I set out to make a simple pro/con list to help me decide whether I should or should not homeschool my two eldest children next year. Since I’ve homeschooled in the past, I thought it would be a cinch. After all, I have first hand experience of both the pros and cons, right? Well, yes. And I know how to make a list, right?
Well, sorta.
I mean, it turns out that all the pros had cons and all the cons had pros and before I knew it I sounded like the father from Fiddler on the Roof singing about “on one hand, on the other hand, on one hand, on the other hand” until I felt like some kind of love child born to a Jewish father and Durga, the Hindu goddess with a billion arms.
Finally, I decided that whatever list I came up with was gonna have to have a lot of other hands. So, here we go…
Homeschooling On the Other Hand
CON: I would be surrounded by my children All.The.Time with no breaks.
On the Other Hand: Even if the eldest two go to school, I will still be surrounded by three little children who can’t maintain a rational conversation for more than two sentences.
On the Other Hand: Right now I do have FOUR WHOLE child-free hours a week. Blissful quiet from 9:30-1:30 on Tuesdays. If we homeschooled, that would be gone.
On the Other Hand: All these snow days cooped up together have been, gasp, kinda nice. Besides, there are tutorials on Tuesdays. The big kids could go there while the little girls are at MDO.
On the Other Hand: What does it say that I’m even worried about considering what it means to spend 24 hours a day with my children?
PRO: I’d be there to witness my children learning new things. I’d get to see them light up at the moment a new passion is born.
On the Other Hand: I’d be single-handedly responsible for teaching them those new things.
On the Other Hand: I’d get to discover new things right along side of them, after all, I’ve forgotten so much.
On the Other Hand: I have forgotten so much. In part, because there is a lot that’s really too boring to remember.
On the Other Hand: I know you can do without the boring bits since I’ve lived so long without them. Maybe we could just skip them altogether.
CON: I’d be taking on a whole new responsibility. Sometimes I already feel overwhelmed by my responsibility to these young people, without being the one who is solely responsible for their educational future.
On the Other Hand: At the end of the day, I’m still the one responsible for their education. I’m not even homeschooling right now and I’m still spending hours on the world’s most disorganized complete pro/con list.
On the Other Hand: There’s a difference between being responsible for making sure they are learning in general, and being responsible for whether they know how to use a comma correctly.
On the Other Hand: Maybe there’s not. How many times have we drilled items that show up as problems on homework so that they understand?
On the Other Hand: Ummm. Maybe not as often as we’d have to drill multiplication facts. Multiplication is a bitch.
PRO: My children would spend more time with me than they do with people who are paid to spend time with them.
On the Other Hand: My children would spend more time with me than they do with people who are paid to spend time with them.
On the Other Hand: I would know my children better than anyone else does.
On the Other Hand: My children would know me better than almost anyone else does. Shiver. That’s not always pretty.
On the Other Hand: That’s a Life Skills class they don’t teach in school: Dealing with Mothers 101
CON: Homeschooling isn’t free.
On the Other Hand: Public school isn’t really free either. Especially when you add up all the fundraisers, field trips, school lunches, and standard school attire.
On the Other Hand: All those expenses are spread out over the year. Homeschooling necessitates several hundred dollars in one month – August.
On the Other Hand: Homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive. There are many free, or nearly free resources available.
On the Other Hand: Just like everything else, curriculum choices offer three options: Price, Convenience, Quality. Pick any 2. Besides,tutorials are neither free, nor nearly free. Without tutorials we are back to I will be surrounded by all my children All.The.Time. Oh, and also it means they’d miss out on art and music and socialization. Almost as important…
PRO: My kids can learn at their own pace – grade levels ahead in some areas, and a little behind in others.
On the Other Hand: Ahhhh! Behind? What?! No. Let’s leave this to the professionals.
On the Other Hand: No one is great at everything. Better to excel where you excel and accomplish proficiency where you do not, than to end up mediocre across the board.
On the Other Hand: What about being well-rounded?
On the Other Hand: Well-rounded students are a fantasy invention of college admittance boards.
CON: I’d have less time for personal pursuits (like this blog) if I was also educating my children full time.
On the Other Hand: With big kids around, I might actually have more time, since they could play with/entertain/shepherd little ones while I’m doing other things. As it is now, I’m I’m my own 12 hours a day.
On the Other Hand: Isn’t that selfish? Pawning younger siblings off on older ones?
On the Other Hand: Caring for younger siblings, within the larger picture of a safe nurturing environment where everyone’s needs are going to be met, is a great preparation for adult life. How better to learn patience, compassion, and plain old SILLY than hanging out with three year olds for an hour a day?
On the Other Hand: As Tevye would say, There is no other hand.
PRO: Those homeschoolers are Such.Good.People. I want to hang around them. I want my kids to hang around them.
On the Other Hand: They aren’t going anywhere. Even if I don’t homeschool, there will still be room for us.
On the Other Hand: Room, yes. But time? Questionable.
CON: If my kids don’t go to the local public school, it will be harder for them to meet kids in our neighborhood.
On the Other Hand: Harder, yes, but not impossible. How about a summer neighborhood popsicle party?
On the Other Hand: It would be easier to be friends with people they see everyday in school.
On the Other Hand: It would be easier to be enemies with people they see everyday in school. Especially middle school. Bleh.
On the Other Hand: One always has to hope for the best. Just because middle schools are breeding grounds for Mean Girls (and boys too, I suppose) doesn’t necessarily mean they will be at OUR middle school. Does it? Does it?
On the Other Hand: A homeschooling day is shorter than a regular school day, leaving plenty of time for other activities in the neighborhood and plenty of opportunities to meet neighborhood friends. Besides, there’s all those homeschoolers. Maybe our neighborhood is overrated.
What This All Means
I’ve made a decision.
If I decide to homeschool I will NOT be teaching my children how to make a pro/con list.
Help a girl out.
What would you put on the list? Fellow Homeschoolers, what is on your own list? Non-homeschoolers, what questions do you have about homeschooling? Considering your questions may remind me of something I’ve forgotten. Just go down there to the comment section and fire away…
Celia
what about issues with transferring to a public school after homeschooling (and skipping all the stupid subjects for years)? What about going to “well rounded” college after skipping all the stupid subjects? Are there issues?
Jen
There aren’t really many issues with transferring to a public school. Public schools, by nature, are used to getting students from other schools who have used different curricula and followed a different scope and sequence. The one sticky wicket is math. Specifically math facts. If you send a fourth grader to school who has never seen a multiplication chart, you’re gonna have trouble. But even then, there are always students across a wide spectrum of ability, so there will be other students who are struggling with the same thing.
As far as skipping the stupid subjects, it’s not that the subjects themselves are stupid, it’s the parts of the subjects that are covered. It is my experience that schools, both public and private, focus on the same things in science and social studies for years, just getting deeper and deeper into them. For example, in first grade we talk about the difference in living and nonliving things, in second grade we talk about what different living things eat, in third grade we talk about habitats, etc… so by sixth grade we are learning about the physical difference between an animal cell and a plant cell. I think it’s important for some people to know the difference. Doctors and botanists, for example. But I don’t think your average 6th grader gains a lot by cramming that info for a test. It will be quickly forgotten and easily looked up again later, if needed.
As for college, I can’t really speak to that. I’m considering homeschooling for elementary and middle school, not high school. I would think that anything skipped in the younger grades could be easily and quickly mastered in high school in order to prepare for college.
Anonymous
true. there’s a book called strengthsfinder that talks about how nonsensical it is that americans put so much effort into overcoming weaknesses and being well-rounded. what if we put the same energy into our strengths and quit nurturing weaknesses? makes sense with education. and i’d say that’s a homeschool PRO.
a friend recently bragged to me that her daughter is a nurse at vanderbilt children’s hospital, despite all of their homeschool lessons on baking bread (when it’s all mama could handle).
Karen
My only concern comes from a quick review of my own experience and my kids experience. My best friend, and yours and Erica’s all came from attending school. Learning how to chose those early Pride members, negotiating friendship, needs a population to draw from, and while family is most important, navigating the social world begins early. Being able to walk over to your friends home, ride the bus with them and share the same experiences lets a child learn to find others who will enrich their life. On the other hand, it also teaches how to cope with those that bring negative stuff. I think this is better learned young than when that bad stuff is really bad.
Jen
I agree, Karen. I think, particularly during the middle school years, friends are extremely important. In fact, learning to navigate social situations, to make connections with people, and to learn how, if necessary, to BREAK those connections is, I would argue, as important as any academic skill.
However, choosing between homeschooling and traditional schooling is not the same thing as choosing between having an active social life and not having one. There are literally hundreds of opportunities for homeschooled students in our area to spend time with kids and make friends. At present, my daughter has two friends at her school. TWO. And she’s very outgoing. Part of that, is of course, self selecting because of the school she’s attending. Even so, of all of her sleepovers for the last two years, more than 75% have been with friends she’s NOT currently in school with. With the exception of ONE, all of Grey’s playdates have been with homeschooled friends, or friends he knows from places other than school.
It would be lovely be have friends within walking distance. That’s why that item is on my list. But… I NEVER had a friend whose home I could walk to. I had to be driven everywhere, and I went to public schools in my neighborhood. My best friends in high school didn’t even GO to my school. So, while I agree that it would be ideal if my kids could connect with other kids here on our street, there’s no guarantee that they will even if they do go to the same school. I’m just not sure that the possibility of making that super convenient connection is what I should be basing my schooling decision upon, though I appreciate the opinion.
Laura
For my own experience, I think I had all of two, maybe three friends in middle school that went to my school. The friedna I had were kids I met in my neighborhood, who went to our beach, or were in girl scouts with me.
Middle school for me was… traumatic, at best. I can remember a lot of elementary school and highschool – who my friends were what we learned and did on a daily basis, fun we had, tests we took, science fairs and such. Middle school, ugh. I have apparently repressed it so much that I can’t even tell you what I studied or what classes I had or what we did after school. But then, my experience isn’t everyone’s (or at least I sure hope not for everybody else’s sake).
Stephani
The education they will receive at home, even when you’re distracted by your 20 toddlers, mounds of laundry, a blazing headache, and a quiet longing for Jamaica, will NEARLY ALWAYS, in NEARLY ALL WAYS, surpass what they would receive in almost any other school setting. This is my pro/con list. Also…what are you really hazarding? A year is doable. You’ve survived much worse 🙂
Anonymous
I think art and music are important.there are some people out there who may not have a degree in art or know profesanal terms for the difrent methods of painting but would be willing to spend time doing art with your kids while you spend time writing/taking time to yourself.
Jen
I totally agree! Since I am, myself, a musician (I have a degree in music and run a piano studio) the comment I made about art education being “almost as important” as time to myself was just a bad joke. I’m famous for those!
Shannon
I’m perhaps a little biased, but after homeschooling one daughter through middle school (she started high school this year at a local private school), I offer the following Pro’s for homeschooling in middle school:
-Letting your kids stay kids for a while longer. The way our system puts 5th graders in middle school pushes kids to grow up earlier than is necessary. With homeschooling, you can teach them the core subjects in a fraction of the time they would spend at school and then let them (gasp!) play.
-It knits you closer together with your kids to spend extra time with them during middle school. My high schooler asks me stuff about boys and friends that most girls would never ask their moms. But she is known by me – and FEELS known by me. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
-She was plenty prepared for the rigor of high school after four years at home. She knows far more history than her peers (because it’s something she loves) and maybe a little less science, but she’s still thriving back in a traditional school setting.
There’s certainly not one right answer. Here’s hoping you find the answer that’s right for your family for next year – I think that’s the most any of us can dare hope for!
Laura
As an adult who was homeschooled some (before it was something people even really had a name for) and private schooled, and public schooled and foreign public schooled and foreign private boarding schooled. (yes all that in only twelve years) I was able to go to college with a full ride scholarship here in the good ol’ USA, am able to make friends, am happily married with 6 children of my own and have chosen to homeschool my children. This is because, of all my experiences, homeschooling was where I learned “how to learn”. Isn’t that what education is all about? The question is not really so much “what to learn” but rather “how to learn”. The result is that as adults, our children, can learn whatever they need and/or want to learn!
Kayley
Hi, I’m a new follower of your blog and currently a home school mom in Nashville. Yea there are negatives to HS most of them are ones that affect me. Like for the past 2 years I have not had a day with no kids. It is a lot of work involved with HS ( I have a second grader and pre k so they are still needy) and with no breaks from kids you lose your mind every once in a while. But for our family the benefits out way the negatives.
Almost everyone always assumes that HS do not have friends and that is simply not true.
I feel my daughter has more social time when HS than she did in private school Kindergarten. We are normally done with school by lunch and can go do things with friends who HS or wait for Public school to get out. We are currently in a one day a week tutorial, one day a week HS ballet class and softball. My pre k goes to MDO. We also meet up at least once a week with other HS friends and go to park etc.
Another benefit of HS is that our family comes first, so we can set our own schedule around special events, vacation, holidays etc.
I really enjoy seeing my kids flourish, and catering their education to their interest. Currently they love the revolutionary war.
Since you HS before I’m sure you know all of this.
Jen
Well hello fellow Nashville homeschooler! Thanks for stopping by to say “hi”.