Josh (sigh), or, why we homeschool
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 3:30AM I don’t often discuss why we homeschool, because I find that most people don’t really want to know. What they want is the one-word answer. Do you homeschool for religious, academic, social, or safety reasons? Does your child have special needs that the school system can’t address? Or did the shootings at Columbine High freak you out so badly you decided to keep your children “safe” at home? (Has that really been ten years ago now?)
Also, people have questions. I don’t have the answers all ready to give out, without resorting to the old homeschooling clichés, such as, “our children love to learn at their own pace”, and “socialization is more realistic in families than in a classroom”. Someday, when it’s all over and my baby boy is safely tucked away in some college dorm, I hope I do have ready answers. I hope by then I will have it all figured out. I sure don’t now.
I suppose to anybody who wants the one word answer, I would have to say “academics”. Because we do feel that on their own time schedule, our children can grasp the academic stuff much more quickly than if they’re waiting for/trying to catch up to all the other children in their classes. And there’s the cliché again. Ah, well. If that’s all you wanted to know, stop here.
If you must know all the horrid backwash of a person’s soul that causes her to make a drastic decision like homeschooling, well, read on.
What it all boils down to, really, is this. I was a terrible fit for the tiny rural public schools I went to as a child. In high school I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, which I still don’t completely understand, but which meant just one thing to the child I was: I was a terrible fit for my tiny local schools.
I have a long list of examples that would only bore you, but I will mention the day I first thought the word “homeschool”. I was probably a junior in high school. I’d been reading a book of Greek plays, by Euripides, I think, as I walked from class to class, and another person asked me, “Why are you reading that?” I was so tired of everyone being so aghast that I would read something academic-seeming without being compelled, and I thought, “Someone with less self-assurance than I have could seriously be damaged by this environment.” Please remember I was a teenager, and a cocky one, at this time.
At that moment, all of the times I’d wept over sheets of multiplication tables my frozen mind couldn’t answer as the egg timer mercilessly ticked off its 60 seconds, all the times I’d had to leave the classroom for the accelerated program amid the jealous glares of my fellow students, all the time I’d spent inside the windows of a school wishing I were outside them, clicked into place in my mind. I sought control over my situation the only way I knew how. I swore I would never do something like this to anybody I loved. Again, I remind you, I was a teenager and given to…drama, shall we say.
I’d heard of homeschool, but knew that people who homeschooled were social misfits, and I’d never do that to anybody I loved either. "Social misfit" is at the bottom of a high schooler's list of "things I want to become". So I shelved the idea.
And then I met Josh. During my senior year of high school, I won a speech contest given by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, resulting in my being sent to Washington, D.C. to represent my state and compete for the national prize. I was the contestant from North Carolina, he was the contestant from Tennessee, and oh, was I ever in love. (By now I shouldn’t have to remind you. I was seventeen.) He was charming, and likable, and one of that rare breed of attractive teenage male who doesn’t realize all this about himself. I spent the whole weekend thoroughly enjoying refreshing, intelligent conversation with him, and making lame advances that he totally didn’t get. I can hardly stand that, when you’re making advances they totally don’t even get. I mean, could hardly…were making…I mean all that in the past tense, of course.
I was already making plans to move to Tennessee, when he casually mentioned something about having been homeschooled. I stopped completely short. And here’s where I should have stopped for real, because I blurted out, before I could stop myself, “Homeschooled? But you’re so…normal!”
He grinned, and I started babbling, digging myself deeper and deeper into my own pit. “You, I mean, you homeschooled in elementary school, but you went to high school, right? I mean, you homeschooled for a few years but mostly public school…” I went on in this way. I had a way of saying really intelligent things to guys I really liked. But I was aghast. He was a homeschool kid? And…and he was normal enough for me, a public school kid to converse with, to…to like? They were supposed to be so weird!
He’d never been to public school a day in his life, he told me. Well, except for service projects he did sometimes with his church. Sometimes they involved the schools. Really??
All my ideas were undergoing a major upgrade. If it were true, if people could not go to public school and turn out like Josh, well…homeschool might have something going for it. Just for good measure, Josh happened to mention he had a twin. “There are TWO of you??” I gasped. So much for the social skills of a properly public schooled human being. I carefully gave him my email address when we parted ways. He must have lost it on the way home.
After that, I knew that there was another alternative to public school, and that it was completely possible. Looking back I can see what I couldn't grasp at the moment, that not only did Josh have adequate social skills, but he definitely had better skills than mine.
Academically, I could always see how public school fit so many other people, and wished it fit for me. And, in retrospect, it seems a bit of a stretch to apply my experiences to my children’s upbringing so completely wholesale. But, by a strange twist of fate, my oldest son has a lot of the traits I exhibited as a messed-up kid. “Like you, but with a Y chromosome,” my husband says. I told him when I met him that we’d be homeschooling our children if we had any together, and, oddly enough, he agreed. I also told him we wouldn’t have a TV. At least the homeschooling thing worked out.
I still chew my fingernails down to nubs over whether my kids will turn out “normal”. I worry about them fitting in with the other kids, while telling myself I don’t care. But when I see them flourish as they pick up the same things I struggled so hard with, just as a part of their everyday lives, I know that, for some of us, there’s simply a better place to be.
And here we have no egg timers.
~MB~
Reader Comments (13)
For what it's worth, I never thought you were strange. Very smart and somewhat quiet, yes. But not strange.
Wow, I love this post. So engagingly written. And interesting to me to "meet" someone who knew about homeschooling as a teenager. I didn't hear about it until I was an adult, and it didn't really register in my mind until I had my own child.
It's funny that you worry about your children being "normal", because I have the same worry, but for opposite reasons. I dread the thought of my dd growing up "normal". I so much want her to be an interesting, unusual, individual free spirit. Not weird, of course, but rejecting the mainstream.
Nichole, I appreciate the vote of confidence!
Sarah, thank you for the compliment. I think I'm coming more around to your point of view the more I realize I'm raising people, and not just children. If I'd wanted normal, I guess I would have done things in a "normal" way. Hm. Maybe deep down I'm less worried about normal than I thought....
~E~
Ha! The first time I thought about homeschool was when I read <u>Little Women</u> and Amy stayed at home after her horrid teacher whipped her hands for the limes and said it was just as useful to educate a female cat as a girl. I worked out in public schools, though, because I was totally OK with being very abnormal. I used the system to get what I wanted, but I realized even then that I wasn't as interested in learning as I was in getting the grades to get a scholarship to get out of town. And while, again, it worked out for me, I also vowed not to do that to my kids. My kids were going to truly love learning and would be able to learn anything they wanted - and not under some education department nazi system. So I was already pretty sold on homeschool, or at least alternatives to public and regular private, before the big violence started and I married Mr. Yarth (yet another reason to homeschool). Now we're pretty locked in, The new house as a whole double room in the basement just for homeschooling (or course, when we sell the house in ten years, it will be billed as another bedroom with a really big closet).
Normal is over-rated. And galacticallty impossible.
I'm glad you posted about this. I've been going back and forth ever since my first was born whether or not I wanted to homeschool. She'll be kindergarten age this fall and just recently I've swung back to the homeschool-might-be-a-good-idea-for-us idea. Honestly I just don't want to give her up for most of the day. Then I think I'm just being clingy because she's my first. I don't want to limit her by my possessiveness. I actually really loved school, especially elementary school. But as a parent I love being a part of her learning. I love reading books together and talking about her interests and showing her new things and rediscovering the world with her. The idea of homeschooling excites but also frightens me. So thanks for your perspective.
By the way PLEASE come see me when you're in Utah!
Oh, Shauna. I was there. I was sitting on the floor the day before kindergarten registration with a white board with four columns on it: Public school pros/cons, and Homeschool pros/cons. This was the day I had to decide. Bafflingly enough, every item went in multiple columns. Socialization...where does it go? Public school...good? bad? Both. Homeschool...good, bad, ditto. And so on. In the end, I decided that both choices were a trade-off. If I put my child in school, I might give up creativity and personal initiative for discipline and structure, but if I homeschooled him, it might be the other way around. I reached down deeeeeep inside, (and called FB at work) and we realized that we'd far rather have a creative, self-driven child than one who obeys rules.
We've tried different things over the few years we've been homeschooling, and now favor even less structure than we started out with, and we love it. One thing I've never done, since the day I put the pen down and wiped the white board clean, is regret this choice. I don't want to give my children up for most of the day, either. I also had that moment of concern over whether I was being selfish. But I feel like they would be (and I was) more limited in public school than they can be at home. At school the edges of your world are bounded by a clock and four walls. Outside it, there are no boundaries. We are a family, and as a family we explore the world.
Now I'm sounding preachy. Sorry. But I do want to say this: She's your baby. No teacher in the world is going to love snuggling up with her and reading her stories like you do, and I think that feeling is there for a reason. The things you share with her she'll remember always. Homeschool is something you can do if you want to.
Oh, no, I've said too much! (Or have I said enough...?)
Let me know if you need a reading list. Besides my blog I mean. :)
~E~
Oh, and, when we're in Utah we're SO there!
I think the last time I saw you was at you daughter's baby blessing. I must have been the only one at your house that wasn't a member of your family. I was sitting next to I think your grandma having a nice conversation (you were busy in the kitchen) when there was a pause and one of your cousins or uncles said "who are you?" And everyone looked at me curiously like "yeah, who is this girl?" It makes me want to laugh still thinking about it. Yes it will be nice to see you. It's been too long.
What you say about homeschooling resonates with me. I'd love a reading list. I need ideas of how to do this.
i totally agree. you just expressed exactly what i have thought before about homeschooling and what i think now. i definitely plan on homeschooling my kids. i mean, for all the wonderful teachers we had, there were the ones who didn't know which end was up. we can totally do as well as that! ;)
I can't believe you never told me you had a blog & I had to find from your sister's blog! Shame on you!
Obviously you know I'm a fan of homeschooling. What's been interesting over the 14 years we've homeschooled (yes it has really been that long!) is that my reasons for doing it have morphed from time to time. In the beginning it was because the public school we were zoned for wasn't a good experience. And then it became about one child's health, and later about my need to survive having triplets. Now one teen goes to a charter school so that I can let him live till adulthood, and I homeschool the triplets so that they don't have to feel stupid because their brains work differently because they were born 11 weeks early. Through it all it has created a really amazing family experience; siblings who really know and love each other in ways that are beautiful to me. Thanks for helping me remember that!
Here's a quickie reading list to get you started:
David and Micki Colfax-Homeschooling for Excellence
John Holt-Instead of Education (he has a whole string of books that are golden)
John Taylor Gatto-The Underground History of American Education
I'm sure I'll add more when I'm not in a Shreveport hotel room trying to get back on the road. Good luck!
~E~
Also, when I was starting out with little children, "Basic Montessori: Learning Activities for Under Fives" by David Gettman was very helpful.