Now that my son is five years old, I know the time has come for him to begin education. In this country, I have a few options. There is a public school system, ostentatiously 'free', but in fact paid for by taxpayers. There is also a set of private school systems, many religion-based. Lastly, there is the legal opportunity to homeschool. After consideration of the options and my child's unique personality, I have opted for the third.
What kind of person homeschools? There's a variety, but I can give you my answer in this case: I am a married woman with a bachelor's degree and some experience both teaching on the college level and tutoring on elementary, highschool, and college levels. My husband and I maintain a single-income working-class family with a mortgage, a small vegetable garden, and a very old station wagon. I'll be doing most of the teaching, with my husband supplementing with what only a father can provide to a little boy.
I have scored a consistent IQ level of "Bright" with high creativity, suspected "ADHD Inattentive", high sensitivity, mild dyslexia, and synesthesia. My husband has scored an IQ varying between Moderately Gifted and Exceptionally Gifted with his score rising each time the test is administered, diagnosed "ADHD Hyperactive", with a mild language processing disorder.
I bounced between public, private, and homeschool through my education, so although I was once homeschooled, I approach the decision with some experience in each sector. My husband was public-schooled entirely, in and out of 'Special Ed' and on and off of Ritalin, and heartily approves of homeschool.
Why would I choose homeschool? I have several reasons, the main ones I'll set out in order of importance:
1. Giftedness - My son shows signs of my high sensitivity and my husband's exceptional manual dexterity and mechanical skill. He is very intelligent and observant such that people interacting with him one-on-one always remark on it, but teachers who see him in large groups think he's 'a little slow'. (I suspect sensory overload.) He may be ADHD Hyperactive, but I think he's within the realm of a normal active boy in terms of attention span and ability to sit still.
2. Sensitivities - As noted before, I suspect him to be prone to sensory overload. Even as a baby, he would sometimes cry uncontrollably until I simply put him in his crib, walked out, and shut the door for five minutes. He didn't even go to sleep. He just needed his world 'reduced' for a while. He becomes either completely withdrawn or irritably hyperactive when he's among a group of his peers, and reacts badly to sudden loud noises. (Badly means startling and crying, not becoming violent or uncontrollable.)
Do not feed this kid artificial colors or flavorings, or he will become an absolute bear for the rest of the day. I could just imagine the chaos he could cause if someone fed him a glass of Hi C and a few Skittles and then expected him to sit quietly in a classroom for the next two hours.
I suspect he is 'borderline', not bad enough for special attention, but bad enough to not get from a traditional school system what he needs. I want to teach him the coping skills I have learned, in a safe environment, and expose him to the busier environments by degrees. I do not believe in the "toss in and see if he swims" mentality when dealing with a still-forming brain.
3. Christian teachings - Shouldn't I as a "good Christian" put this first? Well, no, actually. You can raise a child through the private or even public school systems and still instill important values within him, though it will be more challenging when the school will not work with you. Children will learn from the people around them how to behave, whether you like it or not. They are not able to miraculously develop social and life skills from a blank slate, and they will look to their parents first in trying to discover what an adult is supposed to be.
I want to see to it that he learns what will make him a good man, respectful to women, willing to submit to authority without blindly following it, able to challenge wrongdoers and care for the needy. In particular I believe the public school system often follows with popular culture in giving lip service to virtue while promoting the following of your own self-interest in the name of 'happiness'.
This may be a good place to address the question of socialization. Children can be jerks for a while while they're learning to be adults. (A few continue to be jerks into adulthood.) Just as you would not want an apprentice electrician learning to be a master from another apprentice, you do not want your child learning from his peers how to be an adult. Right now, my son is friendly and gentle, kind, without an ounce of racial/sexual discrimination in him. I want him to grow up to be a friendly man, gentle, without an ounce of racial/sexual discrimination. Once he leaves highschool, his 'peer group' will have nothing to do with age alone for the entire rest of his life. He will be interacting with teachers, students, congressmen, doctors, grocers, and bankers of all different ages and backgrounds. I do not choose homeschooling despite a concern about socialization. I choose homeschooling because of a concern about socialization. Age-related activities and other socialization opportunities are readily provided through extracurricular activities, with and without Mom.
4. Sexual discrimination - With boys disproportionately being perceived as 'acting up', punished, and in some cases belittled in the public school system, with the percentages of college-bound young men falling, it is obvious there is something wrong with the public school experience being geared utterly towards the strengths and development of female over male.
Boys are being taught that all aggression and competitiveness is evil, forced to repress it instead of being trained to control and direct it for the good of humankind. They are pushed, often too early, into a place where you are penalized for being an active child, where girls often have the jump on them in language skills, and girls are encouraged to excel beyond them at math at their expense. Literature assignments and history retellings are tailored for feminine enjoyment, and increasing numbers of boys simply do not find it interesting.
I wish to be able to tailor my boy's education to his boyness, to encourage him to read about boys who overcome struggles and win battles internal and external, who protect the weak and provide for the needy. I do intend to nurture his gentle side. He already owns a baby doll (which he treats with utmost care) and enjoys watching movies like Cinderella and (to my surprise) The Sound of Music. It is important to teach boys to be kind and careful, to never torture animals and to treat fragile things with extra delicacy. But it is also important to let them be boys and show them how to be men, and in this area I feel the public school is far behind and many private schools are not much better.
How do I homeschool? Again, there are many different answers to this question, so I will give mine. We have officially enrolled him in a private, nonprofit distance program known as Christian Liberty Academy Satellite Schools, or CLASS for short. I'm in their full plan, which means that they provide a curriculum, and I submit my student's work back to them for grading. They maintain paperwork including transcripts and other school records for me. They also have a Family Plan, in which they simply ship you a curriculum and you don't send anything back, neither do they keep records for you. You can also make your own curriculum, but that's harder, and takes more expertise than I feel that I have at this moment. I'm knowledgeable enough to know that I don't know what I'm doing quite well enough to fill in all the gaps. That may change over time.
Am I afraid of getting into legal trouble? Well, our parents on all sides are pretty supportive of our decision, and other family members are either supportive or at least not hostile. Still, it is possible to run into difficulty. Consider that the usual overseers of a homeschool program is the local public school district, which will gain an extra $6K give or take per year if they can prove that you aren't doing a good enough job. Not all districts are equal, and some are friendlier than others, but most homeschoolers learn to beware. We've taken the extra step and joined HSLDA, which for a surprisingly small annual fee will represent us if we run into any problems.
Homeschooling is legal in all states in my country, with restrictions varying from lenient to near prohibitive. Fortunately, my state strikes a good balance.
What are some things people might not know about homeschooling?
1. It doesn't require the parent to be a certified teacher in most states, and research has shown that homeschooling parents with only a highschool education actually turn out students with slightly higher grades on average than those with a higher education level.
2. In the semi-recently profiled cases on the news media about homeschooling 'to hide child abuse', every family mentioned had already been investigated multiple times by DCF, which dropped the ball on the follow-up. Homeschooling had about as much to do with it as the color of the parents' hair, and it certainly didn't cloak them from the government.
3. Most homeschoolers have several extracurricular activities, not all of them religious, in which to exercise their social and leadership skills. They can range from 4H to Civil Air Patrol to karate lessons to Boy Scouts. They provide extra accountability as well. "Isolated" rarely describes a homeschooling family.
4. Among homeschooled children, the educational gap between black and white, as well as male and female, disappears completely.
Is homeschooling always the best choice? Absolutely not. You don't need to be a genius to teach, especially with the curriculum options available, but you do need to be sufficiently disciplined and determined. Sometimes the parent, through no fault of their own, can't pull it off. Sometimes the kid is just the sort who learns best in that traditional public-school environment. Sometimes a kid is best off in homeschool for some years, public school in others, and private in still others. This is a decision that should be made uniquely for each parent, each child, each year. Perhaps my son will reach a point where he has overcome his sensitivities and needs the further structure and/or learning style of a public or private school system.
But for now, homeschooling is definitely It.
