Growing and Learning

Driving is an interesting thing. While you are driving, so many things are happening all around you, you have to pay attention, to watch what you are doing and yet you can be thinking about so many things as thoughts run through your mind.

I was driving home one night and found myself thinking about homeschool verses public school or private school. It's so different, a whole different way of life. I was wondering to myself, "What is Homeschooling?" (You know, "What does the word really describe?") Not only that, I began wondering, "What is it?"
"What does it look like when kids are done with school?"
" Why do people do it?"
"Is it just a fad people get interested in, so it because they want to be "cool?"
and
"Does it make a difference in the long run?"
"Will kids perceive the experience of homeschooling as being positive or negative in the end."
"Will they think life would have been better for them, more fulkl of opportunity if they had gone to "normal" school?"
And..
"What is normal? What is normal, especially as it pertains to school and life and growing up in an ever changing world."

"Homeschool,"I am always trying to figure it out because I know it looks so different to different people and the homeschooling families I have meet, the ones I know, are each quite independent and unique. I have learned over the years that different people have different reasons for homeschooling their children, different methods different philosophy and methods too. I found myself wondering what exactly is at the core of this homeschool experience, what makes it tick and what makes it thrive, after all it's really nothing new... people have been doing it since the dawn of time...that is, teaching their kids.

As I thought more about it, I thought is was kinda funny that often people simply think of "homeschooling" as "learning everything you would in school, at home instead of in a classroom of kids somewhere in a school" But I am a homeschooling parent. I can tell you, I think somehow that notion is merely a facade. It sounds good to say that, looks good to think about that way, but it's really not that simple.

Being at home, in the family and with your family all day every day, has many dynamics school does not.. and visa-versa. I mean, what we think of as "school,"... the workings of a classroom, and all the people it takes to make a classroom happen and happen well, is intricate. Homeschooling is much simpler in many ways, however homeschooling has a lot of challenges of it's own. It has it's own intricacies. My personal experience with the government run, classroom type of public and of private "school" is such that for I am really glad to have the freedom to educate my kids to read and write at home.

"Homeschooling" (a relatively newly coined word,) has different connotations to different people. Also, contrary to what first comes to a person's mind when they think of homeschooling, it the reality that homeschooling is not just a Christian endeavor. People of every faith and even people with no religious convictions in particular do it. I am a Christian and I find that even "Christians" who homeschool, homeschool for differing reasons. All these varied people employ various language arts programs, math textbooks, etc, not to mention methods, philosophies.. etc.
IT's a mixed back of sorts you might say.

This thing called homeschooling, is an interesting thing...

As I thought about all of this, I decided I kinda liked the way Dr. Raymond Moore put it into words once, long ago, when he called the kids who have parents who teach them at home instead of sending them to school, "homegrown."

There is something to be said about being homegrown. I have never actually read completely any of Raymond Moore pioneering works, but when you been around a while, you quips of this and that here and there.

It's kind interesting to think that kids who are "homeschooled" are "home-grown," this as opposed to "commercially grown" or "mass produced in a factory" or worse, "synthesized by some man-made "chemical process." Hopefully, being homegrown, they are a kinder garden of children who, whatever kind of flower they are, will blossom into goodness and be wholesome. (How is that for an analogy?)

The reality for all of us with kids, homeschooled or not, is that kids do grow up. toddlers become children, children become in betweens or teens, teens become young adults and then men and women suddenly emerge. Things change. Kids grow up. They are not little for long. Values and ethics give children roots, and education give them wings. Eventually, they will all mature and fly away.

So, " What is homeschooling?" Now, that's an interesting point to ponder. Whatever it is, I have concluded that taking time to be with your children as they grow up is really important and "homeschooling" is one way to do that.