Welcome to Education Alternative's Series on Homeschooling!
We publish Saturday mornings between 8am and 12noon EST
We follow the kos rule of Participating in someone else's diary
Follow us at Education Alternatives for our occasional weekday pieces on homeschooling. If you would like to write for this series, please contact us at educalternatives@gmail.com
"Mom, do you think that NEXT year we might do something in science besides plant seeds, because we've done that every year since preschool?"
These are the words of our then 4th grader. And they went right to my heart. Both the hope and the dissatisfaction that they conveyed wrenched my guts. This is a child who gets up every single day excited about what he can learn that day. He has been that way since he was a toddler and is still that way today, at 15. It became clear to us that if we didn't find someplace or somebody that would challenge him, and would feed this constant love of learning, that we would lose him, he would become bored, disruptive, and withdrawn.
This diary is an edit and rewrite of a diary I published in 2010 in response to a heated conversation about homeschooling that happened in a diary about textbook selection in Texas. The story of our decision to homeschool, and the questions it raises, are still relevant today, as has been evidenced on Dkos lately where many people have questioned the decision by some liberals to take their kids out of public school and homeschool them. Many responses have basically trashed liberal homeschoolers for not staying in the system and working from within for change. I assure you, I did that without success. I also assure you that the decision to leave the schools was not an easy one. It's one I continually struggle with personally, and this is what I'd like to discuss today. Follow me over the squiggly for more...
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