just put them in to pay the bills.

We (having been well schooled) might say that classical music and opera are “more important” or “better than” cartoons. But most of the kids in my generation first (and maybe only) encountered opera in the cartoons. Ohh Bwunhiwda, you’re so wuv-wy…Yes I know it, I can’t he-e-elp it… 🙂

My kids discovered Strauss through Tom & Jerry. I discovered Strauss through That’s Entertainment!

To come back to the question: do we give equal weight to everything our children are interested in? I think yes, we do. School has to decide what to present how, and in what way, but at home, we don’t. We aren’t bound by a calendar year or test date. We don’t have to squeeze knowledge into someone else’s boxes. Way leads on to way!

“Every Face I Look at Seems Beautiful”

March 17, 2008 @ 8:26 pm | Filed under: , , , ,

I’ve been thinking through some things in emails (and offline) lately, and I wanted to bring some of those thoughts here. It has to do with patience, a good kind and a bad kind, and their relationship to happiness and learning, especially unschooling.

My children think I’m a pretty swell mom, but they know all too well that I have my faults. If you asked them, they would say (if they weren’t too loyal to rat on me) that my greatest fault is impatience. They’d be right, at least as far as my relationship with the kids is concerned. Impatience comes from frustration, (or does it lead to frustration?), and I think we all know that what spills over from an impatient person’s frustration is scolding, or nagging, or sharp words. Impatience is what you feel when people aren’t doing what you want them to do: it’s a frustrated desire for control.

When Jane was two years old, in the hospital fighting leukemia, people used to constantly compliment me for my patience. Other parents, nurses, doctors—I heard it from many people and it always puzzled me. I didn’t feel ‘patient,’ not in any virtuous sense. What I felt was a keen awareness that my days with this child might possibly be numbered, and I didn’t want to lose a single one of them to a bad mood. I wanted to savor every moment with my baby girl, in case I didn’t have many moments left to savor. So I gladly, gratefully, spent hours playing playdough with her, or giving her i.v. pole rides in the hallways, or holding her while she slept. You don’t need ‘patience’ to live through moments like that.

And through the years, I’ve held on to that sense of ‘savor this moment because it is precious’ with my kids. But I cannot deny that as the years passed, and as more children joined the party, impatience elbowed its way into my heart, my words, my actions. I can almost pinpoint the moment I changed, or at least the moment impatience boiled over into sharpness. Rose was three years old, and Beanie was a baby; we were at a lake beach near our home in Virginia, and I got stuck. Stuck trying to leave the beach, with an unhappy, sandy Bean crying on my hip and a bag slipping off my shoulder, and an intractible Rose straining to pull away from me, her heels digging into the wet sand, wavelets lapping at our ankles. We needed to leave. Jane was already halfway to the parking lot (and too young to be there alone). I couldn’t put the baby down without getting her wet (again), and I was out of diapers. Rose refused to budge. I felt helpless, completely held hostage by a stubborn toddler. I had to scoop her up under one arm like a football and carry her, screaming and squirming, back to the car.

I say “had to,” but I’m sure I had other options. It didn’t seem like it at the time. We were there with friends—the dad friend would, in later years, recall that episode with glee, the day he “saw Lissa lose it.” Why I didn’t holler to him to stop grinning and pick up Rose, I don’t remember. I am quite certain that either of the mom friends who were present would have been happy to help. They probably offered to, but what I remember about the moment is that sense of helplessness and frustration.

Moms of small children can run into that feeling often. What it is, really, is a feeling of being out of control. Loss of control is scary. I dealt with it well when the loss of control was due to illness, something out of any human being’s power to alter. But ah, it’s when a person, or people, especially small people who are “supposed” to obey their mama, are flouting my attempts to control—that‘s when impatience comes in.

People who try to control other people often find themselves feeling impatient, or worse. The reason mothers (to single out one kind of person) scold or fuss or nag or criticize their children is because they are trying to bring a situation back under control—that is, to make things go the way the mom wants them to go.

When I had three or four children each wanting to go a different direction, that’s when I got impatient. That’s when I became a mom who scolds. That’s when I stopped savoring every moment, only selected moments.

That’s when I started to wonder what had happened to the patient mommy I used to be. I used to be so patient—I would think that all the time, forgetting that in the days when people remarked upon my patience, I hadn’t felt like patience came into the equation at all.

I think when we talk about patience in terms of a quality we don’t feel like we possess (“I used to be so patient”), we are talking about a kind of patience that isn’t really a virtue at all. That kind of patience is about enduring the present moment until a better one comes along. It’s a gritting-one’s-teeth-and-getting-through-it state of mind.

It’s how many of us endured countless hours of our lives in school. The kids who didn’t patiently endure were the ones labeled troublemakers. Patient endurance is how most people get through hours in line at the DMV, or (to poke my own self here) the interminable waits in doctor’s offices. There is no moment-savoring going on in that kind of patience. In fact, often ‘being patient’ really just means ‘being quiet and not making a fuss’ while resentment or irritation is churning underneath.

I think the reason people tend to be less patient with their children is because they can in fact exert some external control over the children—as opposed to the doctors who keep us waiting, or the complicated beaucratic systems directing the flow of traffic at the DMV.

But “exerting control” by nagging, scolding, lecturing, ordering in a drill-sergeant’s bark—these are actions that, sooner or later, will do harm to a relationship. Nobody likes being nagged, scolded, or lectured ‘for their own good.’ I sure don’t like it, I know that much. It’s a complete violation of the Golden Rule, isn’t it? Treating children the way we’d like to be treated if we were in their shoes means finding other ways of dealing with those out-of-control moments.

I think for me, the shift back toward a better way began when I drove the kids from Virginia to California by myself. Rilla was six months old, Wonderboy three. Scott had already started his job out here, and he would have flown back to drive with us but I talked him out of it. If he came along, we’d be on the clock; he could only take so much time off work. If I drove alone, we could amble, stopping as often and as long as the kids needed to—which turned out to be very, very often. I had to abandon myself to the flow of the trip: letting go of the desire to control every move we made. We wound up having a wonderful time, the six of us, and I think a big part of the reason is because that 2700-mile journey was about taking each moment as it came. They were moments worth savoring, and savor them I did.

Not that there weren’t some bumps in the road. There were (are) still five children, not all of them always wanting the same thing. But I found that being mindful of the difference between ‘taking care of’ and ‘controlling’ (or trying to control), and being determined to appreciate the present moment, not just try to to ‘get through’ it—those attitudes eliminate impatience. Really. And then the bumps in the road become part of the grand adventure, challenges to be tackled, puzzles to be solved. It’s so much more satisfying to be creative and fun than to be frustrated and stern.

There is another kind of patience, a good kind. It’s the quality that allows a mother with ten places to put every minute to sit in the driveway drawing chalk figures for her toddler, or blow bubbles until the whole bottle is gone, or take half an hour to walk down the block, admiring every dandelion and ant that catches her little one’s eye. It’s the patience that plays a game of Monopoly with an eight-year-old until every last dollar is in someone’s pile, the kind that listens with interest to a detailed recounting of the latest phone-book-sized Teen Titans collection. That kind of patience isn’t about enduring the present moment until a better one comes along. It’s about enjoying the present moment for exactly what it is, with gusto and gratitude.

There’s “patience in suffering,” too, of course, and while perhaps that kind isn’t about enjoying the present (painful or sorrowful) moment, it too involves a willingness to accept the present moment for what it is. People who are patient in suffering tend to be people overflowing with gratitude for all the other things in their lives besides suffering. This is a very great virtue, and I think it grows out of the peaceful sense of appreciation for what is, now, as opposed to a longing for something different, something better: it’s the good kind of patience all grown up.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about all this in conjunction with unschooling, which is a whole way of living that embraces the present moment, rejoices in what is good about it. Unschooling says: this day, this encounter, this connection of ideas, this moment between us—this is very, very good. Unschooling begins with a dismissal of the kind of experiences that a child must “patiently endure” in order to be “educated,” but it is more than that, more than a rejection of one way of being. Unschoolers see everything in the whole wide world as interesting, connected, something they can learn about. (Scroll halfway down at the link and you’ll see why I linked that page in particular, though the whole site speaks to the point.) Instead of patiently (or impatiently) enduring the long wait at the DMV, an unschooler might look around, notice things, think about them, wonder how and why. Why are all the people sitting in the back two rows in this waiting area, but are scattered among all the rows in that bank of seats over there? What kinds of jobs do the people waiting in line have, and was it hard for them to get time off to spend a weekday morning here? When did the old cameras get dumped in favor of digital cameras? Why are the walls a glaring white instead of something soft and soothing like in doctors’ offices? What is the ratio of DMV employees to customers? Is customer the right word for a person in line at the DMV?

Of course I’m not saying that unschoolers are the only people who approach life this way. Harvard professor John Stilgoe, the author of that book I’m still reading: he gets it. He sees what’s interesting in power lines and telephone poles and manhole covers. He has made these things interesting to me. Reading that book is making visible—even beautiful—all sorts of things that were ugly or invisible to me before. The other day I looked out my windshield sideways down a street and saw, for the first time in my life, how the rows of of drooping wires made a spiderweb against the sky: lacy, delicate, lovely.

It reminded me of Philip Isaacson’s book Round Buildings, Square Buildings, Buildings that Wiggle like a Fish, which showed me ways of looking at buildings that made every building interesting to me, made me see the artistry and story of the Brooklyn Bridge, the white clapboard church, the green glass skyscraper.

I’ll never forget reading, in college, Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and how one of her students said that after taking Betty’s drawing class and working on portraits, every face she looked at seemed beautiful to her. The drawing lessons taught her to really look at people, and when she did, she saw beauty everywhere.

I know I’m going all over the place here, but in my mind these things are all connected: this way of really looking, really seeing, noticing what is interesting and important and even beautiful about things many people whisk by without noticing. And what I can do for my children is refuse to fill up their lives with things they must patiently endure until a better moment comes. I can savor the moments as they happen, and give them the time and space to find what’s interesting and beautiful in every face the world shows them.

As I was writing that last sentence, Beanie appeared in front of me with a big smile and a present: a bracelet made of safety pins linked together, each pin shining with green and blue beads. “It’s for you, Mommy,” she breathed, so proud and excited. “Jane showed me how.” How patiently (the good kind of patience) she must have worked to slide all those beads in place.

I never noticed before what a work of art a safety pin is!

Home Education: Delicious and Nutritious

March 22, 2006 @ 3:54 am | Filed under:

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.