Is Homeschooling For Everyone?

During our time as a homeschooled family, and during the course of normal socialization like life events, doctors’ visits, you know, everyday life, we would encounter questions from curious parents. Sometimes I would get defensive at silly responses, so you may find some of my commentary in this and some other posts a little salty and maybe even insulting. I was never one of those homeschool dads to look down on public schoolers. Heck, I’m the result of the Philadelphia public school system! However, the fact of the matter was, when we went somewhere with our kids, and there were other kids around, you could see the difference in behavior of my kids over most other kids, particularly public school kids. Maturity levels, politeness, and respect. Our kids would shine over “those other” kids.

“Wow, you homeschool them? I could never do that!” Well, yes you can. They’re your kids and you teach them all the time whether you know you’re doing it or not. Homeschooling is not unusual and you get to teach your kids first-hand about life. As you know from previous posts, homeschooling, regardless of which style you use, is pretty organized. You don’t wake up every day and think, hmmmmm. . . .should I teach my kids to read today? You more than likely have a curriculum, or some semblance of organization. Homeschooled parents don’t typically just sit around watching TV letting their kids run around doing whatever they please (although there were some days like that!). Do you think my wife and I said, “Homeschooling? Heck, we can do that!” Hell no! The thought was downright scary in the beginning. You know what? It didn’t end up to be all that scary and we had the support of our co-op and other homeschooled families to help us out. Did we always get cooperation? Nope. Did we always feel like conducting classes? Nope. But we did it and we did it with love for our kids.

When I watch the back to school commercials, see back to school Facebook posts, or generally hear parents talk about the upcoming school year, I can’t help but think that they use school as a babysitter for 6 to 8 hours a day. Essentially, someone is raising your kids for you and spends more time with them than you do. Not only that, kids don’t get their teachers full attention because there are another 20-30 kids to look after. Seth, our youngest, was already reading in pre-school. Josh tested at a 10th grade English level when he was in 7th grade. Did we push them to be that way? No, we taught them the basics in the curriculum but let their natural curiosities take them in whatever direction they wanted to go. I don’t think you get that in public school. I find it to be very “cookie cutter”, everyone is taught the same thing no matter what. I don’t think there is a “common core” and I don’t think kids learn that way, everyone is different with various strengths and weaknesses. Homeschooling let us focus on both regardless of the curriculum.

I want to make something clear here too. I have the utmost respect for people who educate kids whether it be in public or private schools. They sometimes work in very difficult circumstances, don’t usually get the supplies they need from the school, and in most cases are ridiculously underpaid. I get it and I don’t blame them. However, I also had my share of crappy teachers, I guess that’s going to happen. There’s an old joke that says, “what do you call someone that graduated last in their medical class?” The answer of course is “doctor”.

Was homeschooling difficult? Sure, at times it was. There were times we would get so aggravated because they didn’t get something, or weren’t trying, or didn’t want to cooperate. Sometimes it was me, maybe I had a bad day and I felt like they were asking too many questions. Sometimes I wanted to flat out hurt them! (But I didn’t). However, is it any more difficult than any parent helping their kids with homework? Isn’t it difficult to make time for PTA meetings or other school events after working all day? Isn’t it difficult to juggle multiple sports or extracurricular activity schedules (which we did to some extent as well)? Yes, we had our “oh hell no!” or “remind me why we’re doing this again!” moments, but who doesn’t when raising their kids? As difficult as it could be, it could also be fun and rewarding. We had a lot of flexibility with scheduling so we could do things that kids in school all day couldn’t do. We went to Disney one year in early December before everyone else got out of school for winter break. It was awesome being at the happiest place on Earth with no crowds. We didn’t wait more than 10 minutes for any ride. Most of them had no lines at all.

When I was teaching the kids science, I realized how much of that stuff I forgot or didn’t even think I ever learned. We would go over something in a lesson and I would say to them, “Isn’t that fascinating?!” I was serious too! They would just look at me like I was nuts and say, “No dad, not really.” There was one lesson in particular I’ll never forget. You know it’s going to be a difficult night of teaching when the subject matter has been planets, and you’re scheduled to teach about Uranus. Think about that for a minute. You have a 3rd and 4th grader in front of you and you said Uranus. Now, try to keep a straight face as they crack up. It takes a couple of minutes but they do calm down. Then, to boot, and I’ll never forget this, the first line I read to them from the lesson was, “Uranus is made up mostly of gas”. Seriously!! And every line we read after that either had the word Uranus or gas, or something that sounded like your rear body part or the noises that come out of it. We were all just rolling and belly laughing through the entire lesson. My wife was in the other room and couldn’t imagine what was going on. She thought we were all nuts!