Gamma was selling me a book at bedtime. “It’s my turn to pick out the book,” she said. She selected one of her favorites, Bible stories for children. “How about this one? You like fairy tales,” she explained to me. “This is God fairy tales.”
In bed, she thumbed through the book, viewing the illustrations, looking for the story she wanted to read. “Let’s see. Flood. Rainbow. Bad guys. More bad guys…”
“What about this one?” I asked.
“No, that’s King Herod, he wants to kill all the babies. Very bad guy. They had to keep moving around to different countries.” We were looking for a happy story, I guess.
“Where’s the one where they throw him down the well?” she finally asked. So we found the story of Joseph being sold into Egyptian slavery and read that. What impressed me was that she seemed to have memorized the entire Bible, especially the Old Testament, which is admittedly big on action and drama. So this sheds new light on our problems teaching her the days of the week. Because she is obviously a sharp kid. Just now, writing that previous sentence, I remember my cousin’s son, who has Down’s Syndrome, and has all the Disney characters memorized, including their stories.
Learning. I have no idea how it works. Do any of you homeschool your kids? How do you manage that? I don’t think I could ever do that.
I always found the best way was to find a rhyme/song, or make one up. Have you tried teaching her Solomon Grundy?
I’m still trying to teach her English.
I’ve some cousins who were home-schooled; they’re monkeys. Absolutely incapable of interacting with other adults as though they’re adults – they regress to about the age they were when they were pulled out of school. A bit humiliating for everyone involved, especially as they’ve never had a chance to shuck off the weird behaviors they inherited from their parents. You seem brilliant, and Alpha sounds it, but do you really want the kids to wind up with you two as their sole influences? No homeschooling!
I wouldn’t rule out homeschooling in general, I’m sure a lot of people do it well and for good reasons and are successful at it. I am just sure that I would not be good at it. While maybe I could encourage my kid’s creativity more than the current school does, no way could I teach her the materials she learns there. If she ends up staying at this school, I would prefer to leave her there and spend my effort and energy somehow resisting the erosion of her creativity and individuality instead, rather than trying to teacher her physics etc as well as find ways for her to develop social skills.
Well, the thing is school is not supposed to be a social center. Of course, that only works in theory, especially when those hormones kick in. I believe little league, scouts, and other such group activities for kids would solve any social skill impediment from home schooling. For some families home schooling is different terminology for school drop out. I think some parents are able to take on this tremendous task and do an excellent job at educating their children. I mean, think of all the hands-on learning and field trips that could be taken that the kids stuck in school would never have the opportunity to do. I think home schooling can also be better in that the child can learn at his or her own rate and have individual attention that just can’t be given in large classrooms. There are definitely some pros to the idea.
My children have never been in school. They are equally comfortable around adults as they are around other children.
I think that if a person is curious, adventurous, and enjoys the company of children, then they would love and be successful with homeschooling. That sounds like you and your wife to my mind; but then I am biased, so…
When I started reading some of John Taylor Gatto’s books and essays on the public school system, it really opened my eyes to a new way of looking at school.
i was homeschooled for one year….has its ups and downs. i wouldnt reccomend it unless you are ready for spending all your time devoted to it,otherwise the child dosnet learn very much.my “teacher” was into it for a few months then got bored(i didnt do too well that year)but if you can be a good teacher it would be better than any school system, as long as you also provide a lot of social interaction. whether we like it or not, and whether school was originally meant to be a social center or not, it is.
My mother taught in the public school system for over 30 years and had several children in her classes over the years who were home schooled. You can’t make sweeping statements really since all had different educations. But they were all behind in at least one subject, ahead in others – depending on what the parents were good at. For instance one child had parents who were doctors – she was very advanced in math, the sciences, and other such fields. Needed a lot of work in English and writing, but nothing critical, she was up to her grade level. But even in 6th grade she really acted very immaturely, compared to the rest of the students, and had some problems getting used to the different environment.
I think one of the difficulties with home schooling is that the parents can’t really stop being parents – they can’t just be teachers, who (hopefully) come into the learning experience without any prior expectations of the students. And, knowing your own child, there’s a lot that you may understand about the child and the way he/she communicates – that a teacher might not. I think the main difficulty for the child would be learning how to communicate with teachers that they don’t know, as well as sharing that teacher with other students – a very different experience than home schooling.
I had a friend in the US who was a teacher and home-schooled her kids. I do not know how they turned out, or for how long she did it.
We have a similar maternity/paternity-leave system here in Austria, government-subsidized and about 1 year for each parent. I was a “house-husband” for a couple years when we lived in Japan. I found it depressing, and couldn’t afford to repeat the experience now even if I wanted to. But, as you say, the main reason I would not homeschool my own children is that I doubt I could do as well as the teachers she now has.