Advantages of Homeschooling

Dear TEAMS,

Our dear neighbor S down the street wanted to write a paper last Spring about homeschooling and I was one of her sources (as an interview).  I have placed the transcription in this and the next blog post, because as I read over it, I realized it said a lot about my convictions about what homeschooling is for me.  I have edited it for readability, and the full text is on my computer.

Interview with [Loving Mommy] about home-schooling on April 28 2012

Q: Do you need a certificate, license, or degree to homeschool your kids?

A: That is a good question.  You have to possess a high school diploma to homeschool. Technically my children are not even home schooled, they’re privately tutored because I possess a teaching certificate for [our state] and I have kept mine up to date and active with the state.  So they’re technically privately tutored, but they’re home schooled.   

Q: If you don’t mind me asking, why did you choose to homeschool them?

A: No I don’t mind (you) asking. The short answer is because it is right for our family, and that is usually what I say to people when they ask me why I homeschool. The longer answer is that before [Daddy] and I had kids, we were talking about the influence that we wanted have on our kids, and we also knew what being in public school had done to us as learners, and then to us as people. And I was mildly popular in high school, I was in the “Intellectual Diz” clique, and [Daddy] was not popular in high school and so he really understood what that was like. I didn’t like what I saw going on in high school because I felt like it was a lot of just “I’m here so that people can say I have done so many worksheets and read so many books” and it wasn’t about education. Looking back, though, you have to remember I was a 14, 15, 16, 17-year old so I didn’t have the wisdom of adults either. I did have some very good teachers thankfully. [Daddy] had some very good teachers, but they weren’t the majority of the teachers. So yeah.

Q: What do you think the advantages and the disadvantages are of home schooling?

A: Ok, let’s start with advantages first. Advantages of the children are that:

1. I can teach to their learning style. For example, my oldest daughter A is a very visual learner so I could do all sorts of things visually with her. I could do worksheets, I could do videos, and I could do things like that. My son S is a kinesthetic learner so he’s better at manipulating things and having 3-D things. If he doesn’t get concepts, it’s very easy for me to figure out how I can pull out manipulatives and help him get the concept.
2. Second advantage for the children for homeschooling, is that (and you know this from school) if you’re ever sitting in math class and lets say you’re even a good math student, you’re kind of getting it in Algebra or whatever, and then sometimes you have 5 days where you know you’re just not getting things.  It’s just not going in [the brain] right or for whatever reason you don’t get it.  Well with homeschool I can stop everything and I can say, ‘Okay, let’s spend some more time on this concept and lets approach it from a different angle.  Academically that’s very valuable to people because they learn the concept and it sticks with them. And I don’t have to rush through to get through it. Unfortunately in public school, they can’t do that.
3. The third advantage of home school is that we think it better represents what real life is, because nowhere except in the public school system or teachers in a public school system in adult life do you go to work for 9 months and then have 3 months off to do whatever you wish. And we felt like we wanted from very early on to teach our children what adult life is really like, because our goal is to raise successful adults. So when the children were young, we actually did school year-round.  I schooled through the summer so they understood that learning was a part of every day, their job was a part of their every day.
4. The fourth reason there’s an advantage to homeschooling is because, there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t want our children to have to be exposed to at an early age.  I was exposed to my first drug deal when I was in 7^th grade. And I just didn’t want to, I don’t, I didn’t want to have my children to have to see that and I got threatened by the kid who who passed the speed. So I don’t want my kids to have to deal with that. In my high school, kids were making out in the halls, and why should my children have to see that?  That’s stuff that isn’t a part of academic learning and it’s certainly not a part of everyday life. I mean when people wake up and go to the office, it’s not like people are making out in the hallway.
5. This rolls into point 5 which might be a corollary for you.  Only in public schools do certain behaviors happen. So we want it to imitate real life like the last point, but also in public school there are things that are accepted as part of public education that aren’t accepted anywhere else.  I think the [our town] school system is a very good school system from what I’ve seen from what I know the other area school systems are. I think they try to keep a handle on what’s going on but you know from a student’s point of view, what you really see, you see the smoking in the bathrooms, you see the kids making out in the hallways you know who got pregnant and who got the abortion, and why should you have to be exposed to that?
6. The last advantage I can think of off the top of my head is purely selfish for me.  Have you ever heard moms say, ‘Oh, they just grew up so fast’, or you see these moms or parents or grandparents saying ‘Oh yeah my kids, you just, you have them for such a short amount of time’ and all this.  I will tell you that whenever I think to myself  ‘Wow my kids are growing up so fast’ I can say to myself ‘and I’ve had them 24/7/365.’ I have gotten to take advantage of everything, not just first steps, and first lost tooth, I have gotten to be there.  Sometimes I had no idea that the kids were really stressed about something and because I was here, and I was available and they were homeschooled, I might be standing out there washing the dishes and they’d come in and go ‘Oh mom!’ and I’m not even thinking and then they just start talking to me about what was going on. So it’s a purely selfish thing.   I may still have regrets when my kids are gone, but I will always be able to say to myself ‘and I spent every one of the possible hours I could with them.’

So that’s a long list of advantages of homeschooling, I’m sure I could come up with some more. 

(See the next blog post for a continuation of the Interview)