Smrt Lernins

The Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA) posted a great article today, “The Teacher as Soldier,” addressing statements by public figures about recruiting an “army of teachers” and questioning what war, exactly, these teachers are fighting. The author presents the troubling paradigm of, “Generals and leaders – Administration and the government; Privates/Soldiers – teachers; Civilians/those to be “aided” – students ([...]the group that needs to be fought for – to have things done for them because we don’t see them fit to achieve for themselves) [...] = The War for Education.”

Teachers as low ranked soldiers in a battle (against whom?) to educate passive, helpless student learners; administrators and politicians as detached leaders of a battle in which they aren’t even getting their hands dirty. Not a pretty picture. Not a picture the author enjoys. Is it really that far from the truth, though?

I think public education has become a combat scenario, to some extent, but it’s not a war for education. I’m not sure it’s a war for anything. It’s a skirmish between players with little vested interest, like politicians with children in private school. It’s a battle between Republican tax cuts and the systems that are now so underfunded that they can’t let staff into the building until the day school starts, leaving schedules unfinished, classrooms not set up, curriculum not set in stone. It’s a conflict between the few teachers who are genuinely invested in the success of their students and the administrative status quo that is focused solely on test scores. In this scenario, students are not the citizens being helped, but the friendly fire casualties of a large system floundering and firing randomly, hoping to hit a target they can’t even agree upon.

This is a pretty bleak picture of public education. It’s not an accurate portrayal of every teacher, school, administration, or system. There’s no denying that there’s a strong element of this in public education as a whole, however. Our own experiences in public education certainly point to that. No one was fighting on Captain Science’s behalf but us, and it was a fight we were well aware we shouldn’t have to fight: a fight for him to not be bullied by a teacher who felt threatened by gifted students, a fight for him to spend his days doing something other than worksheets, a fight to have any expression of creativity not squashed out of hand.

Parents have to fight with teachers and administrators to have their children’s most basic educational needs met, and while we’re doing that fighting, more and more funds are diverted away from the children who need them most. It’s obvious who the administration values — not the gifted students and not the special needs students. For the parents of those children, public education can be a constant battle.

The author of the IDEA piece writes, “Learning is not a war, it is an adventure. While it can be used as a tool to equip oneself with the awareness necessary to achieve justice, learning overall is discovery and an intriguing challenge.”

She’s right. Learning is not a war. Education, however, is most certainly a battlefield.

I received a pingback on the Secular Thursday page this morning from the blogger of Quarks and Quirks. After reading through the article that linked back to the secthurs page, I am strongly recommending it to all of you. Take some time to read through “Why We’re Not Secular Homeschoolers” and give it careful thought. It presents a differing set of opinions and attitudes to those that have lead many of us to write our Secular Thursday posts.

I think she misses the mark on a few points (for instance, I don’t believe it’s anger, but a search for “tribal” camaraderie in an overall non-Secular homeschool world, that drives most of us to participate in Secular Thursday), but she took the time to address this issue with great care and has invited polite discussion on it. I do think she hit the nail rather squarely on the head by pointing out that “secular” seems to translate too often to “atheist” or “anti-religious,” rather than “not overtly or specifically religious” (the definition she uses in her post and the one that I follow), leaving those of us that believe in something, but who don’t make that something the focus of our academic exploration, out in the cold.

I hope you’ll take her up on her invitation to participate in a conversation on secular homeschooling. Share why you’re a secular homeschooler (or why you aren’t), why you participate in Secular Thursday (or why you don’t), how you address issues of religion, secularity, etc. (or how you don’t).

ETA: I really wanted this to be the dialogue she requested, but apparently she’s only interested in a conversation with those whose opinions match her own, sadly. I see several great comments from you guys, but no responses.

My friend Heather’s oldest daughter is about to do something absolutely ridiculous: start first grade. I’m pretty sure she’s not allowed to be old enough to do that. In the spirit of preparing for this next stage in academic development, she IM’d me with this cute little message:

So, things homeschoolers never worry about:
1) Will the new teacher like my child?
2) Will my daughter make friends?
3) What if she doesn’t have any of her friends from last year in her new class?
4) Why am I sharpening so many damned pencils?

Oh, sweetie! Have I lead you to believe that the life of a homeschooler is a really so carefree? What a travesty! True, I don’t have to worry about teachers liking my child, but other than that? I have worries! I’m not worry free!

I worry about, on any given day:

1. Will my child be able to maintain his friendships with his public school friends?
2. Will my child have ample opportunities to socialize w/ homeschooling friends?
3. Will we cover all the subjects we need to cover?
4. Will getting in to college be too hard?
5. Does he hate homeschooling?
6. Does he hate me?
7. Would we all be happier if he were still enrolled in public school?
8. How on earth will I cover everything we need to cover?
9. Am I a failure for not having started Latin yet?
10. How about a modern foreign language?
11. Do my kids dress funny?
12. Are my kids well-adjusted?
13. Will my kids manage to actually pass those standardized tests?
14. If they don’t, what does that say about them?
15. If they don’t, what does that say about me?
16. Will I ever get a chance to sleep in again?
17. Do people think I’m doing this because I’m obsessed with Jesus?
18. What would Jesus think about this whole homeshooling business?
19. Am I way more boring than I used to be?
20. Why am I sharpening so many damn pencils?

See, Heather? We worry, too. We probably worry more, because the buck stops here. If our kids are all screwed up, we have no one else to blame but ourselves…and everyone KNOWS it!

Enjoy your babygirl’s first grade year and don’t feel too envious of us homeschoolers. We have it pretty good, but we don’t have it worry-free.

I might owe the young earth creationists an apology.

They just may have had it right this whole time with the “fossils are a) tricks from the devil to confuse you or b)a test from God to see if you believe in the Bible” thing, because apparently, there’s no such thing as triceratops. I’m not putting you on! The triceratops may just be the juvenile form of another dinosaur, the lesser known and decidedly less awesome torosaurus. Why was this not readily apparent to scientists and all dino-obsessed 7-year-olds? Because the tricera-toro-liar-saur-tops had mother-freaking shapeshifting bones, y’all. If dinosaurs with Transformer heads isn’t a prank from a devil or some trickster god (Loki, perhaps? Anansi? Coyote, maybe?), I just may be disappointed a second time, because this is the kind of bullhonky nonsense that just makes me think none of us actually have the slightest idea about…well, much of anything,really.

This has been my biggest betrayal by science since they decided that Pluto wasn’t actually a planet. Wasn’t it bad enough to find out that the brontosaurus was just apatosaurus with the wrong head stuck on it? Now it’s bizarro morphosaurs Science is stealing my planets and my dinosaurs, and this is unacceptable! Next they’re going to tell me that you CAN get pregnant from a swimming pool (if so, I’ll have to give more props to the ultrafundies yet again for their sensible “no mixed swimming” policy) or that we really don’t have a clue how electricity or magnets work!

Patchfire’s post about honest reporting (about your children and yourself) reminded me that one of the requirements for homeschooling in Georgia is that I must write an annual summary or report on what we covered this year and on Captain S’s progress. They can’t require that I give them these reports, but I have to write them and then hang on to them for three years. Record-keeping isn’t my area of supreme excellence, of course, but that’s where the blog will come in handy. All I have to do is refer back to my weeks and weeks of Weekly Reviewins and voila! I shall have all the information I could possible require!

All the information on Captain Science that I could possibly require, that is.

Captain Science isn’t the only one who started homeschooling this year. This year, as my blog subtitle indicates, has also been an educational process for me. No one requires any sort of report on what I’ve learned, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the time to assess it. So, what has Smrt Mama McLernins learned about homeschooling (and herself) this year? What did I learn about being a secular classical homeschooler?

1. Color-coded schedules: what works and what doesn’t. Our color-coded schedule was a great idea in theory, but didn’t work out so well in execution. Too tightly scheduled, not enough time for transitions, and not enough flexibility for Captain Science. He needs more control over his order of activities. Next year’s schedule will still be time-blocked, because that really does help us get through our day in a timely manner, but it will be color coded into “core subjects,” “electives,” etc. and Captain Science will be able to choose the order in which he does his work, and more transitional time will be provided. For example, on Mondays we’d have three one-hour blocks for “school work,” separated by 15 minute breaks, followed by a half-hour lunch, another one hour block of work, then piano. Tank’s schedule would be broken up more and be in shorter blocks, with synced lunches.

2. We had an unacceptable dearth of hands-on stuff. We did so little of this and I really regret that. Projects, crafts, etc. need to be pre-planned and scheduled into our week. Other than writing samples, we have very little to physically show for our school year. No fridge art, no dioramas or whatever to display. This simply will not fly, especially next year, when my artsy little Tank is homeschooling with us. We need specifically blocked-out times for arts and crafts and we need to integrate a physical component into our history lessons. I don’t think we need to make sugar cube pyramids or anything like that, but we do need to find some more hands-on methods of doing lessons.

3. Captain Science owns his work, not me. I am one damn impatient woman. Impatient for Captain Science to get through his work quickly, impatient for him to do it the right way the first time, impatient for him to put in maximum effort rather than half-assing it. On Dawdlin’ Days, it’s all I can do to not just scream “OH MY GOD, just finish your dang WORK already!” at him, whilst running around and tearing at my hair and possibly taking up chain smoking. Ultimately, I’m not the one who controls how quickly he finishes the work. I’m not the one who controls how well he finishes the work. I can set time limits and repercussions for violating those limits. I can set standards for the work and have him redo it when he doesn’t meet those standards. At the end of the day, though, I can’t make him do something in a timely manner or with a high level of quality…or at all. Deep breath. Release. Provide guidance. Provide boundaries. Provide repercussions. Trust him.

4. Broad but shallow or narrow but deep? Did we spend too little time on each of too many subjects at a time? Did we spend too much time on too few subjects? Officer Daddyman and I have discussed this and in looking back over the past year, I see that we had periods of both. We started out with too much focus on history. It dominated our day, our life, our house! While classical homeschooling is typically history-centric, we were sacrificing other subjects just to drag out history. We also had a point where we were trying to cover 6+ subjects in a day, which meant that we couldn’t put any quality time into each subject. One way we dealt with this was by streamlining the subjects. For example, instead of three or four small language arts segments covering different things (grammar, vocabulary, writing), we switched to Michael Clay Thompson’s language arts curriculum, which integrated or coordinated those areas.

5. What’s popular isn’t always right, but it sometimes is. I probably won’t be buying into Sonlight or Math U See any time soon, no matter how many people sing their praises, but I wish I’d listened to the other parents on the advanced learner/gifted forum sooner. I know that I initially scoffed at how everyone was jumping on board the MCT train…oh, aren’t they trendy? Then I saw a video of Mr. Thompson talking about giftedness and why/how it should be nurtured, and I realized that his curriculum wasn’t popular because it was trendy, but because he had really clued in to some essential elements of giftedness. What other curricula have I dismissed due to its popularity that, in retrospect, I might discover could be a great fit for us. I won’t let a curriculum’s popularity/trendiness keep me from checking it out.

6. Friends in unlikely places. I thought that I’d find my home in the secular homeschooling community. As my many posts about feeling alienated or out of place would indicate, this wasn’t the case. I did, to my surprise, find some wonderful friends in the Christian homeschooling community. Despite vast differences in our personal lives, our specific academic materials, and our spiritual/philosophical beliefs, the many things we do share has given me a true sense of community. I also thought that it would be in the academic homeschooling community that I’d make my friends, but I could several unschoolers among the ranks of my Sisters in Homeschooling. I can’t even list all the wonderful (mostly) women (and a few men) I have encountered in the homeschool community…from all walks of life. In the end, it’s hasn’t been about secular or Christian, classical or unschooling, but about commonality of humor, respect for each other and our children, and a belief that we each want to do what is best for our children. If we don’t have humor as parents and homeschoolers, what do we have?

7. It’s ok to quit the stuff that isn’t working (before you hit crisis/loathing stage). A curriculum isn’t a marriage, right? I’ve had to learn and relearn this one. In October, I wrote about how much we loved Writing Strands and by January, I was writing about how much I disliked it. How many months of that time in between did I force us to keep on with an increasingly incompatible curriculum? I don’t know for sure, but next year, I will give myself permission to quite before I have to write a big dramatic post about how much I hate said curriculum. I promise. This time, I really will.

8. I don’t totally suck at this. Captain Science learned a lot this year. I learned a lot this year. We still like each other. Daddyman and I still like each other. The world hasn’t collapsed, the house hasn’t burned down, and I haven’t had a nervous breakdown. We not only can do this, we ARE doing this! We’re really, truly homeschoolers…and we’re doing just fine.

As we reach the end of our school year (10 days left after tomorrow), I no longer feel like I’m homeschooling so much as racing. Will we manage to finish the last of the curricula by the end of the school year, or will it dribble over into summer, throwing off the whole rhythm of everything? Each day is a race to finish another book, another subject, so that summer can be a clean start.

With each book Captain Science completed, I experience a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It’s not just about another check-marked box on a list (though it’s a little bit about that, as well), but about knowing that we’ve done a subject from beginning to end, that we’ve truly completed the first year of homeschooling (rather than just futzing around until we hit day 180). Making it to the end of the year with something still unfinished, unless it was specifically scheduled to be unfinished, would feel–perhaps unreasonably–like a small failure. I set goals and I want them completed.

Every day is a race. Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, we manage to put to bed a couple of months ago, pulling it out for review and working on math concepts independently of curricula in the interim. Captain Science finally finished Paragraph Town last week, though he has gone back and redone a couple of lessons in that. Our brain class with Patchfire is completely. The only thing left in the writing class is making corrections to the drafts and mailing them off for submission. Game class has become more of a game club, without a need for an end-date.

Now, we’re chugging along with Building Poems, trying to wrap that up. Ideally, the only book that we will carry with us through the summer is Caesar’s English I, which I never intended us to finish by the end of the year. Far too many lessons for that, no matter how fast Captain Science seems to be zooming through it. This will keep the vocabulary fresh in his head for starting Latin (and Caesar’s English II) in the fall.

Ten days, five of which will not be managed by me, as I leave the boys in the capable hands of Officer Daddyman and the Nana, whilst I jet off to Chicago to doula for my best friend’s first birth. Five more academic days in which to wrap it all up and put it to bed for the school year. I don’t feel ready for this! This year has been such an adventure and a challenge.

Surely I’m not the only one with a deep seated need to have everything neatly wrapped up by the end of the year. How does it work for y’all? Do you leave curricula hanging to next school year? Not finish the school year until everything is finished? Do tell, do tell!

[Note from Smrt Mama: My dear friend The Mama from Concordia Classical Academy is doing me a very special Secular Thursday favor by guest blogging this wonderful post about how religious homeschoolers view secular homeschooling. I hope you'll appreciate her unique insight into the differences between our worlds as much as I do.]

Most of you regular Smrt Mama readers don’t know me, so let me first introduce myself. I’m the Mama, mother of three children: Sweet Pea, 6, Little Bird, almost 3, and Moose, 7 weeks. My elder two are girls and the baby is our first boy.

I live in the northern part of Minnesota in a little town that isn’t near very much. Except woods. Remember reading Little House in the Big Woods where Laura Ingalls Wilder talks about woods that go for days without end? It’s like that, only not in Wisconsin. Anyway, besides the children which quasi-qualify me to blather on about homeschooling, I am part of a family that fits neatly into the religious category: I’m married to a conservative pastor, we lead a pretty traditional family life, we dress modestly, and we teach religion as part of our day. I’m probably the stereotype that you now can picture in your mind! Smrt Mama told me that it’d be interesting to see how religious homeschoolers view the others–the seculars. I decided to take it upon myself to speak for a diverse, divergent community, so here it goes!*

Social graces

Since the most common question homeschoolers seem to get pounded with by others is about the s-word (socialization, or the lack thereof) I thought I’d start with how we religious folk view this. You may have noticed the plethora of religious homeschooling groups and co-ops, many of which require a member to sign a belief statement to get into the club. Why? Why keep out people who don’t agree? There’s some differing viewpoints here, and I’ll try to hit on those that come to mind:

Book Learning

When it comes to science, there are three main groups: Those who believe the world was created in about a week, roughly 6,000 years ago, those who believe evolution and creation co-exist in intelligent design, and those who believed this all evolved over a massive amount of time. There’s even debate, from all sides, if all of these views are science, so it’s no surprise that this is an area that there’s some big disagreements. Most religious homeschoolers kind of shake their heads at secular science and how prevalent it is. Some even have apologetics–defense of the faith–as a part of science class or its own subject.

Relaxation and rigor: it’s probably untrue, but there’s a big feeling that some seculars are way too loosey goosey with academics. And that eventually this’ll negatively impact homeschooling for everybody.

The Future

Goods news, though: despite the worries about your kids cohabiting and living free and easy, I do think most religious homeschoolers think secularly homeschooled kids will shake out better then their publically schooled peers.

I will say that most of my current homeschool chattering is with secular folks who’ve chosen a similar academic path for their schooling. By circumstance, most of my friends are of a reiligious bent similar to my own. I think both groups could have a lot to share…if we could all just play nice in the sand box. And, you know, do things my way.

*I know there are religious homeschoolers who share none of my viewpoints or are deeply offended by my sentiments here. To you: I am deeply, sincerely sorry!

I belong to a group on Facebook called I homeschool and I teach the science of evolution.

The group was previously called “I homeschool and I believe in evolution,” but there was dissent amongst members and potential members over the word “believe.” Evolution isn’t something that someone needs to believe in. There’s no element of faith involved. Evolution is an evidence-based scientific theory. Saying you believe in evolution is like saying you believe in gravity, relativity, or germs. A few possible name options were bandied about, but “I homeschool and I teach the science of evolution” was the overall favorite and most of the members seemed quite happy with it.

Then, of course, enter that handful of we’re-never-happy-unless-it’s-100%-our-way unschoolers (you know…those unschoolers. Not the “we’re following our child’s natural pattern of learning” unschoolers, or the “I let me child direct the course of his education” unschoolers, but the “I’d rather be illiterate than have had my parents teach me to read” Doddist unschoolers) with their panties in a twist over the use of the word “teach.”

Yes, “teach.”

“Teach,” you see, is a big, bad word among a particular subset of unschoolers. These unschoolers do not “teach.” Never, ever, ever. They lead such enriched and depth-filled lives that their children all learn exactly what they need to learn through their vibrant social lives or it wasn’t important enough to learn to begin with. The use of the word “teach” in the group name was apparently offensive enough that several unschoolers (probably the ones my friend Heather calls the “radical XTREME unschoolers”) left the group.

Complaints about the new name included:

“I don’t teach anything, I support my children as they explore their passions and interests.”

“We don’t *teach* our kids[...]We fill their lives with rich experiences, and they reach their own conclusions.”

“I’m uncertain if we ‘teach’ any of the subjects. We facilitate.”

Really? Really? You know what that sounds like? A group of people finding the most circumlocutious way possible to say they teach without ever actually using the word “teach.” And what exactly is so wrong with “teach,” anyway? Let’s take a look at the dictionary entry for the little word:

1. To impart knowledge or skill to: teaches children.

Hmm…imparting knowledge to your child. Sounds dangerously similar to telling your child how to think. Yes, I can see why that might be threatening to the [radical XTREME] unschooler.

2. To provide knowledge of; instruct in: teaches French.

Well, “providing” knowledge doesn’t sound as bad as “imparting,” but you’re still thrusting all that knowledge upon your children when they might not want it.

3. To condition to a certain action or frame of mind: teaching youngsters to be self-reliant.

Aha! We have stumbled upon it. Conditioning your child? Conditioning is what Pavlov did with dogs, and your child isn’t a dog, right? Teaching is practically like making your child drool at the dinging of a bell. Horrifying!

4. To cause to learn by example or experience: an accident that taught me a valuable lesson.

But…but…wait a minute! I thought [radical XTREME] unschoolers wanted their children to learn by example or experience. Isn’t that what unschooling is supposed to be about? I thought it was about natural learning, modeling, learning contextually, learning through life experience and all that jazz. If “teach” can mean “cause to learn by example,” why would unschooler have a problem with that word? Now I’m really confused. It must be a product of my public school education’s failure to “teach” me how to understand crazy people on the internet.

Not all (or even most) unschoolers are coocoo for Cocoa Puffs on Facebook, of course. Most of the unschooling members of the group were very supportive of the name change. One unschooler even pointed out that, “Someone better go tell Holt (from my understanding, the person who coined the term ‘unschooling’) to change the name of his book, “Teach Your Own” since the word “teach” is bothering so many unschoolers here.” Virtual fist-bump, sensible unschooler.

I’d like to say something to those unschooloonies who gasp and clutch their pearls over the use of the word “teach.” You may hate the word, but you’ve inadvertently taught me something very valuable today: You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time, because some of the people are just plain ridiculous.

I love it when I can start my Secular Thursday off with a story about dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered multiple 243 million year old Asilisaurus skeletons*, enough to assemble a complete skeleton. If you want to get technical, this Labrador-sized creature (which lived during the middle Triassic period) is a silesaur, another member of the clade dinosauriform, so more like a cousin to the guys we call dinosaurs. Still, dinosaurs and silesaurs existed simultaneously, springing from a common ancestor, so if silesaurs existed earlier than originally thought (by about 10 million years, by scientist’s estimations), their dinosaur cousins likely did, as well.

Now, “clade” is a fun word. It refers to a branch on the tree of life and includes the ancestor and all of its descendants. Cladistics is one way of studying/classifying the diversification of life of Earth through looking at evolutionary relation. The diagram demonstrating cladistics is called a cladogram, and it’s pretty nifty-keen in that it can show the origins and derivations of pretty much everything, or at least everything related, neatly laid out so that you can see what came likely from where (or who) based on shared derived characteristics.

Cladograms don’t indicate how much time has passed, just the relation between species, which makes it a useful tool in demonstrating evolutionary concepts to children. Explaining evolution to (especially younger) children can be tricky, in my experience, because children’s understanding of time is fairly limited. Trying to conceptualize time relations between species and understand tiny changes over millions of years is confusing to a kid who still think of his years in halves. Cladograms just show the probable order of speciation, like a family tree, which kids don’t seem to have a problem understanding.

If you want to look at something really cool (though now out of date, because science…always updating and changing as we develop better tools and find more clues!), you should take a look at this dinosaur cladogram completed in 2001. The way this tool can be useful for your kids isn’t because it has an up-to-date degree of accuracy (too many discoveries sticking other creatures in between the ones list), but because it does provide an interesting visual way to track how creatures change over time. The simple dino silhouettes will probably much a lot more sense that a text-only “family tree” of evolution, plus, what kid doesn’t love dinosaurs (probably some kids, but mine aren’t among them)?

If you’d like to read more about the Asilisaurus, you might enjoy one of the articles from Discover magazine or Wired. I’m sure you want to read more about this herbivorous lap dog of the Triassic period!

Nice looking guy, isn’t he?

*Sterling J. Nesbitt, Christian A. Sidor, Randall B. Irmis, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith & Linda A. Tsuji. “Ecologically distinct dinosaurian sister group shows early diversification of Ornithodira” Nature 464, 95-98 (4 March 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature08718; Received 16 September 2009; Accepted 1 December 2009

Mention homeschooling in the wrong company and you’re bound to get an earfull about all the potential damage your irresponsible choice is doing to your children, particularly their “socialization” and their ability to ever, ever get into a college that isn’t named after a guy called Bob. Some will share cautionary tales of a homeschooler that their cousin once knew who wasn’t able to do 8th grade math upon graduation or who wept copiously when spoken to by strange children on the playground. Some will be rude enough to make negative statements about homeschooling in front of your homeschooled children.

I will ignore the stunning fact that no one even asked these people, who are clearly ignorant about what homeschooling actually entails, for their input, advice, or predictions for the (clearly hopeless) future of our children, and instead ponder what it is, exactly, about homeschooling that makes it so offensive. I’ve come up with a few possible reasons why someone might feel threatened by homeschooling:

1. Assumptions about religious motivation — Some homeschool detractors seem to think all homeschoolers are doing it for (extreme and/or fundamentalist) religious reasons and assume that our choice to homeschool means that we don’t want to teach our children about evolution, sex education, or extra-Biblical literature. With this assumption often comes comments on our family’s size and dynamics, since we’re probably also Quiverfullers who beat our kids with flexible PVC pipes. People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as religious nuts who are afraid that the government is trying to brainwash children into believing in global warming and pre-marital dating. They may or may not have opinions on secular homeschooling, or even know it exists, so (if you don’t have the time or energy to explain that many religiously-motivated homeschoolers also have a very rigorous, classical curriculum that may include those supposedly verboten subjects) you may be able to quickly quiet the naysayer by explaining that your homeschooling curricula is secular.

2. Assumptions about parenting (ie. “Special Snowflake Syndrome”) — Some homeschool detractors believe that non-religious parents who choose to homeschool do so because they believe their children are too “special” (imagine a snide tone on that word) to follow the rules/policies of the public school classroom. With this assumption comes comments about how we think our children can never do any wrong, how we blame every problem on an allergy or other condition, or that “every homeschooler thinks her kid is gifted.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as having babied, out of control children who think everything must always be tailored to suit their “special” whims and can’t handle even simple tasks without parental help or oversight. There isn’t any real way to clear up this misconception in a stranger, especially if your kids are flipping out in a particularly slow checkout line, but someone who spends any length of time around you and your children will probably start reassessing these assumptions’ validity.

3. Assumptions about socialization — Some homeschool detractors are concerned that homeschooled children are not offered enough (or the “right”) opportunities for socialization and will therefor be unable to adequately function in an environment outside of their own family. With this assumption comes a tendency to blame any shyness or social awkwardness on the homeschooling, rather than the personality of the child, and to make dire proclamations about the child’s potential for handling college or the “real world.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as insular and isolated. This concern is easily addresses by explaining the many social (and legal) support networks, co-ops, and resources available to homeschooling families to ensure myriad opportunities for socialization.

4. Assumptions about rigors of homeschool curricula — Some homeschool detractors believe that not being held to the identical grade standards of the public schools results in homeschooling parents providing an inadequate amount of instruction and setting low standards for their children. With this assumption comes commentary on that one homeschooling family their aunt knew whose kids could barely read in the 10th grade and were never, ever able to get into college due to their poor education. You know, that family. People with these assumptions often have a misconception that secular homeschooling is synonymous with unschooling, that homeschooling parents don’t make the choice to homeschool in order give their children a more rigorous education, and that homeschooling is somehow the “easy road” (the “wow, I wish I didn’t have to get the kids up for school every morning! It must be nice to be able to sleep in every day” comments). You’ve got two options here: the catty response (“Oh, your son is only just starting long division? We did that two years ago and have moved on to algebra.”) or the civil response (“I’m glad that being allowed to set our own standards means we can set them as high as we’d like.”) I’d recommend thinking the former, but speaking the latter.

5. Assumption that by choosing to homeschool your child(ren), you are actually making commentary on their educational choices for their child(ren) — Most controversies boil down to “if you do it differently than I do, you’re saying my way is bad, so I must defensively point out that your way is bad.” Some homeschool detractors seem quite certain that your choice to homeschool your own children means you think anyone who doesn’t homeschool their children is doing it “wrong.” With this assumption comes comments about all of the above assumptions, because they’ll blame their defensiveness on anything but what it actually is, the fear of someone doing something differently from how they’re doing it. People with this assumption don’t care what studies or data show about the efficacy of homeschooling, how delightfully well-behaved and well-adjusted your children are, or how well your children perform academically — they know homeschooling is wrong, because they aren’t doing it, and the choices they make are always “right.” Don’t even try to reason with people making this assumption; just tell them you’re glad that public/private/military school is working out so well for them and move on with your day.