Taking Homeschooling Out of Your Home

This is an awesome article that really makes parents THINK ! I hope you enjoy it !

Taking Homeschooling Out of Your Home
by Mary Pride

Names are funny things. Take the word "homeschooling". What does that make you think of ? If you said, "School at home," I am not surprised. Home PLUS school seems to equal school at home. Only two things are wrong with this definition.

1. Homeschooling isn't "school." It's a whole different approach to education.
2. Homeschooling does not have to all take place at home.

If Homeschooling is NOT school, then what is it ?
Homeschooling, properly understood is designed by parents. This automaticallly makes it a whole different animal from "public" education, which is education designed by government bureaucrats. It also differs sharply from "private" schooling. Regardless of their talk about parental authority, in practice private schools reverse curriculum design for their teachers, administrator and textbook designers.

Even those who think the child should direct his own education must admit this type of "un" schooling is only possible if the parents has the authority to let the child choose his own educational pursuits and projects.

So, homeschooling is not "school" when it comes to who is in charge of curriculum design. Having parents choose or design the curriculum is radically different from what happens in any school.

Amazing as it may seem, parent designed and parent chosen curriculum yields better results than school designed and chosen curriculum, as many research studies have shown. Then again, how amazing is it that curriculum chosen from the entire universe of options (rather than the small list "approved" by the state or school board) and targeted to the exact child for which it is intended, should result in more learning taking place faster ? Especially when the parents in question have the ability to hobnob with other parents and find out what's working for them.... and when they can easily obtain detailed reveiws of all their curriculum options through homeschool magazines and books.

Homeschool also is not "school" when it comes to scheduling and priorities. We do not have annoucements, ringing bells to mark the end of the class period, football teams that soak up the budget that would otherwise go to art or music, or endless classes geared to the latest politically correct fads. Unless, we want to, that is.

This menas that homeschooled children in general have a much greater attention span and ability to focus than children who attend school, where they are continaully interrupted in the middle of their projects, math papers, writing assignments and so on.

Most Parents Homeschool

But man does not live by focusing power alone. This is why our neighbors keep asking us that old question, "What about socialization?" What they really mean is "Can your child grow into a strong adult just sitting around your house doing lessons and projects ?"

Alas for our poor neighbors. They are mistaking homeschooling for schooling that happens at home, when it is really education under the authority of the home.

What a wild thought ! All those parents who pay for art, music, ballet.... who chauffeur their kids to soccer and karate.... who sign them up for a YMCA course or who join the local JCC are homeschoolers too ! To the extent that they provide educational opportunities for their children solely because they want to, not because any authority makes them, these are homeschool parents.

All that we "real" homeschoolers do in addition to what most parents do, is add academic lessons at home or via a tutor, or an oline academy. We just exercise that additional dollop of choice.

Homeschool Away from Home

Since we now realize that homeschool is not "school at home", this leaves us free to look for educational adventures anywhere in the real world that we can find them. None of this is "school" and none of it will be happening at home..... but it is still homeschool. The world is our home and class is in session !