On my drive into work this morning, I listened to a morning talk show guy interview a public school official who seemed to be quite smug. The school district had just won an appeal to the state supreme court and won the right to force kids into year-round schools of the districts choice, even if it did not work out for the family. A little later, I found an LA Times article on Slashdot about how difficult it is to fire bad teachers. There was some horrific information in the article. We lived through some of that same kind of horror when our children were in the Albany, Oregon public school system. Some of it is even documented on this blog. It was good to have some more confirmation that we made the right choice to homeschool. The crazy part is that, in spite of the really weak academics and the horrendous socialization at both the schools in Oregon and the schools in our area of North Carolina, many parents praise them as great schools because they never took the time to figure out what is really going on.
That got me to thinking that it is kind of sad that most people decide to start homeschooling, not so much because they think homeschool is good. They start homeschooling because the alternatives are so bad. That was certainly true in our case. We did not realize, until after we had done it for awhile, that homeschool was the very best option for our family on just about every measure. Our kids were especially better off socially, but they were also better off academically and with respect to health and happiness. Now that we have some experience, we do not think so much about having had to leave a bad school with bad teachers because we see the positive benefits of homeschooling daily. Still it is good to have a reminder every now and then of why we stared in the first place.
That’s a very good point. I’m excited to see what happens, though, as these second generation homeschoolers start up. Their experience and background will be coming from a positive experience with homeschooling. I wonder if that will change the questions/arguments at all. For instance, will “socialization” finally be removed from the reasons not to homeschool because so many well socialized homeschoolers will now be homeschooling their children?
~Luke
Boy, I hope that is what happens, Luke. I think a lot of us are tired of explaining the whole socialization thing ad infinitum. The thing that makes me craziest about the whole subject is that the socialization doubters never make the caveats about the bad socialization that takes place in government schools that they expect us to make for those (many fewer in both raw numbers and percentages) examples of bad socialization amongst homeschoolers. I have a LOT of hope for the second generation homeschoolers.
Ken, it was a bad public school experience that brought us home. Joseph was not learning to read, no matter what we/they did. On top of that, he was becoming an emotionally withdrawn and self-critical little boy. He even asked why he was born.
I became determined that whether he read or not, I wanted a happy and emotionally healthy little boy who realized life was about more than end-of-year tests. We brought him home and I am do very, very glad. He is a great reader now, though we’re still working on spelling, and he circumvented, I am sure, a lot of tough social situations since he was already being streamlined into the “lazy” and “problem” categories.
On top of that, to punish little boys with a lot of little-boy energy, the school was taking away recess. The teachers hurt themselves by doing this because it only leads to more frustration and bottled-up energy. There were SO many other things that I could write about, but that’s enough.
Lynn
That is a great story Lynn. The reality is that we could have lived (unhappily) with the academics at the school by essentially doing what we are doing now only I think the call it afterschooling in some circles. By far the biggest reason for pulling our kids out of the schools was that one of them was falling through the cracks, while the other one was exhibiting an aggressiveness that went away when we started homeschooling. It is very encouraging to know that other people made the same decision we made for very similar reasons.
We don’t have any “bad” public school stories (for our children, only our own experiences) but rather success stories in our family. This is what we like to focus on. (Without apologizing for bragging!)
Lynn’s recess denial story brought this conversation to mind. The other day I was explaining to the reporter (who’s shadowing us for a story on homeschooling) how we had changed our son’s schedule so that he spent his time before lunch working on “school” indoors and after lunch outside working on various projects because that’s (in our opinion) where boys need to be. Later when Konrad walked past, she asked him what he thought about spending half his day outside. He turned to look her in the face and said with great feeling, “I love it!”
I have some of that same feeling about staying positive on stuff like this. Even though I feel vaguely uncomfortable about writing about the negative aspects of some of this, it is good for me to remember why we do what we do. It really IS great that your kids have never had to deal with some of the government school issues. I wish it was that way for every kid.