I have a six-year-old who knows every state by it’s shape, so I thought I’d tell you how he learned it: From video games.
First, he was in the car one day searching for a new app on my iPhone. He went to top ten downloads for kids, and found one about states. He didn’t really want to learn about states, but he was sick of playing Angry Birds and Battle Bears and he couldn’t find anything else. (more…)
I rarely tout my teaching abilities as a reason that I am homeschooling, which is probably why I have a homeschool blog full of beach resort photos instead of teaching tips.
However I do think I’m qualified to teach writing. I’ve taught writing at Brown, Boston University, and the University of Paris. And having been a teacher of college students I feel qualified to tell you that being a writing teacher is the process of giving constant feedback about what is interesting and what is not interesting.
1. Game time is about respect.
When you tell kids they can’t do what they like, you tell them they have poor judgment. The whole point of child-directed learning is to tell kids that they have a good sense of what is interesting to them and they should respect that in themselves.
I noticed that when people ask me why we don’t teach subjects in our homeschooling, I’d say, “I trust my kids to figure out what they want to learn, and I’ll help them learn it. Passion isn’t divided into school subjects.”
Then invariably one of my kids would yell out, “So why can’t we play video games?!?!?!?”
And the adult would laugh, but I would think, “Yeah. It’s a good question.” (more…)
Most of the time that I’m writing on this blog, I’m relaying to you the daily process I go through of reaffirming in my mind that there is no way I could send my kids to school. Because believe me, if I could somehow justify it in my head, I’d do it in a second.
Last week we hung out in Florida with people who have a lot of money. I did a lot of watching, and (when the weather warmed up enough to take off our winter coats,) I found myself on a deck chair next to a talkative mom, and I chatted.
The biggest problem we have in our child-directed learning program is that my kids want to play video games all day. Well, that’s not true. They’ll choose eating over video games if they’re hungry. And they’ll choose to turn off their games to participate in activities they’ve chosen, like swimming or skateboarding.
But the way to deal with any moment of boredom is to turn on the video games. And in our lives, that means anything from a two-minute drive to the wood pile to a 90-minute drive into Madison. I have made a compromise with them: they turn down the volume on their DS’s and I play whatever violin or cello piece they are learning, or Bach, or, sometimes I take special requests like Willow Smith.
I have spent most of my life surrounded by men. I was a high school debater, which is mostly men. I was a professional beach volleyball player, which you’d think would be mostly women, but when there’s a group of athletic women in bikinis it turns out that the world feels like it’s mostly men.
Then I went into the tech industry. All men. I got my first job writing because Time Warner paid me to write about what it’s like being a woman in the field of tech startups.
Then I had kids and kept working. That’s when the world really divides. Women who work after they have kids are pretty much isolated from other women. Anecdotally it doesn’t make sense: of course there are other women at the office. But statistically this makes sense: Pew Research reports that 80% of women who have kids say they would not want to work full-time outside the home if they had the choice. (Interesting offshoot of this trend: Applications for moms wanting jobs as part-time phone sex operators have increased 400%.)
I downloaded a bunch of episodes of Mad Men to watch because I miss men. I miss their power-mongering energy. It is so different from women. Men don’t talk about feelings or kids. They talk about sports and business. I don’t know anything about football or basketball, so men talk to me about business.
I can’t tell if I miss the men or the talk about business. But I feel confused. Because when I was working all the time, and leaving my kids at home with round-the-clock nannies, I got so angry at men for being oblivious to what their wife and kids were doing at home. And now I think I miss having my small part of that oblivion.
The best thing I did was stop worrying about homeschooling. First I worried every day that I was ruining my kids’ lives. Then I decided that the first year would just be me trying things and if my kids didn’t “learn” anything (whatever that means – I don’t even know) then it’s okay. One year of me messing up won’t kill them. Then I signed them up for lots of classes that they wanted. As sort of a safety net for myself.
My kids love video games. I think they probably play their DSi’s three hours a day. Some days I keep it to one hour a day, but it’s only by mistake. I mean, it’s because we all forget to have the fight about how long can they do their DS’s.
I know what I think makes a good adult life, because I’ve been writing on that topic for ten years. I know the research up and down, and I know from all my experience coaching people as well. People need close relationships with family and they need to be engaged in some sort of work. I’m not going to provide links. Really, I’ve written 100′s of posts on this topic.
So now I am trying to figure out how to get my kids to that in a way that is fun for them. And right now, I don’t know for sure, but I for sure know that I want to be with them during the day. It’s intimate. It’s smothering, of course, but it’s intimate as well.
The most arrogant, out-of-control part of the homeschool movement is the idea that “homeschooling is not right for everyone.”
What does that mean? That you are special because you can homeschool but not everyone is as special as you?
This week, Time magazine reports that US public schools are worse than any schools in the developed world. New York magazine reported that poor kids do way worse in public school than rich kids do, and that kids of uneducated parents do way worse than kids of educated parents. Finally, the Heritage Foundation reports that most homeschoolers perform higher than average on state testing – regardless of the household income of the homeschooler.
So we need to squash the delusional, self-aggrandizing idea based in classism that “homeschooling is not for everyone.”
Here’s another way to think about it. We know that breastfeeding is very important for babies. It gives kids a boost in their immune system, and other health benefits, but it also gives emotional benefits related to the connection with the mom and the baby. (more…)
A post a few weeks back showed a photo of my sons drinking red Gatorade. The topic was whether or not a car is a homeschooling tool. The comments veered into the food debate, asking me, “What are you thinking feeding your kids red Gatorade?”
So I did some research. There is pretty strong support for the idea that the FDA should put warnings on food with artificial color. Which I understand as the FDA is horrified by artificial color but the lobby groups are well funded.
And then I asked a few friends, and it turns out that most of my friends do not buy foods with artificial colors or flavors.
This is, of course, revolutionary thinking for rural America, where there is little access to high quality food unless you grow it yourself. (Remember, the majority of farms are a far cry from organic, or anything approaching that. This is the corn belt: We are making the cornstarch that pollutes the rest of your food.) (more…)
Tyler Cowen linked to my blog last week. It was very exciting because not only does he have a great blog, but he’s an economics professor at George Mason University, so I got a bunch of emails from economists about homeschooling. Like, Greg Rehmke, who teaches a course about the economics of space exploration for homeschoolers.
Another thing that comes from being noticed by other bloggers is that I get asked to fill out questionnaires about homeschooling. It’s sort of insane, since I’ve only been homeschooling for two months. But whatever. I am used to acting like I’m an expert in everything. So when I got asked what reading has most helped me with homeschooling, I listed career blogs, because I’m absolutely dying over how to do my job while I’m home with two kids all day (supposedly) managing their education.
Poor, poor kids. I don’t see how your husband approved of this — and, by the look of it, he makes no appearance whatsoever in this discussion or others.
You may have to eventually admit to your kids that you did this because you could not afford the expensive prep school you dreamed of for them when you first became a mother — this is your way of pushing that out and coming up with a “new” and “better” way, which only time will tell what will happen.
This sort of comment is old news on my big blog. For example, here are 700 comments about how I’m ruining the moral fabric of society.
I feel comforted to have someone slamming me for my homeschooling decisions, (and I’m pretty sure there’s a swipe at my decision to live on a farm too). I feel comforted because now I think the conversation can get real. Now nothing is sacred and we don’t have to tiptoe around the idea that we might be ruining our kids’ lives.
I have found that most of the people who hate me are insane, but sometimes, there are good reasons to tell me I’m a jerk. (Here’s one.) I learn the most when people are free to call me out for being a terrible person.
And I think the homeschooling community in general will benefit when everyone is free to take pot shots at each other. It’s a better learning environment because it is more honest.
The cover article for last week’s Time Magazine was about sibling rivalry. Specifically, how parents favor one kid over the others. According to Jeffrey Kluger, who just published a book on this topic, all parents have favorites.
To illustrate this fact, he talks about how researchers went into a home specifically to observe if they could tell the parent’s favorite. So parents knew what was going on, and still, within a few hours researchers could tell in roughly 70% of the cases. And here’s more damning evidence for parents: grown siblings seldom disagree on who was the favorite.
Of course, favoritism is damaging to the non-favorite. But the favorite suffers as well, because the siblings resent the favorite.
Psychologists say the best solution is for parents to hide favoritism as much as possible. Which means I will not write about my own situation in this regard. But I will say that my nine-year-old was drawn to the title of the cover, which read: Mom Likes You Best.
He picked up the magazine and started reading. I thought: This is good. My kid is reading the science section of Time magazine. I helped him divide the article into manageable sections. But I’ll tell you, his reading level miraculously went up five grades in order to figure out who is the favorite in our family, which strikes me as evidence that kids are hugely motivated to learn when the topic interests them.
My husband physically assaulted me last week. For the second time. The first time, my six-year-old saw it. Here’s the post about it.
I’ve been talking about it all week. On my blog (there are 400 comments) in my family (calls from two of three brothers that I should leave) and among my friends (I’m blown away by how many invitations I’ve received to come visit.)
I haven’t said anything here because I know people think you have to have a stable home to homeschool.
But I think that’s crap. I mean, I think you need a stable home for 5000 reasons. But there is no evidence that public school is effective for kids from unstable homes. In fact, based on graduation rates at high-risk schools, it appears that public school is really terrible for kids from messed up homes.
So it’s been hard to hear from people who tell me to put the kids in school while I figure out what I’m doing. Because deep down I know that sending a kid to school doesn’t shield the kid from anything.
I know. I know because I went to public grade school. I came in late, bruised, dirty clothes and bloody noses. And no one said a thing. They just took my note from my dad that said I was sick the day before and school went on and on.
The boys were cutting words out of magazines while I was sneaking in reading time.
I landed on a piece in Harper’s magazine called Juvenile Injustice – photos of the juvenile prisons. They made me ill. There is no way you can look at those photos and not feel sick. I think the sickness comes from knowing I know and knowing I’m doing nothing.
Later I was reading about slavery to my six year old. We read If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America. And I realized that slavery was, in some ways, better for black kids than juvenile prison is today. Because as slaves, the boys had monetary value, so someone had an interest in them. Right now no one has an interest in those boys in the juvenile prison. Also, slaves had to work every day, which, in almost all cases is better than solitary confinement every day.
These thoughts have stayed with me for a week. I think this is what people mean when they talk about the joys of learning with your kids. Real learning shakes you up. It scrapes your skin and makes you want to look. Makes you want to take action. And I think, in this moment, homeschooling did that for me.
Now that I have this blog I have talked with tons of parents who homeschool in groups rather than on their own. I can tell it is the way to avoid making my social son into a socially awkward homeschooled kid. But look: I hate talking to people. I have Asperger Syndrome and I’m awkward, and while I’m very articulate on this blog, and you probably like reading it because I’ll say things other people don’t say, that is fun for a blog and very bad for a dinner party. Or a homeschool group.
So I don’t want to have to be social to do homeschooling well. In fact, I love the idea of never having to talk to anyone at school again. And, by the way, a lot of people who have Asperger’s are also face blind, which I am. So all those people I see every day at school during drop off and pickup and arguments about my older son’s IEP? All those people are people who I don’t recognize when I see them. So of course I’m elated at the thought of never having to go back to the school: the place is a sensory integration nightmare.
So I worry that my son will not have a rich enough social life as a homeschooler. Not because of any inherent problem with homeschooling. But due to an inherent problem with me.
When I look around at everyone else in the world, I can see each person’s worst personality trait after talking with them for just a minute. I think I have savant syndrome for peoples’ shortcomings. And I think, what do all the other parents do, who have personality deficits way more unappealing than mine (at least to me)? What do they do when their kids are stuck in a house with them all week long? When there is no forest but just sort of a small grove of a few saplings, the acorn probably falls too close to the tree.
Suzuki camp. Again. I am by the pool. Next to a mom.
There is a girl who is a great swimmer. She is doing butterfly across the length of the pool. With straight arms and perfect double-kicking toes. I say to her mom, “She’s a great swimmer.”
“She’s on a swim team.”
“How many days a week does she swim?”
“Four.”
“And she plays violin? How does she have the time?”
“We homeschool.”
“Oh. I’m going to homeschool too. We’re starting this fall.”
There it is. Just like that. I decide that I’m doing not just one kid, but both. Because that girl is great at violin and at swimming and I think maybe that is all you need to be in order to have a fulfilling childhood.
I get a report from my nine-year-old son’s overnight camp that he is largely unable to read the nonverbal responses kids have to his humor. And, unfortunately, those responses are very negative. And, unfortunately, this is a camp for kids with Asperger’s so the bar was not very high to begin with.
I am sad.
I have been through school districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Madison, WI. I have hired lawyers, I have spent tons of money to win everything I want. I have been through enough hearings to know that in our current school district I would have to spend loads of money to enforce my son’s IEP and then I’d win and then everyone in our town would hate me.
Being right is not as important as being a good mom. So I decide the first kid I’m taking out of the schools is my nine-year-old who needs special services and it’s easier for me to spend my time earning the money to pay for services than to spend my time fighting the school systems to get services for free.
I am nervous about telling my son. I am worried he has already been sold on the idea of school by the school. I plan out what I will say and I rehearse. I worry he will not trust me to teach him. Or he will miss his current teachers. I worry he’ll call my bluff on the whole idea that you can learn from home.
At the end of dinner I say to my son, “We are going to do school at home this year. No going to school in the mornings for you anymore.”
Public education is a complete mess in the US. A deep, structural, crisis kind of mess. Anyone who does not see this is totally out to lunch. Fortunately there are a lot of very smart, very well funded people working on that issue.
It’s not that I don’t care about fixing public schools in the US. But I care about it like I care about ending the war in Afghanistan. Both are really important issues and lots of peoples’ lives are being ruined but I don’t want it to affect my kids’ day-to-day life if I can help it. And being a parent activist definitely takes it’s toll on family life (these people actually quit their jobs to do it).
Remember the opening scene of Sex, Lies and Videotape? The woman is talking to her psychiatrist about world hunger or world garbage or some other world problem, and she sounds like a nutcase because she’s not taking care of the problems that are close to her.
I think that’s what parents sound like when they talk about school reform. We should just take care of our kids. Right now, today, is it better for your kids to be at home learning or in your particular school learning? That’s the issue that interesting because that’s the issue we can really act on.
In the pre-industrialized world, only the kids with a governess got an education. And those governess types were so quirky and fun because it was an alternative choice to be a governess instead of stay in the town you were born in, get married and have kids of your own. (Think of going airborne with Mary Poppins, or singing with the von Trapp kids and Maria.)
In today’s school system teachers choose teaching because it’s safe and predictable. You can generally get a job teaching where you were born, and (before Scott Walker busted unions) teachers could rely on a lifetime position.
The parents most willing to stay home and teach their kids all day long are probably the parents who do not fit in well in corporate America. That’s why they are willing to leave and stay with kids.
What if we had only the workplace geniuses running homeschooling? Would that be better? Are we aiming to train our kids so that they can successfully navigate the workplace that dominates adult life instead of leaving the workforce? What is the best type of person to teach children given the world they will need to navigate?
I love the elementary school principal. I wonder if she will continue to have monthly lunches with me after I tell her I’m taking my kids out of school.
