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Well, not everything is rainbows and unicorns in homeschooling. That shouldn’t be a surprise. But what can drag down a homeschool teacher on a day to day basis? What drags down the homeschool student? Sometimes, it’s the same thing.
Discipline:
An obvious homeschooling con is the new level of discipline that must be introduced into your home in order to succeed. I’m not just talking about the discipline of your children either. I’m talking about YOUR discipline, too. Let’s face it, most of us don’t live by a rigorous moment by moment schedule. We may get up at a certain time, go to work at a certain time, eat lunch at a certain time and so forth. But in our experience in 7 years of homeschooling 4 kids, homeschooling tends to break down the further you move away from a set structure.
What does a successful, structured homeschool look like? I’m not saying you need to block out every hour for various subjects. I’m saying that you need a set format for your schooling that provides both incentives and penalties for your child’s success and failure in their lessons. Any good homeschool curriculum will provide a structured layout for your day or week, but without proper incentive, it’s easy for the distractions of home to derail your schooling.
In our house, we have tried several incentive approaches with varying degrees of success. The tricky part is developing an incentive-based approach that is easy to track, maintain and live up to. Promising your child that he or she will get to pick out a candy bar at the end of the day at the grocery store if they finish their homework may not be enough incentive for some kids. Or, it may not be possible if your plan for the day fails. Failing to follow through even when it’s beyond your control will deflate your student’s motivation.
Our current incentive is a points-based system whereby the children earn points for completing each subject for the day thoroughly and correctly. Each subject is worth 10 points which can be traded in for a variety of rewards such as media minutes (video games, cartoons), staying up past their bedtime, etc. This has worked well for us because the success of their siblings is a great motivator to their own success.
Finances:
Homeschooling is a decision that arises from a desire for a better education that what our tax dollars will buy us. The great irony is that if you choose in home schooling, the tax revenue you generate for the public school system goes to waste (for your use) and you then have to pony up even more money for homeschool curriculum, after school athletics and various other expenses that are generally “free” to public school students.
Fortunately, there’s eBay! And countless other websites that offer used home school curriculum for much cheaper than new. Let’s also not forget that a formal curriculum, while handy, is not always even necessary if you can pull together the resources you need from various other sources.
Beyond that, let’s not forget that in order to homeschool successfully, at least one parent needs to stay at home. Clearly, that can be a issue if the primary breadwinner is unable to carry the financial burden on their own. All I can say to address this is that, as a financial planner, I see many people living beyond their means in the first place. If homeschooling is important to you, analyze your household budget and see if it’s truly within your ability to survive on one income. Many times, it’s just a matter of re-prioritizing.
Time:
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to homeschooling successfully is time. This issue ties back into the first point I made on discipline because a well-disciplined homeschool will generally have a better handle on time management. If not, you may find yourself trying to finish that science project at 10:30 at night.
For us, our day starts at the breakfast table for Bible after the morning chores are done. Then the kids have their individual assignment sheets in their notebooks so self-study can begin, drawing on the wisdom of Mom or Dad (if I’m home) for help where necessary. A trip to the Y for workouts, socialization and just to get out of the house happens just before lunch. After lunch, the afternoon chores and assignments are tackled, hopefully leading to the ability to spend “points” later in the day for the fun stuff.
In my mind, there really aren’t a whole lot of cons to homeschooling. Notice I left out the typical cons that many uniformed people in our society today use against homeschool, such as a lack of socialization, unqualified teachers, etc. These aren’t issues in the majority of homeschool situations. The point being, you can do it.
 The most serious issue to come out of the 2009 NCHE Homeschool Conference is certainly the potential implication of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I could launch into a tirade of why the UN is an absolutely corrupt and worthless organization to begin with, but I’ll have to save that for another day.
The basic warning here is that if people don’t raise their voice in opposition to this, we may find ourselves without legal right to parent our children as we see fit. As was so aptly put in the Keynote address Friday morning, “some guy in Uganda will be 1 of 18 people deciding how you can parent in the US”.
Rather than rephrase what has been already so succintly stated, read Michael P. Farris’ article here: http://www.parentalrights.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={2B53865E-A8C1-4FE6-AF67-08789FBE3C0A}&DE=
From the Article:
10 things you need to know about the STRUCTURE of the CRC:
1. It is a treaty which creates binding rules of law. It is no mere statement of altruism.1.
2. Its effect would be binding on American families, courts, and policy-makers.2.
3. Children of other nations would not be impacted or helped in any direct way by our ratification.3.
4. The CRC would automatically override almost all American laws on children and families because of the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause in Article VI.4.
5. The CRC has some elements that are self-executing, while others would require implementing legislation. Federal courts would have the power to determine which provisions were self-executing.5.
6. The courts would have the power to directly enforce the provisions that are self-executing.6.
7. Congress would have the power to directly legislate on all subjects necessary to comply with the treaty. This would constitute the most massive shift of power from the states to the federal government in American history.7.
8. A committee of 18 experts from other nations, sitting in Geneva, has the authority to issue official interpretations of the treaty which are entitled to binding weight in American courts and legislatures. This effectively transfers ultimate authority for all policies in this area to this foreign committee.8.
9. Under international law, the treaty overrides even our Constitution.9.
10. Reservations, declarations, or understandings intended to modify our duty to comply with this treaty will be void if they are determined to be inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty.10.
Ten things you need to know about the substance of the CRC:
1. Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.11.
2. A murderer aged 17 years and 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.12.
3. Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.13.
4. The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.14.
5. A child’s “right to be heard” would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.15.
6. According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.16.
7. Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.17.
8. Christian schools that refuse to teach “alternative worldviews” and teach that Christianity is the only true religion “fly in the face of article 29″ of the treaty.18.
9. Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.19.
10. Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.20.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO SIGN THE PETITION TO FIGHT AGAINST THE U.S. RATIFYING THIS TREATY, PLEASE VISIT www.ParentalRights.org
The HSLDA (www.hslda.org) funded by homeschoolers is fighting this battle FOR YOU. They have been for some time. Its members pay $100 per year for legal representation should we ever need it in the ongoing fight for our right to homeschool. You don’t have to pay anything to sign their petition.
It’s that time again. We load up the kiddos in the family boat and head out to Winston-Salem for the annual NCHE Homeschool Conference to learn, be inspired and perhaps most importantly, be re-ignited with the motivation any teacher needs to keep going and improve upon the last year. If you live in North Carolina and homeschool or are thinking about it, I strongly encourage you to attend this awesome weekend. We even bring our kids with a fun activity bag that keeps them quiet and entertained. For older kids, there are sessions they can attend themselves. I’ll post a bit more remotely as we head through the conference with some highlights.
Well, it’s that time of year. One of the nice things about homeschooling (at least in our fair state) is that you don’t have to start testing your child until they reach age 7. This is nice mainly for the sake of laziness. But I find testing to be one of the great gauges of how your child (and you, the parent-teacher) is / are doing. If reading comprehension is lacking, just beef up the work in that area. If your child is precocious, you can ease of the pedal if you wish; something more difficult to do in a classroom setting.
This year we’ve decided to go with the CAT (www.setontesting.com). For one, I took the CAT as a kid and have some fond memories of it. It is similar to other testing services, such as PASS, but has a couple advantages. For one, it’s cheaper ($25). And if you have a lot of kids like we do, cheaper is better. It’s nice if you want to do your testing on your own time frame. It arrives quickly and you can return it when you like. It has times sections but still allows plenty of time to complete.
It’s race weekend in Nashville! Every year at this time the family heads to Tennessee to run in the Country Music Marathon and this year is no exception.
The kids come along, of course, and so does the schoolwork. The promise before we left was that May would be “no math month” if they could get the rest of their math books done before the trip ends. We’ll see how that goes. It’s a pretty decent incentive to finish the year early (for math anyway).
One of the things I’ve been reminded of in this process is that you don’t need to be an expert in all fields of study in order to homeschool. You can know the basics and resolve to learn (or re-learn as the case may be) the details as you go along.
The other great thing about homeschooling that springs to mind - you don’t need to do it at home! You can bring it on the road with you and not worry about schedules.
Every day I talk with clients, co-workers and acquaintances who ask about my family - or more often, see me actually with one or more of my kids during school hours. Invariably, homeschooling comes up either as a point of interest or explanation as to how I’m not violating any truancy laws. As homeschooling has caught on so dramatically in the past several years, more and more folks immediately see it as a great thing. Others, however, still look at me like we must be “one of them weird families”. Fifteen years ago, I too saw homeschooled kids / families as weird. That’s because they were. In fact, my assertion to the reader is that kids were homeschooled because they were weird. They weren’t weird because they were homeschooled.
In the past decade, homeschooling has become more and more mainsteam, as parents witness the perpetual degredation of public and private schools. In my opinion, this change over time has been (in part) the result of parents wanting less and less parenting responsibility coupled with the schools wanting more and more control. What was once the place to go and learn the basics needed to function in society - and perhaps move on to college - has become a place of poor teaching practices, over-crowded classrooms, liberal indoctrination and free babysitting. If you’re unfortunate, your child may also get to experience drug raids and school shootings . Notice I didn’t mention peer pressure, alternative ideas or bullying. These are normal experiences for childhood. These are experiences that must take place to prepare a child to exist and function in society. If you are homeschooling to attempt to spare your children from these latter three, you will most likely end up with one of the “weird homeschooled kids”.
Of course, every school is different and arguments for a particular school can always be made. I’m looking at the larger picture. Instead of taking the typical approach of elaborating on the obvious flaws of governemnt and private schools, let’s look at why homeschooling is catching on so rapidly in various parts of the country.
1. Homeschooled kids are smarter.
There. I said it. Oh, and I can back it up too. A WSJ study reported that homeschooled kids outperformed the national average on the ACT and SAT. A study done by the NHERI showed that homeschooled kids outperformed their public school peers in standarized tests by 30 - 37 percentile points. Furthermore, whereas public schools show performance gaps between minorities and genders, the gaps are practically non-exististent in homeschoolers. Interestingly, nearly 3 times as many homeschooled men go on to complete their doctorate than the national male average.
2. Indoctrination
While you’re still stewing over the first point (unless you already homeschool), let me provoke you a bit further. I posit that the vast majority of homeschooling parents have made their decision, in part, out of a desire to indoctrinate their children. Now, when people hear the word “indoctrinate”, their ignorance starts to flare up and get itchy. Why? Because the modern media has taught us that the definition of indoctrination is “teach your kids fundamentalist, radical ideas that fly in the face of what the rest of the world believes”. I hate to break it to you, but the sad reality is that the public schools are indoctrinating your kids right now. They are not asking you what you want them taught. They are deciding for you what should be taught, what theories are to be taken as fact, what political views should be embraced or shunned, what philosophies to hold, what religion to adhere to or disregard. Hey, I just described public schools and communist China at the same time. These are your kids. Do you really trust someone else with these decisions?
3. Parenting
It can be safely asserted that homeschooling parents homeschool out of a desire to be a parent. Huh? Better re-read that sentence. Public schools have become the place to drop off your kids while you go to work, go back home for “me-time” or to run errands. The result is that for 8 or so hours per day, someone else is doing the child-rearing. Someone else is disciplining your kid. Someone else is working on instilling values that you may or may not agree with. If your kid turns out well, great! You get 50% of the credit. If they don’t turn out so well? It’s 100% your fault. As a homeschooling parent, you are the parent. The child is is being raised by you and no one else has a more vested interest in being the parent than you.
4. Sensibility
Homeschooling makes sense. Being the smart kid who has to sit through 6 months of math he already knows, waiting for other kids to catch up to him doesn’t. Eight hours of school of which 2 hours are spent learning doesn’t. Staying back a grade because you’re too shy to raise your hand and ask questions in class doesn’t. My son finished his Kindergarten math in March. Boom! He’s onto First Grade math. No sense in waiting till September. No reason to wait for other kids to catch up. During my senior year in high school, I needed a specific number of credits to graduate but I had already taken the important coursework. I was left with a menu of ridiculous time-wasting electives. When I say “time-wasting”, I mean that though they were a complete waste of my time, they were designed to waste time to get me through the day. Wouldn’t it be better to have gotten me started on college coursework if there was nothing else for me to do? I’ll tell you, if my kids have finished their essential schoolwork, we don’t make them sit around doing nonsense for 2 hours to kill time. They will get up and participate in family life and continue to learn by observing their parents and pitching in.
Unfortunately, not everybody can homeschool. The single parent who has to work to put food on the table probably can’t. The parents with health problems may not be able to. The really, really, really stupid people of the world probably cannot pull it off. But the two income household (where 90% of the second income barely covers child care and schooling expenses) probably can. The work-at-home mom and dad probably can.
Typical arguments against homeschooling (besides the two I refuted in points 1 and 2) include a lack of socialization and a lack of exposure to diversity. I beg to differ. My kids play soccer, hang out at the YMCA while we workout and participate in a variety of activities that socialize them and expose them to people of different races and religions. But again, what is really meant by “exposure” to diversity is really “acceptance of diverse ideas”. Let me refer you back to point #2 and make my final argument.
- I think I’m smarter than than the average public school teacher.
- My faith in God is a belief, not a guess that He exists.
- I see the flaws and contradictory logic in the current liberal thought that is so prevalent in public schools.
- I’m not weird.
So, why would I send my kids there?
Welcome to the first post of Homeschool 360. It’s gonna be a fun post. More fun than humans deserve. Much like homeschooling.
Geez, when i was a kid, I would have killed to be homeschooled. I hated school. Get up at 6. Rush to get dressed. Panic about unfinished homework or a quiz I didn’t study enough for. Stand out in the freezing cold at the bus stop. Let alone worry all day about my totally lame haircut, my ridiculous corduroys that Mom made me wear or whether that cute girl who sat in front of me liked me or not. And let’s not forget how long school was. I left the house at 7 and got home at 3. I was sleep deprived, fun deprived and family deprived.
Today, when I mention that we homeschool our 4 kids, people often look at me like I’m crazy, like they must be weird kids, or that we must be weird parents. But think about how different life is for a kid who is homeschooled for a minute. Sine this is my blog, I’ll use my kids as the example. They sleep till 7 AM, get up and do some chores before a nice family breakfast. After breakfast, we read the Bible individually or collectively, depending on the day. Then it’s time for some math. Thirty minutes of largely self-directed work is the norm. After that, it’s off to the YMCA so Mommy can work out for a couple hours. This is social time for the kids. Other kids at the Y are homeschooled or tracked out so on average there’s 20 - 30 kids for them to interact with on a regular basis. After the Y, it’s home for lunch and other subjects. Language Arts, history, science or reading may be on the schedule for the day. Today, for instane, our kids took turns being the teacher. They directed their siblings in the course work they were to do, the older helping the younger, going to Mommy when someone got stuck.
The biggest bonus of all (in my humble opinion)? No one holds you back. Once they finish studying, they’re off to play outside, free to help out with jobs around the house (’Home Economics’ is another homeschool “subject” in our house both for our girls and our boy), or take the dogs for a walk.
It’s easy to be daunted at the prospect of homeschooling your kids - something I look forward to talking about in future posts - but once you get past that, you realize that homeschooling is fun. Lots of fun, actually. The pros so vastly outweigh the cons it’s a wonder that a much larger percentage of the population doesn’t do it.
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