Smrt Lernins

Karen asks, “What will your kids do without an annual yearbook? Even elementary schools have them nowadays.”

Elementary schools offer them. I do not buy them. Twice-yearly pictures were enough. I barely gave enough of a flip about the other kids in Captain Science’s class to buy the class picture. I certainly did not ever give enough of a flip about the other kids in the entire school to buy a yearbook. I am not a cash cow and do not appreciate being milked by anyone other than my nursing baby.

Really, when is the last time you opened up your yearbooks? How much meaning do they really have to you in adulthood? I think I look at mine every few years, mainly when I need a reminder of how much I hated high school and 99.97% of the people in my graduating class. Yearbooks are a $50 way of remembering a time period that I actually wish I could effectively block from my memory. High school days were not my glory days. I don’t look on them fondly. I don’t wax poetical while poring over black and white pictures of people who mostly grew up to be the kind of people I add on Facebook and summarily delete, because they are just that insufferable. You will not see me weeping over a lack of a yearbook.

Should my children express a longing for something of this nature, I’ll gather together all of their homeschooled friends. We’ll do photoshoots, get photobooks printed, and they can all sign each other’s photobooks. They’ll be classier, less expensive, and full of only the people they liked and want to remember, rather than the overpriced remembrance of people he barely knew, didn’t particularly like, and won’t bother to keep in contact with after graduation.

And that is what a [Smrt] Homeschooler has to say about yearbooks.

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

Homeschooling has its many obvious upsides: customized curriculum, flexibility of schedule, ability for students to advance at their own pace. I have also discovered many benefits I hadn’t expected, however. These are some of the benefits that have revealed themselves over time.

1. Fewer lice scares. What public/private school student hasn’t brought home at least one “We have lice going around! Oh no!” note at least once during their school years? This isn’t much of an issue w/ the homeschooled student. Sure, they could pick something up at co-op, but where are those kids going to get it? With smaller groups (and, admittedly, the hippie homeschool tendency to wash hair a little less frequency) in a carefully controlled setting, lice isn’t going to be spreading through the homeschool community like wildfire.

2. No (social pressure-laden) fundraisers. I know that some co-ops or homeschool groups do fundraisers, but not like public/private schools do fundraisers. Fundraisers are serious business in public and private schools. Wrapping paper, candy, cookie dough, frozen pizzas, flower bulbs: the list goes on and on. Note after guilt-inducing note letting you know all the prizes your child will be missing by your failure to adequately pressure your friends, neighbors, and relatives into buying multiple items from your little darling. You don’t want your baby to be the only one who didn’t get the key chain and teddy bear, right?

3. Ever-ready errand boy/girl. There’s something to be said for having a child in the house who is big enough to respond to, “Go grab the whatever-it-is-I-need from the car.” Sure, this isn’t something you, as a homeschool parent, should abuse, but it’s nice to not constantly be running up and down the stairs all the time. Besides, it’s lots of extra physical activity for your child. Mark it down as P.E. and you don’t even have to feel guilty.

4. Also, ever-ready manual labor. The kids are home during the time of day that I’m doing chores or running errands, which means I’ve got extra sets of hands when it’s necessary. Sure, doing the grocery shopping may have been easier with just the baby, but that meant balancing both baby and bags of groceries to get into the house. Homeschooled kids are there to help you carry in those bags! If you haven’t figured it out yet, household chores are also a great way to break up the monotony of the school day and to drive home the valuable lesson of the careers to which one may aspire without finishing a decent education. In other words, kids who pitch a fit over doing math or writing can scrub a bathroom or rake a yard to get the full experience of why we pushy parents think learning is so important.

5. Fewer birthday party invitations. If you don’t realize what a blessing this is, you have never had a child in public school. The obligatory birthday invitations mean hundreds of dollars spent on impersonal gifts for children your child doesn’t even play with outside of school or risking the possible social ostracism that comes from failing to appear at all the right parties. The other upside of this is that you are equally freed from the obligation of inviting 19 near-strangers into your home or rented bounce house facility once a year. The controlled social sphere of homeschooling means smaller, more intimate parties. Be happy about that.

6. You do not, in fact, gotta catch ‘em all. A controlled social sphere also means your child’s exposure to the “kid crack” phenomena of Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu-gi-oh, and all other collectible card games is significantly more limited. Few parents really want to get their kids started on these games (Which the kids don’t even know how to play. It’s just about the having), but they’re aware that knowledge of games like these (and ownership of the cards/toys) is like currency in a public school, and they don’t want their kids to be the socially impoverished ones, begging for little Pikachu scraps off the elementary lunch table. As long as you keep them off of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, homeschooled children don’t have the same exposure to these games, and aren’t as likely to get caught up on the frenzied need to have them. Homeschooling, I choose you!

7. Minivan Expectations. No one will make “oh, you poor, unhip thing” faces over your choice to drive a minivan. Everyone knows that homeschoolers drive minivans, even if they only have one or two kids. Homeschoolers are not expected to drive SUVs, Camrys, or muscle cars. If anything, there might be some confusion as to why your van is a mini and not a conversion.

8. Floods. Not the natural disaster, but the pants length. By the end of the season, pants are hanging a few inches above the shoes and shirts are cutting off a few inches above the wrist. In a public or private school setting, this means either replacing the garments for the few remaining weeks of cold weather or dealing with the disapproving looks and comments directed at your slightly bedraggled-looking offspring. When you’re homeschooling, no one cares if your kid is wearing floods. Being slightly ill-dressed is part of the social expectations for homeschoolers, so you’re disappointed nobody by meeting those expectations and rising above expectations if your kid is wearing pants that fit come March. It’s win-win.

9. Never again be perceived as idle. While a stay-at-home-mom may be perceived (incorrectly and unjustly) as “not working” or “doing nothing all day” or “getting to stay home and play with the kids all day,” a homeschooling stay-at-home-mom is perceived as undertaking a momentous and time-intensive task, one that most parents of public/private schooled children believe they could never, themselves, manage. Fewer people will make assumptions about your availability (“Well, you don’t do anything all day, so you can do this favor for me!”). Lackadaisical housekeeping will be viewed, not as a sign of laziness, but as a natural byproduct of the tremendous effort expended planning lessons, directing learning, and grading and filing papers. Don’t disavow anyone of that belief; You’ll ruin it for the rest of us.

10. An excuse for weirdness. When your child does something unusual, socially awkward, or just plain bizarre in public, you can easily soothe observers’ distressed looks with a slightly dismissive hand wave and an, “Oh, don’t worry. They’re homeschooled.” This also works pretty well to explain weirdness in homeschooling parents. A woman muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is creepy. A homeschooler muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is just planning for next semester.

When the current course of home education isn’t at its peak, homeschoolers sometimes fall back on the dangerous logical fallacy of “homeschooling is better than public schooling, therefor any amount of homeschooling is better than public schooling” when attempting to justify or rationalize any lapse in their intended output. You may recognize the related mantras: “A homeschooled child learns more before lunch than a public schooled child does all day” and “The worst day homeschooling is better than the best day in public school.”

In other words, as long as they can convince themselves that a day spent playing Club Penguin or watching videos on YouTube surpasses the quality and quantity of education in the average public school day, they don’t have to feel guilty about having let their children play Club Penguin or watch videos on YouTube all day. At least the kids aren’t in public school!

I absolutely agree that, overall, the quality and quantity of education received in the average public school is greatly exceeded by the quality and quantity of education received during the same period of time spent homeschooling. That doesn’t mean there is something inherently superior about homeschooling, though. Very little is brought to the table by location alone (academically speaking — mentally/emotionally/socially, being at home has an important impact). Done right, your child is receiving significantly more education than in a public school. Done wrong, your child might be receiving significantly less education than in a public school. Homeschooling parents seem to want to make it about location, but they’re missing the point — a great big fat point. It’s not the fact that you’re schooling at home, but that you’re putting in time, effort, individual attention, creativity, and love. Location is one of the less significant factors in education, coming far behind materials, methodology, and investment in the child’s success.

It’s not fair or accurate to selectively compare homeschooling and public schooling day by day, and certainly not hour by hour or minute by minute. To say “a day of homeschooling is superior to a day of public school” is disingenuous. Which day? Which homeschool? Sure, a public schooled child isn’t learning much on CRCT day, on class party day, on school assembly day. A homeschooled child isn’t learning much on mom’s pneumonia day, on “first I have to run all these errands” day, or on YouTube watching day, either. None of these days would be a fair day to choose for comparison as an adequate example of education, yet I’ve seen many examples of homeschoolers use class parties or school assemblies as examples of how public schools don’t educate, but just waste time. As a former public school room mom, I can assure you that our school system allowed for exactly two class parties a year and they had assemblies once per grading period.

We have had days when we accomplish more work and cover more materials than my son covered in a week in public school. We’ve also had weeks where we struggle to cover the amount of material that they covered in a day of public schooling. It fluctuates. No, every day of homeschooling is not going to cover more material in greater depth, simply by virtue of being homeschooling. Location doesn’t make the materials better — they have to actually be better materials. Location doesn’t make you roll out of bed in the morning and teach — that’s your own motivation. Location doesn’t cause ideal lesson plans to spring up or those lesson plans to be adhered to — you, the parent, have to make sure that happens. That video you watch at home has no more or less inherent academic value than the video watched at school unless you make it relevant, make it part of something bigger. If you plunk your kid on his butt in front of a video without finding a way to engage him in the materials or contextualize them, he’s not learning any more than he would being plunked on his butt in front of a television in public school. Location doesn’t equal education.

Public schools do have certain academic standards to uphold. Yes, many schools are failing, but most schools at least attempt to educate the children attending them. Are these standards as rigorous as my personal standards? Not by a long shot. Do I think kids are sitting there being taught nothing? No, I do not. Public school classrooms cover a wide range of materials. They even cover some of it well. It’s possible to have a sound, thorough education from public school, though a lot of that depends on student commitment, parental involvement, and the quality of the individual school(s) and teacher(s). A good public school teacher will engage the students, find ways to make information accessible, and will impart a love of learning. Dismissing public education out of hand simply because it’s not at home is just as bad as dismissing homeschooling out of hand because it is at home. Location doesn’t equal education. Déjà vu!

Not every homeschooler is done by lunch. Not every homeschooler is learning in a half day what public school kids are learning all day. Don’t make it about day-for-day, hour-for-hour. Don’t make it about there vs. here. Look at the big picture. An hour of half-assed homeschooling isn’t better, academically, than an hour of public schooling with a competent, engaged teacher. Stop telling yourself that to make yourself feel better. Public schools have some really good days, days that are doing to be better than your worst days, and that’s ok. You’ll have good days that are way better than their best days, because you can give your child the personal attention to make a good day great. You, as the parent-teacher, not homeschooling as a concept. You don’t have to tear public schooling down to make yourself feel better about an off day. You don’t have to blow smoke up your own denim jumper. If you’re making an effort 75% of the time and teach your children with love and a vision for the future success, you don’t have to excuse your worst day by trying to compare it to public school. Not only is it not accurate (Really, have you ever had kids in public school? It’s certainly less than ideal, but it’s not exactly day care, and some of them are doing a good job), but it’s not necessary.

It’s not the location that makes homeschooling better. It’s you. You are invested in your child. You want your child to learn. You want her to love what she’s learning. You want him to engage with his curriculum. You make education happen. Keep your eyes on the big picture and the important part you play in it. It’ll keep you motivated through those weeks when “a homeschooled day watching science videos on YouTube is better than a public school day of science labs” seems like a really nice lie to tell yourself.

Christi writes, “I’ve considered home schooling my eldest for middle school, since our local middle school is really bad, and we can’t afford private school. The trouble is, even with my degree in education, I have a hard time just helping her with her homework. She gets frustrated, rolls her eyes, throw tantrums, and then I get irritated with her and give up. Have you dealt with any of this and how did you get past it?”

That’s a reasonable concern and on that many parents contemplating homeschooling seem to have. You’re touching on the very thing I feared when the possibility of homeschooling Captain Science was first brought up for consideration. We battled over homework nearly every night. I’m not being hyperbolic here, either. Almost every single school night devolved into fussing, yelling, tears, arguing, nagging, and/or fits over the completion of homework. If I couldn’t get him to finish an hour of homework without that sort of drama, how on earth could I manage to get him through a full day of school work? Were my days going to be nothing but a constant struggle to accomplish even the smallest tasks? Was I setting us both up for a complete breakdown of our parent-child relationship?

Well, take a deep breath in, Christi. Now let it out. Relax and be assured that none of the above worries have come true.

Your daughter spends most of her day at school. She’s probably up and out the door pretty early, spends a full day at school, and then comes homes only to do more school work. Of course she’s not happy about it. Who among us enjoys putting in a full day at the office, then coming home to spend an additional hour or more of what should be your time with family on work-related conference calls, paperwork, or, for a more accurate comparison to the majority of homework, a busywork review of your day’s tasks? Sure, some people like bringing their work home with them, but most people want to leave work at the office.

Newsflash! So do your kids. They also seem to understand instinctively what Harris Cooper, a professor of education and psychology at Duke University who is an expert on homework, has discovered through research: that there is very little evidence that most homework (reading and short assignments to prepare for tests excluded) in elementary school helps kids learn. In other words, all that work really is a waste of your child’s time and yours.

During her school day, your daughter may be interested and engaged in the materials. Her interactions with her teacher might be very positive. This positivity could carry over to the home education environment, with you in the role of the educator sharing new knowledge with your child. Or, it might be that she’s very unhappy with the teaching style, classroom dynamics, speed at which materials are covered, etc. and you could help reengage her with her education by finding the right curriculum and by providing a safe and secure environment in which to learn. As the homeschooling parent, you aren’t being put in the position of having to be a prison guard jangling the keys while your kids serve an unpleasant sentence issued by a teacher, a sentence over which you’ve had no input.

This may sound a little melodramatic to those of you whose children have always been homeschooled or whose homeschooling experiences weren’t preceded by negative public schooling experiences, but those of us who started homeschooling in response to bullying teachers who seem to punitively assign busy work can tell you that is exactly what it felt like many nights. It actually reached a point with Captain Science and his third grade teacher where I did finally declare some of the work to be pointless busy work that I didn’t care if he finished or not, because I got so tired of having to enforce rules I didn’t set and harass him through worksheet after pointless worksheet.

In the homeschooling environment, my reluctant homeworker has become a (usually) willing homescholar. Our daily materials aren’t busy work. It’s not worksheets to send home in order to have something to grade or give the appearance of actually teaching when I’m not. I have the power to make it interesting the first time through…and the first time through is the only time through, if he demonstrates mastery of the concepts!

Just a warning: you may have to do some deprogramming to get these positive results. Take a relaxing summer off and start the school year with positivity. Find out what parts of her day she most enjoyed, what aspects of education worked best for her, and let her know you’ve taken that into account when planning the curricula. If she balks, take it slow, and reassure her that she doesn’t have to worry about grades and tests, just about learning the materials and enjoying them. Don’t let it turn into a power struggle. You can always quit and come back to it the next day, which is better at the beginning that leaping right into the head-butting.

Ultimately, I think you’ll find how little homework and homeschooling have in common.

Today’s “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” is less of a question, and more of a request.

Marci writes, “I want you to do a post on how you possibly think your child will be able to handle hard situations if they aren’t exposed to them in public school at a very young age. You know the whole comment about, ‘they’re going to have to deal with moronic/mean/belittling…people someday so they might as well learn now.’”

I will start out by saying that I have never met an adult who is a better person due to belittling as a child. Cruelty doesn’t produce character. Suffering through meanness doesn’t make a stronger, better person. Bullying doesn’t create well-rounded individuals who are able to deal with day-to-day challenges. Removing a child from a damaging (mentally, physically, or emotionally) situation isn’t teaching him to “run away from his problems.”

The premise that bullying in some way “toughens up” children, helps them develop “thicker skin” or become “less sensitive,” or teaches them about the “real world,” is faulty and dangerous. Imagine trying to apply those same ideas to adults. Should an adult accept physical or verbal assault in order to develop a thicker skin? Should adults accept sexual harassment in order to become less sensitive? Should an adult accept discrimination or racism simply because it’s “part of the real world?”

Of course not. Adults are not expected to accept these kinds of behaviors, because they are unacceptable. The only situations under which most adults are willing to accept assault and harassment is when the adults feel powerless — fear of losing a job, fear of retaliation, fear of being called a liar. Why should my goal as a parent be to create situations where my children feel powerless? Treating bullying as a character-building experience for a child makes no more sense than treating domestic violence as a character-building experience for an adult. Domestic violence isn’t stopped by teaching the woman to make quips, hit back, or focus on her many positive traits to help her stand up to her abuser, because to do otherwise would be “running away from her problems.” It’s not stopped by telling the victim that it’s “just words” or that she needs to “toughen up.” It’s stopped by getting out and staying out. Why do so many parents fall into the trap of thinking that bullying, which is just another form of abuse, doesn’t merit the same solution?

As an adult, if someone calls me names, swears at me, physically threatens me, or just downright annoys me, I have the freedom to get up and walk away. I am not obligated to accept mistreatment. I am not obligated to accept abuse. I am not obligated to tolerate idiocy. Walking away from an unpleasant or intolerable situation may involve making a sacrifice, but I have the power to do that. Unless I am bound physically (such as through incarceration) or legally (as with military enlistment), I always have the option to weigh the costs and benefits of tolerating or rejecting any given set of circumstances. I can choose my place of employment, my recreational activities, and my social group (which is very rarely based solely on age). A child in a public school setting, however, has no choice over his classroom “peers,” his schedule, or even his presence there. How are the social lessons learned under those circumstances analogous with the social lessons I will need as an adult? Short answer: They really aren’t.

Yes, there will be times when my children will have to smile and nod at idiots, brush off an insult without reacting, or even deal with a bully. They won’t be learning the skills necessary to do that within the contrived, age-segregated “social setting” of the classroom. They’ll be exposed to a much wider age range (though homeschool co-ops and the many other social activities in which we participate), where they will have the model of older children and have to be the model to younger children. They will also witness their parents dealing with frustrating situations politely and tactfully, even if we grumble about them later. Sometimes, they’ll see us ignore harsh words from someone who isn’t worth the effort we’d have to make to respond. We’ll talk about why we choose to engage and why we don’t. We’ll explain that sometimes you fight and sometimes you walk away.

How will our children learn how to deal with tough or unfair situations that deserve a fight? When we are dealt with unjustly, they’ll see us modeling appropriate anger and indignation (one real world example: I was asked by a security guard at a water park to stop breastfeeding my infant), appropriate immediate responses (ex: I didn’t bless out the security guard, but instead clearly and politely recited that state laws protecting my right to nurse my child there, and then spoke with the manager), and appropriate longer-term responses (ex: I worked w/ the manager on implementing training for employees about breastfeeding laws and including pro-breastfeeding language on the water park’s website).

I can’t think of a single situation in my life where having been bullied or forced to deal with idiots in a manufactured setting has been of any great benefit. I have tapped the tools I learned from my parents, Girl Scouting, my Model United Nations team and other wonderful sources on many occasions to great success, but not once have I thought, “Gee, I’m so glad I was belittled by my peers!” I’m pretty sure my kids can manage without that particular brand of education, too.

And that’s what the [Smrt] Homeschooler has to say about that.

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

Emily at Learning Vicariously asks, “If you could go back in time, would you have homeschooled Captain Science all along, or were you happy with his early education before last year’s teacher? What made you decide to put The Tank in a traditional preschool? What are your plans for him and Babypie in the coming years?”

I’m not really much of a “go back and changes things” person in general. The end is almost always a result of the process. I never would have come to homeschooling as a first choice — I had to get there by seeing how nothing else was right for Captain Science.

We learned a lot from the different schooling methods. I regret a great deal about those years, too, especially not pulling the Captain out of his Montessori school when we first suspected the bullying problem (the bullies in question was the teacher’s daughter and her best friend, the daughter of another teacher in the school) or insisting that he be moved to a different class in public school when we realized the ongoing issues with the teacher were so extreme. I’m unhappy with Montessori and public schooling, both as they apply to Captain Science and systemically. Having something to which I can compare homeschooling, however, is a good thing. Having Captain Science’s attitude, demeanor, and willingness to work to compare to how he was in other schools means I can appreciate just how good homeschooling is for him. Seeing what methods don’t work for him gives me a better idea of what we should try as an alternative.

We opted to put the Tank in a traditional private school setting for a few reasons. For starters, the little Methodist preschool is the same place where Captain Science went for two years, and he loved it there. The teachers are sweet, it’s low on the God stuff for a church school, it’s close by, and relatively inexpensive. Because this was our first year homeschooling, I thought it would be best for Captain Science if we could focus as much attention on him and his education as possible. I had no idea how this was going to work! I had no idea to what degree we’d struggle, how much time it would take, or anything like that. Having the Tank out of the way for a few hours, three days a week means I can put a lot more energy into school for Captain Science on those days.

I also did worry a little about the socialization issue. The Tank isn’t old enough for classes at the co-op, so he spends a lot of that time playing with the babies and younger toddler. While many of my friends have children Captain Science’s age, their other children are mostly older or younger than the Tank. He’d never spent any significant amount of time away from me. I wanted him to have an opportunity to play with other children in a safe environment for a short period of time — preschool seemed like an ideal place for that. Plus, he had been begging me to go to school since he was old enough to realize Captain Science was going somewhere, and despite the Captain being home now, the Tank still wanted to go. He enjoys it immensely and I view it as a regular playdate much more than I do “school.”

Next year is still up in the air for the Tank. I know I’ll homeschool from kindergarten onward, but whether or not we re-enroll him for another year of pre-K is yet to be seen. I know he’ll want to go, but I’m not sure I’ll want him to. The back and forth to the preschool is disruptive and inconvenient, so if I can find a better outlet for the Tank’s (considerably higher than Captain Science’s) social needs, we may not go back next year. As for what we’ll do with Babypie, that’s still so far in the future at this point that I don’t even want to think about it! There are several other baby girls her age in our homeschool circle, which gives her more of a ready-made friends than the Tank had available. With her being my (potentially) last baby, I might also be too clingy to send her off anywhere. Yes, I admit it! I might be a bit overprotective of my baby.

All in all, I’m happy with the choices we have made for this year, but I wouldn’t rearrange our past in hopes of getting this experience sooner. It’s homeschool-by-comparison that allows us all to truly appreciate what a gift we have been given.