Although we homeschool, I try to keep the Big-Eyed Boy on a schedule similar to his public school friends. That way he’s never stuck “doing school” while his friends are outside playing. Ensuring he has a chance to play with his peers is important to me, since it helps address the whole socialization thing which causes so many people concern over home education.

Sometimes, I wonder if that’s such a wise idea.

Take, for instance, the argument my son and his little friends had this morning while playing together outside. One of the neighborhood kids mentioned they don’t go to school on Monday because the nation will be celebrating how Christopher Columbus discovered the United States.

My son, who’s been learning about this very thing for the past month, pointed out that Columbus in fact landed at the Bahamas, and that Columbus Day itself is really October 12. We just happen to observe it Monday, instead.

His friends, being products of the public school system, basically told my son that he’s an idiot. The Bahamas, their education has told them thus far, are a string of gorgeous beaches where Mommy and Daddy go for a luxury vacation without them.

Bless his heart, my son at least had the wisdom not to point out how Columbus is far from the Great American Hero his little friends seem to think, or that within three years of landing on the islands he’d enslaved 40,000 Lucayans he’d encountered there.

Instead, he left their illusions safely intact and decided to come home to play a few hands of Uno with me. Since I’d assumed he’d want to play outside as long as possible, I was a bit surprised to find him cutting his playtime short. He didn’t want to stay outside with his friends playing, he said, when they clearly needed to be inside convincing their parents to homeschool them so they wouldn’t remain so clueless.

All of which reinforces my belief that any “socialization” which requires my son to dumb himself down to the level of his peers really can’t be all that good for him.

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For the past few weeks I’ve seen a trend among my friends whose kids attend public school. It started right around May 1, when households everywhere flip the calendar to the new month and see — usually scrawled in a child’s big, bold letters — NO MORE SCHOOL!!!

Some of my friends react with sighs and sudden stomach aches, making mental note to refill their antidepressant medications. Others hop online or scan the local news for summer camp listings, swim lessons, festival dates and just about any other activity that will keep the kiddies occupied and off of mom’s last nerves.

It’s not just the longer parenting hours and added expense my friends are dreading. They know full well that Johnny, who just made major strides in reading and math this year, will inevitably go through summer learning loss, reversing his progress by “approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills during the summer months.”

Meanwhile, as a home-schooler, I also suffer the “What do I do with him all day?” crisis right around this time of the year. Sure, we could home-school year round: many families do just that. But I need a break, too, and I’m not even the one whose brain is having to wrap itself around new concepts daily. I just want a few weeks to catch up on my pleasure reading, to maybe learn a bit of CSS and, I admit, to play a few new video games that have been awaiting my attention. But how do I do those things and keep my kid entertained, while protecting against “summer learning loss”?

It dawned on me this morning that I really don’t have to change a thing that I’m doing. I just have to call it “Summer Break.”

See, we’ve been using a program, Time4Learning for the past year. My son adores the interactive, quick lessons and funny cartoonish-games. I love the brief 5-question quizzes that check for comprehension and mastery, and the “Portfolio” that tracks his progress. It’s perfect for homeschooling, but as I’m starting to realize, it’s perfect for summer school, too.

Now, I want to point out that this entry is being filed under the “Sponsored Venom” category for one reason only: Time4Learning credits members who blog about the program. Even without that renumeration, I’d rave about this program, anyway. It’s done that much to make my life — and my son’s schooling — easier. And I tell everyone I know about it. Just ask Chelle.

Or ask my friend, whose son despises the “busy work” his teachers send out: the repetitive worksheets, the copy work and general educational regurgitation that’s a hallmark of an over-extended teacher who can’t take time for one-on-one with each kid. Since his school was having a “half-day,” but my friend couldn’t take off from work to be with him, I offered to watch him for the afternoon. When he arrived, The Big-Eyed Boy was sitting at his computer, clicking away and laughing.

“What’s he playing?” the little boy asked.

“He’s doing school,” I explained.

Five minutes later, the two of them were sitting side-by-side learning about multiplication. Not that they knew it: they were too busy having fun.

When my friend picked her son up, he gushed over how much fun “doing school on the computer” is. His mother pointed out that he really does love computer games. What kid doesn’t these days? But what amazed her was that her son — who just the prior evening had thrown a tantrum while working on a math worksheet his teacher had sent home — could now understand the concept of multiplication. She says he now asks to come over every day after school and “do more school” with my little boy.

I finally told her about Time4Learning, and how it’s perfect for after school, summer school and, yes, even homeschool. With a scope and sequence designed to meet National Standards, it’s perfect for both supplemental, enrichment education as well as primary subjects from preschool through middle school.

Of course, her first concern was the cost. Having spent a small fortune (and I mean that) on homeschool curricula we abandoned mid-semester, I was wary when I first checked out Time4Learning, too. But at $19.95 per month ($14.95 for each additional child), with a 2-week money-back guarantee, I couldn’t find a reason not to try it myself. For less than the cost of a couple of those annoying workbooks, Time4Learning offers:

» Language Arts
» Math
» Science, and
» Social Studies.

I can’t emphasize enough how great a difference the program has made in our homeschooling day. My son looks forward to his computer time, and he consistently makes strides day after day, week after week. Meanwhile, not only can I be confident his core education meets our state’s standards, but I also have more time — and patience! — to work with him in other areas. Together, Time4Learning and I are providing my son with an amazing, year-round education that he actually enjoys!

The 43rd Carnival of Homeschooling is up at About Homeschool. Meanwhile, the Cates have been busy hosting the Carnival of Kid Comedy.

UPDATE: Be sure to catch the Carnival of Education at PassEd, too!

It’s National School Lunch week, as proclaimed by President Bush.

I call upon all Americans to join the dedicated individuals who administer the National School Lunch Program in appropriate activities that support the health and well-being of our Nation’s children. (Source)

Far be it from me to lapse in my patriotic duties. So, I made my son a chicken quesadilla, “little trees” of broccoli dipped in Ranch dressing and a glass of milk. At home. Where he’s safe.

A Christian homeschooling parent sent me an email after finding my blog through this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling. It went something like this (edited to remove long, rambling passages of Biblical misquotes and proseltyzing):

Kate,

I am a Born Again Christian and a homeschooling parent. I read the Carnival to find appropriate, edifying writing from a perspective similar to my own. I was offended by your entry in the Carnival due to your reference to the “s-word” (Not socialization but that other one). If you choose to continue blogging about your experience as a homeschooling parent, you should put a disclaimer warning people of your tendency to be profane and sometimes downright vulgar. Your blog is not suitable reading for those of us pursuing Godly thoughts.

Gee. What can I say to that? I thought the Venom part of the blog title was pretty much all the disclaimer I needed.

And, just in case you are continuing to read the blog (which I assume you are since your IP address keeps showing up in my referrer stats), I believe you owe me a big ol’ “Thank You” for not publishing your name and email address. M’kay?

The Carnival of Homeschooling goes retro for its 40th installment at Homeschool Buzz. In this week’s edition, Phat Mommy challenges homeschoolers to provide an answer — a very detailed answer — to those who’ve always wondered “What do homeschoolers do all day?”

This summer, eBay announced that it would no longer allow the sale of used teacher’s editions with homeschool curricula. The company asserted that such sales violated eBay’s fair use policies since the company had no way to verify whether the sellers/purchasers were, in fact, teachers.

The homeschooling community has been outraged.

But where there’s a niche there’s always someone willing to fill it. The latest entrant is the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which just announced the launch of its Curriculum Market.

Excellent! Now I have a good reason to go hunting through the basement for all of the books we’d bought last year but don’t need anymore.

As any homeschooling parent can tell you, the most frequent question (or challenge) we encounter from other parents about our child’s education environment boils down to the dreaded S-word: Socialization. As in: “Kids who aren’t forced into social interactions with other children their same age can’t possibly be considered ’socialized.’”

Witness, for example, the kerfluffle that happened at Dean’s World when he agreed with me about the perils and pitfalls of public school attendance as the primary method of ’socializing’ kids. The one thing missing from the conversation at Dean’s was a single scrap of evidence that any ’socialization’ occurs through the public school system, much less that it’s inherently superior. To put it another way, a staggering number of people seem to believe that public school attendance is synonymous with socialization.

The circularity of the argument is nearly laughable when one recalls what socialization means.

socialization

(psychology) The process whereby a child learns to get along with and to behave similarly to other people in the group, largely through imitation as well as group pressure.

Suffice it to say, then, that both homeschooled children and their public schooled counterparts are ALL socialized. The question is: to conform to whom? Homeschooling parents, myself included, believe that the greatest gift we can give our children is a personal role model, a functional home, a family that stands behind them in their own pursuit of excellence, and an education consistent with the morals that we claim.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what alarms those who believe children should be sent to public school so they can be socialized. They fear Johnny will be warped because his parents — who do not believe in evolution, for example — choose not to make that part of Johnny’s science curriculum. They cloak it in concern whether Johnny will know how to get along with other runny-nosed children his age, whether he’ll know what it’s like to be picked last for a team, whether he’ll be prepared to ask a girl on a date some day long down the road or if he’ll crumble the first time his boss passes him over for a promotion (assuming he can even get a job, being homeschooled and all).

But what they really, really mean is this: they don’t share the same morals as Johnny’s parents. They want Johnny to learn what they themselves believe, and they wrap it up in a nice, neat little package they call ’socialization.’ Or, as Freeven noted in the comments:

The socialization argument is a canard. Public schools can’t be defended on the academic merits, so they have to look elsewhere for talking points. These things get parroted around, but ask for any hard evidence and the discussion is pretty much over.

Interesting, isn’t it? Non-homeschoolers do not believe that parents should have the right to independently educate their own children in a manner consistent with their family’s moral beliefs if they don’t share those beliefs themselves.

Frankly, I don’t call that ’socialization,’ although I do agree it smacks of a different dreaded ’s-word.’

UPDATE: Anwyn’s trying to decipher the comments of a Montessori advocate who, while remarking on the “positive social effects” of that approach notes: “Typically the home environment overwhelms all other influences in that area.” While I, being jaded, interpret that remark as yet another educator who believes that schools are inherently superior to a child’s actual parents, Anwyn’s taking a proactive approach and actually emailing the ‘expert.’

These days, it’s increasingly common to read about schools searching out homeschooled students. Usually, however, the stories are about colleges actively recruiting homeschooled students.

Not this time:

Teachers, starved for technology, are bounty hunting homeschooled children.

Such is the case in Mason County, Ky., where The Ledger Independent reports that local public school teachers are being encouraged to make house calls to dropouts and homeschoolers alike, convincing them to return to school.

For each student that rejoins the fold and stays for a year, the teachers receive new technology in their classrooms.

While it’s disturbing that homeschoolers are being equated with dropouts, I’m more concerned with the reasoning of Superintendent Tim Moore, who is behind this clever idea.

When asked to defend his attack on home educators, he replied, “Education is more than learning in books.” He added, “social aspects of school are important as well,” according to the article.

Frankly, I’ve never understood what the allegedly beneficial “social aspects of school.” I recall classrooms filled with students trying to break the rules behind the teacher’s back in order to impress their peers, kids who were chubby or who wore glasses being or who just looked different being chased and sometimes “pantsed” or “canned” or just beat up by gangs of brats wearing designer clothes, smart children who acted stupid in order to make friends and girls who slunk around with caved-in shoulders to disguise their developing bodies from the taunting and leering eyes of their friends. And, before you ask, I was usually among the worst offenders.

Most “socialization” in the public schools seems to teach merely this: those with the fastest punch, the slyest tricks, the snidest attitude or the most expensive clothes are inherently more worthy of attention — be it good or bad. Teachers can do little to nothing about this, aside from sending a particularly unruly child to the principal’s office (which achieves the kid’s goal of getting both attention and out of class) and principals don’t have the time or legal power to do much more than make phone calls to parents too busy to care. And as for the ’social aspects’ of classwork, most kids learn by second grade to do as little as possible in order to pass. Not to excel, mind you, just pass.

Nevertheless, the Superintendant of the Mason County schools believes he’s doing a service for students by pulling them out of one-on-one home education programs where children learn to work on their own, get along with adults, and take pride in their behavior, their efforts and their accomplishments.

I can only assume that with logic like his, he’s a product of the public school system himself.

Yesterday I mentioned that I signed The Big-Eyed Boy up for Time4Learning after reading about it over at Dreah’s.

Today, I’d barely finished serving breakfast and starting a fire to warm the house (it’s still chilly… hooray!) when the Boy asked if we could “start playing school yet.” Well, dang! I sat him in my chair, booted up the computer, and let him have full control of the mouse.

No, I didn’t get a lot of blogging done and barely responded to any email, but he made it through three lessons in Language Arts, two in Math and one each in Science and Social Studies. And that was just before 10 a.m.

Meanwhile, I had a chance to actually step away from our homeschool corner in the kitchen to squeeze in a workout, do a little cleaning and start pre-sorting financial stuff for our tax returns.

Yee-freaking-hah!

This, I believe, calls for a celebratory martini.

One of my favorite childhood memories about summer vacation was being totally, 100% in control of my day… unless, of course, my mother had plans for me which, luckily, she seldom did.

Oh, sure, there were days when I was bored beyond belief: neighboring kids were on vacations, it was too hot to play outside, and the 3 channels on television were all playing game shows and soap operas I wasn’t interested in seeing. So I read. One summer I worked my way through the Nancy Drew series which, considering I was only in third grade meant that I was stretching my reading skills. The next school year it showed, too.

Ok, so my mother wasn’t thrilled a few summers later when I found her brand-new copy of Joy of Sex and began asking questions. It disappeared, replaced by a stack of National Geographic magazines which were almost as educational, at least to my sexually curious 12-year-old mind.

Another summer, after my brother set aside the book he’d been reading in favor of chasing girls, I picked up Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern and encountered my first taste of fantasy fiction. It was the beginning of what’s proven to be a lifelong love of reading and a deeply rooted certainty that as long as I have a good book to read I’ll never truly be bored.

Those summers, when I wasn’t reading to fill time, I was writing or learning other things that piqued my curiosity. I churned out (what I believed to be) fascinating short stories and poems, wrote letters to my grandparents and aunties, even dashed off a letter to President Carter complaining about the smog-producing factories on the hillsides near our home. (He personally wrote back, incidentally, which didn’t surprise me at the time but now seems amazing he’d found time for a kid considering all that Cold War stuff going on.) I taught myself how to type on our manual typewriter, began experimenting in the kitchen and finally learned how to cook without almost starting a fire, and, yes, I watched TV… when I wasn’t busy exploring other things… and that was seldom.

Kids these days don’t have those three long summer months to fill anymore. It’s not just the over-abundance of cable programming that’s at fault: the schools themselves are destroying opportunities for kids to develop their own interests. As Lynne explains about her child’s summer vacation:

M is apparently expected to do 75 pages of that math book we received yesterday, read a book, and write a paragraph on each chapter during his “vacation“. Everything is due on the first day of school, and if it’s not, he’ll fail his first report card.

I totally sympathize. Although I homeschool my youngest (who has no idea that other children get 3 months off school each year), my teenager’s still in public school. She started her summer with homework assignments to complete and sports-related training to attend over “the break.” I was fit to be tied.

Even calling it “the break” ticks me off. It implies that the school is doing her a favor by not mandating her attendance but meanwhile still retains authority and control over my daughter while she’s not attending. And, guess what: according to the court system, that’s not merely implied: it’s a legal fact.

All our kids belong to them.

I should’ve known better than to write two days ago about how well my son had taken to homeschooling. I should’ve known better than to assume I’d continue passing days so richly contented, so permeated with joy. I should’ve known there’d be days like this one.

But I’m damn glad I didn’t know it beforehand.

Today was bitter, starting too soon and ending too late. It was ferocious. I would’ve gladly traded a year of my life not to have had to live through today. But live through it I did, and I can only hope that tomorrow is not nearly as evil.

It started at 7:15 when my son woke up a full two hours earlier than any morning in the past three weeks. He wanted breakfast — now — and refused to wait the 10 minutes it takes me to use the restroom, brush my teeth and find my robe and slippers. In those brief moments, he’d managed to strew Apple Jacks and milk all over the counters, the floor and the inside of the refrigerator. Add in one puppy who also couldn’t wait 10 minutes to do her thing, and you can imagine the swamp of cereal, milk, shit and pee that greeted me when I finally shuffled into the kitchen.

Where I stubbed my toe on my son’s firetruck that he’d forgotten to put away last night.

And I found that we were out of coffee.

But both of these things occurred just as I stepped into a big pile of dog shit which, since I was hopping on one foot while trying to massage my painful stubbed toe, meant that I went skidding across the kitchen floor and landed on my ass. In dog shit. And Apple Jacks.

Two hours later (and, no, nobody died), I’d managed to mostly clean the kitchen floor… or at least had cleaned up anything resembling feces or urine. Then it was time to start our school day… or so I thought. My son, however, had other plans.

He didn’t want to read a story together. He didn’t want to read to me or have me read to him, either. He didn’t want to play with flashcards, play Word Bingo or even play Junior Scrabble. He didn’t want to bang on drums, play with Play Dough or paint. He didn’t want to do anything but watch Scooby Doo.

So I let him.

Then the phone rang. The company from which I rent server space was sold again, which means that all of VenomPages’s clients were down while the new DNS addresses propagated. So I got on the phone with the company just as the damn puppy decided to take yet another dump. This time her target was my purse, which meant the company’s customer service rep got the earful they so richly deserved for having pulled this crap without notice to me. I was mid-stream in an admirable string of profanity when the customer service wench explained they’d sent me an email warning me of the transfer… last week… when my computer was hosed and I was offline.

Shit.

So I sit down to the computer to start restoring my clients’ site and that’s when the Big-Eyed Boy decided he was ready for school.

Now, I’m still new enough to this homeschooling thing that I figured it was better to take him up on his interest right then and there rather than risk alienating him by telling him that Mommy was busy. So I pulled out my notes on today’s science project — making rock candy to demonstrate crystallization, which jives nicely with our language lessons that currently feature the “hard-c” sound. (Get it: candy, cooking, crystal, crunch?)

We’re boiling water and stirring in sugar when a bird — yes, a freaking bird! — flew in the deck door that my cat had managed to push open. Hot sugary water flew all over the stovetop, all over my apron, and almost all over the Big-Eyed Boy but (thanks to the puppy peeing on my son’s firetruck which I’d only managed to kick across the kitchen this morning), the boy had moved out of the danger zone. Nobody was hurt. It was just another mess demanding to be cleaned.

Not that I had time, mind you. I’d just pulled out the 409 and paper towels when the doorbell rang. The DHL delivery dude needed my signature for the three boxes of miscellaneous school supplies I’d ordered two weeks ago. I’d just finished signing that weird electronic tablet thing the use when the puppy — followed by the cat — race out the door and onto the street. Naturally, I raced after them and the DHL dude was kind enough to race after me to provide help. Of course, my son also raced after the two of us, so while I’m hollering at him to get out of the street I’m also managing to scare the crap out of the puppy and cat. I have to say, that DHL dude is fast, because he managed to scoop up both animals and get them back in my front door before my son actually understood what I meant when I shouted: “Get back in the driveway, now!”

By the time we returned to the sugar-encrusted kitchen, ants had already found the mess and called their buddies in for a feast. I probably wouldn’t have minded nearly as much if they were cleaning up the Apple Jacks as well as the dog’s shit and pee that I’d somehow missed under the kitchen table, but they weren’t at all interested in those mundane things. I guess they figure there will be more of those available tomorrow, and they’re probably right.

At that point it was 10:30 a.m. and I was ready to call it a day. I put the puppy in its kennel, locked the cat in my office and bribed my son with his leftover birthday cake while I finished cleaning the kitchen then took a hot shower. Once I was clean again (and realized it was far too early to start drinking martinis), I figured the only way we were all likely to live through the day was by getting out of the house.

So off to Wal-Mart we went. After all, I needed a new purse.

This was our first trip to a public place during standard school hours, a potentially awkward situation that I’d read plenty of warnings about. Had I not been so frazzled already I might’ve noticed if we got any strange looks or passed by any old ladies whispering about truancy and bad examples. As it was, I could only focus on finding a purse that was cheap without looking so.

With that mission accomplished, we still had another 6 hours to fill before 5 o’clock — the Golden Hour when Hubby comes home and takes over parenting duties. So we went to the library, we went to the playground, we went to the grocery store and we went out to lunch. Then it was noon.

Dear God, how could it have only been noon?!!

Feeling sorry for the puppy in its kennel — as well as myself — we returned home to confirm that little leprechauns and house elves do not, in fact, exist. The house was still a mess, as was the puppy who’d managed to roll around in her own poop and emerged from her kennel dripping pee from her ears.

I was hosing off the dog in the backyard when my son strayed too close. I couldn’t resist. I sprayed him head to toe with the hose and he laughed. He laughed! It was the first laugh of the day for either of us, and it was infectious. I sprayed him some more, then I let him capture the hose from me so he could soak me down, too. This went on for at least a half-hour, with the puppy barking happily and dashing between our feet, when we decided that what we really needed was water balloons.

The lady at Dillon’s did her best not to bat an eye when my son and I — our hair still wet, although we’d at least managed to change into dry clothes — tossed six bags of water balloons on the counter. Finally, as she handed over my receipt, she mustered the courage to ask whether it was a school holiday or something.

“Every day is a holiday,” my son replied. “We homeschool!”

She told him that he’s a very lucky boy to be able to go to school at home with his mommy, then wished us well as we left. As for me, I bit my tongue.

If this is a holiday, I hate to think what’s in store for tomorrow.

Then: Sometime around the turn of the year when my son was mid-way through kindergarten at public school, I glanced at the calendar and felt a gnawing dread twist in my stomach. Still twinkling in the living room, the Christmas tree stood green and perfect while outside its living counterparts shivered and groaned underneath a caul of ice. But my thoughts weren’t on the bitter temps, the squealing wind, the seemingly endless cloud-gray days. Because I knew they weren’t endless. I knew that eventually summer would come.

I used to wonder when I’d lost that eager anticipation for summer time, when I stopped yearning for the lazy warm mornings, the hours of freedom and leisure. After two years of sending my son off to preschool each morning, summer meant surrendering my life for three long months to cater to him. Summer was the three month-long period in which I didn’t have time to blog, to read, to write, and getting any housework done first required a lengthy negotiation session in which I agreed to play games and buy ice cream in exchange for the privilege of scrubbing pee-drenched toilets. I learned to dread summer, starting right around New Year’s Day, and to see each sunrise as one more step closer to my own armageddon.

But that was then.

This is now: Since we started homeschooling last month, my son and I are around each other just as much now as we usually are during the summer time. But I don’t wake up filled with dread anymore. I don’t find myself wishing his favorite TV show would come on just so I could have 30 minutes to shower, dress and maybe do laundry. The kid who drove me crazy whining and intent on consuming every ounce of my patience is now relaxed, centered, even happy. As am I.

In this, our first month of homeschooling, I have learned both about my son and myself. I have learned how much my little boy and I think alike — both of us are adamant and assertive kinetic learners. (According to my mother, when I started speaking it wasn’t merely a word but a sentence: “I do it myself.” Thirty-eight years later, my attitude has not changed.) We are doing this together, my son and I, and it is working. He seems to have embraced the concept of school at home… at least for this year.

I expected just the opposite.

On our first day as we sat down at our kitchen table for “class”, he got out his pencil and crayons while I silently reminded myself that the key to making this all work was patience and a positive attitude. I expected a red-faced tantrum punctuated by stomps and screams… from both of us. I need not have worried. My son has taken to homeschooling as if he had just been waiting for me to take the first step.

Our days have fallen into a happy pattern, far more leisurely and content than ever before. Now that he can wake at a time of his own choosing, he sleeps later and wakes with a sweet nature I’m only just now beginning to recognize. He likes an hour or so to himself before we start our school day, which means that I now have an hour or more to myself each morning, too. Then, when he’s good and ready, he takes his seat at the table and informs me it’s time to start school. By then, I’m glad to get started, too.

But the most miraculous change is in his behavior. See, I can’t remember the last time he misbehaved. Oh, sure, there are times he wriggles and gets distracted when we’re doing schoolwork, or even the occasional tussle over picking up his toys or going to sleep. But their significance — and intensity — pale in comparison to the fun-filled hours we spend reading and coloring, playing “Word Bingo” with his vocabulary words or “math-facts hopscotch” in the living room to reinforce addition and subtraction skills.

Had you told me a month ago that my son could be such a non-stop joy, that I’d relish every moment of our day and find myself preferring his company to any of my solitary pasttimes, I’d have thought you a liar. Now, I know better.

If I’m dreading summer-time now it’s only because I wonder if we really need a break from all this. According to my boy, the answer is a resounding “NO!” And I think he might have a point.

Hey, remember me? I purportedly write a blog here, and yet it’s been days since I’ve checked in. There’s a reason, however: We’re officially homeschooling now.

But wait, regular EV readers say, weren’t you going to be starting at the end of the month? Why, yes. That was my plan. Then my son announced Thursday afternoon that he never, ever, ever wanted to go back to school. As luck would have it, that day our new curriculum arrived in the mail.

I’d ordered the 1st Grade series with the plan of letting him “unschool” (or “deschool” or however you want to put it) throughout the month of March. Then, I figured, I’d work with him to help him reach the remainder of the kindergarten learning objectives. By mid-summer, or maybe even this fall, we’d be ready for the 1st grade books I’d purchased.

Once again, my son had other plans.

This morning he announced that he wanted to start school at home with Mommy and brought me the 1st Grade Reading/Phonics workbook I’d left out after I’d looked through it. It didn’t take long to realize that the first six chapters were too easy for him, and by the end of the morning we were working on lessons scheduled well toward the end of first grade. After lunch, the same thing happened with the math books.

No wonder the little guy was bored out of his mind at public school. Luckily, Mom is not compelled to slow down his learning to suit the schedule of 22 other little minds, so I guess we’ll be finishing 1st grade sometime this summer… a year ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, I have absolutely no firm plans for history, science, art or Spanish (his chosen second language), so tonight I’ll be putting together at least a rough outline of objectives and our first few lesson plans.

So, although I thought I’d left behind my years of burning the midnight oil while slaving over a pile of books, I have to say: this is so much more fun!

While trying to think through and prepare for the switch to homeschooling, I’ve found myself indulging in the convenience of bashing the public school system. By “convenient,” I mean the human tendency to villify one option before selecting another. In the case of deciding we’re going to home school, that’s meant not merely finding fault with the public school system, but feeling anger and even a sense of betrayal for its deficiencies.

The truth is, public schools aren’t necessarily poor or sub-standard, they just might not be the best fit for a child’s personality, learning style or temperment. Yet for years they’ve been promoted as just that. Encouraged by our Federal and state governments, taxpayers have come to expect all American schools to reach unform standards, wholly ignoring the natural consequence of this approach.

We speak about educational fairness and equal access, demanding that students in less-affluent areas receive the same opportunities and education as students in more well-to-do locations. By doing so, we ignore reality: that public school funds come from the public, which means a school’s financial resources are destined to reflect the financial resources of the area it serves. In other words, the only way to truly even the playing field is by redistributing wealth… and that, as we know, is a wholly un-American concept.

But we ignore this, just as we ignore the consequences of demanding that public schools work better, faster and cheaper. Ultimately, those expectations have forced school administrators and teachers to devise boiler-plate, outcome based curricula that can be efficiently and homogeneously imparted to children. And that’s the problem.

The assumption underlying our demand for a more effective, more efficient school system is that all children can be taught in the same way, using the same books, the same lessons, the same lectures or teacher interactions. Look beneath this assumption and you’ll find another: that all children learn pretty much alike.

So we have come to accept, and teachers have come to rely upon, a combination of visual- and auditory-based techniques. Students read text books, listen to lectures, copy notes from the chalk board, fill out workbook sheets, sit in classrooms decorated with posters and collages reinforcing current study topics and take written tests to demonstrate mastery. Doing hands-on projects are “special treats” — field trips to sites relating to areas of study, dioramas accompanying book reports; role-playing in skits or puppet-shows.

And let’s face it: students are learning. True, we hear horror stories about social promotion and high school graduates who still haven’t learned how to read. But you are reading this, I am writing this, we’re both successful enough to afford computers and internet access, and we’re smart enough to have learned how to use them. We didn’t acquire those skills in a vacuum. We learned them — or the building blocks upon which they are based — in school.

Just because public schools are capable of teaching children, just because so many millions of American children receive acceptable educations, just because public schools are, quite simply, there does not make them right for each and every child. If it did, schools would not have had to create and adopt the concept of “individualized educational programs” (IEP) for those children who can’t learn with the mainstream.

Sadly, needing a unique learning environment or alternative teaching methods — needing an IEP — stigmatizes a child. He or she is “different” and must be set apart, taught separately, and often socialized separately as well. By definition, a child needing an IEP is disabled. Translation: a child capable of learning exactly the same concepts as others, to the same degree of mastery, is still somehow flawed, incapacitated or otherwise handicapped. For the child whose mind takes in and processes information different than other children, a public education means either continually struggling to conform to something inherently foreign to his/her way of thinking — and the likelihood of perpetual poor- or sub-standard performance — or accepting the notion that somehow he/she is deficient and born “broken.”

What a hell of a burden to place on a child to whom, not so many years later, we then say: “Measure up! Be like others! Fit in!”

My son is a kinesthetic learner — he does not learn by verbal instruction, he does not seek written or visual clues to help him understand a new concept. He learns initially through physical manipulation, action and activitity. Having personally encountered something new on his own terms, he is then prepared to assimilate additional knowledge. So, once he’s had a chance to independently explore a new concept or task, then (and only then) is his mind prepared to receive additional information from other sources: verbal explanations, hints, questions, written materials.

Ask any public school teacher — or parent, for that matter — and they’ll tell you that kinesthetic learners are tough to handle. They’re time-consuming. You cannot deliver information orally or through written words and send them off to try it themselves. You have to do just the opposite: let them explore on their own, deal with the (occasionally loud or explosive) outbursts of frustration, re-motivate them so they don’t completely give up, wait for that motivation to lead them back to you in search of additional information, and then start the process all over again. Ad infinitum.

That’s a process I’ve gradually learned and adjusted to over the past 5 years. It was hell at first, and led at times to such heated outbursts from my son that I found myself dreading any activity that required our interaction. I could not understand why he didn’t “get” things, since I could definitely see evidence of his fierce intelligence as he picked up reading on his own, learned how to count on his own, figured out how to operate a computer on his own.

But he could not — or, as I thought of it at that point, would not — learn from me. He grew defiant whenever I tried telling him how to make his bed, how to operate a new toy, how to write his name. He’d push me away, sometimes yell at me, and often broke into tears. At one point I found myself wondering how I could so deeply adore my little boy and yet feel that parenthood was, ultimately, unsatisfying and burdensome.

And so, as I’ve mentioned before, I was eager for him to start kindergarten. Let him be someone else’s antagonist for 6 hours a day actually went through my mind. Like most parents, I assumed that having taught so very many children for many years, the teacher would possess more coping strategies, more patience, more insight into my little guy and his mysterious brain than I ever could hope to possess myself. I believed in some magical classroom alchemy through which my challenging child would transform into a well-behaved, calmly patient and submissively receptive learner. Then I’d be able to deal with him better.

I was wrong.

Almost from the get-go, my boy experienced problems. He did not like to sit still. He wants to be up and moving around, looking at things, even when it’s story time and the others are all raptly focused on listening. He wanted to talk with the kids who sit next to him, play games while the teacher talked, color outside the lines if he felt like it, and do his workbook pages in the way that most suited his whim.

My son’s teacher grew frustrated, just as I had. Using the rewards/consequences paradigm which leads most children to demonstrate good behavior, she urged my son to listen when instructed, stay on task, keep his attention focused along with the rest of the class. When he had to “move his star,” I tried reinforcing the teacher’s point by instituting consequences at home for misbehavior in school. He began trying to get out of going to school. It didn’t take long to see a pattern.

The fact is, things probably would’ve gone on that way and perhaps my son would’ve eventually capitulated, learned to control his activity level and sit quietly when expected, and maybe with his high intelligence he could’ve even become a more model student. Lord knows, my life would be easier had I just sat back and waited for all of that to happen. Yet, at what cost? Would the process of conforming quell the active, inquisitive spark that served him so well as he learned the alphabet, numbers, addition tables, U.S. geography… all on his own? Was I really willing to trade his gifted, albeit challenging, intelligence for a child who’d sit still and remain silent when bidden?

Back at home, where I’ve spent evenings helping my son finish incomplete classroom assignments, I had to become the student. I had to observe him, to learn how he works best, what motivates him and what turns him off. I had to study the things he was doing on his own that worked, analyze how they differed from what I’d been doing. I had to ask him questions, to let him teach me how I to teach him. I had to research different learning styles, experiment with different techniques, and train myself to use these new concepts when we were together. Then my work began paying off: my son grew happy, cheerful and courteous. He grew inquisitive again and invited me to sit with him while he did homework. He worked diligently, independently, and without the tears and frustration of the past. He came to me with questions, seeking new things to learn, and I knew how to respond in ways that encouraged him even more.

Having invested so much of my own effort into learning about my son, I could now see all the wonderful things he’s been doing right on his own. I began to see myself as a partner in his education, and that by continuing to work with him I could at least re-invigorate his love of learning at the end of each day.

It wasn’t until my son’s teacher suggseted that I have him evaluated for ADHD that I came to realize I’d invested myself in another role, too: that of my son’s advocate and champion, the adult whose responsibility it is to do the hard work in order to make learning easier for him. As his champion, it is also my task to distinguish between what is and what is not in his best interest, and to fight for his right to be accepted and loved for who he is. When it comes to my son, I draw the battle line at classifying his way of thinking and hands-on style of learning as “disorder” best managed by changing his personality through medication.

Like any info-junkie parent, I am aware of the frequency with which little boys are now placed on psychotropic drugs. I know there no long-term studies showing their effects on children. I know that American school children are prescribed (and sometimes legally forced to take) these drugs in numbers unparalleled by their European peers. Try as I did, I could think of no rational basis for that discrepancy, nor could I come up with some organic change within children making them need behavioral drugs more than children did five, ten, even twenty years ago. Which can only mean one thing: we’re diagnosing children with ADD and sometimes — although certainly not in all cases — sticking them on drugs because it’s convenient.

Don’t get me wrong: I do wholeheartedly believe that some of us have valid organic reasons for needing medication. I am in no way implying that every parent giving their child such meds is somehow copping out. In fact, the NIMH research indicates that intensively medicated children show improvement in social interactions. Ironically, the very same study reports in one paragraph that ADHD affects only 3 to 5% of children, yet in the next paragraph describes it as “relatively common.” Since when was 3-5% common?!

It’s this form of short-hand thinking that has led educators to view such medications as the modern-day aspirin: a panacea for challenging behavior patterns. All too often its seems that if Johnny does better in school after going on Ritalin or Adderall, well then, Joey ought to try taking it, too. And it’s far more convenient to tell a parent they need to medicate their child so he/she does better in school (a goal every parent wants their child to achieve) than to examine whether the problem lies not with the child’s inability to adapt to the teaching methods, but rather, the teaching methods’ inability to adapt to the child.

As you’ll recall, this whole entry started off using that word: convenience. My point in the beginning was that humans tend to villify one option before rejecting it in favor of another. I do not want to villify the teaching methods used in public schools for not perfectly every student’s style of learning. But I also reject the “convenience” of labelling a child as deficient, as needing mind-altering medications, as a behavioral problem simply because his learning style does not perfectly fit in with the way public schools have undertaken to teach.

It would be so very “convenient” for me, as a parent, to continue sending my son to public school and hope that somehow he would change. It would be very “convenient” for me to lower my academic expectations for him in exchange for more time to myself, more autonomy, more of a life centered on my own needs and happiness. It was oh so very “convenient” for me to think — initially, that is — that the problem somehow was my son’s, and that figuring out how to get along in school was his job, too. It would be far, far more convenient to give him a pill every morning and send him off to school where he’d be calm enough to become a receptive (rather than active) learner.

I can’t afford such convenience. I only have one son, and he only has one life. We have just these few years in which to inspire him, to ignite that spark that promotes a life-long love of learning, to equip him with the skills and concepts upon which he’ll rely once he’s grown into a man. I can no more justify the villification of public schools for not suiting him than I can justify the villification of my son for not fitting into public school. If it weren’t for my son’s school prompting me to examine my expectations of him, along with my expectations of myself, I might never have gotten to the heart of what convenience really means:

Main Entry: con·ve·nient
Pronunciation: k&n-’vEn-y&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin convenient-, conveniens, from present participle of convenire to come together, be suitable, from com- + venire to come — more at COME
1 obsolete : SUITABLE, PROPER
2 a : suited to personal comfort or to easy performance b : suited to a particular situation c : affording accommodation or advantage
3 : being near at hand : HANDY

For our lives, the obsolete way of thinking is to expect my son’s behavior to be suitable or proper for public school. For us, our educational choice needs to be suited to his personal comfort, affording accomodation for his different style of learning, so we can give him the advantage he deserves, and that means keeping him near at hand. For us, homeschooling is convenient.

This time, I am embracing that word.