I wanted to preface this with an acknowledgement that some of my opinions may sound harsh. I don’t mean to be insensitive about children who do not have the same opportunities that my daughter and my family does. But when making the decision to homeschool I have had to keep my own daughter’s interests at the forefront and that has led me to formulate some opinions that, under other circumstances, I would consider inconsiderate.
Part of my struggle with the decision to homeschool has been the time commitment it would require on my part because it would require me to put my career on hiatus for some time. One of my aspirations as a librarian is to, essentially, provide all children with educational opportunities. But again, and this ties in with what I said in my preface a few days ago, my decisions can no longer simply focus on myself or on an amorphous “others”. I am here to ensure that my daughter’s needs are met and her best interests are represented. One day I will return to librarianship and help those “others”. In the meantime my experience teaching my daughter and the gratitude I feel for even having that option will inform my career decisions in the future.
Question One: Why homeschool?
First and foremost, I am not happy with our schooling options outside the home. The public schools in California are atrocious. They are extremely rigid in their methodology, teaching to standardized tests that discourage curiosity, intelligence, and the development of a whole child. The teachers are ill-equipped to deal with their classes, which tend to be far too large and composed of children at a variety of levels of school-readiness. There are no extra curricular classes such as art, physical education, or music. Most of the facilities look like prisons, not places of learning and childhood. I was a product of the public school system until middle school, when I transferred into a private school, and remember how far behind my new peers I was. It took me four years to really hit my stride, although I don’t think I ever really “caught up”. I later worked for the same school system just out of my undergraduate years and saw how much worse it had gotten.
In terms of private schools, there are four options. Independent, Waldorf, parochial, and Montessori/Reggio. Of the first three, none truly espouse the same educational philosophy and ideals I hold. Certainly they don’t have many of the problems that the public schools do (i.e. overcrowding and testing), but they still don’t match up very well with what I want in an educational experience for Cam. There is one Reggio school and a few Montessori schools, but they are either too far away or not very well regarded.
As I have researched pedagogy and learning I am very drawn to the educational philosophies of the Montessori method and the Reggio Emilia approach largely because they foster independence, curiosity, and well-roundedness in their students. They also encourage the student to be a life-long learner and allow the teacher to follow the student’s lead when it comes to selecting what they most want to study. I do not see these qualities encouraged in any of our local schools.
Most, if not all, of the schools I have seen push academics way too early. Children need to play and explore and develop skills beyond test taking, reading, writing, and math in preschool. In fact they don’t need those skills at all until they are much older. And even when they do, I think most schools place much too high of a priority and emphasis on them. To the detriment of a lot of other things I value, like character building, imagination, artistic ability, creativity, and just a simple love of learning.
I know I harp on the idea of a “love of learning”, but I think it’s incredibly important for encouraging people to continue to engage with the world and take an interest in life. Teacher-led and mandated learning does not make children want to pursue their interests and keep learning. I think there is value in knowing that you can’t always “do your own thing”, but don’t think that that lesson needs to come at the cost of wanting to learn for yourself and learning what interests you. If a curriculum is student-led and the teacher is there as a collaborator as well as a learning specialist then children want to engage and take interest in anything put in front of them. Plus, at the elementary level I don’t think it really matters what content they learn so much as the process of learning.
The curriculums that these schools follow also tend to be disjointed and disparate. Even though the subjects are applicable to the real world and are inter-related, you would never know that from how they are taught. I think subjects (everything from math to language arts to gardening to history) can and do overlap. By encouraging students to see connections, both to other subjects and real life you encourage them to take interest in a variety of topics and see the pertinence of the skills they are learning.
I also don’t think most of these programs allow children enough time to play and to go out of doors. I think is especially a problem in programs where the academics get inserted in too early. Children spend their time working toward objectives instead of indulging their imaginations and rarely get outside except for a 10 minute recess here and another 15 minute recess there.
Finally, there is cost to consider. I think sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get your child the best education possible. My parents and my husband’s parents certainly did. I am not opposed to paying, and paying dearly, to get Cam the best education. But I really don’t think the cost of some of these schools, when held up to the quality and type of education they offer, is justified. I think Cam can get a better education from me for a much smaller price tag.
One final, silly question.
