My
family and I just returned home from a little visiting trip. We were
in the car about 11 hours each way so I decided to take advantage of
that time and read/watch a couple things I have had on my back burner
of homeschooling research. I wanted to talk about them a bit here.
First I want to state the obvious.....I support homeschooling. It is
working for my family and my kids are thriving in the year we have
been doing this. That being said I do not believe homeschooling is
for everyone. If you curl your nose at the thought of stepping
outside of the traditional box of public school, if the thought of
being with your kids all day every day is nauseating, if you have no
desire to be an active participant in helping your kids learn....then
read no further because schooling at home is not for you.
Another
thing I want to point out is that you have to be flexible. If the
idea you have in your head about what home schooling should look like
doesn't work for your kids you MUST be willing to change things up.
You will learn right along with your kids, sometimes you will teach
them new things, but most of the time they teach you new things as
they explore things that interest them. You do not have to keep up
with or slow down to keep on track with what the same age level
students are learning in the local school. The great thing about
humans is that they learn at different paces because each person is
unique. If you have a pair of twins one may read quicker and faster
than the other, while the other is better at math. They do not need
to be at the same level at the same time....and that is perfectly
normal!
I
watched “Class Dismissed” and I read “They're Your Kids....”
and here are my thoughts:
*****************
In
one of the homeschooling facebook groups I follow one movie is
mentioned and recommended frequently... “Class Dismissed”. I
bought the documentary DVD (if any of my local friends want to borrow
it get a hold of me). It follows one family through their decision
and some of their research for homeschooling. It was insightful and
some of their struggles hit home with some of my own. There are so
many ways to school/educate your children, I think this documentary
is a great starting point for those who are considering different
options or who have just begun their journey.
Here
are a few youtube links for “Class Dismissed” Trailers:
Official-https://youtu.be/0FMrQXkFCxA
Trailer
2- https://youtu.be/vL0kZ69LwNw
Trailer
1- https://youtu.be/74fO06CU6xY
***************************
“They're Your Kids: An Inspirational
Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate” by Sam Sorbo
The first part of the book talks about
the governments role in our education system, and I will admit some
of these things made me physically nauseous. The book starts out very
politically anti-government, socialism, dictatorship comparisons,
even some conspiracy thrown in there....but sometimes we need hit
with the big stick of possible truths. There are a lot of facts
written here too, including years worth of unsuccessful reform-
notably 2001: No Child Left Behind Act, 2011: Race to the Top Fund,
and 2013: Common Core (Take note these major changes were implemented
AFTER, or possibly during our [as parents] later years, in public
school.....today's school experience is NOT the same as ours.)
Here are a few quotes from within the
book that stood out to me:
“How could I home educate? I'm not
capable! The question is, if you graduated from your public high
school, maybe even a good college, and ended up incapable of
instructing a nine year old, what hope do you hold for your children
who you send to public schools? Education should be contagious, not
constrictive. Doesn't your own sense of inadequacy compel you to
protect your children from enrolling them in the same kind of
institution that clearly, by your own tacit admission, failed you?”
You like the idea of a small school
because of the small classroom size. You know a smaller group
setting, say 10 kids to 1 teacher, has a higher probability of
holding those kids more personally accountable to learn and digest
the material instead of just being passive grazers giving those
children more of a chance of slipping through the “cracks” of the
system. Well imagine a one on one or a two on one teaching
experience. You are going to know whether your child actually
absorbed the information that you just went over, no test necessary.
(this is paraphrased because I forgot to make note within the book
and didn't take the time to track it down again.)
“Compare school to buying a house.
You walk through it and love it. The inspector says it's great, the
neighborhood is right, and so you purchase it. You may not realize
until after you've moved in that the roof leaks or that it's drafty.
You can repair the roof or apply caulking. (Hire a tutor.) The
draftiness is caused by a faulty design of the heating system. Buy a
few sweaters. (Hire a therapist for the kid.) But eventually you
discover the house's foundation is defective and twelve years later
(graduation) the building starts to sink. (Your child can't hold a
job, because of low self-esteem, or high self-esteem, and no one
taught him anything about the skills needed to hold one, or, worse,
he doesn't even know to desire independence, because the government
education bureaucracy taught him to revere the
government-as-provider. His education was steeped in entitlement,
recycling, and nature conservation.) Luckily, a good homeowner's
insurance policy covers the foundation issues. But little will
mitigate the deficits in your child's education. He's moving back
home. The future of our children is at stake, and parent's have
blindly entrusted the care of their kids to those who, on a broad
scale, have proven to be mediocre, at best. Would you knowingly hire
an average or less-than-average builder to construct your home? Are
your children more valuable than your home?”
“The unions are the worst thing that
ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns
into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers
can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired.
It's terrible.” -Steve Jobs
“Money runs the show, and that's why
many are convinced it can fix the system. They're not only wrong;
they're one hundred and eighty degrees wrong and thus, are part of
the problem, though some of them don't even know it. Misuse of money
has broken the system, but human greed is why it's broken and greed
can't be repaired. The education establishment must return to being
more about the advancement of education in our children, and less
about power and money. And the only way to do that is to wrest the
power away from the institution, bringing the educational
responsibility back home.”
“Who controls the past controls the
future. Who controls the present controls the past.” -George Orwell
“Our rights as home schooling parents
are only as strong as the rights we have as free citizens. Sadly
there are those in our country who choose to abdicate choice to the
government, allowing it to dictate our everyday lives, despite its
proven inefficacy.”
“Education is the ability to listen
to almost anything without losing your temper or your
self-confidence.” -Robert Frost
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I
remember. Involve me and I learn.” -Benjamin Franklin
“You will ever remember that all the
end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.”
***********************
So as you can see I took a lot from the
book and movie I watched this past weekend. I have had other recommendations made for books similar to this- the self help, build your home
school confidence, and common core awareness types. But honestly I am
already there. I have confidence in myself because I know my kids. I
know when they know something, I know when they understand, I am
willing to do different things to peek their interest. I can read and
research and try different methods. We are changing our entire life
style and learning has become a part of our every day life, not an
8:30 to 3 day job work experience.
We are Schooling As We Grow and we are
doing it together!
