Home-schooling for Homesteaders

- The One-room Schoolhouse is Alive and Well

continued from page 1

by Sheri Dixon 

WHERE THE HECK IS THE STUFF ABOUT HOME-SCHOOLING????

Enter child number three, born to a different (half of it anyway) set of parents, in a different state, and at a different time of life for these parents.

This child was born at home, with a midwife, in a 100-plus-year-old house at the edge of a tiny town in Texas.  I had a part time job, meaning that Alec had to go to daycare several days a week and we found a wonderful one run by a wonderful woman - home cooked meals, lots of outside playtime, lots of hands on activities rather than sit-still-and-listen activities.  Delia has an after-school-pickup section of her daycare, and in the spring before her little charges turn kindergarten age, they take a field trip to the school to get them familiar with where they will be going in the fall.

We had already toyed with the idea of home-schooling since, by this time, my employment offered me the freedom to take my child with me to work if I wanted to, and with him being all of almost five, he could be taken without CONSTANT supervision, allowing me to actually, you know, WORK at work.

We went on the field trip to the school.  Out of 12 families, only 2 parents attended, and I thought it was odd that I was one of them, since we were thinking of NOT enrolling our child in this school.  One would think that one would be interested in checking out one’s child’s school... Our local school is considered very good; it gets wonderful ratings by the Texas Education Association, and indeed, when we walked through the front doors, we were met with a cacophony of colors and sounds all touting the Fun of Learning, and our son was clearly psyched about it.  Hyperactively so.  His excitement was contagious, and I was tempted to be swept into it all along with him

Until....

I looked up and saw The Banner.

Over the entry to the main corridor was a banner proclaiming this school one of Texas’ Finest, signed (supposedly) by the President of the United States of America, and boldly (even aggressively) stating

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

I know that this phrase is supposed to be uplifting, comforting and encouraging, and in my former, younger, newer life as a parent, it probably would have been.

Since I am twenty years older, have been around life’s block a few times, and have now seen our government and society at work, it struck me like a slap across the face as being creepy and menacing.

And I knew at that moment, for sure and for certain, that THIS child would NOT be attending public school.

Chapter Two - The "Why" of Home-schooling

Each family has their own personal reasons to home-school, but whether those reasons are religious, political, or having to do with the child’s needs not being met by the public school system, the gist of the matter is basically the same as why we homestead - we want to KNOW what’s going into our children's heads is as pure and true as what we are so careful to put into their tummies and their lungs.

I feel compelled to add here that my initial thoughts about home-schooling were completely and absolutely self-serving.  Ward goes to work at 8:30 AM.  I go to work after lunch.  The local school starts promptly (a word I have trouble with on the BEST of days) at 7:45 AM.  I had a difficult time justifying hauling our 5-year-old to "work" well before the adults in the family had to be at theirs.  Then, on the other end of it, Ward and I both get out of work at 6:00 PM - well AFTER the school lets out at 2:45.  Of course there’s Delia’s after-school care, but for a young child to spend eleven hours out of every day in the care of adults who are not their parents seems more than a little unnatural to us.

I understand and sympathize with parents who have no other choice than the above scenario - I spent several years as a single-working-mother myself.  We do the best we can with the options at our disposal.  Depending on your employment, sometimes home-schooling can still be accomplished - if you are able to work "odd" shifts, child care can sometimes be arranged for when you are working, and you will be with your child(ren) during the day to school them.

The fact that a large part of our society considers it normal and healthy to deposit their young into the care of "others" for a huge part of their waking hours, and from the time they are 6 weeks old, is, to our way of thinking, certainly a sign of the not-wellness of our culture.

At the present time, we are fortunate enough to have the freedom to both home-school AND be gainfully employed, so we started looking at the all-children-should-go-to-public-school idea very closely.

And just like a platypus, the more closely we looked at public school, the odder it started looking.

Figures provided by the schools themselves admit that a mere 2 hours is spent in actual school-learnin’ for the average elementary-schooler each day.  The rest of the 8 hours or so is spent taking turns, waiting in line, recess, lunch, bathroom breaks, etc.

I called our local school to find out the average class size for kindergarten.

Thirty.

They have thirty 5-year-olds vs. ONE teacher.

I asked how many teacher's aides were in each class and was laughed at.

I asked if they took advantage of room-mothers to come in and provide extra hands, eyes and hearts to this mass of young humanity and was told "that’s NOT allowed."

Wait a minute....

"NOT ALLOWED"???? *I’M* not allowed into my own child’s classroom during the day???

Apparently not.

Home-school was looking better and better.

In fairness, the next school system over has a kindergartener-teacher ratio of 15-1, which would have been perfectly acceptable to me.

Then there’s the question of homework.  Our neighbor’s boy is the same age as ours.  He spends all day in public school and comes home with at least an hour’s worth of homework.  In SECOND GRADE. What in the world is there for a second-grader to learn that cannot be accomplished in 8 hours at school???

One of my best friends is an elementary school principal, and she was a teacher for years and years before that.  She was understandably skeptical about our interest in home-schooling (since she’s known me for almost 30 years, I’m sure she saw right past all my "for public consumption" reasons and saw my inherent slothfulness shining through).  From watching Cathy over the years, I know that the majority of teachers teach because they love their students.  I know that they spend literally thousands of their own dollars purchasing materials for their kids to make up for the shortcomings of the materials they are given with which to teach.  I know that they are frustrated by the fact that they must take a large portion of every school-year "teaching to the test" - preparing their students for the standardized testing that will determine what their schools receive in the way of funding.

Our final analysis of public schools is that the public school system is aimed at educating the Average Student.  Anyone who’s known even one child knows that not a single one is average, all are uniquely gifted and learn at different rates and in different ways.

To take all the knowledge that needs to be learned by all the children in the country and force it into a single mold is like asking a federal committee to construct a duck.

You get a platypus.

While agreeing with me in concept, Cathy challenged me, asking exactly HOW I was planning on carrying out something as important as my child’s education all by my lonesome, without any formal training.

It was an excellent question.

 

Continued...

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