Our school experience
Families choose to homeschool their children for many reasons. Before I begin to explain our decision, I would like to share some background information. This way, you’ll be able to better understand a bit of our history and why we personally made our choices.
My story
I attended a very small local elementary school. My mom was a typical “homeroom parent” who often volunteered to help around the classroom. Despite my mom’s presence, however, I often begged to not have to go. I had a lot of anxiety surrounding school and often had physical symptoms relating to the experience.
Boredom was extremely stressful for me, and there was a lot of wasted time at school. Extracurricular activities such as parties, movies, gym class, and recess were all overwhelmingly tedious and, in my mind, wasteful. When I hit middle school, the number of “pep rallies”, sporting events, and more increased. My misery increased right along with it. I began asking my parents to put me into a Christian school or to homeschool me, but neither was an option for my family at the time.
High school worsened the issues even more and at the age of 15, I began researching things myself. I quickly learned that I could drop out of school and get my GED at the age of 16. I told my parents that was exactly what I was going to do. At this point, my mom decided to take me seriously and began exploring other options. She found an alternative education program that allowed me to attend a local college but to still receive a regular diploma.
Daniel’s story
Daniel started out in public school for the first couple of years. Unfortunately, however, he experienced a lot of difficulty due to his poor behavior. A few years in, and his parents decided to place all of their children in a local, non-denominational, Christian school. He continued here until his teenage years. He greatly enjoyed the interaction with other kids, and getting to participate in sports and such. For him, school was a wonderful experience.
His parents then decided to enroll him in an at home virtual school program that was ran by the public school system. At the time, he believed this was considered homeschool but has since learned it is better described as public school at home.
He enjoyed having more free time, but greatly missed interacting with his friends on a regular basis. He found the work to be tedious, and so found ways around actually reading the materials and lessons. If he didn’t want to actually do the work, he would simply click through the lessons quickly. He could then retake the tests as often as needed until he got the correct answer. While it was easy, he did not feel he received a truly good education from the program.
Marriage and a Compromise
Daniel and I met at college and fell in love. Before we were married, we had a lot of discussions about educational choices for our “potential future children”.
Despite my poor experience with public schools, I believed I got a good education compared to those I had met who had been in Christian schools. I also believed the troubles I had had in school shaped me into the person I had become. Therefore, my preference was for my kids to be in public school. I was open to the possibility of learning about homeschooling, but was not even remotely interested in Christian schools which I saw as very subpar academically.
On the other hand, Daniel did not want his children in the public school system. He was afraid they would be negatively influenced by secular teaching and did not want them in that kind of an environment. He preferred Christian schools as it would allow his “potential future children” to have regular social interaction, the possibility of sporting events, dances, etc. Homeschooling was still on the table, if for some reason Christian school didn’t work out and only if it was done differently than the way he had been educated while at home.
After we got married, we decided to compromise and planned to homeschool, at least for the first couple of years to give our kids a good educational foundation.
Switching Places
When our children were still babies, we began working with teenagers in our local church. We were appalled to realize that many of them could not read well at all. We also began listening to stories from the kids and their parents. A 12 year old told us that she had been told she was “unable to learn” at her local school. Her parents fought for her, got her moved to another school and hired a tutor and within a year, she was reading. But why did the first school fail at teaching her?
We also saw kids who were riding busses for 90 minutes to and from school. We heard stories of kids staying up until ten or eleven at night in tears who didn’t understand their homework and who’s parents had no idea how to help them.
These stories and more really started affecting my belief in the public school system and I started doing some research. I found some of the types of statistics mentioned here.
As my faith in the public schools began to dwindle, Daniel was changing his mind too. He began to realize that he was religiously indoctrinated and brainwashed into legalism as a child. His goals changed to wanting to ensure that our kids were not sheltered from the things of the world and that they weren’t taught dogma instead of doctrine. He wanted to make sure our kids were truly prepared for the real world. As such, he was no longer at all interested in putting our kids into Christian school. Instead, he felt the public school option may be better, but not until after our kids were old enough to have a strong walk with God and not be too easily swayed.
And so, that left one definite option for the younger elementary years: Homeschooling.
Wavering a bit
When one of our children hit second grade, she was repeatedly asking to go to school. She wanted to spend daily time with her friends. There was also a desire just to know what “real school” looked like. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders and we thought it may be worth a try.
After only three weeks, however, we all decided it was not right for our family. While she enjoyed the daily interactions with kids of her own age, we learned a lot of things we just were not comfortable with. This experience really solidified our desire to homeschool our children.
We are still not 100% decided that we will always homeschool our kids. I am a firm believer that every child, and every family has different needs and those needs may change over time. Ultimately, I have a few main goals for educating my kids, and at this point in our lives, homeschooling is the best way to meet those needs.