Yes.
“That’s the big debate in our house now, whether to homeschool through high school. Did you use videos and co-ops and that kind of thing?”
I didn’t want to bore the whole group with the whole long answer, so for the rest of the Bible study, I was distracted by all the things unsaid. Things like that the biggest advantage of homeschooling, in my mind, is the opportunity to learn for the sake of learning, to step outside the academic game and study the things that fascinate you, to learn the way you learn best, to learn from rich life experience and not just memorize things for a test and a grade. I would have said that if you’re just going to create a mini-school, you might as well send your kids to school, because school probably does the school thing better than you can.
Not to say that co-ops and core curriculum and all that doesn’t have a place. And certainly, people might have very conventional ideas about education and still homeschool for other reasons. If you’re going to educate conventionally, homeschooling at least lets you do it efficiently and leave the rest of the day open for exploring and creating and just being a kid. But feeling obligated to recreate school at home is such a sad waste of homeschooling’s potential.
This is all fresh in my mind because I am, for the next month, doing in med school something that’s very like homeschooling. It’s a reading month, a free-form elective that requires merely a topic, an advisor, and whatever sort of work the two of you agree on. I had my first meeting with my advisor today, discussing a handful of journal articles we’d read, and came away thinking, This is what education is supposed to be like.
In a classroom setting, I would have been given a sheaf of articles in a coursepack, which I would have perused dutifully–if at all–the night before the class. Then I would have struggled to stay awake through a long small-group discussion of a topic about which nobody except the disheartened professor seemed to care.
But this month it’s different. This is my topic, spinning along in whatever direction my interests and my advisor’s guidance takes it. I read and thought and came to today’s meeting with questions, eager to explore them with someone knowledgable and equally interested. I didn’t have to ward of yawns, because the topics we were discussing were things I’d been mulling over all week.
I didn’t find it hard, when I started college, to adjust to playing the academic game. (Actually, I quickly discovered that I didn’t need to work as hard as I thought I did.) And I’ve been in this world for long enough that I’m used to it. But days like today, when I get to breathe again the free air of just learning, I realize that the dad at Bible study had it wrong.
It’s not that I “was homeschooled.” It’s that I am a homeschooler.
5 Comments
Great post, Claire! I recently graduated from homeschooled high school, and because of the love of learning that was instilled in me and the realization that it can take place outside the classroom, I still consider myself to be ‘in school.’ I’m still reading, still learning, still pursuing my educational interests, though I won’t be going to college until next fall.
I am a homschoooler as well. =) Like you, I’ve found that I can “play the academic game” pretty easily, and was surprised that it wasn’t as hard as I thought. In fact, it’s been easier and less stressful than when I was home and had to plan out my own lessons. But, I much prefer the home-learning way. I am very much someone who learns best on their own, though there have been some good things about the classroom. This is my first semester at college, so it’s been quite a change, but I have adjusted pretty easily.
I enjoyed your post – thanks for sharing!
Yeah home-schoolers! Another home-schooler here who didn’t have a problem adjusting to college and who still loves to learn.
Enjoyed this article.
“I am a homeschooler” I think that is the ultimate statement of a successful homeschool graduate! Homeschooling is a lifestyle, a method of preparing a you to teaching yourself to find out what you want to know, for the rest of your life!
It is interesting to note all the comments of one gets about homeschooling “even through highschool”. I think the “classroom” method of sitting down with mom or dad as teacher at the white board is actually better for younger children to help instill the basics. And use highschool to pursue interests and hone your self teaching skills. I know for myself this was the case, I largely self taught through highschool with all those great curriculums geared directly toward the student. Mom mainly corrected my papers!
i know what you mean! it’s not an activity you once did, it’s an identity. I go to the University of California, and i still find myself explaining my antics to people as, “I’m a homeschooler”