Comments on: I just realized

By: shannon

shannon — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:45:42 +0000

Thanks for the link to the article. I missed it the first time around and I am constantly trying to explain to well-meaning white people why race is a factor in our decision to home school. A nice footnote to help in that endeavor next time.

By: Riderone

Riderone — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:19:08 +0000

Riderone dreamily recalls the make-work assignments of grade school, the aroma of mimeograph paper (mmmm!), the thwap thwap thwap of the working ABDick machine if you were lucky enough to be sent to the school office to pick up a fresh batch of work papers (like warm bread, it was!), the special purple ink, and recalls that she found the assignments brought her peace and relaxation, the same kind she finds now when she does very simple knitting.

By: Jody

Jody — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:03:28 +0000

We have very practical, specific reasons for choosing the school options we choose for our kids. I’ve been immensely grateful that none of the homeschoolers who read my blog have ever been so ungracious as to say, “hey, this is exactly why we’re not doing the bricks-and-mortar school” when I write about our inevitable problems with our choices. I’ve wondered whether that’s because the homeschoolers know what it’s like to write about your problems and have people use them as an argument against the choice altogether.

The religion analogy doesn’t work very well for me because I feel, at some level, compelled to believe what I believe about the Divine,* but I don’t feel compelled to make a particular set of choices about school for my kids. I want to make the best choices for their particular selves, in the context of our particular family.

Then again, I’ve never felt that traditional school was the default (because I’m surrounded by people who homeschool, and not having made the choice, I’ve never been on the inside of the attacks against it), AND school saved my life. I’m sure that affects my attitudes about school in all sorts of profound ways.

These days, I know very few people (with abundant resources, of money or time or education) who consider the education decision a one-off deal, who never revisit it once it’s made. Maybe that’s just a reflection of the company I keep.

* I feel compelled because it would be false for me to say I didn’t believe in God, I would know I was lying to myself, even though lately I find that belief inconvenient and absurd.

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:29:20 +0000

My kids go to public school. Granted, it’s an exceptional school but it is a brick and mortar school - homework in the evenings and all. Workbooks, etc, the whole thing.

Honestly, just like I can’t wrap my head around homeschooling others can’t around public school- and I respect that…my point is that I can’t wrap my head around it because I CAN’T. That statement has nothing to do with homeschoolers it’s more about me. I don’t have it in me. I simply don’t.

And let’s leave out the $20,000 in special services my kids get to support their special needs (and they aren’t considered severe). Those services are for basic skills that other parents take for granted like speech, buttoning shirts, basic reading.

My frame of reference is that school was good for me. I was an average student. A C. Something like 200 out of 400 kids. The school work didn’t excite me, my life around being social did so it was a good experience.

But I will say that not all public school experiences are horrible. And just like there is no way for me to say with certainty that homeschooling wouldn’t work for my kids (if I could actually do it, but I can’t), there’s no way to say that school wouldn’t work for homeschoolers. But it’s our choices that work for our familiies. And that is the great thing about having kids… you have a chance to change things that you would have in your own past.

By: I answered BJ twice | this woman’s work

I answered BJ twice | this woman’s work — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:25:41 +0000

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