The Reasoning Behind Home Education

When I was in middle school, I noticed one girl in band class who wasn't there for the rest of the school day and I didn't understand why she wasn't there the rest of the time.  Did she have some kind of horrible disease?  Was she a grade ahead of me and I didn't know it?  Maybe she had all the same classes I had but at a different time.  Or she was a Special Ed student and she had the rest of her classes in another building.  When I asked some of the other kids in class who she was, I was told in very hushed tones that she was homeschooled.  Oh the horror, for this was 1993 and no one was homeschooled unless you were a religious weirdo, sick to the point of death if you were around other kids or so troubled that you'd been kicked out of every other school and that was the only option left for you.

I ended up going to church with this girl and her family for a couple of years and I discovered that she was not only very smart and kind and funny, but that she was completely normal.  Her parents weren't strange, she wasn't sick and she wasn't troubled.  Her parents simply believed they could provide her with a better education at home than she would receive in the public school system.  Except for band class as neither of them played an instrument and this young lady wanted to play the flute more than just about anything.

Fast forward twenty years and homeschooling is starting to become the norm instead of the exception.  I know more homeschooled kids now than I ever have.  The internet is making school more accessible from home than it ever has been before.  More and more states are beginning to offer online K-12 as an alternative to attending a physical campus.  I wish it had been this easy to homeschool when I was in school because I would've begged to stay home instead of face the African Savanna that was high school.  I hated watching weak kids being picked off like sick wildebeests by the popular lions and cheetahs.  It was sickening.

2.0 will be homeschooled.  This was not a decision that Nate and I came to lightly.  We talked about our children's education before we even thought we'd have children to educate.  You see, Nate has an IQ of 165 and mine is 155, both of which are firmly planted in the genius IQ range (140 and over is considered genius level).  If 2.0 has a high IQ like we do, then public school will be horribly boring for him.  

That being said, Nate has ADD and is dyslexic, not to mention the vision problems he has as a result of his keratoconus (click here for more info on keratoconus).  Those conditions made school difficult for Nate.  While he attends college, he has to have accommodations made so he can learn in spite of his issues.  Not all public schools have the funding to meet the needs of students who have special needs like that.  While homeschooling, Nate and I can meet those needs and tailor 2.0's education to fit him.  

If 2.0 excels in one area but falls behind in another, we can spend more time on what he has trouble with over an extended period of time and still offer more advanced material to him in the areas he excels in.  I was horrible with math but excelled in English, literature, and science.  For all I know, my son may excel in those same areas as well.

Homeschooling also provides us with the opportunity to teach our son what we want him to know.  I don't want my son learning about condoms when he's seven.  I don't want him to learn an abbreviated version of history because the teacher doesn't want to discuss the civil rights movement or is uncomfortable talking about the Nazis.  I want my son to learn how to mend a torn hem on his jeans and I want him to learn how to change the oil on the car he's driving without taking time away from the rest of his studies.

Most of all, I want to spend time with my child.  I'm not saying that parents who send their kids to public school don't want to spend time with their kids.  I'm saying that I want to spend more time with my son.  I want to help open the world up for him, not ship him off to another place so someone else gets the privilege of handing him the world and explaining it to him.  I'm not sending him to daycare.  Why would I send him off to school?

Homeschooling is not for everyone.  Some parents aren't able to do it and some parents simply shouldn't do it.  If homeschooling isn't for you, that's fine.  Isn't there enough criticism of parents nowadays?  There's nothing wrong with public schools.  I simply want to educate my son at home.  

Someday though, he may step foot in a public school.  After all, I'm a horrible artist and I haven't played my clarinet in over a decade.  If 2.0 wants to play an instrument or take an art class or play a sport, he just might have to do what that girl did in my band class twenty years ago and take the class with other kids.