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How to get an Educationat Home
by Pat Farenga
Source:John Taylor Gatto Pagewww.spinninglobe.netGREEAN FARMER educational resources for Homeschoolers, etc:www.eco-geo.co.nr
There is a revolution going on in education, but it is not happening inschools. It is happening in the homes of American families in every state. Itis happening every time a family decides to help its children learn at homeinstead of sending them to school. Fourteen years ago there were roughly10,000 children being homeschooled; now there are upwards of 600,000children learning at home. If you and your children are not pleased withyour schools and you are tired of waiting for them to change, then you cando something now and join the growing ranks of people who homeschool. It is impossible to generalize about the "typical" homeschooling family anymore than you can about the "typical" family whose children attend schools.Homeschoolers include traditional, middle-class two parent households,single parents, low-income families, families with parents or children whohave physical disabilities, and two income families. Some homeschool solelyfor religious reasons; some homeschool solely for pedagogical reasons. Manyhomeschool for mixtures of both reasons, and many others homeschoolsimply because they enjoy being with their children and watching themlearn. Some homeschoolers live in rural communes; others live in midtownManhattan. Some homeschooling parents have only high school diplomas,others have doctorates. It is not necessary to have a teaching certificate tohomeschool effectively. None of these examples are conjectural; familieshomeschooling under these and other conditions have been writing to us atGrowing Without Schooling with their stories for over fourteen years. Allsorts of people homeschool, and you can too.You might think that homeschooled children are limited by their parents'expertise, experience, and knowledge. If we view teaching as the filling upof an empty bottle with the teacher's knowledge then this concern makessense. With only one or two people pouring into the child's "bottle" it makessense that the child will only learn what they pour in. However,homeschooling allows you to depart from the "bottle" model of schoollearning and follow a different concept of how children learn.My friend, the late John Holt, wrote about how people learn throughout histen books about education. He spent the better part of his lifedemonstrating that we can trust children to learn all the time. Johnobserved that for children under school age, living and learning areinterconnected, but once they enter school, the two are separated.Learning is supposed to take place in special buildings called schools, andliving takes place outside of school. But from the moment children are bornthey learn from everything they have access to, not just from specialteachers and places. Children learn to walk and talk with little or no formalteaching from us parents. Several studies have noted that homeschooledchildren consistently test at or above grade level when compared to theirschooled age-mates, regardless of the degrees attained or teachercertification of their parents. Washington, Alaska, and Alabama are threestates that have studied and reported this. This proves not only that we cantrust our children to learn, but that we can trust ourselves to be effectiveteachers for our children.
GREEAN FARMER educational resources for Homeschoolers, etc:www.eco-geo.co.nr
"But I'm not good at math," you may be thinking. "How could I be a goodhomeschooling parent?" First, homeschoolers use a wide variety of resourcesand learning materials. Some feel more comfortable beginning with a fairlytraditional curriculum, and many different ones are readily available. Otherfamilies follow a less conventional approach, learning according to theirown time tables and taking advantage of individual learning. Many parentsfind homeschooling greatly stimulates their own thinking and creativity andprovides them with new learning opportunities.Homeschoolers also think very hard about friends, relations, neighbors, andco-workers who have expertise in areas their children want to explore. Wehear many stories about how non-family members offer considerable helpwith a child's home education. One child decided she wanted to learn moremath than her mother was familiar with. Her mother found a math tutor forher. Another story is about how a boy learned a great deal about computerprogramming from adults he met at his church and through Scouts. AmberClifford, a sixteen-year-old horneschooler from Missouri, wrote to us abouther interest in archaeology, something her parents know nothing about. "Iwas able to do the reading and studying on my own, but my parents helpedme find the resource people that I needed and took me to the places that Ineeded to see. We're in a town with a university, so when I was interested infossils, my mother called the geology department and got the professor totalk to me. I didn't know how to go about finding someone, and she did, sothis is where she was really helpful to me."Some of you may feel that the children I am describing are special, thathomeschoolers are taking the best and most motivated children out of school and leaving school with the dregs. The fact is that many of thechildren now flourishing in homeschools were not flourishing in school. Someparents began homeschooling children who had been labeled "learningdisabled" in school, and they watched their children lose their LD behavior.Other homeschoolers have children for whom school was not challengingenough, and they teach them at home using materials and experiences thatmatch their needs. Some homeschooled children are late readers, notlearning to read until they are ten or so. Grant Colfax, a homeschooled.child who graduated from Harvard and is now in medical school, didn't learnto read until he was nine. Woodrow Wilson, who was homeschooled, learnedto read when he was eleven. Children like Colfax and Wilson develop othertalents and skills while they are young, and when they do learn to read theydo so without special difficulty. In school these late readers would beimmediately segregated and treated for these academic deficiencies, andthey would be held back from other learning opportunities until they couldread at their grade level. It is simply not true that all homeschoolers wouldbe winners in school anyway.Despite the diversity of methods and reasons for homeschooling, there isone thing each and every homeschooler has in common: they all asked,"How will your children be socialized if they don't go to school?"
GREEAN FARMER educational resources for Homeschoolers, etc:www.eco-geo.co.nr
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