A few nights ago I told you about the self-defense class for women that I attended with dd13 and dd15. The martial arts studio that offered the class is owned by a homeschooling family who have been home educating for a long, long time – they decided to do it when their 22 year old son was an infant. Afterward the three of us hung around and chatted with the husband and wife, and later were joined by their college age daughter and friend.
Recently I’ve been feeling somewhat troubled by the changes I see in the homeschooling world that is paralleled in the Jewish world. Home education has gone from a choice made mostly by parents who have done a tremendous amount of thinking and considering, who are looking at the individual needs of their children with the focus on how to support individual strengths, who were willing to go against the current because of their strong belief in those principles – to growing numbers of those who look at it as a parallel academic choice, as just another way to do fulfill the scope and sequence. (Edited to add: that’s to say that there’s been an increase in families who are viewing home education in the latter light; however, the majority are definitely still in the former category.) To me, that’s a real loss of potential joy in learning and in family life that has always been inherent in homeschooling.
So because this has been on my mind lately, it was especially enjoyable spending so much time speaking to long-term homeschoolers who know exactly what trends I’m referring to, and find it equally of concern. So refreshing to speak to people who intuitively ‘get it’. We all started off talking together, and then we started having more than one conversation so the girls spoke to the wife and later on her 18 year old daughter while I spoke to the father. Finally after an hour we said goodbye – we could have kept talking lots longer.
When we got back in the car, the girls both strongly commented at how nice homeschoolers are. They really enjoyed the conversation with the mother and the college daughter, and commented on how unusual it is for them to be treated with that kind of respect or enjoyment by people older than them, but how common it is with people who have been homeschooling a long time. One went on to say, “There’s a difference between homeschoolers and people who homeschool. When people are homeschooling for a short time, they tend to be more similar to people who send their kids to school.” That was quite an interesting observation, and fairly accurate, too. (Edited to add that I’ll clarify what was meant in a different post since after reading this I realized it could seem to be a criticism of those homeschooling a short amount of time.)
In our discussion of homeschoolers, we were noting some subtle qualities found in those who have been homeschooling a long time that are really nice to experience. In general, homeschoolers tend to be accepting, interact with people of all ages comfortably, and are respectful of the differences. This is noticeable in social groupings with homeschoolers, where the differences in how the kids interact is so visibly different from the typical playground interactions that it’s quickly notable.
Something else that’s unique is how homeschooled kids enjoy one another regardless of age – I recently took four of my kids to a homeschoolers pick up sports session, where ds4 was able to play softball with ds7 and dd9 (they were on different teams, though). It’s so nice to see how there were kids ages 4 – 10 on these teams all having fun together (we also see this at our local homeschool gatherings – a mother new to homeschooling recently commented that she couldn’t believe that so many kids could be playing together without adult supervision, and no fighting, no yelling, no bullying!).
There are many positive qualities I’ve noticed in homeschoolers: their willingness to think about difficult issues and really act on their concerns rather than follow the crowd, the commitment to their childrens’ well-being, their intelligent and thoughtful approach to life in general. But in short, they’re really nice people to spend time with, and it seems the longer they homeschool, the nicer they get!
Avivah
This post leaves me with a feeling like I couldn’t possibly “get it”, since I’ve only been homeschooling 3.5 years or so. Despite my relative inexperience in homeschooling, I do feel that I try to fulfill the individual needs of my children and work with their strengths and so on. Maybe you could write more posts that address strategies that you have found helpful in doing these things. I don’t know if I would call homeschooling a “parallel academic choice”, but I not sure I see much value in promoting homeschooling or a particular way of homeschooling dogmatically. Hate to be so relativistic, but I can only do what works for me, and others should do what works for them. If that involves sending their children to school, signing up for a cyber academy charter school, or using school-in-a-box type curriculum, I don’t see the need to bemoan that state of affairs.
Are you concerned with potential future affects on all homeschoolers’ freedoms as cyber schooling and other one-size-fits-all approaches become more popular? I think that is a very valid concern.
Anytime something becomes popularized and mainstream, the newer proponents of that thing, whether that thing is homeschooling or punk rock, may not share the same values and experiences as the older ones. I am not sure this is a process that can be avoided. Is there any value in getting concerned about this normal process? I don’t know. It reminds me a little of my angst as a teenager over some obscure band that became popular, leading me to claim that they had “sold out”.
I am not sure if I should submit this comment at all. I don’t want to be obnoxious or rude. After all, real homeschoolers are nice! I do want to discuss this, though. For some reason this train of thought leaves me uncomfortable and I am just trying to reflect on why that is.
Feel free to delete this comment if you feel it is inappropriate. I am not sure how to write this in a more neutral way.
I have continued thinking about this, and I wanted to stress that I meant nothing in my post in a sarcastic way. I really respect your knowledge in many subject areas, but I am just wondering what exactly your concerns are. How do you think these trends will affect you? Are you concerned for the well being of the children in new homeschooling families?
I should not be on the computer now, so Gut Shabbos to you!
Binah, I didn’t take offense at anything you wrote; it was obvious you were coming from a place of sincerity. Since when is asking questions and wanting to clarify something not ‘nice’? 🙂
I don’t have much time now but wanted to let you know that I saw your comment and will respond when I get a chance as a separate post.
I am glad you did not take offense! Some things just don’t come across as intended in writing, so I just wanted to be sure my intentions were clear. It’s one thing to have a group discussion online (like on Torch-D or Imamother.com), and it’s another to come to someone’s private blog and write something that could be construed as sarcasm or disdain. I look forward to your post!
Avivah, I have seen something a little different. Back when we began this journey (seven years? I lose track) people who chose to homeschool after experiencing the school system all pretty much said the same thing, no matter what style homeschooling they chose: “my kid is great and the system is broken”. What I’ve been seeing more of in the last year is parents who have bought into “the system is fine and my kid is “broken”” choosing to homeschool. They have one kid who “needs” it, and are happy that at least the others are just fine in the mainstream. So it’s not a philosophical choice for them, it’s what they see as necessity. In one extreme case, the parents essentially left one of their kids home by himself for most of a year and called it homeschooling!
However, I would not to paint all newcomers with this brush; first off, the majority are still choosing for philosophical reasons, and still believe that their kids are just fine and that “the system” is irrelevant. Second of all, it’s demoralizing to newcomers to hear about the “good old days when the people making the decision to hs were better people”. Instead of encouraging people to find their way, it discourages them from even trying! I know you don’t mean it that way, Avivah, but it sure sounds like that! And third of all? I was hearing stuff like this back when I made the decision, seven years ago.
Something that I am seeing is that the sheer volume of materials out there is making things more difficult, not easier, overall, and people who would have come to rely on themselves earlier spend more time looking for the “right” boxed solution. Can I add how much I dislike the rainbow resource catalog for this reason? They sell everything, so there’s no point of view to the catalog and therefore no way to know if the resource would work for us or not. I do buy from them when the price is right, but it’s no fun-books.com or even the sadly defunct Elijah catalog.
Malkie, what you’re describing is similar to what I’m referencing in this post, meaning increasing numbers of parents who view the school system as ideal and use that as a model.
You’re right, what I wrote did sound like I was bemoaning that all homeschoolers aren’t like the hardy good ol’ days pioneers, though it’s really not what I intended to express at all. I made a couple of notes in my post to clarify that I was referring to an *increasing trend*, though the majority of homeschoolers tend to be amazing people who have put a lot of thought into their decision. (I’d have preferred to edit the original wording to avoid future misunderstanding but then those reading afterwards wouldn’t know what the comments were referring to.)
Btw, the couple I was speaking to are the owners of fun-books.com – great people, and I’m sure you can understand why it was so enjoyable speaking to them at length.
!!!!Wow!!!!
I hate to be a total fan girl, but the fun-books.com people IRL?! I own something off of every page of that catalog and you know I send people there all the time. The catalog descriptions are so thoughtful and honest, I can only imagine that IRL that’s what they are like.
As for this new trend of people taking the “homeschool” label when their kids just need a year off from school. Obviously I mind people using the term “homeschool” to mean “neglect” (or recently in the news here, abuse). But something else that really troubles me is that those kids then go back into the school world with the label “homeschooler” on them, and are NOTHING like homeschoolers. Half the time they haven’t even detoxed! Especially here in Israel, where there aren’t that many of us, and the first one you meet, or believe you meet, makes a lasting impression. They make things harder of us who do put in the effort for our kids look bad, and I resent it.
You definitely would have loved the conversation, Malkie! Intelligent, thoughful, non-judgmental – they’re genuinely nice people. Seriously, the longer people homeschool the more they integrate that thoughtfulness and acceptance into their personas. Though I supposed that’s true of everyone – the longer we do something, the more it becomes part of us and shows up in our personalities.
I really want to respond to this point of yours because I have very, very similar concerns, but I want to do it in a post so people won’t miss it down here. Binah above asked about my concerns in people taking a certain approach and this is a significant concern of mine, that I plan to address in my next homeschooling post, PG.
I currenlty do not homeschool but I am starting to think about it. One concern I have is that how do your children cultivate relationships with other adults to ask advice if they feel want an outside opinion. I know the goal is to have an excellent relationship with your child and be able to advice them. Do you think it is necesary or beneficial to have others i.e. in shcool a child has teachers and often older friends. Thanks I really apreciate it. I learn so much from each of your posts.
It’s a good question! Give me a few days and I’ll try to respond to this in a post, okay? 🙂
Thank you for this post. I woke up from a much-needed nap after helping at VBS this morning, and my first thoughts were that homeschooled kids and homeschooling parents are some of the nicest, sweetest people I know. It was just a revelation that I’d never considered until then. So finding your article was something that resonated with my hope to post an article of appreciation for the niceness of homeschoolers in general. I hope it will give a few of my homeschooling friends a pat on the back for being really nice people. There’s just something really different about people who choose this way of life for their families.