Zatera Ul

This anti-homeschooling article on the NEA web site is getting ripped on by various education bloggers (see here, here, and here).

MFH and I are planning to homeschool our (future) children.

So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this — the shaping of their children’s minds, careers, and futures — to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!

I really think I would rather not leave the shaping of my children’s minds, careers, and futures to someone else. Why bother having kids if you’re not going to parent them? Anyway, not all teachers have worked for 10 or more years yet; some are fresh out of college. I never had any trouble competing with education majors for grades in college courses. It’s true that I didn’t take education courses, but I will be specializing in the care and training of my kids from birth, so I don’t think that will be a problem.

Of course, this guy brings up the old “socialization” issue: if you homeschool your kids, they will be “social misfits.” Actually, MFH and I were both social misfits even in public schools. The question to ask is whether the socialization that comes from educating children in herds is better than the socialization that comes from parents educating their children themselves. More than one person has compared high school to a prison that is being run by the inmates. Much of my so-called socialization at school was negative.

I had many excellent teachers in school, but half my education came from home anyway. I had the privilege and incredible advantage of growing up next door to my grandma, a retired teacher. She read to me and let me pound on her piano and played Chinese checkers with me and taught me to sew and bake and took me to Sunday school…. So much of who I am today started there. Another advantage I had was ample access to books. My grandma had many old school books. I had my own library card before I could print my last name, and my mother often took us to the library. My uncle had boxes of paperbacks that he was selling at flea markets. I was always reading.

I wasn’t involved in many activities outside of school, so I had a lot of time to pursue my own interests and figure things out for myself. Also, I had time to read in school, when I finished in-class assignments far faster than other students.

Don’t most parents have a tough enough job teaching their children social, disciplinary and behavioral skills? They would be wise to help their children and themselves by leaving the responsibility of teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects to those who are knowledgeable, trained and motivated to do the best job possible.

Yes, teaching social, disciplinary, and behavioral skills will be tough work. That’s why I don’t want it to be undermined at school.

As MFH commented, are all teachers knowledgeable, trained, and motivated to do the best job possible? No. A homeschooling parent’s motivation can overcome gaps in training or knowledge. I’ve heard of people working hard to learn or relearn a subject (that they had struggled with in public school) so they could teach it to their children. We’ve thought of having MFH, rather than me, teach our kids math–his math education, for various reasons, was an absolute trainwreck. It would be good for him to do it over.