A Passerby’s Trail

More and more American families are choosing to homeschool their children.  The number of homeschooled children has increased drastically in the last ten years.  According to National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, 1.1 million are being homeschooled.  The Home School Legal Defense Association, however, says the figure is now higher, probably somewhere between 1.7 and 2.1 million children. 

I am an educator and I had a lot of teaching experiences in different school levels; yet as a mom, I prefer to homeschool my child.  I’m aware how much work it’s going to be, especially if I intend to create a curriculum from ground up.  But I’m willing to invest all my time, my energy, my creativity and my expertise.  It’s worth it, because it’s for my child.

I believe in education.  And that includes homeschooling as well.  A lot of successful people were homeschooled for some or all of their school years.  Great authors such as William Blake, Charles Dickens, Irving Berlin, C.S. Lewis and Mark Twain were homeschooled. American presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt were also homeschooled. 

I can name a lot more people that are famous —  Benjamin Franklin, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charlie Chaplin, Claude Monet, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers.  Even my favorite poet, Robert Frost, was homeschooled!  They are proofs that school attendance is not the only way to become a successful, sociable adult.

I am an educator but I believe that school is not the only place for children to develop socialization skills.  Children don’t need to be around many people in order to be socialized because they don’t respond too well when they are in a crowd.  I know that because I used to handle very large classes.

Around 40+ students were in my elementary classes, 30+ students in my college classes, and 70+ students in my high school classes!  From my experience, at least 75% of my students accepted that they were bullied by someone and 90% of them wanted to look and talk and be like everyone else. Most of them felt like they were being forced to attend school.  They felt like they’re not learning what they really are very much interested in so that every time I’d announce a “no-school day”, all of them would jump out of their seats in joy.  And I mean every single time.

Except for a few students, peer pressure and unhappy school experiences kept most of them from excelling in academic subjects no matter how much I tried to inspire them to do their best.  Even in a ninth grade class of five which I am handling right now — it took me five months of encouraging them before we could read aloud together as a class.  Insecurity, self-consciousness and nervousness wouldn’t be an issue if a child is not in a classroom setting.  A school environment can certainly be a threatening place.  For some children, it can be traumatic.  It’s sad…  but that is a reality.
 
I am an educator and I love schools.  But I prefer to homeschool my child.  Perhaps, if every school would be a safer place…  Perhaps, if our school curriculum wouldn’t be as outdated and unfriendly to our students… Perhaps if the school system wouldn’t be as oppresive to everyone else as it has been in the last ten years…  I might send my child to school.  I really can’t make up my mind if I would, but I probably might.