Why Did We Decide to Homeschool? (Or, Are You Crazy?)

I started toying with the idea of homeschooling about mid-way through my daughter's first-grade year.  It started with feeling dissatisfied with the education that my daughter was receiving in Catholic school.  Her teacher was fine, but I just felt like her education could have been so much better.  She was coming home from school telling me that it was boring and she didn’t like school.  She said her favorite subject was recess or PE.  She dreaded Mondays and counted down the days to the weekend.  And, she was only in 1^st grade!!  

Homework was another issue.  She brought home very vague homework assignments.  Sometimes I couldn’t even figure out what they wanted.  For one assignment, it had math word problems and the sheet said they should use “problem solving strategies” including acting it out, drawing it, or writing a word sentence.  On the sheet it had the math problem and a small line for writing the answer.  I worked with Claire on all of them and we talked through them, drew pictures on scrap paper, etc.  She wrote the answers on the paper and took it to school, very proud that she had worked hard to figure out the answers.  It came back the next day with a note from the teacher saying “Please re-do and show your work.”  Nowhere on the assignment had it said she needed to show her work!  I was annoyed that she had to re-do something she’d already done and I was even more upset that this made her feel like she had done a bad job even though she had worked very hard and had done everything that was requested in the assignment.  

Homework is another issue I have with traditional school.  I realize they can only fit in so much when they have 25 students in a class and need to teach them all.  But my daughter was DONE with school by the time she came home and she hated doing more school work in the evenings.  I hated the fact that it ended up being another chore crammed into our already busy evenings of after school activities, dinner, baths, bedtime routine, etc.   Also, I think kids need time to just play and be kids and it seemed like there was never time for that during the week once homework was added into the evening plans.  

Another issue I had with homework was the fact that everyone naturally resists that which they are forced to do.  As part of my daughter's homework, she was required to read with us for 10 minutes each night and record the book she read along with our initials.  At the end of each month, she had to turn in her reading form and she was given a reward if she'd read for the required number of days.  Don't get me wrong.  I think reading with children is wonderful and that, in itself, is a great thing to encourage.  What I hated was that requiring them to read for 10 minutes and sign a form proving they had read turned reading into a chore.  On the sheet it said “read for fun,” but on some nights it said “take a break.”  If you are doing something for fun, you shouldn't have to be forced to do it and you shouldn’t want to take a break from it.  

There is a psychological concept that says that when we have to do something or are given extrinsic rewards for doing something, we enjoy it less.  Studies have shown that amateur baseball players often find that they enjoy baseball less once they go pro and are paid to do it, for example.  We already read most nights and having to record and sign off on what we read was annoying.  It turned what had been an enjoyable parent-child bonding time into something required for school that we had to do even when she was too tired or getting to bed too late.  It made it seem like reading wasn't fun so she had to be forced to do it.  

My other concern about homework is the fact that I strongly believe that children of all ages need time for free play.  They need time to play outside, spend time with friends, play with toys or even video games, etc.  The psychologist, Jean Piaget, said that play is the work that children do.  He believed that children learn through play and learn best through play.  In a way, we all do.  Schooling and homework rob children of that time to play.  I’ve heard from friends who have a child in 5^th grade, that homework often takes  their child 3 hours each evening!  That’s excessive especially for 5th grade.  When are they able to play and be kids?  When do they spend quality time with their families and when do they sleep?  If we homeschool, they can get all of their school work done during the day and can relax in the evenings. 

I also didn’t like the fact that my daughter started comparing herself and her abilities unfavorably with her classmates and it started destroying her confidence.  Last year she was a little behind in learning how to read.  Children learn at different paces and she was younger than many of her classmates, so I wasn't concerned.  This started creating problems, however, when she said she hated reading out loud because one of the boys in her class told her she wasn't a good reader.  She got to the point where she didn’t even want to read out loud to my husband or me.   I don't want her to have an unrealistic sense of mastery over everything, but I do want her to feel confident enough to keep learning and keep trying.  I want her to enjoy learning and feel good about the strides she’s making.  Again, my psychology background kicks in here.  I want her to have a sense of self-efficacy, the belief that she can master new skills and that she is competent and capable.  Studies have shown that people with high self-efficacy are more likely to try harder and to choose more challenging courses of study.  I worried that the criticism of her classmates was destroying her confidence.  Incidentally, her reading ability finally kicked into high gear the summer after first grade and she's now reading above grade level.  

I also felt like traditional schooling was destroying her natural sense of curiosity and love of learning.  Before she started first grade, she was so curious about things. She’d find a bug and want to look it up and learn all about it.  She seemed eager to learn how to tell time.   Then, she started first grade and that changed.  She was still somewhat curious, but it seemed like she was starting to get the attitude of only needing to know things for tests or assignments in school.  One incident, in particular, really struck me.  I knew they’d been working on telling time in school, so one evening I was trying to tell her it was time for bed and I asked her what time it was.  I pointed out that the little hand was on the 8 and the big hand was on the 1.  She said, “ we only learned o’clock and thirty and we’re done with time now.”  I informed her that she will never be done with time so she’d better learn the times in between o’clock and thirty!  

I know that this attitude of only needing to learn things or know things for school is a common side-effect of tests and grades.  Over the summer, I volunteered at Girl Scout camp.  The other leaders and I were having a discussion with our group of sixth grade girls.  One of the leaders used a big word and one of the scouts asked what it meant.  The leader defined the word for her.  At that point, another scout said, "No learning!  This is summer and we're out of school!  We will have no learning here!"  I hope that my kids will see learning as something to be enjoyed and something they want to do all the time, not just when it is required for school.  

 

The more I researched homeschooling and thought about it, the more I realized that I could offer the kids so much more in a home school.  Without 24 other children to educate, we can be so much more efficient in our learning.  They don’t have to do busy work while they wait for the other kids to finish assignments.   We use a mastery model where we don’t move on (or at least don’t permanently move on) until they’ve mastered a concept.  In school, they have to move on whether everyone has learned a topic or not.  Some kids just get better grades than others.  For example, my daughter had weekly spelling tests.  Some weeks were busy and we didn’t have time to study the words as much, so her scores on the tests were not as good as other weeks.  Whether she learned them or not, the next week she got a new list of words.  Consequently, there are still words she doesn’t know how to spell.  Now that we're homeschooling, we continue to review words until she learns all of them. 

I know that homeschooling isn't for everyone and I know that many people go through school and turn out happy, productive adults.  Homeschooling was just the choice that made sense for us given all of the points above.  We plan to assess each year to make sure it still makes sense for our family, but, at this point, we're enjoying it too much to even think about going back.