I have a bunch of friends who talked about possibly/probably homeschooling their kids but then enrolled them in school once kindergarten rolled around. I get it: while there's a lot of idealism amongst parents when their kids are young, often the social, financial and emotional realities make school the easier, safer, more secure choice. We're in a community where my kids have often been the only homeschoolers in their age range. Right now, for instance, my 11-year-old -- whose interests and aptitudes are more like those of a 14-year-old -- is the only homeschooler over the age of 9 in our area. That doesn't really create problems for us. My kids aren't usually a good fit for age-levelled group learning anyway, and their social needs are pretty low. There's good acceptance of homeschooling here and we find friends and activities amongst all types of families.
My pet peeve is when my friends who chose to put their kids in school at age 5 explain to me that they're "also homeschooling." They go so far as to keep up membership on our regional homeschooling email listserv and use it for networking (buy & sell stuff, childcare connections, etc.) as well as taking part in outings, field trips and other events organized by homeschooling parents for the homeschooling community. Our region's homeschoolers are far-flung, so I don't think other parents necessarily know that these kids are enrolled full-time in school. Or close to full-time, since they will take a half day or a day off from time to time to take part in a homeschoolers' field trip.
As a homeschooling parent I feel like there's something different when it is you, and not a school, who is considered to be responsible for the day-to-day process of your child's education. School provides a fair number of perks. Obviously on balance for my kids I believe the benefits have made up for losing those perks. But when you're a homeschooling parent you don't get free child-minding, you don't get someone who shoulders a large part of the responsibility for educating your child, you don't get basic tools and resources and facilities for arts and physical education, social opportunities for your child and so on. You have to provide those things yourself and if you don't manage, the blame is only upon your shoulders. And I think being part of a regional network for grass-roots activities and resources and events and networking helps compensate for the loss of some of those perks.
When my elder kids enrolled in high school they didn't give up playing violin, working in the garden, singing in choir, drawing, writing computer code, reading, travelling and having deep conversations about philosophy or politics. They still learned a ton outside of school. But that's not what makes a child a homeschooler: what makes a child a homeschooler is *not going to school.*
Now, I'm obviously being a bit of a hypocrite about this, because Fiona has been going to school one or two hours a week for the past year and a half. (That's one of the perks of being involved in the DL [teacher-supervised] home-learner program run by our school district.) But the thing is, if I choose to provide for part of her math education by sending her to school, if it doesn't work out I am the one who has to fix it. It's a question of where the responsibility lies. I think that makes it different. That, plus the fact that she is legally enrolled in a home-learning program.
I referred to one of my friends as a "homeschooling sympathizer" and she once again clarified that she considers herself a homeschooler who happens to send her child to school because she has to. I said something softly worded like "I still think it's a bit different, because when your child goes to school you share the responsibility for your child's education with the school." She was adamant: "No, the ultimate responsibility is still mine. If school wasn't working out for her I would do whatever was necessary to fix things. Not all parents feel this way, but I take full responsibility for my child's education."
Whatever. I still think it's different.
End of rant.
Starling&Diesel, I don't think using JUMP math necessarily disqualifies you from inclusion in the radical unschooling or fully unschooling clubs. I think of radical unschooling as extending the principles of unschooling into the realm of things that are not normally considered education (like nutrition, bedtimes, conflict resolution and so on). And I think of unschooling as being not at all about whether your child uses school-style academic resources but about where the motivation and expectations surrounding that work comes from. In your case maybe it's coming from you, but if it's coming from her I think that's very much unschooling.
If my kid begs for gymnastics classes so we sign her up and she spends hours every week at home practicing what her coach has showed her, how is that different from when she begs for a math book which we provide and she then works enthusiastically through? I don't think it is different to an unschooled child: it's only different to we school-conditioned adults, those of us who think Math=School and Gymnastics=Hobby. Our kids probably don't put these things in different categories.
Miranda