"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school."
Margaret Mead

Homeschooling My Kids

© 2006 by Maggie Meyer. Printing Paid for by USALL Systems.

Home schooling means many things to many people. One family may want to give their children the advantages of an education that they themselves determine based on their religious or cultural beliefs, a way of making sure their children are prepared best for life.

Some parents may be more concerned with keeping their children from the negative conditioning and beliefs that schools, even private schools, will impart to the student in their care. Some families want to avoid gang violence, peer pressure to smoke, drink alcohol, take drugs or experiment with sexual activities.

From what I have seen and read, its a rare exception that a family that home schools causes their child harm. Now, admittedly, it will depend on what you value and think is important to have children learn or what you call harm. To some parents, to let their child learn on their own time table (instead of learning "time tables") to love to learn, to be creative and spontaneous, is much more important than learning who Paul Revere is. To many parents, to see their child learn from internally motivated desire is just as exciting as watching their toddler take their first steps.

I was one of those parents, fascinated by how much children can teach themselves, yet at the same time, encouraging them to learn the basics so they would pass the yearly evaluation which would enable them to continue home schooling. It can be difficult when you believe in one kind of learning yet living in the rules of our state, had to make sure that the kids were taught enough of the basics, even if that teaching was distasteful to both the kids and myself.

It helps having a support group to do things with and share knowledge.

A support group for home schoolers is so important. I don't think I would have been able to offer my children the variety of learning experiences that they were able to get from the combination of parents and the other kids. I never believed that other kids weren't important to my kids’ development, just that the schools aren't the only place for kids to socialize and I believe people like John Holt who describe the social life at school as frequently being mean spirited. A support group though can add socialization and extra subjects to explore without the mean spirited interaction that can be a part of public school with the children feeling forced to be there and to be forced to learn how to spit back facts instead of naturally exploring the world in a non threatening non judgmental environment.

This is from a longer quote of John Holt from his "Growing Without Schooling" newsletter.
I found a section of that quote that is at the heart of my beliefs too. “My objection to the social life of almost all schools, as GWS readers know, is that it is for the most part mean-spirited, competitive, ruthless, snobbish, conformist, consumerist (you are judged by what you can buy, or your parents buy for you), fickle, heartless, and often cruel. Most children come out of school with far less self-esteem, less sense of their own identity, dignity, and worth, than they had when they went in. I know this was true of me. Most children in school feel like losers and outsiders, and most will do almost anything that will, if only for a short time, give them the feeling of being insiders, truly "One Of The Gang." But I had generally felt and said that there might be a few children who were so good at all the things that schools and "peer groups" considered important, so completely winners at the school game, that socially, at least, the school experience might be more positive than negative for them.”

John Holt started a sort of newsletter/support group that changed into a wonderful collection of articles to help home schoolers in various areas.

Our home schooling group was small but nice. There were 10 children total in our group. Four kids were the same age (in fact, my daughter and another little girl had the exact same birthday) and another little girl was 2 weeks younger. Then there was a little boy a half year younger.

There were 4 other kids close to each other in age, all of them about 4 years younger than the older group. Then there was my son, the oldest, by 5 years, and a baby, who was an infant at the time of our group.

How I started to become interested in home schooling

One of the first books I read about home schooling was called "No More Public School" way back in 1972 or so. It was written by Hal Bennett. I didn't even have kids yet, but saw that home schooling might be an option for me when I did have kiddos. My mother had decided to go back to college so I sometimes read her books. One was called Summerhill. I also read others and then I stumbled onto my favorite author, John Holt. He wrote a lot of really interesting books that made you think about what school does to children, how it frequently drives away the zeal for learning and turns "education" into something you have to get through, until you can get out of school.

I really got a lot of solid advice on the hows and whys of home schooling from his book "Teach Your Own". Its a great book to read just before you jump into home schooling your own.
 

Home schooling means...

Home schooling means you are taking on a lot of responsibility. Depending on how you do it, it may mean having people think you are insane. In-laws may hold it against you. Your family may want to disown you. Mine did. Imagine my mother, having been a schoolteacher herself years earlier, trying to imagine what on earth was wrong with me. My father asking why I thought I could do it better than professionals.

Like home birth, you can look at home schooling from the point of view of all the good things it has to offer, or conversely of all the negatives that traditional schooling does to your child. If I may suggest to you, please read as much as you can on the subject and then decide. Don't worry, and if you must, err on the side of your child.

There are different kinds of home schooling too, in fact many families call themselves "unschoolers" which has a connotation of no forced learning, the children learning what interests them the most, with the parents guiding them by example, as opposed to sitting down every day, holding "school" in your home.

There are lots of people who do that, holding strict classes, with tests, and many of the procedures of schools and believe it best serves their children and follows their religious beliefs. Their reasons for home schooling may be to instill in their children religious values that schools don't teach, and because of a sincere belief that God is directing them to be responsible for the education of their children. Most, if not all of this type of home schooler, take this on in a very serious manner.

While I don't agree with that point of view, I have admiration for all the parents who give up years of their lives to follow their convictions, religious, or otherwise.

There are people somewhere in between, who are somewhat flexible, aiding their children and guiding them when they show interest, and nudging them when they don't. Its like a lot of belief systems, with home schooling you do what you feel is best based on your own education, feelings, and hopefully by observations of your children. Most homeschoolers have textbooks in the home, but don't always force them on their children.

Home schooling brings children and their parents closer

One thing I have found is that there seems to be much more of a connection between parents and their home schooled children and between the children and their siblings. I have seen older home schooled children looking after younger ones, with no obvious signs of distaste or feelings of embarrassment. Many times I see the children, of all ages, holding their parents hands. I see more cooperation and less fighting for attention.

I don't know how qualified I may be, but I have been able to observe children at home schooling picnics, social groups for older kids, informal classes taught by parents on various non traditional subjects (such as quilting, yoga, sign language, outdoor science, cooking, and non competitive sports) in three different home schooling circles. I have home schooled my kids in Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas. (Funny, but that's also where my 3 kids were born!) I am basing my opinion from my own observations.

In my family as far as legality we had a couple of hurdles to jump. Since I started in the early 80's before it was more accepted the local school made us prove that we were allowed to do it, as opposed to just proving that it was good for the kids. In fact, one of our neighbors reported us to the school and we had a truant officer at our door one day. I hadn’t yet informed the school that we were homeschooling and so I had to scurry and get my paperwork in order. We had a meeting with the principal and he told us he would investigate the legality of it. He said if it is legal then we would be allowed to do it and if it wasn’t he would take us to court. Luckily he investigated enough to discover it legal.

We also didn’t have the financial resources that many families have and so it was a struggle to get our books and supplies. Through the advice of a local Christian based homeschooling mother I was able to order text books for the basic courses such as Math and Reading. We didn’t have as many art supplies as I would have liked to have but I improvised. Also one of our “subjects” was the performing arts and a nearby university had a weekly free performance so with the exception of paying for gasoline (which while not cheap was certainly more feasible in those days) we had a “free” class.

While we watched very little commercial television we did take advantage of some of the interesting and educational Public Broadcasting Television shows. My son liked the Science shows including Cosmos and the kids’ show 321 Contact. There was some wild looking guy who did a Physics show that Eric liked too. I could allow them to absorb whatever interested them the most even if it was from watching TV or going to the performances at that university. If the kids would have been in school there wouldn’t have been any way we could have driven out of town at noon to go to see the Cleveland opera singer, the cloggers, the pianist, the European dancers, the steel drum musician, the dulcimer player, etc.

All in all, I was glad I got to homeschool my children. There were times that well meaning friends and family would try to talk me out of it citing that schools and trained professionals could do a better job than me and when that didn’t work they would bring up that there would be more socializing in school. When that didn’t work and in fact I would tell them that I thought the socialization at schools could be very negative for children they would try to appeal to my more selfish nature. They would tell me how much time I would have to myself if the kids were in school all day. I rarely, if ever, felt like I wanted to stick the kids into a school just to get time to myself. I rarely, if ever, wanted to live a “normal” life. Now that my kids are grown up now and have struck out into the world I am glad that I gave them their early years to learn what they wanted, how they wanted. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I’ll leave you with two more quotes I like.

2 More Quotes

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  Mark Twain


"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, and brutal violations of common sense and common decency."  H.L. Mencken