nowshera.

WE DON”T WANT TO BE LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD

in our quest to be unlike the rest of the world many of us lose sight of the fact the no mater what we want the reality is that we live in the rest of the world and must conincide with the rest of the world.
therefore the more peacably we do that the more likely it is that the rest of the world will leave us be.

I agree with you cherle that it is incredibly important to teach our children what the rest of the world expects and to teach them to be productive members of society ( with the understanding that socitey is dead wrong about many of things it thinks are productive) but things like being on time and following rules are important particularly when you are taking advantage of someone else’s willingness to give of their precious time and energy to show you something of worth or teach you something about what they know. I wish your orchard was near where i live so that we could bring our group and provide you with an example of homeschoolers who aren’t an incredible hinderance to your schedule.

Also if the homeschoolers want what the public school gets enforce your rules ( it is important to understand that there are rules to be followed) because once you make an exception word gets out that you did x for one group and then you have to do x for every group ( in the same way that children need to learn there are rules sometimes homeschool parents need to re learn that just because they don’t send their kids to school doesn’t mean that their kids don’t have to follow your rules when they are at your orchard)

I was involved in every extra curricular activity i wanted my siblings never really wanted organized activity, but then i am the over acheving oldest child who fits most first born steryotypes

in encouragment to those parents who are thinking about homeschooling no matter what method you think you want to use you can always change try a little of this and a little of that and there are tons of people out there doing something who are always willing to lend an opinion or some advice based on past experince, oh and we live on an air field i forgot to mention that ( sorry add moment)

Most of you will not like my post, but I started to look up information on you homeschoolers so I can make some attempt to understand you. I also hope that some of you atleast make an effort to take my comments into serious considersation and deeply examine what you are doing and how you are doing it.

I have led school tours at an orchard for close to 10 years now and accross the board I can tell you that the homeschoolers that come for a tour are the following:

late
unorganized
cannot make decisions
always looking for a discount
have no time schedule
insist on being offered what public schools get, but don’t want to comply to the rules that public school tours are asked to do
multilple phone calls to confirm their informtation addtional labor to be paid by employer due to their tardiness
the list goes on.

The group I had today is what sparked me to search out some place on the internet where I could “yes” blow off steam, but also make somekind of plea to you people to really examine what you are doing and how it is going to affect your kids down the road.

The bottom line is your kids have to live in a world that is not homeschooled!!!!

We just cringe when we get a phone call to book a tour with a homeschool group because we know that it will not go well. We are seriously considering changing what we offer to homeschoolers or not offering them anything at all. I don’t think that is what you want, but I don’t know what we have for alternatives.

I have two different neighbors that homeschool their children and they are wonderful people as I am sure most of you are.

But……….when you get into a group…..this is what happens to you!

I guess my biggest message to you is that I really don’t care what your reason is for homeschooling……….my biggest message to you is you need to spend more time functioning in the real world where your children will eventually have to function.

There I said it. Go after me as you wish. I just want you to know that these thoughts and comments are genuine and are not meant to bash or be thoughtless.

If I have to I will homeschool again at high school level but I’m hoping I won’t have to.

I’ve been in big and small schools myself and my only comment is it really depends on the quality of the teacher. The rest tends to be immaterial. The small school left me badly educated and badly bullied (but with a great home). The bigger school left me well educated and badly bullied (24 hours a day boarding school)…take your pick!

viv in nz

Sharon

My parents selected homeschooling for religious reasons, but also believed in the multi-aged learning environment. They felt that it taught older kids how to teach and younger ones to push themselves for better things. Which is true – i was never the smartest kid in my classroom until I went to highschool. My mother gave up nursing to teach us, but by the time we got above 6-8 we were saving her time by doing the dishes, laundry, yard work, etc.

As far as making the transition to college all three of my sisters finished high school and took their GED’s. We had a branch of the University of Texas in our hometown where they all went for a period of time. Two graduated elsewhere. One is a nurse, one is a montessori teacher, and the other is finishing her studies to be a physical therapist after several years of being a homemaker. My mother died of breast cancer so I was given the choice of taking my GED or going to public school. I wanted to play basketball so I picked public school. I did not have any “credits” so I took tests for the first two years of English and History, and an easy form of geometry for my freshman year. We were heavy into reading so those were easy. Relatively speaking I was behind in maths and science, because I did not have much interest in either, but I caught up. The most striking thing about public school for me was how much time it took. We did maybe four hours of actual mom directed schooling growing up, often times less. We all read a lot, so you could easily tack on a couple hours of sitting around reading what we were interested in or doing projects (punishment for us was not being allowed to read, some of the biggest rules were “no reading at the dinner table” and “no reading in the bathroom”). Public school worked out relatively well for me, I went to an east coast tech school, enjoyed life a great deal, met my wife, found out I really didn’t like math that much, and ended up with a literature degree.

I strongly encourage homeschooling to those interested. If I have the money sitting around someday i would send my future (hopefully) kids to Waldorf. Otherwise, I intend to homeschool them myself.

I agree with you that some homeschooling parents basically give up their own lives to see to their children’s education. Not me. A big part of me “teaching” philosophy is to show my kids that I’m continually learning too. I have plenty of my own interests, as does my DH, and we feel it’s very important to pursue them and for our kids to see that. Not at their expense and neglect, of course, but with as much balance as we can achieve.

I’d also love to see a return of one-room or at least much smaller neighborhood schools. I think the demise of the neighborhood school has been one of the worst things to hit public education ever. There’s so little connection to the large school “centers” that we have now.

Lisa in MN