Browsing through my morning news sites, I came across a home schooling piece written by Andrew O’Hehir for Salon.com. In home schooling their twins, he writes, he and his wife Leslie draw on
some of the alternative educational theories that inform the home-school movement. These include the ideas of “unschooling” guru John Holt, the literature-based approach identified with 19th-century English educator Charlotte Mason, and the “classical education” model popularized in bestselling books by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise.
I was particularly struck by two things. First, note this family’s journey into home education: a we-don’t-have-any-other-option decision.
…[H]ome schooling sneaked up on us, or at least on me. It’s true that Leslie knew about the rapidly expanding world of urban, mostly secular home schooling through online parents’ groups, and was already drawn to alternative educational approaches. But right up until the moment she quit her lefty-nonprofit job early in 2007, when our twins were 2½, we were a pretty typical big-city, middle-class family, with two kids, two incomes and a full-time nanny.
One of the numerous screwy things about raising children these days, especially in a hotbed of social-Darwinist parenting like New York, is that by taking time off to hang out with a couple of toddlers, Leslie became a home-schooler by default. Neither of us completely understood this until it happened. But in an economy that essentially requires all able-bodied adults to work outside the home, and an environment where preschools for 3-year-olds have an intensely competitive application process (and can cost $15,000 a year), you can’t opt out without making a statement, whether you intend one or not.
I suspect that ten or fifteen years ago, Brooklyn parents searching for an alternative to pricey high-pressure preschool would no more have considered calling themselves “home schoolers” than they’d have considered moving into a sod house on the prairie and cooking over an open fire. Which leads me to my second thought. For those of you who still haven’t noticed, home schooling has moved off the far fringes of American educational choices.
Over ten years ago, when our literary agent sent the proposal for The Well-Trained Mind to W. W. Norton, our editor-to-be had to convince a whole lot of skeptics that there really were parents out there who needed the book. (And would buy it, publishing being what it is.) I have the feeling he was swimming against the tide for quite a while: “I’m really hopeful about this book’s success,” I remember an editorial assistant at Norton saying to me, right before it came out. “I mean, there have to be people, like out in the Midwest, who are really doing this kind of thing.”
I should add, quickly, that the good folks at Norton have been thoroughly converted by this point. And so have a lot of others.
Not that home schooling has moved firmly to the center of American culture. I know just how widespread home education is, and I’m still kind of startled to see this piece in the we’re-so-mainstream-it-hurts Salon. And Mr. O’Heheir’s initial column about home schooling his kids begins, “Call us crackpots, but…” (That column’s also worth a read, particularly for his observations about the defensiveness that other parents often feel towards home educators.)
But I think we’re better off on the edges. I actually hope that home education remains the highly diverse, alternative movement that it is. Because it’s alternative, parents have to think hard before choosing it–something that’s vital when you’re embarking on such an important project.
So welcome to my blog reflecting on the alternative, diverse, sort-of-fringe movement that home education has become.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
We’ve had some trouble adjusting this new blog to comments–if you can’t post a comment, send an email to webmaster@welltrainedmind.com.
Susan, thank you for creating a home educating-specific blog, although I’m sure I’ll continue to enjoy the “History of the (Whole) World” blog as well.
Welcome to the Blogosphere! I read your book when I was just starting out. It helped me greatly in finding my own style. I look forward to reading your posts!
I thought the article was interesting as well. We are just starting out with a K student and where we live homeschooling is almost the new “normal.” I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Personally? I’ve read too many articles like this to be interested anymore. I’ve been crackpotting away at this for a while now; we’re in our 11th year. While I used to have conversations like this years ago, I don’t anymore. For me they only exist in the pro-homeschooling literature. Few people that I meet for the first time are really that intrigued or ignorant about homeschooling. Nearly everyone knows someone who is doing it or is talking about doing it or has ditched it for something else because it didn’t work.
I am really starting to suspect that this kind of chatter primarily reflects homeschoolers projecting what they have read about into the conversations that they are having. There are oodles of published pages about homeschooling – books, web sites, chat boards, and blogs – that address these kinds of conversations. They come complete with the uninformed but curious stranger’s questions followed by the standard “I’m launching out into new waters” answers about the oldie questions: socialization, curriculum, and college.
No one seems to ask me the socialization question anymore. The answer to that one is everywhere. When folks hear that I homeschool, they usually recite that answer back to me. “When I first heard about homeschooling, I wondered about the socialization but I’ve heard that you guys have that all handled. I hear that homeschooled kids are pretty active. I was wondering about high school and college though. How are you going to handle that?”
Now that one, that question begs a more thorough answer. And in my experience the homeschooling can-do literature could use a serious shift in tone regarding the tail-end of this project. Sure you can hs K without a curriculum, sir. You can tack the kids onto your life; they can just bounce about doing what you do. Yes, it really does work. But that mode, that way of doing and being, can be a recipe for frustration later on. It is SO hard to let go of that. And you just have to in order to move forward. And I just don’t think we are chatting and blogging and writing enough about THAT experience in a transparent way. Eventually one of the little ones decides that they aren’t interested in gardening anymore. They start to care about things that I know NOTHING about. The homeschooling literature has the pat answer to that one too. “Find them a mentor, someone to cultivate their natural curiousity.” Hmmm… Great idea. In the beginning. When they are small. But somehow, somewhere THAT simple idea grows until it becomes nearly unmanageable. I said nearly. Almost tipping over the edge of manageable. And still it grows. We’re still hanging on here. Spinning, but still clutching at sanity – you know that haunting picture of living-real-life-here-not-some-sterile-classroomie-thing. Who are we kidding? We’re trying to do both, and primarily wondering if the tension between the two is the BULK of the problem!
Life is good. Really. It is.
I have an 11th grader, a 9th grader, and little man in 7th bringing up the rear. And they all seems to care about things that I know little-to-nothing about. There’s more though. We attended a college fair this month. I have “kept good records.” I did the work. And I am doing the work. And it’s a ton of work! It is. Yes, yes, yes my kids are learning to work independently. We are not doing “school at home.” I’m not a novice at this; I (generally) know what I am doing. Etc, Etc, Etc.
But I know that I need to shift my conversation. I generally don’t read homeschool books anymore. And I don’t repeat their answers anymore. Homeschooled kids get into college. That used to be an issue. It just isn’t any more. And homeschoolers aren’t the only ones who know that! John-Q-Public knows that and he is starting to ask tougher questions. He has the basics about hsing down pat. Now he wants to know, “What about lab sciences? And high school math? And foreign languages? And college-admission testing? And ……. How do you do those things well on your own?”
I hear my friends answer him with the standard by-the-book answers. “Oh, there are lots of on-line resources now. The internet is fabulous. Kids can learn anything they want to know if you teach them to be life-long-learners.” Mr. J-Q-P seems confused by that answer even though you can tell that he feels like he just missed some major nugget of wisdom. After all, it was offered up so confidently. It must be true. Right? The conversation ends. Just like the book said.
But the conversation hasn’t ended that easily for me. The internet, on-line classes, oodles of resources (and I do mean OODLES!) have been a mixed blessing around here. I have no life-long learners. I am raising pretty normal kids who would rather play video games than explore the depths of string theory. They would rather sleep in than rise early to tackle one more challenging pre-calc problem. And they definitely don’t know what they don’t know, so they don’t know to look for it.
All on-line classes are not created equal.
All curriculum is not created equal.
The internet is still primarily a time-waster.
And NO! little man – that DVD program that I purchased, so you could learn chemistry from someone other that me, IS NOT TV. Stop staring at it slack-jawed. You have to engage with it in order to learn something. DANG this is going to be harder than I thought! Times multiple subjects. Times three kids. Times life!
… and I spend too much time in the car. Stop telling me to “car-school.” Yes, yes, yes we try to make good use of our time in the car. I’ve become a master at plumbing the depths of Transcendental literature in Socratic-dialogue fashion while maneuvering in Jersey traffic. But it is hectic. And it definitely doesn’t feel at all like making furniture out of sticks in my basement. I suspect that’s because it isn’t meant to feel that way.
But I still need to feel something.
When folks ask me the real-life 2009 questions about homeschooling, I don’t know how to answer them now. The questions have changed. For both of us. The way that I answer those questions will probably make a long-term difference somehow. At least it will for me and mine.
So yes, I do generally wish that homeschooling would disappear from the public’s interest. It’s tough to answer questions that I used to have answers for. Now I just stand there and sort ideas. The questioner is left wondering how I can be homeschooling high-schoolers when it appears that I haven’t even considered the basic questions about hsing high school. It reminds me of when folks used to ask my kids what grade they were in. My kids would just sit there quietly sorting the numbers on the front of their books. They were trying to decide if they should offer up the biggest number, the smallest number, or something in between. After a painful moment of silence, I would say, “They’re homeschooled.” Until I realized that probably wasn’t the best answer. The only conclusion that the listener could walk away with was, “Wow. They say that they’re homeschooled, but they don’t even know what grade they’re in.”
My own self-sorting silence probably isn’t doing much for homeschooling’s reputation. Maybe I should just go back and re-memorize a couple of someone else’s answers.
Peace,
Janice
Janice,
I have to say I agree with you on wanting more info about high school and the transition to college. I’m actually secretly hoping for another edition of the Well-Trained Mind to come out after Susan Wise Bauer’s kids start to make the leap! I’m homeschooling 4 with my oldest in 7th grade and love the newest WTM edition for it’s more detailed coverage of the Logic stage.
I think we will always have to answer the basic homeschooling questions though, as more and more keep taking the jump into homeschooling. I, for one, certainly didn’t think much about it until I was faced with frustration over my kids’ schooling 4 years ago. I often remind my kids when going out during “school hours” that their good behavior can be the best advertizing for homeschooling. However you choose to homeschool, the success of the venture must boil down to whether or not your kids are productive, responsbile, well-adjusted adults.
Regards,
Maureen
janice,
you are a great writer. do you blog? your name doesn’t link to a website so i’m assuming not. you should, and this comment, slightly tweaked for the situation, should be your first post.
Very nicely stated, Janice!
I too am homeschooling a 9th grader and would love to see this subject addressed.
Janice,
Perhaps this is a regional issue? I still usually get “Is it legal?” when I say we homeschool, followed by “What about friends?” and “Can they still go to college?”. I have short answers worked out: yes, gymnastics every afternoon, yes. Then they usually get defensive and say I must be really smart and patient. I have easy answers for that, too: community college and only as patient as the least patient ps teacher. Sometimes it seems like they don’t like their children enough to want to spend all day with them or they don’t want to give up their job because of the luxuries it brings and I think it is sad that they don’t want to homeschool. Sometimes they would like to but know their own limitations or have no time because of other more pressing obligations (like physical needs) and we can comiserate. I only occasionally run into someone knowledgable. I’m always wildly curious about how they are managing all the things I struggle with, but they never seem to be willing to offer any details whatsoever if they are past elementary school. Maybe you are right about the lack of honesty.
I agree that things change when your children get to middle and high school, and with the exception of TWTM, homeschooling books tend to hastily mention school-at-home options or unworkable-for-us ones like Apologia science and then abruptly end. It is most unsatisfactory. Thank goodness for TWTM boards. And thank goodness for our community college.
I agree that it is very hard to let go of the idea that children are little sponges who soak up everything they need to know from everyday life. In my experience, that works well for the first two years of their life and then you need help because they want to know why God invented death and exactly how big their wings would have to be if they wanted to fly and how much fuel it takes to get to the moon in a rocket. And from there it is an awfully short jump to the workings of particle accelerators. Unschooling is way too much work for the parent because they aren’t allowed to teach anything in a methodical or unfun way. I’ve always been grateful that mine had at least kindergarten at public school, so that when they came home, they had some idea of education being time spent sitting reading and writing. I set school hours from the beginning and we stuck to them. It was to keep me from feeling guilty at first, but in the end, it turned out to be a good way to keep us from having arguements over whether they really had to do school right now.
But still, even in high school, I want to take advantage of homeschooling. Part of the reason we are homeschooling is to spare our children the misery of sitting through school and learning everything school fashion. With my middle one, who just went to college, I managed to find a balance between textbook academics and a more unschooling way of learning. Or rather, he found a way himself, by going off peacewalking for part of the year. Now we are trying to find a similar balance for our youngest.
The guidance councilor part is horrible. It has taken so, so, so much time on my part. We have a good system worked out, one that we should be able to apply to our youngest as well, but it took tons of time for me to figure it all out. Community college classes are the key for us. We don’t do grades, I’m unwilling to put tons of time into testing, and the courses aren’t date-able, so colleges have precious little to judge us on, other than those CC classes. It is all pretty scary.
One thing that irks me is that homeschoolers keep saying that public school is inefficient and homeschooling takes less time. Everything takes us forever and I am dead sure the public school is more efficient and often more effective than I am. Academically, we may not be doing as well as our very excellent public school, but I think education-wise, we are. And just because the public school does a good job teaching something doesn’t mean my poor children manage to learn it. We figured that out the hard way.
Anyway, I’ll be waving from the car, a place in which I spend hours every day. If I notice you. Usually, I’m trying to visualize algebra problems to figure out where my son went wrong.
I was very enthusiastic about homeschooling high school last spring, as I wrapped up and summarized what my middle one had accomplished. Now I’m back to the beginning of 9th grade with my youngest and find I’m back to feeling panicky, lost, and ambivalent. I’d dig out one of my finishing-off posts for you, but another unspoken disadvantage of homeschooling high school is the terrible loss when the high schooler goes off to college. I’m not sure I can bear to look. Do a search for Nan in Mass and sea chanties on the WTM board and you might find it.
-Nan
I was struck by one thing: how in the world does he combine unschooling, Charlotte Mason and classical education?!?!
anne–
for me, that isn’t hard to wrap my brain around. charlotte mason’s methods combine some elements of classical education and some elements of unschooling– voila! a homeschooling family could easily approach, say, history & lit in a classical manner but do science with an “unschooling” approach. i suppose this is what i have done, especially in my kids’ younger years. for years i struggled with “what sort of homeschooler” i was and finally decided that i was a “charlotte-mason-influenced eclectic with a semi-classical bent”. it works for us!
Take a peek at the earlier October archive of the New York Times blog Motherlode, which ran a link to the Salon.com article and got 115 comments; there are still a whole lot of uninformed people out there who don’t bother to educate themselves before pronouncing or questioning quite grandly. It’s almost funny that the last few commenters repeated similar questions after legions of patient homeschoolers answered them over and over and over in earlier comments. There are lots of passionate defenders of public education out there who believe that if you live in a “good” district, there is no excuse for not enrolling your child — oh, but for a special needs kid it’s okay, although the main argument for keeping a kid in school is that parents can’t possibly know everything they need to know to teach a regular kid. Somehow they do magically know all about teaching one with special needs or a learning disability. (I suspect this is partly or even largely relief at the idea of getting a child out of the system who needs lots of individual help, so that this does not somehow take away from their own kid.)
There’s another interesting article you can access through the brainChild website, by Laura Brodie. She has a book coming out next April called “One Good Year,” about her daughter’s homeschooled 5th grade and herself as an example of what she calls the occasional homeschooler. One of my good friends did her PhD dissertation just a few years ago on people who drop in and out of homeschooling, or who have one child learning at home, one in public school, or all sorts of combinations and manifestations. In the Brodie article, several children ask their mothers for a homeschool year (or more than one year), and that’s certainly a good indication of how mainstream we have become in some ways: that kids know enough to ask to do it, often to their parents’ surprise. It’s an interesting look at how temporary homeschoolers have to try to juggle the state’s curricular requirements with the children’s needs and interests that led to pulling them out in the first place.
I agree that staying on the fringe is a good thing…taking our kid’s education too casually because it is suddenly ‘in’ in your neighborhood crowd would be a disservice to our kids.
I think we are still on the fringe, I still get the “what about socialization question” and yes, it still irks me. And yet, so many more people are venturing into homeschooling that when people find out we homeschool the usual reply is “oh, my neighbor/cousin/friend homeschools”. I admit I prefer this to the negative judgmental looks/comments I used to get 10 years ago.
love the new blog!
Thank you Susan for opening yet another door for crackpots.
Ooooooo, this is going to be a great blog!! Glad the comment section is fixed – I discovered this blog the first day you started it, and wanted to comment on it!
“Because it’s alternative, parents have to think hard before choosing it–something that’s vital when you’re embarking on such an important project.” I didn’t start off thinking hard before choosing homeschooling – I chose it because so many aspects were immediately attractive to me as a new parent. I find, though, as my kids get older, that I do more hard thinking and more hard choosing, among public-schoolers and homeschoolers alike. “Uh, yes, I actually do want my kids to get math facts memorized, so we have to spend time on that. Yes, I do want my kids to learn to analyze a book, so I have to spend time getting comfortable with a teaching pattern for that without bogging them down. Yes, I am teaching Latin even though (the general) you don’t get why I bother because it’s not a modern language. Yes, I still do the majority of reserving library books, so that we keep going in a general direction each year – though my kids get a wide variety within those chosen books, AND they get guided on how to reserve books of their own choosing. And yes, I let my kids just go play/read when their daily studies/chores are done – they need that – they don’t need to run off to multiple activities each week. Not yet.”
Janice, your description of driving in Jersey traffic while in deep discussion had me really laughing out loud!!!!! I loved your whole post.
Having been homeschooling for 5 years before WTM burst on the scene (and buying a copy ASAP after hearing Gene Vieth speak about it), I understand the search for a methodology that fits one’s style. I have answered the “Big S” question in more forms than I can count, but no one ever asks me about the two areas where I feel most uncertain: foreign language and college applications. Becoming our own guidance counselors on top of everything else is a bit much for me – but perhaps I have an overly rosy idea about what real high school guidance counselors do for actual students.
FWIW, our decision pathway was much the same as the author of the Salon article: can’t afford private school even on 2 salaries; want to spend the best part of the day with the family instead of the worst; have a way to recede gracefully from the world of work (in my case freelance technical editting for awhile). The longer we do it the more precious (and challenging) this pathway becomes to us. I have 4 kids now, and the oldest is graduating and applying to art schools, while the youngest is reading chapter books and socializing with everyone she meets.
Happy to be out of the mainstream, because of what we avoid; happy to be on our own pathway because of what we choose and what we discover.
Laurel, doing college applications the senior year is like taking on a part-time job! My son and I did them together. There were endless forms and tests and deadlines and you can’t screw any of them up. All I could think about was doing it TIMES TWO when my twins are that age!!
I am fortunate that my oldest wants art school, where they don’t care much about peripheral things (like foreign language or advanced math) and just want to see your portfolio…and hers rocks. Still, it’s all about scholarship $$ for her to get that dream, so we’re working hard. I view this as a dress rehearsal for my sophomore, who’s going to want an engineering school–which will have lots more testing, deadlines, and competition associated with the process.
Two at one time…ack!
Dear Susan,
Your brother had a wonderful idea – I really appreciate this blog. I live in Pasadena, CA and am a 36 yr old Biola/Talbot grad who used to read your occasional articles in Christianity Today. Years ago, I joined a group of women who used your Well-Educated Mind as a guide for novels. When I became interested in homeschooling, your W-T Mind was a natural fit, and I am now in my 4th year of educating my kids. I am thankful for you and find this forum especially helpful; although it is fun to read your other blog, I am more interested in your views as they relate specifically to homeschooling.
I have not finished reading your W-T Mind 3rd Ed., and perhaps you covered it there, but I would be interested in your take on homeschooling charter schools. In our co-op, there is much debate and discussion over it, and I assume it is an issue in states besides California.
Thank you for your time, and again, for this forum.
I often cringe at reading posts, blogs, etc., written by novice home schoolers with young children. Although I want to be encouraging to these newbies, their days speak nothing to my days. Pftt, and my children aren’t even in high school yet. Like Janice, I wish someone with much experience would get out there onto the www and let me know what things I should come to expect; afterall, I don’t need to read another blog about trips to the museum counting as school. I’m way beyond that.
Oh my, 561 replies to this article. Did he hit a nerve or what?
While some parents do think long and hard before venturing into homeschooling, others dabble in homeschooling for a few years only to find after a while that homeschooling is indeed work, unpaid work, and requires an immense amount of dedication and self-education on the part of the parent who takes on the role as parent/teacher.
I have taken two kids through 7th & 8th grade and watched them flounder in public high school. The biggest mistake I made was finding what worked for them at home, retooling an assignment to their liking, and ensuring they learned. I failed to train them to buck up and just do the work without asking too many questions. I allowed them to question authority and seek the truth. I might have come close to teaching them how to learn, but I failed miserably when it came to teaching them how to “do” school. The four years they spent in high school never capitalized on what they learned at home. They both gave up; they both stopped reading and learning; they both developed contempt for authority. Ouch! Now I am looking at middle school again with the idea of continuing through high school, but the guides are few. I am looking at the mountain of high school knowing that I will need to redefine my educational agenda—what are we doing and why? What is the end game and how do we get there? Homeschooling is not for the faint-of-heart. I actively discourage it for those who ask and appear to just be window shopping the idea.
I look forward to future blogs!
Cheers,
Wildiris
I’m in my sixth year of homeschooling two kids, 4th and 7th grade, and I agree with what most of the folks here are saying. I get tired of the “homeschool” get-togethers in my area where mostly preschoolers show up, or how much info there is our there about how to teach the primary grades. I’ve also watched our fellow homeschoolers slowly fall out of the ranks as the kids get older. When my oldest was in first grade, we had a group of homeschoolers that included almost a dozen families, now we are down to two or three. As a result I have less families to bouce ideas off of about the day to day challenges of homeschooling middle school, and much less social support. Susan’s blog helps remind me I am sane, and not too far off track (some days do need lots of chocolate, or cupcake making, or cuddling with the dog, hopefully in that order) but it doesn’t replace the “why is my kid putting jelly in his shoe?” telephone calls I could have with my homeschooling buddies when the kids were younger. I could use better advise on the day-to-day quirks and quarrels of hs with kids who aren’t babies anymore.
Hooray for this blog!!! Thanks, Susan, for answering a long-held prayer for MORE of you on the web! (I’ve already read ALL the articles one can find online!)
I am a 2nd year hs’er with a 4th and a 1st grader. Despite their youth and my relatively recent entry into homeschooling, I, too, find myself at a loss when it comes to finding information about the later grades. I concur with a previous poster ~ Deo gratias for the Well-Trained Mind and its Logic and Rhetoric Stage sections.
There are many wonderful (and not so wonderful) resources out there for the younger years but I tend to be a big-picture girl; I want to relate what I am doing now with what will come later. But, no— “get your child a mentor/tutor” or “enroll her in the local community college” isn’t enough for me. And I am already overwhelmed with the Great Books list (especially since I got through my 4 years of Catholic high school with my friend Cliff, who proved I needn’t even open the real books to pass the exams!).
Looking forward to your perspective as you pen here on this and various other hs’ing related topics. Your voice is valued.
PS JANICE: I second the notion that you should publish a blog. I’d read it!
I want to dress up and visit the museum like those little kids!
OK, seriously, last Tuesday I hosted our area’s support group’s mother’s fellowship night at my house (and the house is still clean, who hoo!) getting ready derailed our kitchen table homeschool time, but I was hoping the experienced mothers would give me the golden key of how to pull of logic stage logistics: we are running all over creation, running out of time, and I do not feel like one of those ladies in a magazine.
Mostly other ladies with kids hitting the middle school grind showed up hoping the same thing – so we commiserated, vowed to be inspired and work harder, exchanged laughs, curricula ideas and recipes. But no high school homeschool veterans showed up with golden keys.
Is the golden key to logic stage logistics staying home from support meetings and grinding away at kitchen table homeschool?
Ugh I hope not. Christine
I have discovered that being more like the turtle than the hare will bring my children long term success.Consistency is more effective than any great idea out there. I am mom to DS13, DS11, and DS5. You are right those moms of high schoolers have their noses to the grindstone and if they attend such get togethers they would be soliciting constant interruptions in their homeschool day by inquiry minds who are likely ” a flash in the homeschool pan.” We are in need of veteran h-school moms who will be transparent and available, even if it is through blogs like this. Kudos to you susan!