Should I Stay or Should I go? The Choice to Homeschool

The decision to homeschool is a very personal one. Whether it is born from the conviction of your religious beliefs, the recognition of the broken-ness that is the current state of education in this country or even if it’s not entirely by choice due to health challenges faced by your child and family, many factors are taken into consideration when making this weighty decision. 

Regardless of how you come to that decision, my job as your consultant is to provide support. While I still work in the public sector, I am not blind to the flaws within the system in which I work. It is one of the few remaining publicly funded institutions in the U.S which not only guarantees access to a free education for students kindergarten through 12th grade, but will provide extra support should your child need it in order to succeed. 

However, despite that excellent premise, it is not without its deep flaws. Focus has shifted from providing solid instruction to ensuring that manufactured benchmarks are met with state and federal examinations. The companies that design these tests are the same companies that happen to curate the prescribed curriculum to remedy low scores. What you have here is an incredible business model: Design tests that students will likely not succeed with and then provide the solution that will allegedly help them succeed.

It is a never ending cycle of money going to these big conglomerates

At all stages, this is a win/win for this company. They make money selling us the tests and they make even more money selling us the curriculum. In short, there are a few people out there making money hand over fist at the expense of the educational experience of the nation’s children. 

There is so much learning that happens outside of the confines of a curriculum when it is fostered by an experienced adult. But we are now so focused on teaching to the test, that these meaningful learning experiences are few and far between. This is where homeschooling has a huge advantage over public schools. A field trip in schools is an arudous and stressful process, juggling dozens of kids. The home school parents can just pick their kids up and go on a whim.

I will freely admit that I was not always a proponent of the choice to homeschool. I figured that we (the teachers) were the experts in the education field and, to an extent, there is truth to that. It wasn’t until I got to know my now sister in law and her family that I began to shift my thinking.

My sister in law and her three brothers were all homeschooled. All of them are intelligent critical thinkers who have made sound choices for their adult lives. Through the closeness with my brother I have gotten to know his wife’s family very well and formed a friendship with their mother Connie who was in charge of homeschooling her four children. 

I have enjoyed many rich conversations with her about her experiences as a parent and homeschool teacher, what schooling currently looks like and what it should look like here in the 2020’s. I once took to the concept and interpreted the decision to homeschool as an insult to my abilities and experience. In reality these decisions are made because of a very simple concept: parents want the best for their kids. 

And that’s what we all have in common regardless of our stance on homeschooling: We all, parents and teachers alike,  want what’s best for kids. If we can shift our focus to that common ground, I think some meaningful collaboration could take place.