Why We Homeschool & Other Mysteries

I realize that “Why We Homeschool” is probably one of the most-used titles on blogs and even Youtube videos. It’s effective, however. I know that when I was researching homeschooling I didn’t care as much about the statistics as I did about the experiences of individual families. I also think that as many homeschoolers as possible need to be semi-visible to correct some of the misconceptions, and they are both legion and understandable, of the general public.

(I know that "homeschool" is usually hyphenated, but I think it's time to drop the hyphen. Maybe that's just my own bit of micro-rebellion at the system, or my own tiny protest for societal change.)

Our daughter is now 15, and she’s been homeschooled her entire life. Right now she’s at camp. Contrary to popular belief about homeschoolers she 1) LOVES to be around other young people. She’s a natural extrovert. 2) We do NOT keep her in a box. And 3) she does NOT speak Latin, read Shakespeare, is nowhere near going to college yet, and does not have a miniature nuclear reactor in our basement. We don't even have a basement.

I credit homeschooling, at least partially, with making her into a generally polite, loving, friendly, candid young person with a love for the outdoors and photographing wildlife. In many schools a person with her personality would have fallen through the cracks, labeled, or been beaten down. Now, homeschooling has NOT been extremely successful with making her naturally neat or organized…but that’s another story.

As for our homeschooling adventure, I actually did NOT start out being a fan of homeschooling. My husband and I are both academic success-stories as far as that goes. (He was gifted in math and has been described as “scary smart” by one of his college professors.) I went to a boarding high school for the gifted, was a National Merit Scholar, went to a good private Methodist College and was graduated Summa Cum Laude, then went to grad school. I felt comfortable in academia. Plus, the first homeschoolers that I met were, well, weird. My idea was that my children, if any, were going to go to a nice conservative private school and wear cute little uniforms.

After my husband and I married in our early 30s and began to think about our future children’s educations, he told me that he’d like them to be homeschooled. Again, I wasn’t impressed. I agreed to do some research, however, and, to make a long story short, I became a convert on many different levels.

*In the end I felt called to homeschool. We are moderately-conservative (I use that term loosely, because it is very subjective.) Protestants, and homeschooling is one way of instilling morals and a Christian worldview. I still struggle with a secular worldview gained, in part, through my secular education, although I went to school at a time and place when many of our administrators and teachers were openly devout people. While this is no judgment of anyone else, I could not in good conscience give an account of my life to God if I had not done everything I could do in order to instill in my daughter a more Christian worldview.

*We felt that the school-system has too much control of people’s lives, when what they “produce” is so inconsistent. I used to interview people for jobs. Although now I understand WHY so many of the applicants probably couldn’t write or spell well, it is really eye-opening the low educational level of many people who hold high school diplomas. Some of this is due to factors that I may address in another post.

*We felt that the school system often dehumanizes and categorizes students, and also turns a blind eye to the bullying of the weak. We object to this on both a philosophical and religious level.

*We value a “solid” education. Now, my ideas about this have changed a LOT over the decades. I never questioned my definition of education, or how an education is gained, before reading some books about homeschool philosophy but, dog-gone it, what the homeschoolers were saying made a lot of SENSE. It was a complete paradigm-shift for me, and I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

For now, enjoy the photo of the two Armand Marseille (German bisque) dolls c. 1890s-1900s. These are both common molds: the one on the left is a Queen Louise; the other is a 390. Notice the tatted trim on the 390's dress. They are sitting in an old-style (back-front) school desk from Lisbon, Louisiana, and looking at a mid-19th century book of children's stories.