A few months ago, I made an offhand comment about how I wanted to homeschool my future children, and I had an (unexpectedly) good response from many people. (I always think people are going to think I'm a crazy loon.) I don't feel that I need to justify my reasons for wanting to homeschool, but I thought I'd share them with you all the same. (It's rather lengthy.)
There are a lot of reasons motivating my decision to homeschool (which I’ll discuss below) but I think that the main reason I want to teach my (future) children at home is because I want to instill in them a lifelong love of learning. My mother gave it to me and I’ve always felt it’s one of the greatest gifts I have. I know this gift is more dependent on the individual child than the institution in which they are taught, but I feel that a public school education can often hamper or stifle a child’s growth because it teaches to the lower common denominator and doesn’t always account for other learning styles. I’ve also read studies that suggest that school teaches children to only learn at school or to only learn from their one designated teacher. It may be cliché, but I believe that the world is our classroom and I never want my children to stop learning no matter what they are doing. I’ve broken my reasoning into two sections: educational motivations and institutional motivations.
Educational Motivations (What and How Subject s Are Taught)
• To that end, I want to inject a lot of hands-on projects, experiments and field trips into my children’s education. If we’re learning about marine biology, then you can bet we’re going to visit the ocean, an aquarium, Sea World, whatever, to give them a chance to see these animals, touch them, smell them, watch them play. If we’re learning about the American Revolution, I’m going to take them to museums or battlefields, have them read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, dress up in period costume and act out scenes from the Continental Congress. It’s these types of activities that enhance learning and make it so much fun. That’s not to say that you can’t ever learn anything while sitting at a desk, listening to your teacher speak, because I certainly was able to, but this just sounds like so much more fun to me. It also allows us to set our own schedule, and to spend more time studying those subjects that most interest my children.
• I like the idea of tailoring my children’s education to what they are most interested in and how they learn best. I can learn a lot of different ways, and I did just fine in a public school setting but I have a friend who did poorly in school, and not because she’s an unintelligent person. She’s an extremely intelligent person but she is almost 100% a visual learner. She can’t retain any information from a book, but she can watch a movie once and remember everything about it: plot, character, dialogue, scenes, etc. As she always tells me, she can read 10 books on volcanoes and not learn a thing, but if she can see one, hike up one, smell it, touch it, and be told about it while standing in front of it, she’ll remember everything single detail she’s told. If this is how my children learn, then that’s how I want them to learn. If I stick them in a regular class, they’re just going to be miserable and unhappy and learn to hate school, and that’s exactly what I want to avoid.
• Standards and curriculum in public schools is appallingly low. And I say this as a person who has worked in public schools and for a publishing company that produced standardized tests for public schoolchildren. Again, they only strive to reach the lowest common denominator and make school boring and unchallenging for the brighter students. They mandate what teachers must teach and the introduction of the No Child Left Behind act and increased standardized testing have placed too much emphasis on language arts, math and science, and, in some cases, almost completely eliminated the funding for history, art history, arts appreciation, music, foreign languages, physical education, and elective programs. I would like my children to attend high school because it can offer a lot of great clubs, electives, A.P. classes, and social activities that are, I feel, essential to the life of an American teenager. But if they are going to cut out band, choir, theater programs, academic and service clubs, athletics, and other elective courses, then what’s the point? I can just sign them up for club sports, private music lessons, and college courses to get the same experience. And a lot of homeschooling networks have formed in many communities to create the sort of social activities that a regular high school creates, with a lot less drama. (I hope. Oh, how I hated the drama of high school.)
• I think there are many wonderful educators who chose to teach public school for all the right reasons. But there are a lot of restrictions placed on them about what they can and cannot teach. I believe in teaching all angles of a subject (i.e. evolution and creationism) but people who decry the separation of church and state would have public schools completely eliminate any discussion of creationism, despite the majority of people (regardless of their religious beliefs) who accept this principle. I recently read a book by James W. Loewen called Lies My Teacher Told Me which discusses the pathetic way that American history is taught in public schools. Instead of teaching about our controversies, about our failures and foibles and the issues of race, class, and gender in American history, most high school textbooks simply paint America as the savior of the world and try to induce students into blind patriotism for their country. All this does is alienate some students and make history incredibly boring. I love my country (and history) precisely because I understand where we have succeeded and where we have failed and I also understand where we are headed. I do not want to deny my children the chance to learn truths. And I certainly don’t find it necessary for them to know what the Smoot-Hawley tariff was or when Chester A. Arthur became president.
• I’m also concerned about the new debate over how sex education should be taught in schools. I think it’s the parents’ right and responsibility to lead this discussion with their children but unfortunately, there are way too many uninvolved parents out there who are more than content to have the schools take over the teaching of this topic. I cannot prevent my children from learning about this from other sources, but I should be able to teach them about my beliefs and what I feel are the right and moral decisions to make regarding sex. And I want to teach them on my own timetable when they are mature enough to understand what I am trying to teach them.
• Most of all, public school is a big fat time waster. Think about how much time is actually spent learning. In a 6-7 hour day, I’d say only 2 or 3 hours of that is actual education. (Speaking from personal experience.) I’d rather spend 3-4 hours with my children doing schoolwork and then spend the rest of our time playing, doing crafts, going on field trips, and making learning fun.
• One of my more selfish motivations is simply that I love to learn. And there is no better way to learn than by teaching. I look forward to teaching my children all sorts of things because, in the end, I’m also learning myself. Plus, I should also pick up a thing or two about patience, which I’m sadly lacking in these days.
Institutional Motivations (Who is doing the teaching)
• Now, there are a lot of good teachers who loose their jobs because they want to teach controversial subjects. And there are a lot of bad teachers who get to stick around because they have tenure or belong to a teacher’s union.
How about the 700 teachers on probation in New York City who still get paid their annual salaries to sit around and do nothing? (Granted, I don’t believe all the teachers held in these rubber rooms belong there. Others should have been fired long ago. Besides which, there are a lot of school positions which do not require any interaction with students that these teachers could have helped with instead of wasting time and money.) Of course, just because I pull my children out of a public school system doesn’t mean that my taxpayer dollars won’t still go to education but this is just an example of how poorly run and managed and wasteful our public schools are becoming.
• I was also very opposed to the CTA’s (California Teacher’s Association) donation of over a million dollars to the Prop 8 campaign. Regardless of their position for or against this proposition, I am ethically opposed to a teacher’s union getting involved in political issues. Education should be non-partisan but when a teacher’s union takes a stand on a highly charged political and moral issue, I have to wonder what else teachers feel is appropriate for them to teach in class. Should I expect my child to face a teacher like this during a presidential election?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezrUd8xH0gQ• I’m not really a fan of many teachers unions anyway because they don’t have the education of our children as their main concern. I’ll give you an example from my mother’s experience teaching in California. My mother has been unable to get a full-time teaching position at our school district, so she subs (often on long-term sub contracts) and teaches adult classes at night for failing students. She was planning on teaching an English class during summer school which would mainly have helped out band students who often need to take summer school classes to free open an extra elective to participate in the marching band. Because my mother is not a full-time teacher of the school district, she would have been paid less than a regular teacher. This also meant that the students would have been charged less to take her class (I think it was around $150). But the union demanded that a full-time teacher be offered the chance to teach this class ahead of my mother and be paid their regular salary. This also meant that the price of the class (because of budget shortfalls) would have to be raised to cover a different teacher’s salary. The new class price? $400. Who exactly does that benefit?
• I also have an issue with the credential system for educators. Public schools place far more emphasis on their teachers have degrees in education rather than the subject which they want to teach. It’s one thing to understand educational theories, but a good teacher will only become a great teacher if they know their subject well and teach it well. (This applies more to secondary education than elementary education, obviously.) So even though I have a master’s in American history, I’m unqualified to work in a public school over a credentialed teacher who took a couple credits of history in college. While I don’t totally disagree with a credential program, I do think they need to make more exceptions for other highly qualified candidates. For every good teacher I had, there were two or three awful teachers, who did more harm than good, who made learning painful, and who often made me wonder if they became teachers because they were qualified for no other job. (*cough*Harris*cough*)
You may then ask yourself, “Am I a qualified teacher?” Sure, I feel perfectly qualified to teach history, literature, art and elementary education, but I’m certainly not qualified to teach math or science. In this, I am glad that I have a partner (David) who is very supportive of homeschooling (he wants to do it more than I do) and can teach math and science to our children. There are also a lot of homeschooling communities that trade off in teaching different subjects. I’m also fully in support of our children taking college courses or A.P./regular courses at a public high school. And if any of our [currently imaginary] children wanted to go to school, I would let them go. I do believe that any child can get a lot out of a traditional school setting and curriculum if they have involved parents. There are days when I think I’d love to just dump my kids off at school and have some peace and quiet for a little while or to not have to hassle with lesson plans and curriculum. I wonder if we’d be doing them a disservice by homeschooling or that they’d miss out on a lot of necessary socialization and activities that children need. We will have to evaluate our decision for each child, but for now, we are both committed to homeschooling.
Thank goodness I’ve got a few years to get prepared. And to, you know, have some children. I guess that’s the first step, huh? (And no, I’m not pregnant.)
This is.....well, I don't know the cat's name because there were men involved in her transport who don't think or care about those things. I call her Sweetheart or Fatty because, well, she's a pretty massive cat. Suyom is a svelte 8 pounds, pocket-size really, in comparison to this 15 pound giant.
