Wisconsin Homeschoolers

Your PI-1206 report is due on Wednesday (October 15).  Fill out the report ONLINE.  Do NOT follow the advice of a certain out-of-state homeschool organization which tells you to use a paper form of their own making.  Do it online.  The online form does NOT request any information that is different from what is required by law, the information we used to report in the olden days of filling out the paperwork by snail-mail. 

Failing to file properly (that is, online) includes the possibility of trouble for yourself.  But that's small potatoes.  More likely, when people insist on filing a non-government paper-form instead of the online form, we're setting ourselves up for legal hassles as a group.

Standardized Testing

Common Core increases (yet again) the testing requirements on students.  a) Testing doesn't measure what it purports to measure.  b) Too often, the existence of standardized testing controls the curriculum, as schools "teach to the test."  c) Testing takes time away from real learning.

Not only that, but testing can frustrate children and make them feel stupid.  Here is one story of a mom who helped administer standardized tests to a kindergarten class.  It makes you want to cry.  Even in the best of circumstances, standardized tests are designed so that kids CANNOT do them: that's the sorting mechanism.  The tests are supposed to be so hard that everybody hits a point of incompetency.  On top of that, tests aren't always administered in the "best of circumstances." 

For those with kids in the public schools, many states allow parents to opt-out their kids from the state-mandated testing.  For Wisconsin, information is available at the DPI website.  Information for other states may be researched at an Opt Out website. 

The German Homeschool Family Seeking Asylum in U.S.

Some of you have heard about the German family who came to the United States because it's illegal to homeschool in Germany and they were opposed to enrolling their children in a public school which teaches contrary to the family's beliefs.  The family overstayed their visa.  It was time to go home.  They didn't leave America, claiming religious persecution awaited them in Germany. 

Not surprisingly, the Home School Legal Defense Association is involved. 

The Inappropriate Homeschooler posted information on the case.  Is this case really about the US government trying to destroy homeschoolering?  Or might it be yet another case of HSLDA "helping" homeschoolers in a way that will benefit their organization, increasing membership, increasing our need to be "protected," and thus increasing their own power?

Wisconsin Homeschoolers and Your PI-1206

For 27 years, homeschoolers have been notifying the Dept of Public Instruction of the same information regarding their homeschools. It's the census information requested of all schools, public and private.

This year, some homeschoolers are spreading faulty information about the online PI-1206. If you homeschool in Wisconsin, please comply with the excellent law we have. If you need more information, see this article and this one too.

If you refuse to file appropriately, you risk truancy charges. But not only that, you risk my freedoms and others' freedoms. Wisconsin homeschoolers do not want court cases about homeschooling, and we do not want the legislature considering changes to our law. Help protect what we have so long worked for: report your enrollment, and please spread the word to your homeschooling friends and support groups.

Insurance

I buy health insurance through Gary's job. The company who sells it to us does not have any influence over my health or my need for their product.

I buy auto insurance. Robb, who sells it to me, does not send deer into my path while driving. He does not send thugs through town, bashing cars with baseball bats so that we are feeling the need to protect our cars.

I buy life insurance. The guy who sells it to me has not done anything to cause death rates to rise in my area. Sure, insurance salesmen do operate a bit off the fear-factor, wanting you to prepare for preventing problems if you should die prematurely. But we all know that some people die prematurely. The insurance salesmen don't bump off people so that the rest of us feel a need to insure ourselves.

Let's say a vaccine company comes along and develops a vaccine that might prevent some cases of one particular cancer if it's caused by a particular virus. When that company encourages the government to make the vaccine mandatory, we get suspicious. Is this vaccine really intended for our health? Or is it intended for the health of the pharmaceutical company's bottom line?

Let's say the auto insurance industry gets involved in the government's decision to require new kinds of coverage and higher amounts of coverage. That sure sounds to us as if the insurance dudes are working for their own benefit. We are skeptical.

Let's say a group of lawyers sells legal insurance. Let's say they get involved in the passing of new legislation or in court cases. When we look at this group's history, we find that their involvement in a state will often result in changes that leave law-abiding people fearful. "We knew where things stood last year, but everything's shook up now. Will someone in government come after me? How did the laws change? Did I do everything that I'm supposed to do under the new law? What if my family ends up in court as the whole constitutionality of these new regulations shakes out?" And suddenly, people are feeling the need for protection. They didn't need protection under the old law. But now, after they have been helped by Christian lawyers who are ostensibly "on their side," they need protection.

WHY do we buy protection from those who can create the need to be protected?

Follow the money trail.

Am I an Unschooler?

A young friend asked the other day about whether I'm really an unschooler; she said there are a lot of things that I write about on my blog that sound similar to how she'll be homeschooling. And she doesn't see herself as unschooly.

I never set out to be an unschooler, and depending on your point of view, I may or may not be an unschooler.

We first heard about homeschooling via Focus on the Family in 1985. I read all the library books I could find by Raymond Moore, John Holt, and later one by the Colfaxes. When we began homeschooling, families didn't label themselves as this kind of homeschooler or that kind of homeschooler. If you were nutsy enough to not enroll your kids in school, you were thrilled to find another nutso to hang out with, regardless of what they thought about religion, politics, or educational philosophy. As we began homeschooling, what we did each day was mostly enjoying unit studies and learning-through-literature.

As the years passed, I had more students in my tiny school, less money in the household, and eventually a calendar full of doctor appointments and surgeries and therapist appointments. We became what has been termed unschoolers-by-default. I had kids who were oh-so-curious and gobbled up books and explored the world with vigor. My time was increasingly spent washing diapers and sheets from wet beds, feeding lots of people, driving to doctor appointments, etc. I certainly still read with the kids (a lot!) and bought them cool toys (such as electricity kits, educational games, maps, and more) and practiced strewing.

Is unschooling my educational-theory-of-choice? Nope.

Have I observed that unschooling produces bright, capable learners who are pleasant people, and serve graciously in their callings? Yup.

Even though unschooling does not exactly reflect my educational philosophy, do I support unschooling for those who choose it? Most certainly. Children are different; they have different strengths and weaknesses; they have different interests. An educational method that works for one child may not work at all for another. The parents know the child best. The parents are the ones given the responsibility to care for the child. Parents are the ones who have the most incentive/desire to help a child live up to his potential.

Families, too, face different challenges. Depending on family dynamics, geographical location, finances, proximity to extended family or other support, health, and other issues, parents may not be able to give their children what's best, but only what's second-best, or even third-best. It doesn't matter whether a family considers "third-best" to be unschooling or a traditional textbook curriculum or enrolling a child in a private school, the parents are the ones who must make the decision of what to do if they are unable to provide the BEST. (By the way, public schools can't compete for the rank of "best." Homeschoolers who aren't living up to all their goals still provide a better education than the government schools.)

Should school-at-homers support the rights of unschoolers to homeschool? Of course. Should unschoolers support the rights of textbook-users and classical-ed folks to homeschool? Of course. Should classical ed folks work with people who have entirely different educational philosophies? Yes, if they want to maintain their own homeschooling freedoms. When homeschoolers divide themselves up into groups, determining which ones are Real Homeschoolers and which are not, we are succumbing to the mentality that someone other than parents (whether govt or society or some organization) should be monitoring the parents' decisions on behalf of the child's well-being.

Do We Need More Regulations for Homeschoolers?

Lora linked to an excellent article by a former public-school teacher who now homeschools. The author tells how regulations and frequent testing hamper the ability of public-school teachers to provide an excellent education to their students. She sees no reason to do the same damage to homeschoolers.

IQ Scores

IQ scores are higher among children who live in richer environments. In fact, a study done in Milwaukee about 40 years ago indicated a 30-point difference in IQ scores between kids in an enriched environment as compared with those in a deprived environment.

So, as part of the testing Maggie underwent early last week, the doctor and psychiatrist evaluated her IQ. She's kind of borderline, so it's iffy as to whether she'd get special-ed services if she were enrolled in public school. It's also clear that we'd be in trouble if we lived in one of those states that requires standardized testing for homeschoolers; she wouldn't even score high enough for the states that have a really really low requirement. Thank God for Wisconsin's homeschool law as it's stood for the last 25 years!

I kept thinking how well Maggie's doing ... but where would she have been without our homeschool law that allows me to fit our program to her needs? What if I'd needed to pass muster for the local school superintendent? What if I'd had to try to keep her up-to-snuff for an annual test? Or worse, what if she'd been in the public school? The programs in the public school are certainly more enriching than what the deprived kids in the Milwaukee Project got. But too often, the special-ed programs at school are stifling and discouraging and not altogether helpful. If we hadn't had the freedom to invent our funky, non-conventional, homeschool program, Maggie's IQ would have been significantly lower.

Successful Schools

Take a toaster. Use it to make yourself a milkshake.

What? You say it doesn't work? You say a toaster is designed to make toast? A blender is for making milkshakes? You mean to say that different tools are intended to be used to accomplish different tasks? Really?

What is a school supposed to accomplish?

Some of us think a school is supposed to teach kids to read, write, and do math. And to think! We all want kids to learn those things.

But what if a school is supposed to teach kids to be the citizens that the intellectual elite want them to be? To be dependent upon the government? To be good little consumers? To toe the intellectual line?

How do the schools get "fixed" if we can't agree on whether they're supposed to make milkshakes or toast?

Go read Jane's initial thoughts on the Gatto book she's currently reading!!!

Community

Last night I was filling out a survey for some research on VCFS and its effects on the person, the caregiver, the family, and the community. When I'm asked to fill out a survey on homeschooling, I nearly always refuse to participate. I don't think it's helpful to have research that "proves" homeschooling is okay, because after all, what makes homeschooling okay is that God put children into families with parents, and children don't belong to the State. It's not the good results that make homeschooling okay (even though there are good results), and such research silently assents to the idea that homeschooling rights exist because we can measure up on the academic playing field. However, when a survey is about VCFS, and the experts know so little yet, and our family is one of the oddballs in that we homeschool and, well, "handle" the VCFS so differently than is normally advised, then I'm more willing to participate in the research studies.

Anyway...
There was a section in the survey that was asking about our family's acceptance in the community, and whether the community cared about our child's VCFS, and whether the community supported us as we raise a child with VCFS, and how involved our family is in making the community a better place, etc. I was thinking that the community doesn't care much. That's not an indictment against anybody; it's just that we haven't lived here very long and don't know too many people, and certainly don't know them well enough to be talking much about VCFS with these near-strangers.

But as I continued in the "community" section of the survey, some of the questions specifically asked about our "faith community" which was described as our church or mosque or synagogue. I answered the questions about church very very differently from how I answered the questions regarding the overall community. But the way the survey was arranged made it seem like church was part of the "community." I never thought of it that way before.

What do you think? Is church part of the community? Or is church something very different from our "communities"? Is this an "in the world but not of the world" thing? Or do I have an inadequate definition in my head of what "community" is?

Legislation about Homeschoolers

A bill has been introduced in the Senate that would provide tax credits for homeschoolers. All homeschoolers who value their freedom should get on the phone with their senators and let them know that we are not interested in this kind of "help" from the government.

Jenn (whom I do not know) explains why very clearly. Here's an excerpt from her blog:
If we advocate for tax credits--beneficial as that money would be, as much of a right to that money as we have--we will essentially be inviting the federal government to notice us. To define us. To monitor us. To calculate us. To nickel and dime us. To determine us. This is an invitation that we cannot rescind. It's a way into our lives--a door, if you will. And once it is opened, it will never be closed--not by us and certainly not by them. It will only open wider and wider and our freedom will shrink ever smaller. And we will have invited this.

Besides the pigeon-holing of homeschoolers, the reporting requirements, and the invitation of the government further into our lives, there's another aspect to this legislation that people often do not realize. In high-school civics class, we learn how a bill becomes law. It all sounds so clear-cut. But when you get to politics in Real Life, bills coming out of committee often look quite different from the bills that went into committee.

There's also the record-keeping for taking tax deductions, and the government's prerogative to determine which expenses are allowable. Do we expect the government to pay for (that is, allow us a credit for) Bibles and hymnals used in our homeschooling? Do we expect them to allow the deduction of history or science materials that integrate Christianity in the textbooks? What about swimming lessons? Would it be fair for me to deduct my kids' swimming lessons (or piano or judo or theatre) when my brother's family cannot deduct those things? For those of us who use all of life to educate our children (like, say, daily Sudoku puzzles for a child) do we really want the loss of freedom that would result from the government deciding which expenses are legitimate homeschooling expenses and which are not? Might this even result in subtle pressure for homeschools to become more like conventional schools?

You really should go read Jenn's article. It explains this much better than I do and more rationally.


Hat tip: Jane.

Privatizing Schooling

A quote from the testimony given by the executive director of WPA on Wednesday regarding AB 697:

The basic idea of trying to privatize education by using statutes and public funds is a contradiction and an oxymoron.

The testimony goes on to explain how privatizing education is considered a good thing by conservatives. But how can education be privatized by making more laws about it, by monitoring what goes on in private homes, by making families more dependent on government, by increasing government authority, and by increasing government spending? Think about that for a minute. Do those things sound like privatization?

Wisconsin Homeschooling

Because of the recent court decisions in Wisconsin about virtual schools run by the State, some bills are currently before the Senate and Assembly. Hearings were held in Madison this week. Homeschoolers did not attend; public e-schoolers did; that is as it should be. Based on what happened at the hearing, though, it is terribly important that homeschoolers contact their legislators.

Updated information is not yet available on WPA's issues website, but I'm going to keep checking there for updates in case some news might be posted. Information will keep coming out on WPA's email list, and situations will change rapidly. If you care about new restrictions on homeschooling, I strongly urge you to join WPA and get on the email list so that you can be involved in protecting your freedoms. And if you think you're safe and don't care too much about protecting your freedoms, then consider people like me with special-needs kids who need individualized programs that are unique enough that they may not pass muster with the State (and which we shouldn't have to get okay-ed, anyhow).

The basic problem at this point is with Assembly Bill 697. The bill describes what responsibilities in a virtual charter school will be held by a certified teacher, and declares that the person providing educational instruction in the home need not be licensed nor certified. Although this does not apply directly and immediately to homeschoolers, the bill also says that the DPI will promulgate rules regarding "instructional staff." This will govern interactions between parents and students in the home with regard to education. This is too invasive and will eventually come back to hurt homeschoolers.

I realize that this is not enough information to help you know how to respond and whom you should phone in the Assembly. That would be a great deal of information to include in one blog post. Please join WPA and get informed so that you will be able to take a few minutes (or more, if possible) to help protect our good law.

Huckabee and Paul

Hat-tip to Kristi for the link to a Mary Pride article on what's wrong with Huckabee and why he is NOT a good candidate for homeschoolers.

The interesting part is that Mrs Pride extols Ron Paul's position toward homeschoolers: tax credits and government favors to guarantee certain treatment of homeschoolers by others. Homeschoolers are in big trouble when outspoken homeschool advocates are in favor of getting "help" from the government. Government "help" always always always always always comes with strings attached. Always, not sometimes. If the government is going to "help" homeschoolers, the government will be sticking their nose into our daily life and schedule and curriculum and making sure that we're "bona fide homeschoolers" and all sorts of other interference.

I don't want government "help."
I don't want Ron Paul.
There ain't no such things as a free lunch.

Wisconsin Homeschooling News

Two weeks ago, a district court of appeals declared that it is illegal for a public school to run a charter e-school and take in out-of-district students. Some homeschoolers will agree and others will disagree. The big problem, though, is some of the reasoning used by the court. Legislation will be coming to sort and settle this matter. It is likely that homeschoolers will be caught up in the trouble. We need to be on our toes, paying attention to what's happening, because it's very likely that there could be changes coming that would effect homeschoolers.

Homeschoolers need to ensure that public e-schoolers (kids who are enrolled in the public school, but who do their work at home via computer) are NOT confused with homeschoolers. Homeschools are PRIVATE schools. They operate under the private-school law. Public e-schoolers, even though they're at home in their living room, are PUBLIC school students.

Homeschoolers also need to take this opportunity to remind legislators that we do not want favors and help from the government. We want to be left alone to make our own decisions about the education of our children. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If we are offered tax breaks or any other help from the govt, we need to remember that strings will be attached, and we will no longer have the freedom to choose an education that is best-suited to our children's needs and interests.

For more information, please check out the WPA website. Please circulate the information to other homeschoolers. We may need to be very active in January or February to protect our excellent law. Any groundwork that can be accomplished now, ahead of time, would be good.

HSLDA Endorsement for President

I was stunned when a friend told me that the Home School Legal Defense Association has endorsed a presidential candidate. HSLDA has made some serious mistakes in the past. They purport to support homeschoolers, and yet they have no qualms about alienating huge batches of homeschoolers.

Homeschoolers must work together to protect their freedoms. No matter how strongly I support issues such as pro-life laws, simplifying the tax code, gun rights, or marriage, I do recognize that there are homeschoolers who disagree with me. If homeschoolers are willing to divide ourselves over social issues, we will begin to sell each other out (as HSLDA has been willing to do in the past).

I agree that a moderate Republican will probably not beat a Democrat. I'm not too terribly fond of the Republican Party, and my friend Scott loves to encourage us to learn more about the Constitution Party (which is for smaller government, even if it is too overtly Christian). HSLDA's claim that we need a true conservative on the Republican ticket is a valid claim. But there are other options beside the guy HSLDA is endorsing, who happens to be a governor who requires annual re-registration of homeschoolers with the government. Pr Eckardt suggests Fred Thompson as a Reaganesque candidate. I don't want to support any candidates at this point: right now it's necessary for my mental health to be rather ignorant of the campaigning.

But I do know one thing about the campaign. Any organization that wants to protect homeschooling freedoms ought not be endorsing candidates. A good way to defeat an enemy is to divide and conquer. Homeschoolers are willing to be our own worst enemies, dividing ourselves from within.

Is It Selfish to Fight for Homeschooling Freedoms? (Part 5)

Flipping through my "Day by Day We Magnify Thee" Monday night, I found a scribbled-out quote from a novel I read on vacation a few years back (the only time I ever get to read grown-up for-fun books). This is from Gillian Bradshaw's Render Unto Caesar (p. 432) which is set shortly before the fall of Rome. Discussing the evils of their society, and the troubles, and how to respond, and what to support when both sides of the political structure are corrupt, one character responds to the other:

"The empire isn't going to fall, so our only option is to support those parts of it that make it something we can endure."

Now, the "empire isn't going to fall" was not really inaccurate; the discussion was about whether it would fall imminently. I have often thought that this quote fits quite well for a Christian's place in American society. Especially one of my political persuasion.

What do we do in society and in the political arena now? We know our meager efforts are not going to dismantle the entrenched politics. We may make differences. We try to do our best. But so much is unchangeable. So we support those parts of the system that make the society endurable in the midst of too much raw evil as well as too much power-grabbing.

To me, homeschool freedoms support the things that make this society work. It supports families. It supports the honor of parents to be the authority over their children. Homeschooling freedoms is one wee demonstration that governmental authority flows from the authority of the father, and not vice versa. Homeschooling freedoms allow for options and alternatives, instead of insisting on all power and decision-making being caught up under one mindset.

Some may say that homeschooling freedoms might allow for people to be free FROM education instead of free to choose WHICH education. Although I really don't see it (and I know a whole lot of homeschoolers and unschoolers), I suppose it IS possible. But I believe that it is a small risk. I also believe that the State's regulation and monitoring of homeschoolers brings much greater risk to society as we "support those parts of it that make it something we can endure" than does the acknowledgement that parents can and should make those decisions for their children.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but the washer is nearly done, and I want to get back to the hospital and see how my gal is doing.

Is It Selfish to Fight for Homeschooling Freedoms? (Part 4)

An article in the New York Times discusses unschooling. Reading that article, you'd think unschoolers are kooks who have no control of their children, and you'd think the children are brain-wastes. There are people flipping out because they don't understand how unschooling works and they have no ability to control it, monitor it, STOP it.

Most of the articles about unschooling cover families who have kids in the grade-school years. Seldom are there articles that tell about grown-up kids. What about MY kids? They were unschooled. The oldest is a prize employee who has helped train the people who train her counterparts in other stores. The second graduated with a BA in three years and is now employed. The third graduated with an AA in one year and is now happily married and working. We were the people who are "cause for growing concern" (in the words of the article) among educrats. My grown-up kids turned out just fine, thankyouverymuch. And they wouldn't be the people they are if, in our homeschool, we had conformed to conventional school methods.

Apparently this article is making the rounds of many major newspapers. The cardiology nurse today was asking us questions about "real homeschoolers" and "these unschoolers," based on what she read in yesterday's Milwaukee paper. We talked. She was getting it. She was understanding. She saw the need for there to be alternatives to the government-run schools. But she too had one question.

"But you're one of the good ones. What about the others out there?"

Hey, I know a whole bunch of the "others out there." Not only do I know hundreds of homeschoolers, but I know gobs and gobs of unschoolers. I am NOT "one of the good ones." I'm one of the run-of-the-mill average ones. I might even be in the lower half, simply because my attention has been divided amongst more kids. (I think it's easier to be a reeeally good unschooler if you don't have a whole bunch of kids.)

The uproar about people "not doing anything" with their kids isn't a big problem. I'm not saying that every single homeschooler on the face of the earth is pristine and pure; that'd just be a stupid thing to say. But the desire to monitor and regulate homeschoolers becaue of "those unschoolers who don't do anything" is nothing more than people who have certain ideas about what education should be and who are unwilling to allow for different methods and different timetables.

Is It Selfish to Fight for Homeschooling Freedoms? (Part 3)

"But you're different. You really do care about your kids. You really do care about education. What about the people that don't?"

Very few of them homeschool.

Some have been forced into it by the public schools. They didn't want to homeschool. They didn't understand that the public school cannot legally force them to become homeschoolers. And thus, they accepted what the public school decreed and became unwilling homeschoolers. Some of them step up to the plate and make a hearty effort to give their kids what the school wouldn't or couldn't. I hear rumors that there are those who just don't care and don't try. (Never met one.) For parents who became homeschoolers against their will and just don't care, will it help them or their kids if homeschooling regulations are increased?

Also, it seems kinda convoluted for the State to claim that "homeschoolers need regulation because some of them don't do a good job" when their "proof" and "evidence" are the families that the State coerced into being homeschoolers.

Some troubled kids struggle in school. They don't learn in school. Their parents may withdraw them from conventional school (either willingly or because the school tells them they must begin homeschooling). If those parents do a better job than the school was doing, hooray! But if they don't do any better, then can we recognize that nothing's been lost? It's not exactly like the schools have a stellar record on educating kids these days.

There's an old legal maxim: "hard cases make bad law." When laws are written to cover all the "hard cases," the laws get unwieldy. The laws then interfere with good people doing good things, without sufficiently eliminating the problems the laws were meant to solve.

The original question asked about whether we Christians should be willing to forego some of our homeschooling freedoms so that we might be of service to the hypothetical neighbor who is a homeschooled student whose parents are educationally neglecting him. I think the answer is no. I think the cost to society and to individual families would be a greater burden than we realize. If this burden were really a way to end educational neglect, then society would have to weigh the pros and cons of burdening so many families for the benefit of a few. (Maybe I should mention here a recent post about the failures of running a society on the premise of extorting self-sacrifice.)

We need to recognize that most laws develop out of a desire for somebody to do something, whether or not that something will accomplish what it aims to accomplish. We also need to recognize that there are bureaucrats who just can't stand it that there are people who aren't under their control, and they want to get control. If they can use the excuse of "helping those who are educationally neglected" as a way to control the other 99.999% of homeschoolers, then everyone loses. Except the power-hungry bureaucrats. Not even the hypothetical "educationally neglected homeschooler" would come out any better.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
When homeschoolers are regulated, those who "don't care about education" will find ways to avoid the regulations. Then alllll the others will have lost their right to obtain an education uniquely suited to their own children, while accomplishing nothing to help the few who were supposed to be rescued by the regulations.

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.