(no subject)

[rivka]

kalmn asked why I want to homeschool.

The short answer: (1) I think it would be fun. (2) I think we'd do a good job.

Before the long answer, a disclaimer: If you have kids in school, or are planning to send your kids to school, or you're a teacher, or in any other way you have a stake in traditional schooling, my thoughts about homeschooling are not a commentary on you, your kids, or your choices. This is what I think is best for my family, not everyone's family. Also, Michael's reasons for wanting to homeschool might differ from mine in some ways. He can elaborate in comments if he wants to.

I have positive and negative reasons for wanting to homeschool.

The strongest positive is that I love the idea of being able to give my kids a tailored education. I want them to be able to follow their interests to the end - to obsessively learn everything there is to know about dinosaurs if that's what fascinates them, instead of spending two weeks on dinosaurs and then moving on to whatever the curriculum says comes next. I love the idea of an efficient education that targets my kids' abilities right where they are, so that we can spend more time on concepts that are tough for them and sail right pass the stuff they already know, instead of proceeding at a pace aimed at the average kid in a class of 30. I love the idea of "gifted" or "delayed" being irrelevant, because all that needs to matter is what they're ready to learn next, not how they compare to agemates or arbitrary standards.

I like the idea of being able to link education closely to the real world, so they can understand biology better through cultivating a garden and math through planning out a carpentry or sewing project. I like the idea of integrating practical life skills and traditional academic subjects. I like the idea of being able to draw on the tremendous resources of this city and this part of the country - to be able to jump on the train and go to the Smithsonian whenever we feel like it, to drive out to Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry and Antietam when we're studying the Civil War.

I like the idea of being there when my kids discover new things and new ideas. I like sharing the sense of wonder and exploration. I like the idea of having a lot more time to spend with my kids, just in general, keeping our connection close through shared experiences and discussions.

Some of the negative reasons:

My own schooling was not happy, although I always got good grades. I was phenomenally bored. I spent tons of time doing busywork that taught me nothing and offered no challenges. I was told that that would improve my character because it would instill discipline and good work habits and good attitudes, but it didn't. I was always painfully aware of how weird I was and how much I didn't fit in. That was somehow supposed to prompt me to develop better social skills, but it didn't.

I am not sure that schools do a great job of respecting children's inherent worth and dignity. Not necessarily big things, but small and pervasive things. Like my third-grade teacher who used to walk around the room peering into our desks. If your desk was messy, she'd dump it over onto the floor and spill everything out, and you'd have to clean it all up while the other kids watched. One day she sent someone to the pull-out gifted program to tell me that my desk had been dumped and I'd better come back to regular class and clean it up. To pick a modern example, there's the way my OWL students complained that they were embarrassed to carry menstrual products, because they were required to have mesh or clear plastic backpacks. None of these things are necessarily very big or outrageous, but I remember the ones that happened to me clearly, even if they happened more than 25 years ago.

It's pretty clear to me that Alex is an unusually bright kid. I don't think most schools are well-equipped to handle gifted children (or kids who are otherwise outside the norm). I worry that her teachers would breathe a sigh of relief knowing that this one would pass the end-of-year tests regardless of what they did, and so she'd be ignored in favor of the ones who need a lot of help just to get by.

I don't like a lot of recent trends in public education: the high-stakes testing at early ages; the NCLB-inspired "back to basics" approach which focuses almost exclusively on reading and math in the elementary years and squeezes out science, social studies, art, and music; the widespread elimination or reduction of gifted programs; abstinence-only sex education; zero tolerance discipline policies. And yet private schools have their own issues, like intense pressure to succeed, and the narrowed vision that comes from always being surrounded by very privileged people.

I would say that I am more driven by the positives than the negatives, but they are definitely all factors I think about.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

I was homeschooled, for not-too-different reasons, from 4th grade through 10th grade. I think a lot of those positive reasons did apply in practice to my experience; in general, I think it was an excellent thing for me and my brother.

I'd be glad to talk to you more about this at length, if you'd like. Or, actually, I suspect my mother would be glad to as well, if you have a bit of time next time you're near Blacksburg.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with my elementary school principal's comment to my mother, on hearing that she was going to home-school us: "What an excellent way for them to learn social skills! We don't have time to teach those here." (I'm not sure if you've gotten to the point of talking about this to other people enough to get the considered irony of his statement yet, but it will be there.)

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

Your desk dumping experience sounds exactly like my desk dumping experience (Hammond Middle School, Columbia, MD). For a shy kid like me it was mortifying.

I think one thing my public school education taught me was how to coast, and this coming from someone who was in a good school system. I'm smart and lazy, and I learned early on I could do well on my natural abilities. I rarely felt challenged, partially I think because I didn't have anyone who noticed what I was doing and took the time to push me. I know that's been a detriment to me as an adult because I am only now (in my mid thirties) learning how to push myself. It makes me sad to think of what I might have been capable of when I was younger but I never knew what it was like to really work for something.
Like you, I find home/un schooling fascinating in how kids can explore a subject until they are satisfied, how they can mesh it with the other things they are learning, how there is no limit on what they can do. It's funny, people have told me I should be a teacher except the only kids I'd want to teach? Home schoolers. Ah, well.

[ckd]

I think one thing my public school education taught me was how to coast, and this coming from someone who was in a good school system. I'm smart and lazy, and I learned early on I could do well on my natural abilities.

Oh does that ever resonate; it reminds me of this article, too.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean.

Around my junior/senior year of high school I figured out that coasting along with minimal effort might not be so beneficial to me. I wound up choosing a college (Reed) where students were not told what their grades were - they just got written and verbal feedback about the quality of their work. That helped me readjust my thinking, so that "good" became more about "using my full abilities" rather than "better than everyone else."

[acceberskoorb.livejournal.com]

I know you'll get a lot of interesting comments here, but I thought I would say in advance that one of the difficult things about the issue of homeschooling is that it's probably impossible to think about it outside of one's own schooling experience. I am pretty sure I'd feel the same way you do given the kind of horrible experience you describe here. Where my mind goes, though, when you talk about homeschooling Alex (and now Colin) is my own experience: my mom telling me after a meeting with my 6th grade teacher that it was at that meeting that she found out I was smart. I was 11. My mom is an intelligent woman and I love her, but the idea of having my elementary education in her hands makes me shudder.

You, however, are brilliant and curious and I know you will make a fantastic teacher for your kids. When you hear hesitance or resistance to your plans, much of the time it will be from people with experiences more like mine that yours. Don't be daunted! You'll be a great teacher.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

my mom telling me after a meeting with my 6th grade teacher that it was at that meeting that she found out I was smart. I was 11.

*boggle* Wow. She... wow. She had met you prior to that, right?

And yeah, clearly, there are many many kids for whom school is wonderful and a lifesaver. And clearly there are parents who don't know their kids as well as they think they do, or aren't as sensitive to their kids' needs as they think there are. I'm glad my kids have other smart, loving, observant adults in their lives, like you, who could jump in and advocate for them if we were steering the wrong way.

[ailbhe]

My partner's parents found out he was smart at a meeting with his teacher when he was five. I thought that was bad. Wow.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience. I never had to do homework, and I could pull a good GPA. I spend all of high school and even college coasting. I occasionally wonder what it would be like to go through a challenging grad program.

(Moving on to general comment to the post) I think it's my propensity to coast that makes me the least likely to try homeschooling for my own kids. We considered it, for many of the same reasons as rivka, but I know myself too well. I'm not sure that I'd be a great teacher. I *can* be, but every day? Every week? I don't think I'd do well. I think I'd coast.

I posted a while ago about the Montessori school that I visited. I didn't particularly like it for the little kids - I thought that imaginative play was lacking, and it was pushing a little too hard a little too early. The part where we saw the older kids was completely different, though. The kids were all doing their own self-paced projects, they were all working on an individual basis, just all in the same classroom. The classrooms were groups of three or four ages. They introduced me to one kid who was interested in raptors and hawking, and he'd been spending weeks on it, even to the point of meeting with an instructor and real birds. Way cool.

Rivka, I had a question about teaching/parenting approaches. I noticed occasionally that when Alex and Henry would both ask a question, you would give a straight answer, and I would ask Henry "what do you think?" It seems like such a little thing, but I've wondered if he'd be more likely to ask more questions (not that he doesn't) if he knew he'd have an answer instead of an "assignment"? I noticed even before that I do it a lot, and I occasionally think that maybe I'm rushing him just a bit. Is it an approach that you've consciously chosen, or just a small difference in styles?

ETA: Oops, this comment was originally in response to kazoogrrl, but it probably fits better here anyway.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I noticed occasionally that when Alex and Henry would both ask a question, you would give a straight answer, and I would ask Henry "what do you think?" It seems like such a little thing, but I've wondered if he'd be more likely to ask more questions (not that he doesn't) if he knew he'd have an answer instead of an "assignment"?

Okay, you know what's hilarious? I noticed the same thing, and I was thinking, "Gee, I wonder if I'm too quick to jump in with the answers, and I should be more like Char and give her space to formulate her own thoughts."

It's probably in part a personality issue (I'm pretty, um, dominant) and in part a reflection of where Alex is at right now. Her questions are incredibly overpoweringly frequent (maybe not as much at the museum, but at home) and it's easier to just answer a lot of them than it is to turn each one into an extended conversation.

But also I've been influenced by unschoolers, who caution against turning requests for information into quizzes. The idea is that if another adult asked you a factual question, you'd give them an answer - so you should do the same for your kids, instead of making them "work" for it. Some of them go so far as to say that you should never ask your kids a question that you already know the answer to.

I don't go that far at all, and there are definitely times that I'll try to get Alex to answer her questions herself if I think she knows. But I also spend a lot of time just answering her questions. Sometimes the same question again and again, so she can get confirmation that 5+5 always = 10.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

I loved homeschooling (or, rather, unschooling) the Munchkins, and I think you'll love it, too. I think I taught them to respect their own curiosity and intellect. I also think that during those years, I spared them the social agony that public school was for me. [Edited to add: I had them from the ages of 2 and 3 to the ages of 7 and 8. They're now 17 and 18.]

Nowadays, wtfpotatoes is doing internet high school. She was a ball of anxiety going to "regular" high school, and I pulled her out after two weeks, during which she would go to school in misery, come home, and sleep it off for several hours. It was making her a wreck. Introverts like us don't always do very well with forced socialization, but her brother, who IS a social creature, still did well with unschooling because we had the energy to honor that, too, and wtfpotatoes and I would entertain ourselves quietly while he was doing his social thing with other kids.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I think I'd be horrible at homeschooling, which is why I didn't, even though my kids, particularly David in the early grades, might have done better with that than at school.

You, on the other hand, I think would be terrific. And your reasons sound very compelling. I would never have left my mother in charge of my education, but would have loved to have been in a program such as the one you describe.

I had a lot of issues with grade and middle school, which I carry with me to this day. I think it irretrievably affected my self-esteem. Growing up in Florida in the early 70s, girls weren't applauded by their peers -- or even their teachers, necessarily -- for being smart, but for being pretty and (in the case of teachers, quiet and obedient). I have never been pretty. I was too smart, and I talked too much. I was never able to pass as an average girl. I learned to loathe myself pretty thoroughly.

But a program in which curiosity and intelligence were rewarded! And those field trips! You live in such a rich area for teaching.

Have fun teaching those kids. They're really lucky to have you and Michael as parents.

Homeschooling

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This seems like only half an answer. Like everything else, the choice to homeschool is a tradeoff. You've talked about the benefits of homeschooling over traditional schooling. What about the costs?

I've always believed that homeschooling is better for smart kids than traditional schooling, with some exceptions. (Big cities have magnet schools that can challenge even the smartest kids. And I worry about suburban kids not getting any "real world" if they stay home from school.) But where I get stuck on is the costs: they're enormous, and I'm not convinced they're worth the benefits.

(I had one teacher -- third or fourth grade, I think -- who dumped desks. I never had to face the humility, but even then I thought it was a horrible and unfair practice.)

B

Re: Homeschooling

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

"and I worry about suburban kids not getting any "real world" if they stay home from school."

That's a worry I had, too, but I got over it quickly, when I remembered the brutality of the real world of overcrowded public schools. I figured, and I think I was right, that it was my job to protect my kids from that particular slice of reality, not to inure them to it.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

*waves*

I'm skimming f-of-f before bed *big yawn* and am currently homeschooling. My oldest is six and my younger one is two and a half; holler if you're curious (some of has worked, some of it doesn't, I don't know if we'll do it forever but, you know, each day as it comes).

[jinian.livejournal.com]

As another scientist, I just do not see myself ever having the time to homeschool, even if I make time to have a kid. How are you planning to teach with both of you working?

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

This is my big question.

There is NO way for me and my husband to support our expenses (and we do not have outrageous expenses) in the city in which we live, without us both working full time.

I have one friend who is homeschooling here, and she is not working, and her husband is a freelancer who is now working 70-80 weeks and missing family time in order so that she doesn't have to work and can homeschool. And I guess it's working for them, but I wonder at the stress it's putting him under, and how it's affecting his relationship with his child.

N.

[txobserver.livejournal.com]

I couldn't have stayed home to teach my kids full time, but I compromised by having them in a school emphasizing parent participation. I spent one day a week volunteering in their classrooms and driving carpools after school. One thing I noticed was that kids go through phases where they don't especially want you intimately involved in their life with their peers.

I think the "socialization" issue of home schooling is not that the home-schooled children won't learn to be polite and function in the adult world, but that they will not be forced to learn strategies for getting along with peers that aren't necessarily friends screened by their parents. This may not always be pleasant, but I feel it is important. It is painful to watch your child deal with relationships that don't go their way, but it is part of maturing for them to experience negative as well as positive things and learn to deal with it. Life isn't going to be an unmitigated series of pleasant adventures.

[redbird]

The problem, in my experience, is that such strategies aren't taught: being "forced to learn" that way works about as well as being "forced to learn" math by being quizzed, repeatedly, on arithmetic and told only that you've gotten it right or wrong, but not what the right answer is.

"Hide in the corner and don't say anything" might be a strategy for avoiding active attack, but it's not socialization.

Yes, I'm still bitter. Though in my case, home schooling probably wouldn't have helped: I was dealing with a school system that either didn't notice the problem or had no idea of how to teach it, and parents who had no idea of what the strategies were, much less how to teach them.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Obviously, you have given this a lot of thought and need to do what's best for your children as individuals, but as a parent who has two kids in the gifted program on an elementary school level, and in public school, can I make a recommendation to you?

Look at the specific school(s) where your daughter will go before making a decision. Sure, in general there are issues with teaching to standardized tests, and there may be busywork to deal with on occasion, but if the schools by you have a full-time gifted program like my kids' school those issues might be strongly mitigated. Yes, they will often have assignments on things they might not have known to be interested in - my fourth grader is doing a unit on the Titanic which incorporates reading, essay-writing, the science of icebergs and how they are impacted by global warming, and the history of the US and the UK in the 15 years before World War One. Last October they did comparisons of each candidate's platforms in powerpoint form and presented them to the parents and other classes, and last year they did a unit on Latin, and have read a few Shakespearean plays. This is, btw, a fourth grade class. He has one more year at Elementary and then will (most likely) go on to the International Baccalaureate program at our local public junior high.

My kindergartener's class was very dull for him for the first two months while they did the alphabet, but they are now adding and subtracting double-digit numbers, learning about the concept of X in math, hatching chickens and writing diaries about the process, and building instruments out of shoeboxes, string and the cardboard inserts from paper towels.

Other schools in South Florida don't necessarily do this, but my school does and it's why we send our kids there. It works for my kids, and I know we're lucky to have it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We live in inner-city Baltimore. Our schools aren't like this.

If we lived in the kind of good suburb or school district that had full-time gifted programs &etc., we might still have wanted to homeschool - but it would've been a harder choice.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I think you and Michael will do an excellent job providing Alex and Colin with an education.

But there are a number of aspects of group education that I found extremely important in my upbringing. In 4th grade, I remember I was all full of the power of my full vocabulary, which rivaled (or exceeded) my teachers at that point. I was whining to my mom about how the other kids were too duuuuuumb to understand what I was saying and why should I have to CHANGE WHO I WAS to cater to their issues. My mom told me that communication was when one person spoke and another person understood, and that if I wanted to communicate with other people, I needed to use words that they would be able to understand. After an initial period of sulking, I started to understand what she meant and developed the skill of adjusting my vocabulary to my audience. Boy has THAT skill come in useful since then.

In junior high, I attempted sports and was terrible at them. I worked hard and became mediocre at them. It was FANTASTIC for me to expend a great deal of energy to become mediocre. Not only did I learn to shoot a freethrow, but I understood much better what it was like to desire to do well, to work hard, and to still not excel.

In high school, the three most important things I learned were typing, shop and math. My parents probably could've taught me typing. Shop, they lacked the skills for. I still use them all the time, when approaching a hole in drywall or a plumbing problem. It also taught me that I could solve physical problems -- very satisfying. Math? Well, my parents didn't think I was very good at math. I suspect I would've worn them down with my whining about how it was TOO HARD and TOO OBNOXIOUS. It turned out I was quite capable of doing it, but I needed someone to demand it of me.

I have a great deal of confidence my sons will emerge from their educations as curious, literate men who know where to find the information they desire and the academic skills they need. What I hope they learn from school is how to turn boredom to opportunity, compassion for others, what it's like to try and fail and try again, the importance of stupid details (Sunday in Sunday School one of my kids announced: "I learned something important this year. Your grades are a lot better when you actually do your homework." YES. THIS.) I hope my children are asked to do things that are not in their natural gifts -- things they think are irrelevant. I hope they learn how to deal with arbitrary authority in a way that prepares them to work in commerce or government. I hope they learn diplomacy, negotiation and when to stand your ground.

I sometimes wonder whether it is a very difficult transition to go from an education provided by parents who love you, playing to your strengths and interests, adjusted to your pace ... to a working world where the pace is what it is, the work is not always interesting and those in authority over you sometimes act with caprice.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Oh, desk-dumping. I had teachers that did that to me. It was humiliating, and beyond that -- it was so intrusive, so disrespectful of me and my property, it was infuriating. I was suspended for one day in 4th grade because I threw a fit in class after my teacher dumped my desk on the floor. I demanded my rights; she demanded that I leave class and sit in the hall. I did so, continuing to yell and argue and shout to the whole world about what a horrible teacher I had. The principal came to take me to his office, and I would not stand up. (This was a sit-in, you see.) He dragged me by the arm. I was yelling all the way, flailing and kicking and protesting.

To the principal's credit, I was suspended for only one day, and that was for kicking him. I was supposed to write an apology to my teacher. What I wrote was full of references to property rights, quotes from the Declaration of Independence, and not very apologetic.

I should have been a civil rights lawyer.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

I want them to be able to follow their interests to the end - to obsessively learn everything there is to know about dinosaurs if that's what fascinates them, instead of spending two weeks on dinosaurs and then moving on to whatever the curriculum says comes next.

um.

so if you sent your kids to school, you wouldn't teach them things outside of school? or before they started school?

on a more general note, i think that homeschooling kids as a first resort is racist and classist (it's usually reasonably well off white kids being pulled from schools, and frequently the schools they are being pulled from are poor and predominantly full of kids of color), and usually sexist in implementation (as with so much other work performed at home, it's predominantly done by women).

i think that school is sometimes horrible. for some kids it's horrible a lot. for some kids it's not so much horrible. life does not stop being horrible after you graduate from high school. i think that it's important to develop coping skills to deal with horribleness. i think that parents helping their kids deal with horribleness is a big part of this, and important for everyone involved to learn how to do. minnehaha b may be right, however, that people are sufficiently awful to you during team sports and summer camp so that kids who engage in those activities develop the skills necessary to live through bad things and to cope with them.

so, that is my "i'm at work and have six things on fire" quick thoughts on homeschooling in general.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

My below-the-poverty-line, Mexican kids were homeschooled as a first resort by women, because women were all we had.

And I think that horribleness will find us no matter what our parents do, but to drop children into the horribleness on purpose is neglectful and wrong.

[ailbhe]

Thank you for this post.

I asked elsewhere if people could tell me why they chose to send their children to school. Only one in twenty had a positive reason (that's *one* positive reason) and the main positive reason was childcare.

I must ask that again.

[echosupernova.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you and Michael will do a great job with homeschooling!

I'm always amazed to hear lots of folks complain about public schooling (and occasionally schooling in general), and it's hard not to take it personally sometimes. I agree with others who've said that teachers as a whole are more grounded in scaffolding and teaching skills now, but teaching is a profession that is pretty independent and self-directed for those with tenure.

I have a notoriously poor memory for specific occurrences in my childhood, but I can't think of one bad memory that stemmed from public schooling, and I went to a great variety of public schools. I was very miserable, however, at the small parochial school that I attended for middle school. Go figure.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I did have some great teachers, too, as a kid, and of course I have plenty of friends who are teachers. I don't think teachers are bad or evil. I do think that when you have 25-30 kids of widely varying abilities in a room, plus social/emotional/physical issues, and a lot of stuff you're supposed to get through, and high-stakes testing hanging over your head... you can't do everything you might want to do to help individual students.

[(Anonymous)]

Homeschooler. Homeschooling is a great choice in itself. I'm not sure that homeschooling is good based upon memories of uncomfortable social experiences and certainty about school curriculums not meeting a child's needs because she appears gifted in certain areas of her development at 4. I've lurked, read and enjoyed the developmental updates, and of her success cognitively in school. By all accounts she seems adorable, great, bright, and well exposed, but easily a fit in a typical classroom. I understand the choice of homeschooling, but not the assumption that she needs specialized education. Bk

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Okay. Did you miss the entire first half of the post, plus the last two paragraphs - especially the very last paragraph? Or did you read them but decide that all the stuff about positive reasons for homeschooling was just a smokescreen for seething childhood resentments and an overdeveloped sense of my kid's genius?

[(Anonymous)]

I think "BK" was simply pointing out what he/she saw in your post, and was just saying that he/she did not think that, your points about you being a childhood social outcast, was a viable reason for you moving Alex into homeschooling. Sure your other reasons as to why you want Alex in home schooling might be good reasons, does not mean that "BK" has to acknowledge and comment on your whole post, but he/she can just make a comment on parts the he/she feels are good, bad, stupid, silly, great, grand or any other form of anything.

Thanks

L.G.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

How nice for B.K. that another anonymous commenter just happened to spontaneously drop by to defend him/her. What are the odds?

[(Anonymous)]

The odds are very high. You journal is popular, and many people read it. An intelligent person like yourself must be able to figure those statistics out.

I find you are the one and not BK who needs to have a reading comprehension lesson, if you can not comprehend that I was not defending BK but mearly pointing out where you were incorrect in your retort.

L.G.

[ailbhe]

God, I wish I was anonymous, so I could tell you exactly what I think of you without anyone being able to hold me accountable fo rmy words!

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hi, I've seen you around LJ for ages, and ailbhe keeps saying I should read you, so I've added you - hope that's OK!

Also, I could have written more or less every word of this post - it's nice to find someone else who thinks similarly about education :-)