Is It Selfish to Fight for Homeschooling Freedoms? (Part 2)

Sometimes we hear that there need to be more controls on homeschoolers because of the people who might abuse the homeschooling law. Beth wondered about the people she's seen who take advantage of homeschooling freedoms.

I tend to be skeptical of this argument for two reasons. First, I'm not so sure that those who appear to be doing "nothing" for their children's education actually are doing nothing. Second, if there actually are a few cases of educational neglect, the question is how to handle it.

I would be one of those homeschoolers that make some other homeschoolers squirm. Some think I'm the type of homeschooler who gives us all a bad reputation. I'm the kind of homeschooler who "unschools" math and grammar for years and years, and then teaches it formally to the kids when they get ooooooold. (Did you know that it takes only about 120 hours to teach a 12- or 14-yr-old all the K-8th arithmetic? That's about an hour a day for four months, instead of the school's hour a day for eight years. Or did you know that it takes only a couple of months to teach all the K-12th grammar, if you wait until the kids are old enough?) I'm the kind of homeschooler who lets children learn to spell naturally (except for the one who just couldn't!) even though they don't start spelling until they're around 11-14.

When your children are the type who'd be labeled in school as ADD or ADHD, you bother to find a different way to "do school." To many homeschoolers -- and certainly to people who believe in the conventional schools and the conventional textbooks -- these different methods may look like educational neglect.

When you have a child who's retarded or slow (or whatever we're supposed to call it in this PC age), you finagle a way to teach, no matter how "wrong" it is according to the experts, no matter how silly or lax or "neglectful" it may appear to those who don't know and love the child.

When families homeschool, the children learn umpteen gazillion things that aren't part of the conventional-school's curriculum. They may learn about marine biology and mountain-climbing when they're 7. They may learn how to cook or milk goats. They may learn to sew or knit or build cabinets. They usually learn (much better than their schooled peers) to get along with their siblings, as well as how to socialize with adults and wee munchkins. They may spend more time practicing their musical instruments or refining sports skills or other special interests. A kid who has a rich background in science experiments and/or oodles of history, a kid who knows his catechism backward and forward, a kid who gardens well, a kid who is friendly with adults and peers, a kid who is a creative problem-solver, will nevertheless be seen as a failure if he gets plunked into school in 5th grade and can't spell any better than a 2nd grader. People will talk about how homeschoolers need more regulation because sommmme people are really just "hiding behind the homeschool laws" and committing "educational neglect."

But it's seldom true.

What sometimes looks outwardly to be educational neglect may, in fact, be the most effective way to educate a right-brained person or a genius or a person with learning disabilities.