The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

I got this in an email today and thought it was worth sharing!

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List:

(From Secular Homeschooling Magazine, Issue #1)

1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Dilemma

For the past three years, the kids have been enrolled in a program set up by a local private school that provides us with $1000 (per kid) worth of funding toward the kids' various activities in exchange for a little bit of weekly reporting on my part. The school is based on a strong belief in child-led learning, so they are very unschooling friendly, and the kids have never been affected by their enrollment - they live their lives, I write up a synopsis of what they get up to, and our facilitator turns that into "educationese" in order to satisfy the government body holding the purse strings. So far, so good. I'm well aware that, according to the government, we aren't actually considered homeschoolers because of our affiliation with this school (it irks the hell out of me, but I've learned to live with it) - but then again, I'm not really homeschooling for political reasons (although I guess we all are to some extent).
We're lucky here in BC, because we have the choice to opt out of the education system and teach our children however we want, no questions asked. That's how we did it for the first few years, but as the kids got older and wanted to take more and more classes, the pull of the funding was pretty hard to turn down.
My reason for saying all this is that I'm thinking of pulling out of the program because of the work that lies ahead of us with the building of our house. My husband and I are planning to do most of the interior finishing ourselves over the coming fall/winter, and I don't foresee having a lot of spare time on my hands. The only problem is, we need the school funding now more than ever! The $1000 barely covers music lessons, and there's still photography, Capoeira, and gymnastics to pay for (and now we've discovered a really cool "knight training" class)!
I think it's pretty obvious that we can't continue with this particular program. There is the possibility of switching to the government's DEL (Distance Education) program, which offers the same funding and only requires a portfolio per term rather than daily input, but they're also more "schooly" in their expectations and therefore less unschooling friendly (I don't really care if my kids learn about the first World War in grade 10 or grade 2).
I guess my other options are to try and come up with a way for us to do our own fundraising (Bake sales? Handmade greeting cards with the kids' artwork?), or to cut back on activites, which I don't want to do.
How do the rest of you make your homeschooling ends meet?

Schools Are for Fish

Here are a few new comic strips from Jason Holm. He has such a knack for hitting the nail on the head! (Click to enlarge image).

Socialization

I saw this cute comic that deals with the dreaded socialization question on one of the unschooling lists that I'm on. Its creator is planning to make t-shirts and bumper stickers with it. Check it out here.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Someone sent me the link to this great video and I thought I'd share it here. The speaker is fun to listen to, and the message is an important one.
Enjoy!



If you can't see the video, try this link.

The dark side of homeschooling?

I seem to be neglecting this poor blog lately.
The kids and I have been busy with various things, but nothing too exciting.
Our homelearning group held its monthly "Theme Day" on Thursday, which was fun. There were many great presentations, and we learned a lot (about Chinese inventions, why it's important to recycle cell phones, bones in the human body, why popcorn pops, invisible ink, etc.) . This month's theme was open, which is supposed to allow the kids the freedom to talk about whatever they feel like, but my guys seem to have a problem with that. When there's a specific theme, they usually look for a way to make it fit their interests, but when it's completely up to them, they have no ideas. In the end they decided to make a movie for their friends using their Littlest Pet Shops and a batch of borax slime. It turned out to be more of an in joke between the two of them than anything else, but they had a ball making it.
Theme days are always fun because it's a chance for the kids to play together as a group, and for the moms to catch up/bitch/compare notes.
We (the moms) ended up talking about how it seems like a lot of homeschooling mothers try to create this image of non-stop domestic bliss, never admitting to the frustrations and outright madness that sometimes ensues. It occurred to me today that this is probably partly because by choosing to homeschool, we're doing something that many people don't understand and are eager to find fault with, which makes it hard to admit that sometimes it's not all fun and games and academic brilliance. If someone asks in that oh-so-interested way "how's the homeschooling going?", it can be humiliating to confess that you haven't been out of your pajamas in days, and that the kids can't be within 10 feet of each other without one making the other one cry (not that that ever happens at our house, of course). That's when it's great to get together with other women who are in the same homeschooling boat to vent your frustrations and restore your sanity.
So in the name of solidarity, I'm here to tell you that in between acting out our favorite Shakespeare plays and studying the various dialects of the Yanomamo people (what, you think I'm making this stuff up?), we have our fair share of crying jags and uncontrollable hissy fits (and sometimes the kids have bad days, too). : D