Don’t argue with me
The only good reason for playing games with babies is because we love them, and delight in playing these games with them and sharing in their delight with them — not because we want someday to get them into college. It is our delight in the baby and the games that makes the game fun, and worthwhile and useful for the baby. Take away the delight, and put in its place some cold-hearted calculation about future IQ and SAT scores and we kill the game, for ourselves and the baby. If we go on for long in this spirit the babies will soon refuse to play — or if they do, play only in the spirit of school, i.e., because they think we’ll be disappointed or angry if they don’t…
from Boing Boing’s review of How Children Learn (thanks Kris!)
See, this is why I don’t do stuff with an eye to teaching. I did at the beginning, with Noah. I’d play games and make note (this is math! this is grammar! this is science!) but I don’t anymore. Because they learn it. They do. At least my kid did and I think the little one will, too. And when it’s time for more formal learning — if it’s time and every kid is different — there is room for that, too. All of it happens in the rhythm that works for YOUR child and YOUR family. That’s unschooling.
Recently I heard Kristen say “I’m not homeschooling for excellenence,” which makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. (It could be our battle cry! “We homeschool for mediocrity!” Except we don’t — it just sounds funny.) So if I’m not homeschooling for excellence (these are the Well-Trained Mind people, the ones who are thinking about Ivy League spelling bee winners and I like these people but we are of a different unschooling ilk) then what am I homeschooling for?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I guess I’m homeschooling for confident, comfortable competence. Homeschooling for joy. For relationships. For family. For love. For creativity. For the experience and not the results. Ivy League? Sure, if you want. Trade school? That works, too.
During our crisis of the last month (financial, that — thanks to an ill-timed trip and very late checks and a client who just stopped paying, which arrived in a perfect storm over the summer that depleted our emergency funds) I felt fiercely defensive of our choice to homeschool because yes, if we’d send the kids away we wouldn’t be on such monetarily shaky grounds. (Although on average I make what I’d make with a “real” job but see, it’s on average, which is why Brett is now working to make up for those months when the Bell Curve isn’t working for us and to build that emergency fund back up.)
But I love our homeschool family and what’s more I believe in our homeschool family. I sit out on the front porch drinking coffee and doing Madison’s hair, chatting with Noah and hear the kids on the school playground across the way and I feel positively gleeful that we’ve kept it up this long. Noah is thinking about high school these days, thus his decision to keep on with a very truncated version of the virtual school. But Madison? Oh she is homeschooled! She will tell you, “I homeschool preschool.” And she spends her days spinning.
(Now I’m saying don’t argue with me but really I mean I won’t argue with you. Most of my homeschool posts end up being homeschooling debates and I’m too busy for it today. You can comment critically but likely I won’t comment back not because I’m insutled or angry with you but because I have so much on my plate today that I don’t have time. I think it’s swell if your kid is doing absolutely awesome in school and I sympathize if he or she is not. Only I don’t get why some people who love school — or at least love their kids’ school experiences — are so anxious to dismiss mine. I have yet to go to a schooled parent’s blog and tell them why homeschooling is better or argue with them about why school is worse yet most of my homeschool posts do indeed bring this out in folks. Which is why I rarely write about it anymore. But you are welcome to read my archives to read more about why I do it, how I’ve struggled and how I’ve responded to past criticism.)
(Also, this post? Which is apparently showing up in the Related Posts below? Noah didn’t flunk fifth grade because it turns out no one cares about the busy work as long as they can show “mastery.” He finished the year out ahead of his level on everything but math. He passed all the standardized tests with flying colors except, again, math, which he passed with muted colors. And he was reading at a tenth grade level midyear with a vocabulary to match so who knows where he is now but clearly he is FINE. So there naysayers!)
Your posts on homeschooling often make me feel like a terrible parent… I love my kids but could never, and I mean NEVER spend so many hours with them. And to be a writer on top of it - I can’t imagine. I mean, it boggles my mind. I have to admit that school is/was always about ME and not about them. (awful thing to realize and admit!) I had major homeschooling fantasies BEFORE having kids but as soon as they were realities, I backed away from the idea in sheer terror. I am actually quite in awe.
No awe allowed, Susan! I do a lot of benign neglect around here. After all, I’m an UNSCHOOLER!
Dawn, you have my full support! I’m doing what’s right for my family - crazy expensive private school - and you’re doing what’s right for yours. I think THAT’S what’s important, that we do what’s right for our personal situations. I think people who attack your decision are probably insecure about their own paths. But I’ll always be in the front row of your cheering section! (BTW, I remember how angst-ridden you were years ago about Noah’s “delay” in learning to read. My how times have changed!
Angst ridden is right! Remind me of that when Madison is doing something on her own timetable, eh?
Us, too, i.e. the “crazy expensive private school” is the right decision for us (eerily enough, by clicking on Marjorie’s blog, I’ve discovered probably the same “crazy expensive private school” — Hi Marjorie, my daughter is in the 2nd grade).
So, I’ve criticized you before, and have since realized that it’s not appropriate. But, I do know why I do it. It’s ’cause the homeschooling idea always brings out my worry about parents and children, and whether children are allowed to develop in a way that is not bounded by their parents desires.
The “CEPS” my kid goes makes a big deal about how the school is a place for separating from the parents. Our head of school started back to school night by telling us how proud he is to see the little ones climb the long stairs to the school, by themselves, at the morning drop-off. *My* daughter thrills and thrives in this separation, the opportunity to be her own person, and separate from me and my desires.
I recognize that even this desire, that children benefit from separating from their parents is a pretty strong opinion, and one that I certainly have no right to make for your kids.
BJ, I think we have a comfortable enough online relationship that any go-arounds we have had have been respectful and ultimately understanding. And I take responsibility (and mostly pride) in having a blog that must invite friendly discourse but since I had no time today, I just wanted to head it off from newbies who might be like, “What? You homeschool? But haven’t you considered…?”
You would like Marjorie. Marjorie is fabulous and nice and smart and an A-1 terrific writer so if you don’t know her in person yet, I hope some time you will!!
One of the posts where I go all fangirl-in-love on you
Sigh. I so wish I could homeschool! I fear that my overly-anxious-check-box-coloring-within-the-lines self couldn’t survive a week (especially unschooling, which is absolutely what I would want to do) but if my family circumstances even remotely allowed for it, I would do it in a second. I sigh with envy when I read your homeschooling posts.
More power to you. There’s no way that I could homeschool, but I respect each family’s choice to do so..
I love that you love it as much as I love sending my little angel off to school each morning, backpack in hand.
I have never really understood the homeschool brouhahas that erupt when you or Shannon or anyone else posts about it. I don’t really get it, at some level I’m completely incapable of articulating properly today.
Redneck Mother linked to a friend whose kids pitched a tipi in their backyard during the first cooler weather of the fall, and I ached for that kind of family life. I think homeschooling is seductive, even if we’ve made other choices, for now, for us.
argue, argue, argue.
hee hee
just kidding.
i think its pretty damn awesome too, but i’m probably with susan. we’ll see. haven’t gotten there yet.
I love your homeschool posts. If nothing else, they inspire me on what home should be like when my kids come home from school. I do love that my children go to school…I would probably have made a fair unschooler. My #1…nope, she’s a school kid. #2…I doubt we will explore it, but he’d probably like unschooling. So no argument here.
I probably envy the whole everyone working at home thing (and I hope Brett’s job works out how you want it to work out). Despite being allergic to just about everything on a farm, I used to tease my husband that that is what we should do. All of us home together. At least some part of my farming roots come through.
I completely support and adore unschooling. Ya know, when my oldest started school I was so prepared to find the experience terrible and have all my public school prejudices justified…I can laugh now at how she eats it up. She just simply thrives in school. It’s the right choice for her. My son just started Kindergarten, and he’s the one I figured wouldn’t like school all that much. But he too is thriving. I should caveat that I think their school is awesome as far as public schools go, and we’re lucky in that.
I guess I’ve come to believe that it’s not the end of the world, either way. Neither seems inherently good or bad to me anymore.
My son went to a preschool attached to a private school last year (we’ve simce taken him out because it was so academic he wasn’t having fun). At the first parent/teacher conference, the teacher commented that he “really knew how to play”. Evidently many of the 3-yr-olds there didn’t know how to play unless it was scripted. Sounds very much like what you were mentioning about the babies losing interest in playing. Lucky for me (I guess?), I was so busy keeping my son entertained so he wouldn’t destroy things that I never had time to think about the “academic value” of the games.
i always enjoy the homeschooling posts, even if, or maybe because, both my kids are in school.
obviously we all make the choices that are right for our families and our kids, but we can still be inspired by the choices other people make to think and evaluate our choices and goals in general.
and more obviously and less self centered, to learn about other people and other ideas.
What IS it about homeschooling??? Why don’t people who school their kids realize they are also–by their school choices–trying to control their children’s lives? We are parents. We are all doing what we think is best for our kids. It’s our job.
I just don’t get it.
You know what’s interesting though? Every teacher I tell about homeschooling is soooo down with it and congratulating me and telling how great it is that I’m doing it.
That is pretty telling, if you ask me. And I am a has-been teacher myself, so I am in my own test group.
Shannon, to be fair — I hear from a lot of teachers who worry about our homeschooling, too! So I don’t think every teacher is pro-homschooling although I’ve also met plenty who are!
I just don’t think there’s anyway to prove which is better because it comes down to values. If you hold greater value the school experience, you should send your kids to school. If you hold greater value for the homeschool experience (however you make it look) you should homeschool (if you can because yeah, homeschooling has been hard on our finances and I appreciate that there are lots of folks who can’t even get it on the table).
I read Becca’s “I’m a Happy Mom” post today (http://not-quite-sure.blogspot.com ) and I’ve met her girls and I know that this is a family thriving in school, no question. I don’t think my kids are better off than her kids — they are differently off.
I’m just not clear why some schooled folks of my acquaintance (off-line as much as if not more than on) can’t grant me the same leeway.
I didn’t even read this as a homeschooling post, since the issue about playing you started with could apply to homeschooling, public schooling, private schooling.
I remember way back when you blogged that family members were giving you a hard time because Noah hadn’t started reading. Lucky for him you stood your ground.
“Winning a spelling bee” has become a catch phrase for my husband and I because Dr. Bradley in his natural childbirth book talks about a child who was born naturally (and had LLL leader mother) and who later won the spelling bee! I recognize the role of anecdote in writing, but it was such a ridiculous claim to causality that I had to laugh.
I love the part in Bradley where he talks about how much healthier it is for women to wear skirts! I’m all for the Bradley method but Bradley himself? His book was pretty freakin’ hilarious, eh?