Back in 1990, just before we took the plunge into homeschooling, I sat down one day and typed out every reason that came to mind for our decision. My purpose was not to make a reasoned argument for homeschooling, but to have something written down to which we could refer when the going got rough, to remind ourselves why we had made that choice.
At the time, I posted the list on the good ol' GEnie Education Round Table, my online support group. Now that I have my own blog, I thought it would be fun to publish it again. The list is specific to our particular school situation in places, and somewhat dated, but most of the reasons would still be valid were we beginning our homeschooling journey today.
At the time of writing, we had one child going into sixth grade and another going into third, both at our local public school. The elder had completed kindergarten and first grade in a private, Montessori school.
Fifty Reasons for Homeschooling
- We have long known that we would have to supplement our children's educations, whether they were in public or private schools. For a while we were content with this, but the increasing homework load, plus all those hours spent in school, has made this impractical if not impossible.
- More time could be gained by dropping extracurricular activities, such as music lessons, choir, and the Indian Princess program, but we consider these to be essential elements of education.
- In middle school the time load will become even worse. Not only is there more homework, but the schedule is such that students do not arrive home until after 4:00, severely limiting after-school activities and interfering with a reasonable bedtime.
- Eighth grade is even worse, as eighth graders with any academic ambitions at all attend their first period class at the high school, for which they must catch a 7:00 bus.
- Even this long schedule allows only seven class periods per day; sixth and seventh grades have only six. There are no classes that meet less than five times per week, so this leaves open only two class periods beyond the core of math, science, social studies, and English. One of the two may be band or chorus (she'd have to choose between them); the other is required to be 2/3 PE and 1/3 gifted resource class. She would have no opportunity for art, home ec, shop, foreign language, etc. This is simply too restrictive a curriculum. I could cry when I remember all the different classes I was able to take in junior high school.
- While most middle school girls are probably delighted to have only twelve weeks of PE per year—I wouldn't have minded that myself—it's not enough physical activity for a child who no longer has recess and whose schedule does not permit any other outdoor activities on school days.
- The situation does not improve in high school, either academically or physically. Only one year of PE is required, and most kids take it in summer school, because summer school is virtually required and PE is easier to compress than algebra. Summer school is necessary for anyone with academic ambitions because there are only six periods in a high school day. That is because these periods are sixty minutes long, longer even than our college classes! After a long fight, the school board finally relented and will be offering a seventh period—after the normal school day ends, thus forcing students to choose between the extra class and any after school activities.
- I have observed top level sixth grade math classes this year, and am not at all happy with the pace of learning. I realize that math requires a good deal of repetition before it becomes second nature, but the students are entitled to enough new material to keep them from giving up on math as altogether too boring for words.
- Speaking of math, our youngest has now spent two and a half years in school and knows only a small fraction more math than she knew before she entered kindergarten. I don't know how our country expects to turn out mathematicians if its schools allow them to vegetate for so long in the subject.
- Both children are suffering the consequences of low expectations. They are working hard, in and out of school, but the work is not the mental stimulation it should be. Any threats to their grades are not academic but organizational: forgotten homework, poor time-management, bad study habits, etc. Granted, organizational skills are very important, but children deserve an academic challenge as well. Our primary concern is in the area of reading; our oldest has never been given any reading assignment in school in which the vocabulary, content, or style placed any demands on her reading ability. It is tempting to be happy that school is easy for her, until you realize that she is missing out on the most important aspect of education: learning how to learn. The lazy mental habits acquired through unchallenged schooling can be disastrous later in life.
- One-day-per-week "gifted" classes are no substitute for solid academic training. They do provide opportunity for interaction with children of similar abilities, and for more interesting activities than regular classroom work, but in reality the most that is accomplished is the establishment of "one day each week when I'm not bored." Depending on the teacher, far too much time may also be spent on affective activities. The middle school offers some gifted academic classes that would be useful if they were not offered in a six-period day context.
- The schools' social expectations are low, too. The teachers expect the children to be TV-saturated and rock-music oriented. Although some effort is being made to change it, the Friday afternoon "reward" for a week's good behavior is still most often a movie. I would not mind "educational" movies so much (although I still think recess would be a better reward), but most of them are entertainment-oriented. Some teachers can't seem to imagine children being entertained by something educational. And maybe they're right. Our youngest came home upset one day because they had been watching a movie about animals which she had been enjoying very much. Due to the misbehavior of some of the students, however, that movie was stopped in the middle and a more "entertaining" one substituted.
- The lower grades are not so much of a problem, but rock music blares out of the fifth grade during party times. Some buses play rock music as they make their rounds. I realize that many students love rock music, and if that is their musical taste, I have no right to deny them, on their own time. But as we keep trying to explain to deaf school system ears, there is a big difference between what is allowed in terms of books, music, and movies, and what is school-sanctioned. Are we alone in thinking that the schools should set higher standards than the general community?
- If the academic atmosphere is too slow, the social atmosphere of middle school is too advanced—if that is the word for it. Having worked in the school for a year, I have observed a steamy atmosphere of pre-teen dances, sexual innuendo, steady dating, foul language, and social ambition. The clothes you wear are very important, and even the teachers have been known to speak disparagingly of "the kind of girl who would buy clothes at K-Mart." It is bad enough that so many of her peers have their standards determined by Hollywood; more disturbing is that the schools go along with it.
- The atmosphere is not only steamy, it is also cruel. From my own observations, and the experiences of friends with children in middle school, I can see that the "normal" adolescent tendency to cruelty toward other kids is given almost free rein. I don't know if the teachers are afraid of the students, or think this is an important stage of development, or are just unable to keep them civil, but it's a jungle in there.
- We hear a lot of talk about the need to prepare the students for the "real world." This is true, but the schools' idea of the real world and ours are vastly different. I see the world as a place where you can enjoy and must get along with many different kinds of people, but where there are choices: if it's too hard to get along with your boss, or your neighbor, you can get a new job, or move. Also, in the real world there are laws against assault, slander, and child abuse. (I guess it's not called child abuse if it's done by another child.)
- We have tried to work within the system, serving on and working with the school advisory committees, PTA, advocacy groups, and the school volunteer program, attending school board meetings, helping with parties, going on field trips, keeping close track of what goes on at school, in general knowing and being known. All these have helped, have been very important. And we have a good school, with a sympathetic administration and wonderful teachers. Indeed, when I look at all the available teachers, I believe that each year our kids were assigned to the best possible ones. But we've also become aware of a few key problems. One, all that involvement helps, but it doesn't help enough. Two, we've seen changes made, changes for the better, and should be able to rejoice. But for the most part, the changes are too little or too late to help our kids. True, there is value in changing the system for the benefit of those to come, but how much family time can you sacrifice for the solving of other people's problems? Which also brings us to: Three, we've discovered that there are a lot of people out there who don't think much of the changes we'd like to make. What good does it do to give up our time to make changes for other people's kids, only to have them turn around and change things back, sacrificing their time to "fix" the system for subsequent students whose parents will probably try to change it back again!?
- I love teaching our kids, and we work well together. I am not a good teacher, as such, and I take my hat off (or I would if I wore one) to anyone who can work with a classroom of thirty children. But I am a good tutor, and enjoy working with one or two kids at a time.
- There are three reasons that I volunteer at our schools. One is simply community service, helping where help is needed. Relative to many districts in the country, our school taxes are low; service in the schools is a kind of voluntary tax of my time. The second motive, which in reality is the primary one, is that by helping others I can indirectly help our own children. Because I help run the Math Superstars program for the third grade, others are freed to do the same for the second and fifth grades. Moreover, involvement in the school shows our children that we are interested in their educations, and has vastly improved our relationship with school personnel. The third reason is simply that I enjoy the work. The first motive would be valid no matter where our children went to school, and I would hope that not only I but also the kids will be able to continue to offer some service in this way. The others, though, are somewhat specious. Having the good will of the school is helpful, and I wouldn't want to be without it, but there are too many problems that all the good will in the world won't fix. Above all, what kind of sense does it make to spend my time tutoring someone else's children so that that person can work with ours? It is like fixing dinner for a neighbor while she makes our meal: interesting on occasion, but pretty silly otherwise, since we each know our own family's needs best.
- Homeschooling is not an option for most people. For those whose needs include day care, for those who don't like to teach or who don't feel competent to do so, for those who think the benefits of their school outweigh the problems, for those who have little interest in education, schools are a blessing. But I am home, I love to teach and am confident in my ability to help our children learn until they are experienced enough to take over the process themselves, I'm convinced that the disadvantages of school now outnumber the advantages, and I have lived and breathed education for the last seven years.
- Their dad is a good teacher also, and strong in my areas of weakness. While of necessity most of the teaching responsibility will fall on my shoulders, he has a lot to contribute in the evenings and on weekends, and in terms of ideas, wisdom, and direction.
- Homeschooling will allow our children to learn at their own paces, permitting them to advance in their areas of strength and take more time in areas of weakness.
- A homeschool curriculum can be tailored to fit each child's individual needs and interests.
- In the one-to-one, tutoring relationship, misunderstandings can be detected early, and mistakes corrected while they are still fresh.
- Homeschooling should save a lot of time. Not the parents' time, of course. But tutoring is a much more efficient use of a student's time. Witness a friend's daughter, who was as an eighth grader confined at home by illness for three months. She had no difficulty staying caught up with her classmates on two hours of work a week—and she was in advanced classes! Not that we expect to spend only two hours per week on school work. The homeschoolers we know spend anywhere from two to six hours per day "in school." But we expect to do a lot more than just "stay caught up" with the public schools.
- Time is a major issue. The enormous amount of time swallowed up by school (and, I'll admit, extra-curricular activities) is depriving our children socially, physically, and emotionally. Socially, they have little time to play with their friends. Traditional ways of coping with this might be: Letting them stay up later to do homework, so they could play in the afternoons (unacceptable; they need the sleep). Cutting down on their TV time (impossible; you can't watch less than nothing). Teaching them to work more efficiently (a good one; we're working on it). Restricting extra-curricular activities (forget it). Encouraging them to take the route many of their friends have, of not worrying so much about doing a good job (forget this one, too). Or reducing the number of chores they are expected to do at home (they'd like this one, but we wouldn't). One of our homeschooling goals is to work the kids hard during the day, but to arrange it so that they will be finished when their friends return from school.
- We have seen our oldest daughter's physical fitness level drop each year, as she spends more time with the books and less outdoors. With homeschool, not only would there be more "after school" time, but we could incorporate recess and daily fitness activities into the curriculum.
- One of our biggest time concerns is that our children do not have enough time to be kids. They need time to play, time to explore, time to call their own, even time to be bored, if that were possible. Homeschooling will give them time to be children while avoiding the middle school atmosphere that forces children to grow up before they are ready.
- Homeschooling should also reduce the unnecessary stress put on adolescents these days. Every school official we have heard from admits that middle school is too stressful; it is even noticeable in elementary school.
- In homeschool, we can teach practical home economics. (And not "Orientation to Home Economics Occupations," which is what is offered in our middle school!) Cooking, sewing, housekeeping, etc. can be taught in a much more logical manner where the benefits are immediately obvious.
- Other "practical arts" courses would have similar at-home benefits. Yardwork, car maintenance, the use of basic tools, and the like could be taught in a much more natural way.
- We can provide a better, more practical, and more comprehensive computer education program than the schools do.
- Homeschooling will enable our oldest to continue in church choir. Because of the middle school schedule, which would get her home after choir was more than half finished, she would otherwise have to drop out.
- This way we can be more flexible about scheduling music lessons, not being restricted to normal after school hours.
- Homeschooling removes us from the uncertainties of the public school situation. Rapid growth is threatening us with cutbacks in services, rezoning, double sessions, and/or year-round schools.
- As long as we put in the required number of days, and cover the material, we are free to be as flexible as we like in our schedule. This means we can have classes in the summer and take our vacation in the winter, if that is what we'd like. We can take off the same days that our county does, for more interaction with neighborhood friends, or work on some of those days and take off days that correspond with vacations of friends in other counties, or with the arrival of relatives, or whatever.
- The girls need more religious instruction than they get at church. As noted before, time for supplemental teaching is scarce, and they certainly won't get it in school.
- Frankly, despite our love for our school, I'm tired of "winter holidays," "spring break," and the unnatural removal of all references to religious activity in life as it is presented in public schools. I realize schools must be very careful not to give offense, but I find the resulting blandness pretty offensive myself. Once when I observed a second grade class, the teacher gave the following lesson in her reading group: "Who made the mountains? Did men make the mountains? No, Nature made the mountains." And this year, at a "holiday party," the teacher (a Christian herself but limited by school policy) sang a dozen carols with the class, not one of which made any reference to Christmas at all! I hate to start any sentence with "In my day . . ." because it makes me feel old, but in my day people at least realized that Christmas is a national holiday and therefore didn't choke on the name. Songs were not excluded from our repertoire just because they mentioned God; the musical and historical value of Christmas carols, Negro spirituals, and the like were recognized. (I wonder what Negro spirituals are called these days; maybe they're just not sung at all any more.) In addition to excluding traditional religion (meaning Judaism and Christianity, mostly) from the classroom, the schools seem to have invented one of their own, a combination of pop psychology and materialism that comes across as flat and boring. There's a limit to how much of this kind of stuff I can stomach.
- Homeschooling seems to be the only way out of our reading dilemma. There are so many books that we feel are important for the kids to read; books that we read as children, but also many that we didn't read but wish we had. (The expectations placed on us in school were not always the best, either.) Our children are quite willing to follow our suggestions in reading, but time again is our enemy. We're more inclined to encourage them to play outside in their free time, because they spend so much time at bookwork as it is. The schools are not helpful at all in this, even at the middle school level; they seem to have quite a different set of books that they think are important. Reading will be a big part of our homeschooling curriculum, and we get to choose the books.
- We believe that one of the primary forces that drives a family apart during the adolescent and teen years is the excessive peer dependency fostered by the school environment. Homeschooling will provide a proper balance of peer and family activities.
- A chief goal of our homeschool will be to teach the girls how to learn: how to dig into a subject and work at it until it is understood, how to find out information on their own without having to be spoon-fed. Too many bright children graduate from high school without ever learning anything of the sort.
- Field trips would be less crowded and hectic, with more opportunities for discussion, and more direct application to what is being studied.
- Once you begin to think in terms of homeschool, all of life becomes educational. We have always been education-oriented, but now find ourselves even more so. Once we made the decision to homeschool, we began integrating learning into everything we do. This not only increases our knowledge, but enriches our relationships as well.
- Homeschooling is legal in Florida, with modest restrictions.
- While homeschooling is not commonplace, we are hardly pioneers. There are many resources available to us: other homeschooling families (we know several), books, curriculum publishers, support groups, and magazines.
- Homeschooling will allow us to begin foreign language instruction before eighth grade. (You can begin in eighth grade if you are willing to attend first period at the high school.)
- We are tired of fighting a school system with values so markedly different from ours. Why spend so much energy trying unsuccessfully to convince them to teach what we think they should, and not to teach the things we think they should leave alone? Surely that energy is better and more effectively spent working directly with our own kids.
- We also have trouble with the schools' approach to discipline. The philosophy, even in middle school, is a kind of mushy behavior modification approach that is teaching the kids to expect a reward every time they do something right. There is also altogether too much group discipline, where everyone is punished for the misbehavior of a few. And the kids who are real troublemakers rarely get any punishment worse than a severe "talking to." I know that the schools are very leery of corporal punishment, but why they don't use their power of suspension more often is beyond me.
- In short, we believe homeschooling to be the alternative that best meets our children's academic, mental, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual needs.
- Besides, we expect to have a lot of fun!
I believe the YMCA still has something of the sort going, called "Adventure Guides," and it's probably just as much fun. It can't be the same, though, as the "Indian" part of the name was very important. Teaching knowledge of and respect for Native Americans was part of the program, and here at least we had a relationship with the local American Indian organization (that's what they called themselves, not "Native American"). Going to their yearly pow-wow was one of our favorite outings. But clearly the national YMCA organization bowed to "political correctness" pressure at some point.
I should have made it clear that these are not necessarily the 50 reasons for homeschooling I would write now, after all our experience. They were a stream-of-consciousness list that obviously reflects more of our dissatisfaction with schools than the joys of homeschooling, which were still in the future. My list now would be yet more negative about school, but mostly in contrast to the great things about homeschooling.
And let me hasten to say, once again, that I realize other people's experiences are different, and no one educational choice is right for all people. It's just hard not to be enthusiastic because our experience with homeschooling was so positive, and because we didn't see most of the negatives about institutional school until later; we had actually thought our kids' schools were quite good at the time.
Your school system was quite unusual, I think. Actually, I'm pretty sure your parents had a LOT to do with your positive experiences, but the school seems unusually helpful, too. I've never before known of a public school that allowed parents to choose their children's teachers.
What I really don't understand is how you managed to have so much time in your life. It wasn't just Heather and Janet who were swamped; that was the most common complaint I heard from parents. I remember one youth group parents' meeting at which the leader asked us, "What are the top stresses your children face?" He clearly was expecting to hear about drugs, sex, peer pressure, social problems, etc. In fact, he was so prepared for those responses that he spoke on them, anyway, ignoring the parents' number one issue: time pressure. This discrepancy was also reflected in the fact that the youth group leaders were always planning activities to keep the kids busy, which only exacerbated the problem.
I understand your point about the problem with suspensions is that the kids see them as vacation time, but I am of the unorthodox opinion that if they don't want to be in school, they shouldn't be there.
Excerpt: Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne with Lisa M. Ross (Ballantine Books, 2009) This review was interrupted so that I could write the Things Dr. Spock Won't ...
Weblog: Lift Up Your Hearts!
Date: February 7, 2013, 7:12 am