Should You Homeschool?

Paige at The Nurse Mommy is thinking about homeschooling and wants to know if home education is right for her family. While I can’t say whether homeschooling is right for any family other than my own, I can add a little bit to the discussion, I think. Jesse and I have been preparing to home educate our children (all eleventy-two of them) since the first time I saw two lines on the pregnancy test, but I’m not one of those die-hard homeschoolers who thinks that absolutely everyone should homeschool. There are lots of people who have no business even having children, let alone trying to educate them, but that’s another post.

Homeschooling is a good fit for your family if:

• You don’t want to live the stressful lifestyle that the average modern American family lives.

My husband and I decided long ago that one person running to and fro every day is quite enough for this family. The rest of us spend most days at home because (gasp!) we like it there.  Hard to believe, I know, but there is so much to do at home, so much to learn, so much to love, that we just don’t need to leave more than a couple of times a week for shopping, to see friends, or go to the library. We often try to cram everything in to the same day so that we can spend more time at home working. 

• You want your children to have open hearts and open minds, with no fear of facing opinions different from their own.

This is known as tolerance. I hear public schools are big on it, but I haven’t witnessed it first hand.

The stereotype of homeschoolers as narrow-minded misanthropes is well illustrated by the film Horton Hears a Who when the mean old kangaroo cracks wise about pouch-schooling her little one to keep him safe from nutters like Horton. Contrary to this stereotype, homeschoolers are some of the most open-minded people I’ve ever met. If they weren’t, they’d be doing what the rest of the crowd is doing, wouldn’t they?

If there is a problem with tolerance, it is in the public schools, not homeschools. In my experience, spending long periods of time with a large group of peers and little influence from adults is the perfect growth medium for bigoted thinking and lock-step conformism in children and teens (especially teens).

Because they’re still learning how the world works, children are fiercely conformist. It’s in their nature to seek the safety of crowds, and they need adult modeling and correction to learn appropriate attitudes toward those who are different from them. Public school can’t provide that. There aren’t enough teachers, and the ones who are there can’t possibly know the children well enough to guide them in the most crucial lessons of growing up. Ask anybody who has been mercilessly teased in the halls for having the wrong clothes or parents, while oblivious (and, I hasten to add, well-intentioned and intelligent) teachers rushed by to do their real job, which is lecturing and paperwork.

It’s not homeschoolers who are narrow-minded and lacking the imagination it takes to understand differences in families and cultures. Not in my experience, anyway. If I had a dollar for every homeschool parent who looked down on parents who raise their children according to a different plan than their own…well, I’d be broke. If I had a dollar for every mainstream parent who has a knee-jerk negative reaction to homeschoolers, however, I’d have that house we’re saving for already–and that’s a nice house I’ve got my eye on.

• You want your children to be able to speak for themselves.

Already, my five year old son is a wonderful ambassador for our family because he feels comfortable explaining himself to others. He knows he has a right to disagree respectfully, and that he doesn’t have to keep his mouth shut when he wants to speak. (Unless he has his mouth full!) Few public school children have that assurance, because they are in classrooms with 20+ other children who only speak when called on, only to provide the answers the teacher is looking for, and within time constraints that are not conducive to real learning.  The classroom environment is simply not a good place for learning to think for yourself.

• You want to direct the education of your own children, so that you can ensure that your children are not, as they say, left behind. This is a particular concern for those who have special needs children, whether gifted or disabled (or worse, both).
  

Teachers, God bless their sacrificial hearts, work their tails off to teach our (OK, your) kids. They do it for not enough pay, under difficult circumstances, and with exorbitant budgets that are apparently spent on everything but actual school supplies. The modern school system itself works against good teachers, and against good students. If a student is lucky, he may get tagged as gifted and moved into a better learning environment, but even then there is only so much a teacher can do to address each child’s special needs. I’m not an expert on anyone else, but I do speak from a great deal of personal experience. I have ADD, and I also have a rather high IQ. Don’t ask how high. I’m not telling.

The schools that I went to were good. My teachers were, each of them, caring and hard-working people who wanted their students to do well. But they were not equiped to deal with me. I doubt they even knew anything about me beyond the fact that I wasn’t doing as well as I could have. They probably thought I was just a lousy kid. Heck, I thought I was a lousy kid. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was diagnosed with rather severe ADD (not ADHD, since hyperactivity is not part of my makeup). Now I know how to cope, but I spent a lot of years bored, over-stimulated, and angry. If I had had more one-on-one help as a child, and especially as a teenager, I can’t help but think things would have been a lot different.

Public schools (and many private ones) are not good enough for my kids (or probably yours). It’s an assembly-line system, and children aren’t Fords.

• You are a Christian who doesn’t wish your child to spend the bulk of his useful time in an environment where “God” is a word frequently spoken as a curse, but not a blessing, and is absent from the lips of those in authority entirely.

There is no authority above God. End of discussion. Here, my mind is closed and I won’t open it. I believe, though other parents may differ, that to send my children to a place where those in authority are forbidden to speak to children’s souls is to teach them that the State is an authority higher than God. ‘Nuff said.

• You have the heart of a teacher and are willing to learn right along with your children.

If you don’t have a heart for teaching your children, take an extra job and send the kids to a private school. Fortunately, most parents do have a heart for teaching their own children. We want them to succeed. Good teachers in public and private schools want their kids to do well, and they want to have a hand in that success. Homeschool parents need to have that quality, too, which means continuing to educate ourselves so that we can challenge our students as they grow. You have to be dedicated, not just to your kids, but to Education with a capital E.

• You have nerves of steel, and skin like a rhino.

I’ll say it again, because it bears reapeating: This is not an easy life-style, especially for the mother, who usually does the bulk of the planning and teaching. The rewards far outstrip the difficulties, but it can be extremely frustrating having to deal with housework, schoolwork, younger children, and the demands of your community (do find a homeschool community if you can), all while trying to tend to your own needs. On top of the actual job of educating your children, you’re going to have to answer the questions of everybody from your pastor to the mailman to the cashier at the grocery store. You’d better be ready with some answers, too! I don’t mind it much, but if you care a great deal what other people think of you, you’d better find some way to hide the children during school hours!

I had some difficulty accepting the fact that my family wasn’t 100% behind me at first. It was a foreign idea to them, and they may not have had much faith in my ability to do the job. No one ever said that, but I wonder about it at times. That hurt a lot, but I went ahead and did what is best for my family anyway. Having tried it for just a little while, I think we’re going to do a good job. Our kids will be the judge of how we did when they grow up. Until then, it’s really no one else’s business. Fortunately, my folks have changed their minds (wonderful family!), and are very supportive now.

I know blog posts aren’t supposed to be this long, but I rarely do anything the way it is supposed to be done. Hope this list doesn’t frighten you, Paige! I think most of these must-haves are qualities that every parent already has. I think you’ll do a great job!

Also, I hope I win one of your giveaways soon! Thanks for the blog-fodder. I was slap out of inspiration.