Why I don’t homeschool
Homeschooling is something that really appeals to me at times, and I go back and forth between thinking I’ll never do it and thinking I’m definitely going to do it. I know exactly how I would go about it, allowing for some scheduled and structured learning in the morning every weekday and then essentially setting them free to unschool. It all works out so perfectly in my head. So why am I not doing it?
1. Because what works great in my head isn’t always what works great in real life.
Can I really teach my kids? I don’t know. How much time am I going to dedicate to this? Will I really want to? Can I really do a better job at this than people who have been incredibly well educated, specifically in the skill of educating children?
These are questions I seriously ask myself when I get really into the homeschooling daydream. Sure, it seems like a really great idea, and at certain times I really enjoy sitting with my kids and watching them learn or teaching them something, but sometimes I just want them out from under my feet while I concentrate on something, or just want to be untouched in silence for a few blessed minutes. Furthermore, my kids don’t always enjoy learning from me. Sometimes it is boring or annoying, or they just aren’t listening.
Granted, they won’t always enjoy learning at school either, but they won’t associate me with that feeling, and maybe I prefer it that way. And, even with Elijah in school, he still has plenty of opportunities to learn from me (check out the science experiments we’ve been doing, here and here), as well as from Jeremy, grandparents, 4H, church, and from unschooling-type pursuits.
Ultimately, I’m just not sure I want to put in the work that homeschooling would require. That doesn’t mean that I’m unwilling to spend any time on my kid’s education; it just means that maybe I’m not up for doing it all on my own. And, to be frank, my need for child-free time is okay. I am a mom, but that’s not all that I am. My duties in this world include not just nurturing my children, but nurturing myself, my other relationships, and my community as well. I fear that homeschooling may wreck that balance for me.
2. I don’t want my ideas to be the only ideas my kids are exposed to
A lot of people choose to homeschool their kids because they want to control what they are exposed to, and I can understand that. Once your kids start going out into the world, they start learning things that maybe you don’t want them to learn. When Elijah started preschool, he started coming home saying things that were blatantly racist, sexist, and homophobic t It didn’t take long to realize that he was learning this from another little boy at his school who clearly came from a family with different values than our own. Now, had we never sent him to preschool, he never would have heard those things, but we also would have never had the opportunity to discuss with him why those statements go against our family values and how they could be hurtful to others. It was a learning opportunity in and of itself.
Let’s face it, if my values are so solid, they should be able to stand up to any opposing values my kids will run into out in the world. And it may be, just maybe, that I don’t know everything, and sending my kids out into the world to learn from others gives them more of an opportunity to expand their minds, and some of that may even filter back to me. I’m as willing to learn from my kids as I am to teach them things.
3. Homeschooling is a privilege not everyone has access to; for many kids, public schools are their only option for education.
I recognize that I am very lucky to even be able to think about the option of homeschooling. If I were like the majority of parents who have to work 40+ hour workweeks, with 7+ hours of commuting on top of that, it wouldn’t even be a thought I could ever entertain. If I were still a single mother, it would be doubly impossible. For the millions of children in homes such as these, public school is their only option.
Education is important. It’s the best way to pull one’s out of poverty, can advocate for one’s own rights, health, and well-being, contribute to one’s community, and figure out problems. An educated populace is the only thing that will make our country competitive in science and technology, the arts, business, and even national defense, not to mention it’s the best way to make our country a more pleasant place to live. Smart, well-educated people take better care of their homes, cities, states, and countries. They are easier to work with, make fewer mistakes, come up with more improvements, and, in general, are just more pleasant to be around.
Because of this, it is of vital importance that we support public education and everyone’s access to good education. Every time a privileged person, such as myself, who could be fighting for access to high-quality education for all, pulls a child out of public schools to homeschool, we are weakening the public school system and leaving those who have no other option in more and more of a mess. If those of us who have the privilege to dedicate time to educating our children dedicated it to making schools better instead, maybe we could make public schools into a place where we are really happy to send our kids. After all, what’s the point of raising the smartest kids in a stupid society?
Are kids really not getting any worth wingeography anymore? I know that reading and literature standards are awful. I hear math is being taught all weird. And kids are bringing home so much homework now that my chances of being able to catch my children up on this stuff during their non-school hours don’t seem very high.