Tammy blogged this here the other day:
. . . And the number one sign that you’re doing a good job homeschooling — You feel like you belong in the world, and there’s no end in sight to all the amazing things there are to discover out there.
All her signs are good but I zoomed in on this. I’m thinking it makes a better distinction between types of homeschooling than the various religious or political classifications we’ve used.
All the progressive, secular unschoolers I know fit this standard, AND so do a few conservative Christian school-at-homers I know. Its correlation with certain other variables is incidental if you can see and understand that THIS is what matters no matter where you find it.
In other words, anyone home-educating or not who fears the world and is closed to discovery is a person unlike me, and in an activist group they are someones I need to worry about, no matter what attributes I otherwise share with them — feminists, progressives, stay-at-home-moms, educators or middle-class neighbors, for example. My own family members too.
If they fear the world and its wonders, then I need to fear their influence and work to resist it, both privately and publicly — no matter why they are that way, and no matter where and how children may learn to emulate them (even in school!)
This “sign” doesn’t have its own shorthand label so maybe it’s less likely to divide us into identified groups struggling against each other, and also it emphasizes learning in and from the whole world, rather than in some scary self-imposed separatist isolation such as schooled society seems to imagine home education must be.
I like her #2 sign too –
“2) You realize that “doing a good job” has little to do with how many boxes you check off, how many worksheets you get done, or how well the kids do on a test. But by the internal gauge that only your family, and the members of your family, can understand.”
She sounds more “school-y” than we are but like she completely gets that this is not about someone else judging me and mine.
Nance
Well, it wouldn’t be hard — EVERYONE sounds more schooly than you and I do!
Interesting thoughts. I love the sense of discovery that comes with homeschooling and the fact that the world isn’t introduced solely in a superficial manner.
Hi Dana – I see you’ve been thinking deeply about such things at Principled Discovery, thereby neatly underlining the point! Sharing this one attitude suggests that we share education philosophy more meaningful to me than most religious, political or school-curriculum labels.
Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I enjoyed your top entry, as well…that was actually something we pondered before having children. How to turn down the noise.
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