So, today, my aunt was in town with some distant relatives I'd never met before. We met for lunch, and it was a nice time. The relatives are older women (70's) and my aunt is single and in her 50's. My cousin and her son were there too (she's about my age).
Anyway. We were talking about how fast summer was going, as we were gathering up to leave, and one of the relatives asked when school starts here. My cousin didn't know, and I said that ours starts on the 24th (we do virtual academy through the state, but it's essentially homeschooling). Cousin and her parents are supportive of our homeschooling, although cousin says she'd never have the patience to do it herself.
My aunt asked whether dd1 will be going to a "real" school this year. I said, "No, we're happy with k12." And she said, "But school is so FUN!!" (she doesn't think much of homeschooling at all, she thinks home schooled kids are socially inept and not as well educated, and that they've been cheated of the wonderful experience of school, by being home schooled). Her contact with homeschooling has occurred almost entirely overseas, encountering missionaries and their families - a very different sort of homeschooling (and basis for homeschooling) than we have. We hadn't really had much of a conversation about Ina being homeschooled before, because I'd avoided it, and it was "only" kindergarten anyway....
So, I said again that the attendance policy here is so strict, with all that we travel, she'd have been taken off the rolls at school early in the school year. And we travel to see the great-grandmas, etc. My aunt said, "But you could do that in the summer, when everyone else does it!" My response was, "First, it's Kansas, who wants to go to hot humid Kansas during the summer? And, no, we can't, my husband's work is busiest during the summer, the most we can manage as time 'away' from work in the summer is 1-2 weekends total."
Her response: "Take shorter trips then, it's what other people do." [Obviously not believing me that dh really can't take more than 2 days at a time away from town during the summer]
Anyway. I didn't want to start a scene or an argument - I'm not even going to mention this to dh because he's never liked my aunt (she's the stereotypical 'old spinster' aunt) --- but it just galls me. I think I've chosen some of the least offensive justifications for homeschooling, when we talk about it (she'd heard these justifications before anyway) - we have close family members on both sides who work in education, we don't want to offend them or hurt their feelings with our choice. So "teaching to test," "lousy outcomes from the public system" etc. haven't even come up, because we don't want to go there with our relatives, who have been fine with the 'travel' justification we've used.
But just because other people are tied down by 8-5 jobs, doesn't mean we have to live like that. Dh is self-employed. That means that we CAN travel during the winter/fall/spring - he can work from the road while we're traveling - and during the summer we must be close to home because, as a partner in an architecture firm, he has site visits etc. going on during the construction season.
Just because most people can't travel like us, doesn't mean we should have to stop just because our oldest is school-aged. I'll put Ina's education this past year up against any other kindergartner in the country. She's reading, writing, spelling, knows all sorts of history and geography, adding/subtracting and already teaching herself multiplication (we haven't really gotten to it formally, she's doing it on her own). And, she can do this all while traveling and actually knowing her great-grandmas (one of whom passed away this past winter, we are so blessed we had decided to make the time to ensure the girls knew her!). We can do it with 1-3 hours of 'school' a day. We can do it on our schedule, not someone else's schedule. AND, we don't have to worry about 'teaching to the test' (which doesn't start 'til 3rd grade for the virtual academy students here) and overfilled classrooms, and dd1 being bored (or struggling but the class moving on). We don't have "homework," etc.
I don't believe that sticking her in a classroom with 30 other kids the same age is necessarily "fun." She's a social little being, and would love more friends (something I've been working on), but it's not like you're playing during class time. And it's not like recess is part of the day for most kids anymore anyway.
Frankly I have plenty of memories as a kid of the very "Lord of the Flies" aspects of school -- the mean kids, bullies, teasing about my vocabulary being too advanced. I have good memories too, but who is to say that school memories are so terribly important that they justify surrendering all the benefits of homeschooling? I grew up without TV, sure I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about old sitcoms from TV, but seriously - I don't think I'm defective because I didn't see "The Brady Bunch" til college.
So, anyway - I didn't get into it with her (beyond our glancing little remarks) - it wasn't the time or the place. But it ticked me off. I suppose I need to continue to think about how I can best defuse her "but school is so FUN" comments which I know will come up again ... I know if I said, "Maybe for you, but I spent one whole year being chased around the playground every recess and sexually harassed by a little boy while the teachers who saw it did nothing about it," she would say that I was allowing my own experiences to dictate whether I'm allowing Ina to have a different, positive experience [which would be bogus, because her "school is FUN" argument never occurred to me - LEARNING is fun, playing with friends is fun, I was initially concerned about socialization, but wasn't concerned about school being the epicenter of fun. To me, school very easily can become the epicenter of conformity and mediocrity]. She's one of those people who is very firm in her beliefs, and whose feelings can be hurt easily at the same time that she's not always considering others' feelings (although she'd be hurt to ever hear herself described that way). And I do love her dearly.
Ina has field trips and park days with other virtual school students; swim lessons, art class, library time, friends she plays with, she's in Cloverbuds and this fall she starts religious ed with church and I think I'm going to suck it up and check out both local homeschooling groups, too, just to try to make even more friends for her .... I think we do pretty well for the socializing stuff. But since dh and I are introverts, maybe we could do better?
UGH. And as a complete and utter aside, I think my aunt also thinks we're restricting Ina because of her allergies - she used her fork that she'd eaten her food with, to give Ina some berries from her fruit salad, and when Ina told her she didn't want them because she was worried about "contamination," she rolled her eyes. Even though she has a background in nutrition, and usually is really careful about egg-free foods for Ina.
Anyway. We were talking about how fast summer was going, as we were gathering up to leave, and one of the relatives asked when school starts here. My cousin didn't know, and I said that ours starts on the 24th (we do virtual academy through the state, but it's essentially homeschooling). Cousin and her parents are supportive of our homeschooling, although cousin says she'd never have the patience to do it herself.
My aunt asked whether dd1 will be going to a "real" school this year. I said, "No, we're happy with k12." And she said, "But school is so FUN!!" (she doesn't think much of homeschooling at all, she thinks home schooled kids are socially inept and not as well educated, and that they've been cheated of the wonderful experience of school, by being home schooled). Her contact with homeschooling has occurred almost entirely overseas, encountering missionaries and their families - a very different sort of homeschooling (and basis for homeschooling) than we have. We hadn't really had much of a conversation about Ina being homeschooled before, because I'd avoided it, and it was "only" kindergarten anyway....
So, I said again that the attendance policy here is so strict, with all that we travel, she'd have been taken off the rolls at school early in the school year. And we travel to see the great-grandmas, etc. My aunt said, "But you could do that in the summer, when everyone else does it!" My response was, "First, it's Kansas, who wants to go to hot humid Kansas during the summer? And, no, we can't, my husband's work is busiest during the summer, the most we can manage as time 'away' from work in the summer is 1-2 weekends total."
Her response: "Take shorter trips then, it's what other people do." [Obviously not believing me that dh really can't take more than 2 days at a time away from town during the summer]
Anyway. I didn't want to start a scene or an argument - I'm not even going to mention this to dh because he's never liked my aunt (she's the stereotypical 'old spinster' aunt) --- but it just galls me. I think I've chosen some of the least offensive justifications for homeschooling, when we talk about it (she'd heard these justifications before anyway) - we have close family members on both sides who work in education, we don't want to offend them or hurt their feelings with our choice. So "teaching to test," "lousy outcomes from the public system" etc. haven't even come up, because we don't want to go there with our relatives, who have been fine with the 'travel' justification we've used.
But just because other people are tied down by 8-5 jobs, doesn't mean we have to live like that. Dh is self-employed. That means that we CAN travel during the winter/fall/spring - he can work from the road while we're traveling - and during the summer we must be close to home because, as a partner in an architecture firm, he has site visits etc. going on during the construction season.
Just because most people can't travel like us, doesn't mean we should have to stop just because our oldest is school-aged. I'll put Ina's education this past year up against any other kindergartner in the country. She's reading, writing, spelling, knows all sorts of history and geography, adding/subtracting and already teaching herself multiplication (we haven't really gotten to it formally, she's doing it on her own). And, she can do this all while traveling and actually knowing her great-grandmas (one of whom passed away this past winter, we are so blessed we had decided to make the time to ensure the girls knew her!). We can do it with 1-3 hours of 'school' a day. We can do it on our schedule, not someone else's schedule. AND, we don't have to worry about 'teaching to the test' (which doesn't start 'til 3rd grade for the virtual academy students here) and overfilled classrooms, and dd1 being bored (or struggling but the class moving on). We don't have "homework," etc.
I don't believe that sticking her in a classroom with 30 other kids the same age is necessarily "fun." She's a social little being, and would love more friends (something I've been working on), but it's not like you're playing during class time. And it's not like recess is part of the day for most kids anymore anyway.
Frankly I have plenty of memories as a kid of the very "Lord of the Flies" aspects of school -- the mean kids, bullies, teasing about my vocabulary being too advanced. I have good memories too, but who is to say that school memories are so terribly important that they justify surrendering all the benefits of homeschooling? I grew up without TV, sure I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about old sitcoms from TV, but seriously - I don't think I'm defective because I didn't see "The Brady Bunch" til college. So, anyway - I didn't get into it with her (beyond our glancing little remarks) - it wasn't the time or the place. But it ticked me off. I suppose I need to continue to think about how I can best defuse her "but school is so FUN" comments which I know will come up again ... I know if I said, "Maybe for you, but I spent one whole year being chased around the playground every recess and sexually harassed by a little boy while the teachers who saw it did nothing about it," she would say that I was allowing my own experiences to dictate whether I'm allowing Ina to have a different, positive experience [which would be bogus, because her "school is FUN" argument never occurred to me - LEARNING is fun, playing with friends is fun, I was initially concerned about socialization, but wasn't concerned about school being the epicenter of fun. To me, school very easily can become the epicenter of conformity and mediocrity]. She's one of those people who is very firm in her beliefs, and whose feelings can be hurt easily at the same time that she's not always considering others' feelings (although she'd be hurt to ever hear herself described that way). And I do love her dearly.
Ina has field trips and park days with other virtual school students; swim lessons, art class, library time, friends she plays with, she's in Cloverbuds and this fall she starts religious ed with church and I think I'm going to suck it up and check out both local homeschooling groups, too, just to try to make even more friends for her .... I think we do pretty well for the socializing stuff. But since dh and I are introverts, maybe we could do better?
UGH. And as a complete and utter aside, I think my aunt also thinks we're restricting Ina because of her allergies - she used her fork that she'd eaten her food with, to give Ina some berries from her fruit salad, and when Ina told her she didn't want them because she was worried about "contamination," she rolled her eyes. Even though she has a background in nutrition, and usually is really careful about egg-free foods for Ina.
I was always bored and could leave school for two weeks and come back and ace their stupid tests. In PS if you miss 10 days in a row (2 weeks) you get kicked out. A teach wrote me as absent when I was there and I was kicked in the 11th grade making me miss credit for the first semester since it was just before tests. I asked to go to alt school and they said no. I grew up a little and demanded alt school. Went in and finished 2 years of high school in 1 semester and corrected everyone's work at that school and created a template for the graduation thesis (mine).
Lillian
