Homeschooling vs American Education Part II

This week we embarked upon our new adventures and are now all engaged in educating and being educated.  Husband is taking two classes at ASU towards a Computer Science degree he started many years ago.  Brother started his homeschool curriculum from Moving Beyond the Page and we are finding it very enjoyable and comprehensive in the way it ties together language arts, science, history and social studies.  We are teaching math without the use of a formal cirriculum knowing where Brother is currently and where he needs to be by the end of the year.  Sister is using a preschool workbook to practice writing, letters, numbers and so forth.  I continue to learn through teaching; I am teaching five classes with a total of 285 undergraduate students.  Husband and I are sharing the responsibilities of educating the kids and it has been very fun to explore Brother's content and concepts together as a family.

When I last wrote about this topic I presented various arguments and reasons for not homeschooling, but I deliberately neglected the most common reason families rely on public education - they are too busy to educate their kids.  The fact is that economic realities for most families require parents to work a minimum of 40 hours a week each.  Public schools serve the important function of ensuring the safety and security of children while their parents are putting food on the table and a roof over their heads.  We have changed virtually everything about our lives to allow for the possibility of homeschooling - and I admit these changes are extreme and not necessarily desirable for many families.

There is also the fear factor, which we have experienced fully.  Will I be able to handle this?  Will my kids fall behind their peers?  Will homeschooling result in any barriers to my kids' success in the long-term?  I have explored these questions in significant depth and am convinced that while failure is always a possibility, it not likely.  Homeschooling during elementary school and middle school does not prevent students from attending high school or taking the GED.  The parents have to be very aware of the state standards to be sure their kid is not falling behind - but there are SO many things kids can learn with their parents that enhance their education.  In our case, household finances, cooking, computer skills (such as programming), sociology, anthropology, economics, public health and music.

In my last post I also raised an argument I have heard that goes something like this: we need to support and be engaged with public school districts to help shape them into the type of institutions that serve the needs of our communities.  While I agree with this in principal I, personally, have a couple of problems with this.  First, I have spent many years in public service trying to change the flow of powerful rivers - many times to no avail.  It is possible "we" (parents) could put our energy into trying to change Goliath - to no avail - when we could just put the energy directly into educating our kids (if that is practical for your family).  It is frustrating to always have to fight the middle man - I prefer to cut out the middle man and take matters into my own hands.  Secondly, all families have limited resources such as time & energy.  How many want to spend those resources seeking to reform a school which belongs to a public education system that is unfairly funded, utilizes arbitrary evaluation methods, and is designed to create compliant workers instead of the problem solvers of tomorrow?   To reshape these institutions in any meaningful way significant policy change at the state and federal levels are needed.

I return to the thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson (who I admire a great deal), in 1841 he wrote an essay called Self-Reliance. In that work he says,

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till." 

What is our "plot of ground" in this context other than the fertile ground of our own minds and the minds of our children?  To really emphasize this point he says,

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

He goes on to talk about how vital it is to be your own person and to think your own thoughts in this great and famous quote,

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." 

So friends, that is where we are at - blazing a trail to own ourselves and our minds - both figuratively and literally.