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I feel a little like you could publish this article with “Montessori School” substituted for each instance of homeschooling and it would still work. Although Montessori still values traditional endeavors, if a kid’s passion is video games they would be out of luck. I enjoy reading what you write, I have been thinking about school options since I was young, and now that I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old, it sort of looks like we are headed to public school anyway. A sort of progressive touchy feely elementary school in a high performing district ( though not as high as you would require, for it to be “good”). My reason is mostly that I am pretty sure the kids and I need some space, in order to still like each other at the end of the day. I worry about my ability to manage my temper and be a good and loving mom if I never have time and space to myself. And I am terribly, terribly disorganized, and prone to depression and similar. So I have a very hard time trusting that home with me full time is the best place for them (although I am a stay at home mom, and we do spend lots and lots of time just playing, right now). School was a disaster for me, and my husband thrived (ISTJ for him, INTP for me :-P), so we are giving it a chance and seeing what works for our kids.
What are your thoughts about this sort of school: http://www.sudval.org ? We have visited and like it there quite a bit, and it is affordable, so I think that is our fall back if school doesn’t work for one or both of our children.
My house has those colors your walls have, yellow and blue.
I was stunned by how you explained homeschooling in the last post. Education for the love of learning and not so much to get to a point.
Of course I want my kids to be employable and yadayadayada. But working so hard to earn a job that sucks the time and the ability to dabble in whatever interest they have….I don’t know. Some jobs pay so much and it’s supposed to yield a better quality of life but then there’s really not much time to actually enjoy your life.
I think we are discovering this with me staying home and our family living in a tiny income. It’s scary. I waste so much time because I am so used to having an outside force cramming a schedule on me. I used to think of my days off as time when I didn’t want a schedule at all. And now that I don’t have an office schedule and nature dictating what I do (nursing a new child) my days seem like a big swath of time where I could get everything done (a lie) or I don’t know what to do (I feel paralyzed not knowing what to choose first).
Slowly I am coming to the scary realization that we don’t need that much money to be happy. It’s scary because 12 years of public school and some more at college taught us that this is what it’s all about. And I believed it. And now I gotta change my rhythm to be internally driven without need of outside schedules.
I am excited for my child. I am excited he’ll get to experience something different.
Thanks for that, I am coming to the same, slow realization. Along with the gradual dissipating of nearly every assumption instilled in my by 23 years of elite education. Like the assumption that those 23 years were the best education I could possibly have gotten…..my true education started with sleepaway camp at age 12, when I was finally released from captivity, allowed to figure out what I liked and who I liked and what I was all about.
I have friends who teach here at the university and they get driven crazy with all the “Will this be on the test?” questions during their lectures. The Melissa story made me laugh out loud. I imagine her as very happy and sort of perky, “That’s Ok. I’m just here to learn.” And the teacher is thinking that she is just a weird, annoying homeschooled kid who needs to get with the program.
I started homeschooling my child in seventh grade and it has been really great to see her shake off the ps lessons you describe. After almost two years of homeschooling she has let most of it go. It has been much harder for me to do the same.
indeed, I totally agree that the “is this going to be on the test” is rather annoying – definitely drives me up the wall. However, it is possible to break this habit, and it is usually pretty much gone by the fourth year of college and in graduate school. On the other hand, having students who come always for extended periods after class is great – but not always. It is, even though it is fun, incredibly time consuming. After working for 8-10 hours the prof might just not be up to more discussions.
Maybe it is more the parents who are driven by grades than the students. Will it ever really matter that my son has a “C-” instead of an “A” in 8th grade algebra? He “gets it” very well, but we’re just not into doing the extra worksheets every evening to get a better grade. He puts extra effort into projects that interest him, but even with that, we look at what he’s accomplished and got from the project more than if it earned a “good grade”. Keeps our family much happier.
I LOVE the line from Melissa. I was that kid and the teachers hated me too.
Thanks for your blog. It’s the lifeline I need some when I find myself second guessing this home school thing.
Natasha
I read the following article yesterday at Fast Company –
http://www.fastcompany.com/3004769/my-email-exchange-aaron-swartz-shows-original-thinker
It’s an unpublished interview done by email in 2009 from Ronaldo Lemos (Project Lead, Creative Commons Brazil) of Aaron Swartz (Reddit and RSS co-founder). He’s been in the news lately since he died tragically of a recent apparent suicide.
The following Q and A really rang true to me regarding education and learning –
Q -You did a lot of important things at a very young age, could you describe a few of them? And how do you see and would explain that? Talent, inspiration, curiosity, hard work? Is there something that you would think that other kids who would like to follow your steps should know?
A – When I was a kid, I thought a lot about what made me different from the other kids. I don’t think I was smarter than them and I certainly wasn’t more talented. And I definitely can’t claim I was a harder worker — I’ve never worked particularly hard, I’ve always just tried doing things I find fun. Instead, what I concluded was that I was more curious — but not because I had been born that way. If you watch little kids, they are intensely curious, always exploring and trying to figure out how things work. The problem is that school drives all that curiosity out. Instead of letting you explore things for yourself, it tells you that you have to read these particular books and answer these particular questions. And if you try to do something else instead, you’ll get in trouble. Very few people’s curiosity can survive that. But, due to some accident, mine did. I kept being curious and just followed my curiosity. First I got interested in computers, which led me to get interested in the Internet, which led me to get interested in building online news sites, which led me to get interested in standards (like RSS), which led me to get interested in copyright reform (since Creative Commons wanted to use similar standards). And on and on. Curiosity builds on itself — each new thing you learn about has all sorts of different parts and connections, which you then want to learn more about. Pretty soon you’re interested in more and more and more, until almost everything seems interesting. And when that’s the case, learning becomes really easy — you want to learn about almost everything, since it all seems really interesting. I’m convinced that the people we call smart are just people who somehow got a head start on this process. I fell like the only thing I’ve really done is followed my curiosity wherever it led, even if that meant crazy things like leaving school or not taking a “real” job. This isn’t easy — my parents are still upset with me that I dropped out of school — but it’s always worked for me.
Fantastic interview. He summed it up so well. A true loss
homeschool has the *potential* to develop these habits. but many people homeschool in a way that does not. and i don’t just mean boxed curriculum. to develop a habit of, say, engagement requires doing something you care about *and* being supported so your work is meaningful, challenging, and self-directed. not too many people are doing that.
simply homeschooling doesn’t solve these issues. it takes homeschooling in a particular way.
Education has really become so much about control rather than learning. It’s no wonder so many kids don’t do well and/or can’t remember anything they “learned” in school. It’s because it is not a happy environment where they can feel free to learn. They are told what to do all day, while competing with other kids under peer pressure. I really believe that kids learn better when they are in an environment where they can choose what to learn, without any pressures or barriers. That’s why I have chosen to homeschool my kids as this will be the best method for the to really learn, while still socializing with all kinds of people, of all ages, instead of spending all day in a classroom interacting with kids their own age only.
A quote from an article by Paul Tough in the WSJ ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443819404577635352783638934.html ) adapted from his recent book – How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character .
“What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years of life. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as non-cognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us often think of them as character.”
“Most adults have a difficult time finding fulfilling engaging work. Because they did not develop the habit of looking for this as a kid.”
My friends and I talk about this all the time. We are in our 40’s and headed back to work after raising our kids but it’s taken a long time to figure out what we even want to do. I thought it was the time out of the workplace but O’m thinking we never really knew.
Great Article P!