Home School Kids...

Even back when Ruth and Hannah first started to home school, there were many different curricula to choose from. But mostly Carla just took the kids everywhere, showed them everything, and let them ask 1,000 questions. She would take them to various businesses and ask the owner to show them what he does, and how. People generally loved to help. Carla had the kids handle the money in a check-out line and know what the change should be. She mentored them. But there was almost never a time when she said: “OK, it's 3PM, time to study math” no such structure. Yes, the state did monitor and test periodically. No, they didn't “have to” take the GED, but both aced it on their own. In fact, Ruth tested in the top 1% in the entire country for language skills. Partially, that is due to the fact that when Carla first raised the idea of homeschooling to me, my only issue was that they become good readers and writers. I figured from there they had the tools to do anything they choose to do. We intentionally had no TV when they were growing up other than a VCR to watch tapes from the library, so they read to entertain themselves and got very creative with arts & crafts for the same reason. Carla spent many hours in the early years nestled in a booth with the girls at “Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor” sharing book reading duties, and on the floor of the local “Goodwill Store” reading through books there as well. Most people were delighted to have a young mother and her two little girls engaged in those activities in their store, even when it was on the floor in a corner of the room. As far as socialization goes, there was plenty of that for the girls as they grew. Local home school groups organized various activities and there were many clubs and opportunities aside from simply spending time with friends. Living in the country, we were big on visiting family farms, going to dairy farms to collect eggs from the hen house...many activities more enjoyable than the enforced boredom of a study hall...

For me personally, I got the best education from my parents, both well educated, articulate people. So I believed the kids mostly did the same with us. Are there gaps? Sure. Ruth jokingly claims that she doesn't know how to read an analog clock. But then, I've never used the Latin or trigonometry I learned and would have been better off learning people skills, how to be a good husband and father, or how to build a raised garden. Of course, that's where reading comes in...

The whole world seems to be very locked in to the idea of the necessity of a “formal education” and I found that to mean an inordinate amount of “sit down and shut up” time...in public schools that are more about crowd control than learning, much like minimum security prisons.

I believe the very best rational for home schooling is the absence of peer pressure. The kids never felt the need to wear certain clothes, behave in a certain way, nor share the attitudes or assumptions of a peer group. That was huge. They both had the chance to figure out who they were, what they stood for in this world, before the winds of social conformity tried to blow them in one direction or another. By the time those winds finally had a chance to try to blow them around, both girls were already very self-confident individuals, well anchored, secure in their own paths. The determined winds of conformity never had a chance...