Why I Homeschool
By Robin at 22 January, 2009, 10:48 pm
Before I begin, here’s a little disclaimer: I do not believe homeschooling is appropriate for every family. I do know for a fact there are major flaws with our public education system; however, some parents are simply not cut out to homeschool their kids. Some kids will get a better education in the public school system than they will with their parents. That being said, I strongly believe parents need to take an active role in their children’s education if they want their kids to excel and be the best they can be. It is not the government’s job to educate our children! It is the parents’ job! This is something that gets to me every time there’s an election or a change in governmental policy regarding education. If parents would be parents, maybe no child would be left behind!
If your kids go to public school, why can’t you still have a rich learning environment at home? I always tell my children, after we’re done with the book work, i.e. math, spelling, grammar, then it’s time for them to get their real education! It’s when we’re done with the basics that they get the chance to go grab a book off the shelf and learn about what interests them. If they have the resources available to them, and parents who foster their thirst for knowledge, children will learn way more than they would if they were simply shipped off to school and then have parents who assume they’ve learned all they need there at school. What do you think they’re going to retain of the things they’re taught at school? If somebody is constantly telling them what they need to learn about, no matter how boring it is to them, are they going to remember those things? I highly doubt it! I don’t remember much of anything I learned at school, aside from the grammatical and mathematical basics. I remember what I learned at home after school when I read good books, or watched National Geographic or Nova. Those were the things that interested me, and I retained them.
The majority of the things children learn at school are taught simply so a test can be passed. This is the number one reason I homeschool. Well, maybe it’s not number one, but it’s probably tied for that slot with some other reasons. Every year in our public schools here in Florida, teachers prepare our children to pass the FCAT, a standardized test. I have more people join my homeschool group in the weeks leading up to the FCAT than any other time of the year! The reason? The kids are scared out of their minds that they’ll do badly on the test. Teachers put it into their minds that the test is of the utmost importance and they must pay attention so they can do well. The school gets better ratings if they do well on the FCAT. How does that benefit our kids?? It doesn’t help them learn a darned thing because they’ll likely forget everything they had to cram into their brains for the test. In fact, studies show that after one year, kids forget something like 75% of the things they had to learn for standardized testing. I have a hundred other reasons for disagreeing with standardized testing, but I’ll save that for another post. That test is not of the utmost importance! The children’s retention of knowledge and ability to learn is what is of the utmost importance!
When I started homeschooling my step-son, he was in second grade. It was January. It was a wonderful experience because it made me so happy that I homeschool my kids!! It solidified in my mind the reasons I do it. I know he has benefited tremendously because now he knows he’s allowed to learn about what he cares about. This poor child had the imagination taken right out of him in school. He had no motivation to do anything unless specifically told what to do. He had no self-direction at all. If I asked him to write a paragraph, it was a major struggle because he had to be told exactly what to write about and exactly how to say it. If asked to draw a picture, he would ask what to draw and how to draw it. If we had a free learning week, which we often do, he would simply stare at the books on the shelves and have no idea what to do unless he was told precisely what book to pick up, and what to read. He had no desire, no thirst for knowledge. He was so used to just doing the work for the work’s sake, he didn’t understand that we learn for knowledge’s sake! We learn so we can know things! We don’t learn so we can show that we’ve finished the worksheet or we can pass the test on Friday. We learn because this is an awesome world we live in and and we want to know all about it! When you want to know, you’ll remember what you learned!
My goal as a homeschooling mom is not to fill their heads with useless knowledge, it’s to teach them how to learn about anything and everything that interests them, it’s to foster in them a thirst for knowledge of the world around them. I don’t care if they can tell me the capital of each of the fifty states! I don’t care if they can tell me the dates on which each war since the beginning of time started. Some things just don’t matter. Curiosity! That’s what I want to teach my children! I want to show them how to be curious about things, and how to figure things out. That, to me, is a rich education!
Why do I homeschool? I do it so my kids can be curious. I do it so they can find their niche in this world on their own. I want them to be independent, thoughtful adults. I want them to know everything about this world, not so they can pass a test, but because it’s genuinely interesting and they care about it! I want my kids to be homeschooled so they can be socialized properly, but that’s another post in itself!
Robin also blogs at Homeschooling, Photography, and Life
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