Credentials:
Husband and father of 6, soon to be 7 little miracles of chaos, love and many
things icky (Kids; for the
un-initiated). My eldest is 9 years old. All homeschooled. No, we don’t
have a TV (We prefer it that way), and yes; we are a little crazy –
but not entirely for those reasons! (There
are so many, many more (joke #1)).
Why am I, the
breadwinner, writing this, and not the school board Chair/ Principal/ Teacher/
PE instructor/ Nurse/ Department Head/In house Chaplain/Janitor/Canteen Manager
– otherwise known as ‘Mum’? Partly indicated above: Mum’s a little busy at the
moment homeschooling, growing miracle number 7 (requiring efforts keeping food
down and sleep up) and preparing for relocating on an extended camp to the
other side of Australia. In addition to the above, people find it hard to
shut me up – so good luck with reading the following.
The 3 Biggest
Myths of Homeschooling: The first time I heard it mentioned by my uncle, a
highly intelligent (Don’t tell
him I said that) ‘Queens Council’ lawyer in South Africa, my
first reaction was – how incredibly irresponsible!! What
possible irrational fear could have driven him to isolate and disadvantage his
lovely 6 (at the time) children. After patiently listening to my vehement and
authoritative ranting, he quietly disabused me of some basic objections. I only
discuss the top few in a semblance of an attempt to be concise; but on any
Google search/ concerted research you’ll find a reasonable number of
comprehensive expositions.
1.
“Socialisation” – Mostly, research
points to equal if not more productive social interactions and interpersonal
skill outcomes in homeschooling, due to it providing a broader and more diverse
age group and varied settings.
2.
“I’m not qualified” – Again
research indicates that the qualifications/ level of education has no
significant (as in statistical significance) impact on the learning outcomes.
Interestingly, it observes similar findings to those in ‘normal’ schools: the
more money spent, the better the outcomes – and seriously, you wouldn’t believe
the amount of resources/ experiences you could buy for the entire schooling
lifetime from the amount you would potentially spend in 1 year for a family in
a private school…
3. “You can’t
get into Uni” – In Western Australia, in the last couple of
years, this has been a little more of an issue (Due to the governments’ non-evidence based wisdom) with
changes in regards to the required standardised testing (eg. Naplan). This has
created the need for a little more creativity for paths into uni. But
basically, it’s doable. Common routes are:
·
Bridging from TAFE (in the Eastern states this is
becoming an issue)
·
Going to school for year 11 & 12
·
Using online universities, or
·
Waiting a year and applying as a mature age student
with relevant skills/ experience (eg. IT Skills demonstrated etc.)
When we first
started looking into this; the ‘mature age’ (read: any alternative path into
uni) placements for uni versus the standard school entry was something like 3:1
in favour of ‘mature age’. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, and again, depending
on what career is aspired to it may require a creative path.
4.
“It’ll be too intense/ long hours” Now
this one has a little more merit. The decision to homeschool is definitely a
lifestyle choice, which I believe both parents need to be behind. In saying
that though, the actual raw time spent on ‘focused’ schooling to achieve the
same outcomes is much less. Also, you have complete control on the gas…
except for the fact that in my experience the mothers (Anecdotally, the primary
role is usually mum’s) who choose to homeschool sometimes forget they’ve got a
brake pedal.
Below is a
hit from a Google search1 that touches on each of these, giving
evidence based research backing to dispel them. While walking through the
kitchen, my wife has also listed a number of talks with people who give a lot
more depth to the research than that presented at first glance. If you’re actually
interested in evidence based research and willing to overcome your bias… look
into it.
Why did we do it?
When you
start asking the ‘why’ question for any conscious act, in my experience if you
dig deep enough, you arrive sooner or later at the bigger questions in life;
namely, what is the meaning of life? And if 42 or hedonism doesn’t quite
cut it for you, well then the search becomes a little more complicated. And the
more significant the action, the quicker you arrive at that door. Now, the
action of nurturing/ forming/ educating your children – well, it rates above
brushing your teeth on most days. Aptly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church
addresses this in its first item (Look
it up! :P)2. In addition, there is the well-worn part of John
10:10 which states: “I came that they may have life, and have it
abundantly”. So, the ultimate end game is heaven. You’re trying to bring
as many people with you as possible, and the best way to do this is to follow
God’s will and the path He perfectly created for you, to match perfectly all
your strengths and weaknesses, your personality and experiences, etc. Flowing
from that basis, our hierarchy of rationale is as follows:
1.
How can we
best help their soul? Help them know their faith (Better than from grade 2
at Sunday school), expose them to vocations, give frequent and encouraged
access to sacraments and a curriculum that explores and examines truth from a
Catholic perspective.
2.
What is best
for their character formation/ personality moulding? Developing
a passion for learning. For me, this point is so apparent and easily observed.
It throws into stark relief the opinion of the ‘norm’ with regards to attitudes
to learning, compared to homeschooled children in general.
3.
What is good
parenting? It’s the first and foremost responsibility of parents to nurture and educate
our kids; in school you are effectively paying an organisation that employs
strangers you have no control over to influence and educate. In addition, the
incredible milestones of childhood – smiles, sounds, crawling – don’t stop at
age 5. Daily, you get to witness and be a part of your child’s ongoing
milestones – it truly is a privilege to witness. Even if you have to remind yourself of that while cleaning off their
name, written on the wall… in permanent marker.
4.
What will
help them academically? Critical Thinking, a broader knowledge base, wide
frames of reference and application to real life. All of these are broad
topics, and I’m already 2 pages over the limit our generous editor gave – but
suffice to say, many of these skills are best developed when the children are
given the time and space to reflect, question, debate and argue (Deep
breaths… yes, it is part of their education – deep breaths). How much
opportunity is there for this in a class of 30 kids?
For all of
the above, we decided this wasn’t demonstrated effectively through the Catholic
or other School system, and we had a better shot at it by homeschooling.
What and how?
One of the
first major minefields that parents encounter when embarking on this journey is
the depth, breadth and variety of homeschool curriculums, tools and games. Suffice
to say if you have a particular inclination, or think your child would learn
from a particular style, there are a range of curriculums, or bits of them,
that fit the bill. If you’re interested, talk to other homeschool parents or
read up about them.
Slowly, in
growing as a parent and talking to other seasoned and not so seasoned parents,
I’ve started to notice something. Generally, the more children the parents
have, the less advice they give out unsolicited. I think it’s because of the
massive differences in dynamics between Mum, Dad and any said child, in the
context of fluctuating personalities, environments, strengths and weaknesses.
Now mathematically, put those variables to the power of the broad spectrum of
homeschool options, and you begin to understand why I have not said “Now,
THIS is how you should homeschool”.
In saying
that, a pattern that seems to emerge for me looking at other families that homeschool
is that the more experience the parents get with homeschooling, the less the
schooling looks like school and the more it just looks like life learning with
periods of focused attention for functionally applicable knowledge scattered
in-between.
Honestly
though, don’t worry – you’re going to stuff it up. But as
long as each time you learn from your mistakes, keep an observant eye on what’s
working or not, and be charitable to yourself and your kids, you’ll do better
than fine. Don’t kid yourself, the ‘National Curriculum’ doesn’t have it
perfect yet either – that’s been continually changing for the last x decades
too. Their review cycle just takes a little more time. On average 4-8 years
longer than your own review cycle – and it’s not uniquely designed for your
kids either.
*Disclaimer: We’re not veterans, not quite n00bs,
but not far off – the boss levels are still to come (13- 35ish… Yrs old).*
Not convinced?
Neither was
I. I had an experienced barrister refuting my ill formed arguments, and still
didn’t really ‘believe’ the evidence based and philosophical rationale he
provided for me. The whole phrase “They can prove just about anything with
research now days” played on loud speaker in my head continuously while he was
speaking – see I’m such a good listener (joke) (#2?). So I’ve got very, very
little expectations that you would be moved after perusing a fragmented,
comically written piece (No matter what the skills of our wonderful editor are…
sorry but ‘Silk purse out of sow’s ear” comes to mind).
You may ask: why,
then, are we actually homeschooling now? Good question. Other than the fact
that I’m pretty sure the sun and stars would obey my lovely wife’s ‘gentle
guidance’, and if she told them that it was not their day to rise, they in all
likelihood would agree with her and take the day off, because after all she
would be right…. You see, I have learnt some things since marrying her (joke
#3). Other than that small
insignificant detail, it’s because of what I witnessed.
In the
earlier years of our first couple of little miracles, my wife ‘gently guided’
me into seeing that spending a weekend at a homeschool camp was really far, far
superior to playing computer games with my friends. At the camp, there were
many eloquent speakers, curriculums on display and learning activities, and all
manner of educational/ promotional materials. But what really struck me was
what I saw in between (And sometimes under and/or on top or in) these
things; namely, the children. What I experienced, on the whole, was
an impression of maturity, confidence and critical thinking, within beautifully
nurtured human beings that were more the rule than the exception. Not only
that, I didn’t just see a classroom of kids. I saw the full spectrum of the
family – 1 year to early 20’s – who had been through this process. It was like
being able to see the finished products of a process that (previously) was so unknown,
unpredictable and downright ‘dangerous’. It truly was a ‘light bulb’ moment –
the penny dropped (And trust me,
it echoed; there’s a bit of space between these ears). I considered that
just maybe, I’d formed my opinion based on a possibly/ somewhat ill-formed
viewpoint. That was the turning point. The rest is just a biological growth
from there for my wife and I, of learning how much we didn’t actually learn in
school. Well, that – and my kids teaching me grammar. Feel for them, it’s truly
a special form of torture.
So to finally
conclude (If you’ve stuck it out to here, you should be given a medal.. come
on, not far to go, you can crawl across the line… just 60 more pages…
(joke #4)), sometimes, particularly as a father who spends almost 40% of my waking
hours at or travelling to and from work, I at times forget that the biggest
influence on the world or ultimately the kingdom of God that I will contribute
to, is unlikely to be through my efforts in my job (Nobel peace prize or not). It
is rather the legacy that is left in the souls of my children and their
children that follow, through the merits of Christ and under the truly gentle
guiding embrace of His Mother.
Worth
thinking about? I know it is for me.
