We went to Austin's botanical gardens. I don't think it was the best/most verdant time of year for doing so, but the kids LOVED it. We paid a dollar a person and they just roamed around like free spirits. It was totally kid-directed and magical, and we had the place to ourselves. Definitely a win.
We also hosted Scotty's little kindergarten co-op for the second time. This one was more successful than the last. We talked about storytelling and read Billy Goats Gruff and talked about words telling a story versus pictures telling a story versus actions telling a story. Then we acted it out. It was funny to me how many times they wanted to act out the story. It took them a long time to get tired of it.
We usually take advantage of public school holidays to play with our public school friends. Last Monday (Columbus Day/Native American Day/Teacher inservice) we took a trip to the Amanda's house which also celebrated the fact that we bought a new car! Post to come on that later. We went to the cutest little pumpkin patch in all America. It was simple, but all five kids were completely entertained with very little Mom encouragement for an entire hour.
Scotty thought it was so great when he came home and found corn kernels in his pocket. A little souvenir. The kids and I stopped for dinner at McDonalds on the way home which was also very special. And I gained a lot of confidence driving the new car (a manual transmission) all that way.
We also joined a homeschool book club, which I'm loving. Our discussions have been really great--the kids have discussed very enthusiastically with only a little help from the parents. And we do a craft and a treat and the kids just play, play, play. It's awesome. Here we were doing 101 Dalmatians. Did you know it's a book?
The thing that triggered this post into being was having, yet again, someone say to me, "It's so great that you homeschool, but my relationship with my child would really suffer if I homeschooled. He/she just does so well at school, and I don't think it would be good for us if he/she were home all the time." The people who are saying this to me are very good parents. I've always thought there's just something weird about this kind of comment coming from them. I know they don't actually mean "I hate being with my child, and I want to stay as far away from them as our modern society allows." What they probably mean is, "Everybody needs some alone time and children need independence as they grow. Public school is a convenient way for me to get those two things." That is true, and homeschoolers arguably have to work a little harder to get their alone time needs filled. But I just don't think the answer to this problem is necessarily to send your child to public school. Why does God put us in families? Was it so that, when children reached the age of 5 (or 3), they could be sent to a government institution for half of their waking hours? Um, no. Public school is not part of the plan of salvation. It is not the key to successful parenting. It is not the thing without which the average parent would be incapable of maintaining their sanity. It is not a necessity. Parents and children are actually designed to be together. When we remember that, I think family life is happier whether or not your children go to public school.
And I'm not saying that public school is of the devil. If you are a public schooler, that is fine with me. You don't need to justify that decision to me at all. But please don't think that you can't handle having your children home. That being together more would somehow ruin your family. That's pernicious and false and believing it can only weaken you as a parent.
A subset of this problematic line of reasoning is, "I'm not patient. Even when we do homework at night, everyone is crying and screaming. I could never get my child to do schoolwork at home."
First of all, when you homeschool you don't have to enforce somebody else's idea of a good education or complete busy work so that somebody else can give your child a certain number of points which will turn into a letter grade. And it's really, really great not to have to do that. I just don't know how you public schoolers can get yourselves to do that hard, painful task of school-assigned homework. Wow. You must be really patient and saintly and selfless.
Second of all, you're right--you can't force your child to do anything and neither can I. Homeschoolers aren't any better at forcing their children to do schoolwork than public schoolers are. The lesson I'm learning more and more as a parent is that you can't actually force your child to do anything. You can control consequences and that is it. So we've got a few systems in place to reward the completion of schoolwork, and that's not hard, and you could do it too, but that's not really my point. Here's the thing about public school. Their system of external rewards is effective enough that they can get a good portion of students to complete assignments that the students don't think are interesting or inherently worthwhile. Grades and social pressure and group mentality and tradition and such make it so that many kids want to complete school assignments even though they may be boring and/or useless. (This isn't to say there aren't great teachers and great assignments in the school system. There are. Hooray for that.) This system works for lots of kids and can lead to true life-long learning and engagement. But we have to admit that this system also fails completely for lots of kids. It mostly works for the kids who have a good home life. And it mostly fails for the kids who don't have a good home life. The common denominator isn't the almighty public school; it's the almighty family.
If you have a good home, your kids will learn, whether or not they go to public school. This blog I was reading suggested that school should not be a place for learning curriculum, it should be a place that simulates a good home environment. And all of the children who already have a good home life should go home and leave all of the resources for the kids who don't have a good home life. I found this thought extremely interesting. I'm still pondering it.
Anyway...I'm believing more and more that no attempt should be made to reproduce the school's system of subjects and standard curriculum and grade levels and letter grades and such. It really, truly doesn't work well at home, and I don't think it's the best way to learn. That's what I'm discovering. And I'm finally giving myself permission to stop trying to force my kids to learn something they don't want to learn. It's just too much work when there are so many things they do want to learn about. My job is to find those things. And maybe a few more people would try homeschool if they realized they don't have to be the school.
So does that mean we can never get our kids to do any schoolwork? Just unlimited video games and TV and candy? No. At least, that's not what we want to do. There's value to having a good teacher. There's value to trying something you initially don't think you would like. But for day-to-day homeschooling you have to be a lot more flexible and joy-filled and curiosity-based about schoolwork. It almost never does any good to force learning (at public school or at home). But at home you can't hide that fact behind the external motivators that public schools have. So it's imperative that homeschoolers find things that are truly engaging to the kids. If you don't want to have to do that, fair enough. Public school will be fine if your children are in a stable home. But if you are going to try to homeschool, all schoolwork has to be something they are truly engaged in. Otherwise it is just as hard as the non-homeschoolers imagine it to be. But when you do find those things that your child truly cares about...it's great and surprising and fun and cool and powerful. Like learning always is.
This post isn't meant as an eternal, undying commitment to homeschooling. It isn't meant as a condemnation of public school. It isn't meant as my final word on this topic. It is meant as a reflection on and accumulation of my experiences and attempts to understand why I homeschool and what homeschooling is and isn't to me.
Okay, I'm done for now. Thanks, blog, for letting me air out these thoughts.
2 comments:
Time with the bestie!!!! Loved your tour of the gardens and your word of homeschooling. And this is why I love that you home school.
You have given this issue some very thoughtful consideration.
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