The advantages of homeschooling certainly aren't new to me, but I still love to read about people's happy experiences. You can read all of this one for free, though as I recall you may have to give them an e-mail address. (Oh, how I love having our own domain, and being able to create "throw-away" e-mail addresses as desired; it's the e-mail equivalent of using generated credit cards, which I also love.)
This is the story of Nadine Lauffer, now 18 years old, who began her schooling in the Netherlands. Knowing no English when her family moved to Florida, she had to repeat kindergarten, but as with all children who are exposed to new languages that young, that was no problem for her, and she continued in public school until fourth grade. At that point, frustrated by the lack of individual attention in the crowded public school, and impressed by the personalities of the homeschooled children they met at church, her family embarked on their own home education adventure.
“The teenagers,” she said, “were very different from the normal teenagers that I'd met coming from the public school system. They were more attentive, they knew how to talk to adults, and they were joyful.”
Nadine continued to homeschool through high school, going through a difficult period where she struggled with what she might be missing by not being in public school. Until, that is, she investigated and decided that she was actually lucky to have missed out on much of the high school experience. In addition, she began to take responsibility for her own education, which is, after all, the primary goal of homeschooling.
[After hearing a talk by Andrew Pudewa, founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing], Ms. Lauffer was encouraged to go through her high school experience in a way that fit her and to focus on her love of learning rather than trying to mimic what was going on in public schools.
Nadine's account isn't much different from the experience of millions of other homeschoolers, but in a world gone crazy, we need happy stories, and the reminder that there's still a good number of people in the world who are not insane (even in public schools, though it can be harder there).
