I apologize

[snyderjoint]

It has come to my attention that some of my comments in my post the other day may have been offensive to you all and your families. I sincerely apologize, as that was definately not my intention. I don't know alot about this topic and I certainly don't know you and your families, I was just trying to get some input on why people homeschool for my class. Again I'm very sorry if I hurt or offended any of you.

[Jen123]

apology accepted.

I think I know what you were trying to ask. Do our children have a say in how they are schooled . Is that correct ? Or are you asking WHY we homeschool to begin with....... can you rephrase the question ? I'd certainly like to help someone better understand homeschooling.

[snyderjoint]

new question

Thank you for understanding, I would like to know both actually. Why do people homeschool and do the children have a say or not. Thanks for helping out.

[Pukka]

It seems to me that children should definately have a say about their education and childhood.

I, for one, did not see your post as being insulting or rude. It probably just could have been worded better. Anyway, of course, children should have a say in their childhood, however, we, as parents, need to be the ones making the really important decisions. Sure some kids would probably prefer to go to PS just like they'd prefer to eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast or hang out at a friends house whose parents don't lock up their guns. Some kids may WANT to smoke cigarettes, play in a busy street or not do ANY type of schooling at all. Do they get an equal say in all of these things? I believe in hearing out what a child has to say but when it comes to their health, safety, education and all other things important, the final decision needs to be up to the parents.

[Jen123]

We homeschool for a variety of reasons. They've changed over the years. In no particular order :

Religious reasons
To control social situations
A better education (more tailor fit to the individual)
Smaller teacher/student ratio
So the children start out "in the real world"
More freedom in their day (don't have to ask to pee/get a drink )

There are more...but I'm tired . lol

As to Do the children have a choice in how they are schooled?

I'd turn and ask the same question of public schooled kids. Do THEY have a choice?

We have told our children that we will make the important decisions , such as education , living arrangements, financial needs for them (just as many public schooled kids parents do). Their opinion is wanted and needed , but the final say-so lies with us...the parents.

I don't know of a single public schooled parent that says "oh you want to be homeschooled now? okay." It's just what they do. Send their kids to school. It's all the child knows. The same with us (personally , I don't speak for others ). Staying home and being taught are all my children know.

If my child came to me one day and said "I'd like to be public schooled" we'd open a discussion on what they were really looking for. And the final decision , much as it is in public schooled families , would lie with us...the adults.


So , yes they have a say in their schooling and No we don't follow every child's whim.

[Dar]

My daughter has always had a choice in how and where she was schooled. Currently she's 12 and unschools. She did express interest in going to a small private school next school year, but we can't afford it tuition (8K) and it's half an hour away in a different state, which would also be really hard for me to do... so we tabled it until next year. If finances and distance weren't an issue, though, she'd be going.

Actually, I homeschool/unschool *because* want my daughter to be free to make her own choices and live her own life. Really, in a nutshell, that's the reason.

Dar

[Brisen]

Originally Posted by snyderjoint

Thank you for understanding, I would like to know both actually. Why do people homeschool and do the children have a say or not. Thanks for helping out.

I homeschool because I believe that I can give my kids a better education when they are young by keeping them at home and having a smaller "class size" than they would get in a larger class setting. I can give each child more attention and have more flexibility to follow their interests and cater to their individual needs. I feel that large groupings of same-aged children is an unnatural and even dangerous way to socialize. I feel that we, as parents, have primary responsibility -- both in deciding what is taught and providing that teaching -- for our children's education, not the government and taxpayers.

Do my children have a say or not... not when they are young, no. They have a say in what we learn at home, whether or not they want to take classes (within what we are able to provide for them), etc., but public schooling is not an option. I know you didn't ask, but I don't really see how a homeschooling parent making this choice for their kid is any different from parents who don't give their children the option to homeschool and send them -- at times literally kicking and screaming -- to a public school. Or from the gov't creating laws making schooling mandatory. Except that many homeschooling parents give their kids varying degrees of free reign in choosing what to learn; schools, in my experience, offer very little choice.

Originally Posted by Dar

Actually, I homeschool/unschool *because* want my daughter to be free to make her own choices and live her own life.

:

[clairegrace]

Why I homeschool?

Mostly for philosophical reasons. I don't see how mass education, restraining young children in non-natural social situations (being surrounded by peers for 8 hours), and teaching the test have anything to do with learning and life.

I personally see school limiting children's potential, by telling them what they need to accomplish by the end of a certain grade. All children are different and develop differently. Some learn to read early, others bloom later after developing other skills.

And I also enjoy being with my kids and learning along with them Instead of studying to be in the real world for 12 years, my children are part of that world ever day through interactions we have at the store, at the park, or during volunteer work.

Does my child have a choice?

She doesn't have a choice whether we homeschool or not - not at this age. As she gets older and develops wisdom and maturity, we will consider that later.

But inside homeschooling, she has a choice on how to do her work, what videos we watch or trips we go on, whether she wants to attend homeschool group or library reading times, etc. She also picks whether to do "seat work" in the morning or afternoon. We are what I consider relaxed homeschoolers - not quite unschooling, but definetly not school-at-home.

I hope that helps some!

Cara

[SagMom]

Originally Posted by snyderjoint

Why do people homeschool and do the children have a say or not. Thanks for helping out.

We began homeschooling because my son asked to be homeschooled. He'd been in public school (he hated 1st grade, 2nd was better, 3rd was horrid) and he jumped at the chance to homeschool. I absolutely think that kids should have a say in whether or not they go to school. My dd was halfway through public Kindergarten when her brother started hsing, and she decided she wanted to see how the year played out. She knew before finishing K that she would hs. My youngest has no interest in school.

As for our reasons...*I* missed having my kids around when they went to school, but more importantly, school just wasn't a good fit for them. Ds was "advanced" in science and history, "average" in math and "behind" in reading and writing. He was bored in some classes and convinced he was stupid in others. Dd was "advanced" in every area and entirely bored in school--to the point that she was "acting out" and getting into trouble. The school could provide nothing for her.

School also was an environment that was very much in opposition to the way we are raising our children. At home, they are respected and treated with consideration. In school, they were expected to just follow orders.

At home, they can direct their own learning, ENJOY what they're doing and work at their own pace.

They have become closer to each other and to me because of the time we spend together.

They have time for interests other than the academic.

We don't need to follow anyone else's schedule, either on a day to day basis or yearly basis.

They're living in the real world, rather than in a classroom and...

...they're HAPPY!

[AngelBee]

snyderjoint

[lilyka]

I for one am glad you asked. I am glad you came to us and asked your questions and got answers from people who do it rather than talkingt o experts and eduation people who have never actually been a homeschooling parent or ben homeschooled.. your openess to learn from real people and understand the whys and hows are encouraging to me. I always enjoy chatting with people who are intrested in learning more about homeschooling. I was sad to see your post had been locked but am glad you got your answers anyway. even amoung homeschooling families wether or not children have a say in thier education varies from family to family and it is always good to chew on these things and see where we stand.

[oldcrunchymom]

Originally Posted by snyderjoint

Thank you for understanding, I would like to know both actually. Why do people homeschool and do the children have a say or not. Thanks for helping out.

Why we homeschool:

1. So we can have the freedom to make our own schedule.
2. So my kids can have more control over what they learn.
3. My kids, my responsibility. Not the government's.
4. There are very few schools that could meet the academic needs of my son. Meeting his social needs would be even trickier.
5. So my daughter can take the "extracurriculars" she wants to. Next year she'll be taking four dance classes and a swimming class as well as various other unplanned activities. NO WAY would I let her do all that if she was also saddled with 6+ hours of school plus homework every day.
6. So my kids are treated respectfully, like thinking human beings, instead of like drones who have to ask permission to perform basic bodily functions.
7. So my kids can be kids, e.g. have plenty of time to play as they wish.

There are more reasons but those are the main ones.

Do my kids have a say? Absolutely. If after discussing all the ramifications, they decided they wanted to go to school, that would be their right. However, neither of them have any interest in attending (and yes we do talk about it on a periodic basis).

[UnschoolnMa]

Originally Posted by snyderjoint

Thank you for understanding, I would like to know both actually. Why do people homeschool and do the children have a say or not. Thanks for helping out.

We unschool because (among other reasons) we believe that forced curriculum sucks, and we want to spend our days doing as we wish rather than as someone else tells we have to.

The kids have always had a say in their education. They have the total say in fact.

[moominmamma]

Why do we unschool?

For flexibility and freedom.

Do my kids have a choice?

I believe they have an order of magnitude more choice than schooled children do. Do schoolchildren have a choice about whether they go to school? Are they able to choose their curriculum, to change the pace, to change the focus, to diverge, to focus, to learn by living and doing rather than by the book? Nope. My kids have all those choices and more.

They even have to choice to go to school if they wish. None of them is the slightest bit interested.

Miranda

[shaywyn]

Well, so many have expressed my own views and thoughts, just wanted to chime in with my support of these reasons.

Especially the people who pointed out that homeschooling/unschooling actually gives a child so much more choice

My children do not have a choice of whether we are homeschooling or public school at this point. Like others stated, it is something that our family may have to deal with in later years, and my children's opinions and wants will be considered and honored when and if that time comes.

[MamaAllNatural]

Originally Posted by UnschoolnMa

We unschool because (among other reasons) we believe that forced curriculum sucks, and we want to spend our days doing as we wish rather than as someone else tells we have to.

:

When I put ds in public school he didn't like it and never wanted to go. It felt really really awful to be forcing him to go. I'm so glad I looked further into homeschooling. It's the best decision we (dh, ds, & I) made. I personally think forcing kids to go to school is wrong. JMHO

[ShannonCC]

I was actually bummed the thread got locked before I could reply :LOL But I do think the way it was worded would have led to a fiery debate. This is much better

Why do we homeschool? We don't have one big reason here. I think it's better for her academically, much better for her socially and better for family relations. I don't homeschool because the schools are bad (I have no idea what they're like in my town) I homeschool because I think it's a more natural choice than school and has the potential to be better than the best private school out there. I unschool in particular so my dd will have a choice in what, how and when she learns.

I am one who does think kids should have a say in how they are educated BUT (a big but ) if my dd ever seriously said she wanted to go to school I'd try and talk her out of it. She briefly mentioned it last year and instead of rushing out and signing her up we talked about what she wasn't happy with and how we could fix that and what she thought school was. She had the PBS image of school as this fun, fascinating place where magic happens on a daily basis

My dd is a very active and, um, strong willed child and I'm pretty confident that if she even spent a day in a grade school (grade 1 or up) she'd run home screaming so fast it would curl your hair :LOL She had some nature center classes a few months ago and from that laid back, one hour experience, she really saw that the whole school scene (pay attention to the teacher, wait your turn, don't play with that til the teacher says you can, etc) is not for her.

But if she ever really wanted to go, I'd let her. I mean, why not, she'd be back home by lunch anyway :LOL

However, as someone else said, I don't see how making the decision for a child to homeschool is any different than what millions of parents do when they make the decision to send the child to school. I don't think any of the kids in the local school down the street were asked if they wanted to be there or given a choice not to, yk?

[Karenwith4]

We pulled our eldest (7) out because school wasn't a good fit for him in so many ways. The school wasn't willing to meet his academic needs, he was overwhelmed by the chaos in his classroom, he was desperate to stay connected to us and intuitive enough to know that school was affecting that. After he started Grade 1 he started climbing back into bed with us or I would wake up and find him sleeping on the floor beside me trying to hold my hand or touch me in some way.

The school system was disrespectful of his needs, the teachers were assuming responsibilities that I wasn't comfortable with and school itself is a HUGE imposition on healthy family life - less time for family, for getting enough sleep, for activities outside school, for exercise, for hanging out. Socially he was so overwhelmed trying to cope with noise, changing schedules, chaos, etc that he had nothing left at the end of the day and no interest in being with other kids. To top it off, the entire family is forced into meeting the school schedule. My younger kids slept, ate snacks and meals, and attended events based on the schedule of the school. My husband gets home from work at 6:30 and we'd have to have DS in bed by 7:30 in order to get him up and going for school the next day. It was a complete nightmare.

We pulled him less than 3 months after he started gr 1. I don't think he'll ever want to go back. Today he spent this beautiful day outside rollerblading up and down our street, laying on the lawn reading or looking at the clouds, inventing and executing science projects related to seeds after we worked together in the garden, pressing spring flowers and observing bugs with his younger siblings, drawing in his journal. At lunch I read to the kids from Paddle to the Sea and they hauled out maps and drew their own canoes. At tea time we read a few favourite poems - all of these things he chose.

By way of contrast his best friend came over after school and told me this was how he spent his day: writing a spelling test, reading a book he didn't get to choose, attending an assembly on bulleying, and working on a math sheet he didn't understand. The poor friend was pretty fried by the end of the day and just wanted to play hockey on the computer. He was already complaining about having to do homework when his mum picked him up. They were rushing home for dinner and then off to soccer. He won't likely see his Dad tonight.

We won't put our younger kids in school although we may be willing to let them play a part in that decision when they are old enough to understand the consequences of going to school. For my kids in particular I don't see many (any?) advantages to school, especially while they are young.

Karen

[Charles Baudelaire]

Snyderjoint, I already posted this in the thread below, so if you've seen it, well...it's a rerun. :LOL

************

Snyderjoint, I'd like to respond to your question about why we want to homeschool:

1. Better academics
Many schools -- and our local one is no exception -- are so beseiged in keeping up with their AYP goals under NCLB that all they do (or most of what they do) amounts to drill 'n' kill test prep. That is not true education, which teaches students to think for themselves, to think independently, to know and apply facts -- not bubble in scantrons.

2. Special needs
Okay, here's the deal with us: my daughter's currently having a great time learning about Sargon of Akkad in ancient history, learning Latin roots, spelling words from the Scripps national spelling bee list, and completing first-grade Saxon math. She's reading HP and the Order of the Phoenix and we just got done watching Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, both of which she loves. She's four.

In regular school, she'd be learning the alphabet (one letter a week), how to count, the seasons and days of the week, and so on. I have no doubt that she would definitely not be accomodated in any way in regular school because she's all over the map -- she'd have to be in about a 6th-grade reading class that didn't require writing because although she can write pretty well, essays are a bit beyond her at this point. She'd have to be in about a second-grade math class, and who knows where she'd be for history. Oh, and forget PE.

Long story short, we can do better. What would be an insurmountable obstacle for a school is a snap at the Baudelaire Girl School. Moreover, we can tailor the curriculum to her learning style and needs.

3. Efficiency
We can get done in three hours what it takes a good teacher all day to do. No roll call, no announcements, field trips, fire drills, shelter-in-place drills, classroom observations, rowdy students, tardiness, absenteeism, or any of the other problems that essentially extend the school day without improving its effectiveness. In the extra time, we can do math games on the computer, do science projects (we are currently mummifying a chicken as a cross-cultural ancient history/science project), read, watch Shakespeare, or simply run around in the yard like a couple of kooks and make mud pies or learn about anaerobic bacteria when it's time to turn the compost pile.

4. No bullies or Mean Girls
Without getting into some big whine, let's say that school sucked the big mogambo for both me and my DH and we would like very much to avoid that Lord of the Flies joy and love until my dd's able to handle herself with the full confidence that comes from being a maturely developed human. We aren't fond of brainless conformity to a culture that values what you wear over who you are, so that contributes to our anti-school attitude as well: too often, it becomes a fashion show/popularity contest, all of which humiliates and degrades both those at the top of the hierarchy and those at the bottom. Bottom line? 'Tain't worth it.

5. Incoherence
Most elementary schools do unit studies -- an incoherent ramble from unit to unit without one single thread to tie them up together. One week we're doing a unit on mushrooms, the next on bats, the next on St. Patrick's Day. Periods are interrupted with a bell, which teaches students that they can only learn until someone in the office tells them that they are done, thus reducing education to a state of complete irrelevance. Irrelevance combined with incoherence doesn't equal a great education.

We can do away with both, or at least minimize both until they are as nonthreatening as possible. Currently, we're doing ancient history, progressing through the timeline until we get to the modern day. Should take us quite a while, probably a year or more. The things we read will be geared to the history we are studying -- for example, when we read about ancient Greece, we'll read Geraldine McCaughrean's excellent children's version of The Odyssey and watch the miniseries as a treat after we're done. In a regular school system, my kid wouldn't encounter The Odyssey until 9th grade, and then only in brief little nibbles, as if Homer were some potentially dangerous fruit you have to try in little bits or it'll kill you. Science will proceed in tandem with the history: biology during the times of the ancients, astronomy during the Renaissance -- a time that subject came into real flower -- physics in the modern era, and so on.

6.Teacher-Pupil Ratio
Not even Phillips Exeter can beat this teacher-pupil ratio. Since we both educate our child, the ratio is literally 2:1.

7. We love our kid
Why WOULDN'T we want to spend as much time of her fleeting, irretrievable childhood with her as possible? We love her; that's why we had her. Why in the world would we want to let her go after only five short years of her company to be away from us for eight hours a day with people we don't know and don't care about -- and who don't know and don't care about her? I'm always bemused by people who say, "Oh, I'm SO glad the kids are back in school! Now I have time for myself!" No offense to anyone on this board personally, but I honestly think, "Then why did you have kids if you treasure your time alone more than your time with them?"

8. Lots of teachers are, let's face it, idiots.
Come on, Snyder...if you're going to be honest, you know it's true. Colleges of education traditionally have the students with the LOWEST ACT and SAT scores in the entire university system -- even lower than Phys. Ed. majors, who at least don't kid themselves or anyone else that they're there for academics. Those students, of course, grow up to be professors of education -- the most dubious of the doctorates -- and therefore the lowest achievers are taught by the lowest achievers.

Many ed majors don't actually major in a subject...and it shows. It shows in things like, for example, spelling "a lot" as one word. Note to teachers: it's NEVER, EVER spelled that way.

The problem is that this essential ignorance manifests itself in real ignorance of basic subject matter as soon as the kids deviate from the "script" of the teacher's manual -- which of course, they do almost at once.

That results in gems like this: a friend of mine's daughter was told that her math worksheet had been done wrong. She was supposed to have multiplied 5x3. Instead, she multiplied 3x5. According to the teacher, "you can't do that."

Wellllll, goodbye, commutative property! See ya!

New stuff not in my old post: It also
results in teachers who are intellectually passive as well as ones who are dangerously defensive when they encounter kids in their classrooms (and there will be many of them) who are smarter than they are.

Many teachers -- again, not all, of course, but many -- are little Caesars who treat their classrooms like bully pulpits, and when they encounter students who are gifted, or worse, highly gifted, they don't react with anything resembling good grace when the student does things like correct them when they're wrong or tell them that they've read this book/learned this skill/mastered this concept years before. Those are the teachers who force gifted kids into one of two little boxes: retreat/camouflage, or rebellion. The American educational system does a fine job of beating these kids into submission instead of fostering their gift, and that goes double if the kid is black or Latino. Sad, isn't it?

I could give lots of other examples, but why bother? Naturally, this doesn't apply to ALL teachers. Rarely does anything apply to everyone at all times. However, it is true oh-so-painfully often that it's not even funny.

So there we go in a nutshell. Hope that helps.

[mother_sunshine]

We homeschool because my daughter is thriving. She went to public school for K-1 (and 2 weeks of 2nd grade). We pulled her out because of a bad teacher, thinking we would put her back for 3rd grade. Dd didn't want to switch schools, she wanted to try homeschooling so we did and she LOVES it so much that she wants to continue. She has near-total say in what she learns (I just require math and grammar but she decides when and what) and is always full of ideas and enthusiasm. She is learning more than she ever did in school because she is interested and self-motivated rather than forced. And she has the freedom to discover (and focus on) her own strengths and interests, something she didn't have in school.