Okay, so sorry, but I have this thing with continuity and proving myself to be not irrational and stuff, so I have to post this and then we can drop the subject for good.
I think this is the long and short of it. On homeschooling:
I don't know, it's just not something I want to be a part of. Despite it's merrits. The thought of trying to provide my children with enough of a well-rounded education to make them succesful drives me bonkers. I don't think I'm cut out for it.
But mostly it's because I do NOT beleive in secluding ourselves from the world, and if there is one thing I want to teach my kids it's how to be in the world WITHOUT being of the world. If they can do that in high school, they can probably do that anywhere. And if they can't, maybe I'd have to re-consider. But in theory, that's the idea, just like in theory homeschoolers are supposed to ace SAT's and read three hundred pages a day. I'm comming to realize that the most important thing is being willing to change as soon as you see that what you're doing isn't working.
Are we agreed?
Thursday, August 07, 2008
there, i finally said it.
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18 comments:
Disclaimer: I am also a big fan of continuity and I hate dropping subjects that aren't fully fleshed out.
I will only agree to disagree. ;-) I am willing to change when I see that what I'm doing isn't working, but I don't see that yet. I can't speak about your experience, but I think what my parents did with me worked, overall. They made mistakes, yes, and hopefully I'll be able to correct those when training my own kids.
I also think that "homeschooling" is way too broad a category to be dismissed because "what my parents did didn't work" or "I'm not cut out to do it the way my parents did it." Stereotypes like homeschoolers always acing SATs or reading a lot are confining and don't accurately reflect the variety to be found among homeschoolers.
I forgot to thank Kacy at one point in our discussion for correcting me on one point. I said that I wanted to take my kids out of the culture in order to give them the tools to re-enter the culture as leaders (or something like that), and she reminded me of the 'in the world, but not of the world' phrase. I don't want to take my kids out of the culture. I'm having a hard time phrasing what I want to do, but I think I want to protect them from the evil influences within the culture until they are old enough to understand why it is evil and resist those temptations. The world is going to try to get them at a very young age, before they have the ability to resist it. I'd be willing to consider a private school to achieve that end, or allow them to participate in certain public school programs that give them more opportunities than I can give them. For example, I kind of wish I'd been involved with a school music program at an early(ish) age, because that would have allowed me to enter scholarship competitions that I didn't have a chance to enter, and possibly to meet more musicians of a similar skill level. But I don't really know how that would have worked out, so I can't say for sure.
Why does the thought of trying to provide your children with enough of a well-rounded education to make them successful drive you bonkers? What do you not think you're cut out for?
I don't want to make my kids successful according to the world's definition. I want my kids to be able to serve the Lord to the best of their abilities. In my view, this includes a better education than the broken public school system can give them. I don't want them to be indoctrinated by secular ideas proclaimed as unalterable fact, I want them to see those ideas for what they are: mere ideas from a worldview that is incompatible with Christianity.
But I will allow my kids to burn their own toast. ;-)
Yeah... I guess it's just not a matter of right and wrong to me anymore. Even personally. It's a really subjective thing, depending on so many variables that you have to consider.
Your right, the steriotypes that people put on homeschoolers arn't fair, but neither are those put on public schoolers. I think there are pitfalls on both sides of the road and the trick is staying out of whichever ditch is closest to the method you choose.
I don't think either ditch is deeper or more dangerous than the other.
What you're saying makes a lot of since, but the ditch I see on your side of the road is that your kids will either be totally shocked by the world and unable to deal with it by the time they get there well into their lives, or they will be totally enamored by it and they will fall prey to serious temptation all at once. I could name so many examples of people this has happened to.
Then again, it's possible to do it right. Just as I think I COULD raise kids right through public school.
And I guess I'm just a really big-picture person and I shine really brightly on my strengths but completely black out on my weaknesses, so I would really struggle to give my kids everything that they need without turning them into little mes or leaving out huge parts of their education. I guess those are just my personal fears, though, and they could be overcome if need be.
I should acknowledge that I've known a lot of homeschool success stories, too. It's a different kind of success, though, than maybe what I want for myself? And maybe deep down I want my kids to be successful in ways that will confirm or validate my personal goals, which isn't fair.
In education as in everywhere else, the definition of success is so subjective. I'm really learning that.
Thanks so much Crystal for helping me to really flesh this idea out once and for all! My thoughts on this have changed and grown alot since I met you.
I agree with you Emily. I agree with Crystal, my concern would be the influences that they would be getting at a really young age, and I think that each child might be different, or my home school my kids for the first few years so I can "well ground them" as it were, and give them a certain lifestyle and really, a certain bias in the way the see things. If I then sent them to public school, they would hopefully have a certain viewpoint behind what they see. Of course, as they got older they would need to form their own opinions about what happens, and what they believe.
I don't know. I think my parents have done a pretty good job to, and I don't really think that we are going to have to struggle with "Culture Shock" almost. Think of the G- family Emily- they home school, but they are in no way a typical home schooling family, and when they have their own job and are making their way in the world, they are going to have absolutely no problem.
I'm very aware of the ditch on my side of the road and I also know people who fell into it. My struggle will be letting my kids experience the world sooner than I will want to let them, and also not micro-managing them. I don't want to hide my kids away in a box and then unleash them into the world at some arbitrary point. I want to be able to do it more gradually than that, and I want to prepare them intellectually for the encounters they will have. That's one of the most important things, in my opinion - preparation. The other, I think, is communication. I want my kids to be able to talk to me freely about what's going on in their lives, and I want to be able to talk to them about what happened at that point in my life.
I guess the reason I don't understand your position is that I don't see how your kids will be able to cope with the world any easier at five than mine will be at a later, more mature age.
I guess there are a couple of other definitions of 'successful' that I would like my kids to be as well. I would like them to not have a great deal of regrets about the past and I would like them to have the ability to do what they want to do with their lives when they figure out what that is. I heard a quote from Greg Harris recently that basically said 'The goal of education is not making your kids into better versions of you, but the best version of themselves that they can be.' I thought that was really good.
If I've read your last comment right, you're saying that you want to put your kids in public school in order to prevent yourself from making your kids fulfill your own personal goals. But this is what you must beware of: are you fulfilling a personal goal by sending your kids to public school? Will they look back and wish you had homeschooled or private schooled them?
I heard about a family recently (some cousin or second cousin of my dad's, which is funny because I didn't know ANY of my relatives homeschooled) that allow their kids to choose, every year, whether they want to be homeschooled or public schooled. I think this would be a really interesting option to think about pursuing in your case, although I wonder about the wisdom of letting your kids choose their own path that early. By the time I knew what I wanted to do with myself, and which subjects truly interested me, the most fruitful period in which I could have developed my skills in those areas was already passing. So I ended up wishing, in some cases, that my mother had made me work harder at things that didn't interest me at the time.
Sorry this is a little choppy and muddled. I'm still dealing with a nasty cold I got coming off of camp and also running short on sleep today (because of the cold, gr). Thank you, in return, for putting up with my incessant argumentativeness and for giving me a point of view against which to flesh out my own more fully. I guess the biggest thing I've learned from this discussion is that raising my kids is going to be a lot harder and more complicated than pretty much anything I've attempted to do so far! It reminds me of a Lewis quote that isn't specifically about your own kids, but could easily and truly be applied to them. I can't seem to find it right now, but it says that everyone you meet is a potential god or goddess, or a potential demon, and everything you say or do to them is moving them towards one of those two ends.
Oh, that is a really cool quote. It really illustrates how the little things we do can influence peoples lives, in good ways and bad ways, and we have to be really careful. Which is actually rather scary.
"If I've read your last comment right, you're saying that you want to put your kids in public school in order to prevent yourself from making your kids fulfill your own personal goals. But this is what you must beware of: are you fulfilling a personal goal by sending your kids to public school?"
That's exactly what I'm saying, I'm afraid that might be part of the reason why I say I'm going to public school my kids. As I've said before, sometimes it seems that we all have emotional or phychological reasons why we beleive what we do and we just seek logical explinations to support or justify them. I'm just saying, maybe these are the real reasons why I feel so adamently about this.
You're right, this is a huge big complicated buisness, and so easy to screw up. We probably all will in the end! But at least we'll be trying.
Here's another thought I got from Devon: If homeschooling isn't something I'm passionate about, would you really want me to pursue it? That made me think, maybe it's a little like adoption. I really really want to adopt children and maybe not even have any birth children at all. To me, while I understand how important it is to "be fruitfull and multiply," there is something much more urgent about children already in the world who need my help than those yet to be born.
But I know that not everyone feels that way, and if you didn't, I wouldn't want you to adopt any children. I think it would be the same with homeschooling, if you're just kind of "eh" about it, it's not for you. You have to be 100% commited, no?
Oh, and I'm not saying that my children will be more capable of handling "the world" at age 5 than yours will at a later age, but I'm counting on pre-school being a little less corrupt than highschool. And I'm hoping that growing up in that atmosphere they will never be shocked or appaled by it. With careful training at home, I hope I can guide them through these experiences at the same rate as their peers and see them deal with the situations wisely as they come.
Those arn't reasons why I'm going to public school, but they are reasons why I think it would work.
I'll write a longer comment a little later when I'm not sleep-deprived (haha) and have a cold like Crystal lol. But the first thing I thought of was this:
I could be like a guinea pig in this situation. I'll make a post after my first day of college next month and you can all see if I was totally completely shocked by the "real world" as you term it, or if I was prepared through the last seven years of homeschooling.
Personally, I think I'm more in the real world that most public schoolers. For example, I wouldn't have qualms about dating someone else because they're a senior and I'm a sophomore, or even being friends with them. I think I'm more well-rounded in terms of interacting with people of ALL ages because I'm with them a lot, instead of confined to a classroom and a school of only people my own age and a few teachers.
I'm completely aware of my bias and the stereotypes we give public schoolers, so I may be way off base here. but as a friend of mine has often said, just because we give people stereotypes, doesn't mean they're always wrong. sometimes a stereotype could be almost always right, and sometimes you have to base your opinions off evidence you've seen or heard, when you can't go there and know every person personally.
so yes, refer to my blog the first day of school, September 22nd.
I really want to have a birthday party that day. wah.
That's an interesting point about stereotypes, Verya, and one reason why I don't actually like the way that word is almost always used negatively. Some stereotypes are true in most cases!
I, too am sleep-deprived, though over the cold, so this will be short (ha, like any of my posts on here are really 'short'). On passionate/not passionate: I think you have to be passionate about training up godly children in order to train up godly children! If you're passionate about that, then you want to do what's best for your kids (ohhh, back to the whole 'success' thing), and if homeschooling looks like the best thing out there, than you do that because you're passionate about raising your kids, not necessarily homeschooling specifically. You can do lots of things in life that you aren't passionate about, because it benefits something else that you are passionate about. Like me getting enough exercise - I would rather not exercise, but if I don't, I run the risk of getting depressed again (this is true, I've tested it over and over again), which affects my ability to practice my music, which I am very passionate about. Ergo, I exercise religiously.
Now, the three ways out of that argument are: not thinking homeschooling is the best thing out there for your kids, or not wanting the best for your kids, or not feeling passionately about raising your kids. If any of those are true, everything I said is moot.
Yes, I would earnestly hope that preschool would be less corrupt than high school. That's why stories on the news such as the one about the picture book "King and King", promoting homosexuality, gross me out so much. I sincerely hope things don't go further in that direction, for the sake of your kids and all of those that are already in the system.
One rather amusing (to me) anecdote on 'Culture Shock' from my own life: I experienced culture shock, not due to my ignorance about public schoolers, but due to my tendency to optimism, when I joined orchestra. I was shocked to find out that they were all as boring and clique-ish as I had been told! I honestly thought they really couldn't be all as bad as they're stereotyped out to be and that I'd be able to make some friends among them. Not so! (The sad thing was that there are even several homeschoolers in Cascade, and I couldn't seem to get to know them very well either. Maybe the whole thing was my fault. But there I go blaming everything bad on myself again, and trying to exonerate everybody else.)
And by the way, I am working on formatting my own blog right now. No guarantees on anything like regular posts. My main venue will probably still be the comment section of this blog. ;-)
yAy! Crystal's getting a blog. :-)
Well, I think this would be an impossible argument to ever completely settle, but I think we both know exactly what we think now. I guess I would put myself in the chatagory of not thinking homeschool is necessarily the best thing for my children, but I would hope that I'd be open to changing if I felt that it turned out differently.
I'd rather have a discussion with my kids about the King and King book than have them be ignorant, I guess. Teach them how to react to it. I don't know though, I can see how bad that sounds.
I'll just have to keep thinking and see what happens. :-)
Eagerly awaiting your first post, Crystal!
one quick note on the passion issue...
ever since I was a little kid I always wanted to be homeschooled, even before I knew what homeschooling was. I just said, "I wish you could be my teacher Mommy." when we found out about homeschooling in 2nd grade, my mom really did not want to do it. she had absolutely no desire to do it.
so she prayed and said to God, "if this is what you want me to do, then give me the desire to do it." and He did - and overwhelming desire. so a couple weeks later my parents pulled me out of school and we started homeschooling, and have never looked back.
so while I would always always always homeschool my kids (as long as they wanted to), I honestly think it's a different decision for each family.
and I believe, like every major decision in life, it should be decided by prayer. only God has the right answer. don't base it on your past experiences, your present feelings, or your hopes about the future (yours or your kids'), but on real honest prayer to ask God for the answer.
I wish I did that about more stuff in my life. it would make life so much easier....
Prayer. Thank you, Verya. We have both (I hope I can speak for you, Em) been relying a lot on our own fallible thoughts and arguments in this discussion. Thank you for reminding us to ask for God's infallible assistance - we certainly need it!
Yes, I definitely think that you need to want to homeschool your children to do it properly. It becomes a lifestyle, and if you aren't ready for that, then it's not going to work.
where's my favorite MNM?
That's it, I'm going to call you and scold you!
I'm sorry Kacy, I've been thinking about you all week but I've been sick as can be...
Yes, prayer. I think you're right. Go where you're called, and don't question where other people are called. Something like that.
I think that's right, though my thoughts are very fuzzy right now.
Awwwww....that's horrible MNM. you just call me when you're feeling up to it. I should be home like all day today and tomorrow. sounds boring, but I'm going to do ditzy things and it's really quite exciting.
and tonight we're going to have popcorn and watch Regarding Henry (Harrison Ford!!!) *squeals*
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