Homeschool Tidbit

Just a little more about homeschooling, a tiny vignette of personal experience in the midst of all the statistics, accusations, defenses, and justifications you find about the matter online.

When my mother told me I would not be returning to junior high in the Fall I nearly died inside. For 7 years I'd taken the bus, sat in a classroom, sweated through gym, ate lunch in a crowded cafeteria and savored the moments of recess. Now I'd be working out math and grammar on my own at the kitchen table next to my little sister? My friends! My freedom! I wanted to find a way to sneak out to school every morning anyway; maybe my mother wouldn't notice.

By October the knots of my life I didn't even know were there began to untangle. Friends? I stayed in touch with school friends and met a slew of kids who were also homeschooled. Freedom? Well, freedom was found in a babysitting job (which meant my own money!) and hours of time to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. Soon homeschooling felt less like a punishment for the supposed failures of public education and more like perpetual summer break with geography and literature thrown in.

Don't mistake this for laxness on my parent's part: I worked hard to get through all my subjects each day. But there was a new love affair with learning as I realized I could disagree with my curriculum and say so (so much for the accusation of homeschooling equaling indoctrination); I could go down rabbit trails of my choosing in history; I could finally spend hours on my blasted math books trying to fully understand algebra, no teacher moving me ahead before I was ready. And I read and read and read and read-- poetry, novels, plays, world literature, I devoured books with leisure and love.

Whatever my parent's intent may have been, I benefited from those years learning in their home.

I know, if we homeschool our children we are in for years of having to explain why we are not right wing conservatives, that you can be a homeschooler and an intellectual, that we do not wish to shield our children from some big world outside our home. But so what? Just as I'd never expect another person to sway from their educational convictions because of my own opinions, so I won't let the naysayers wear me down.