First Post

I decided to sit down and start a blog today because I have 3 children who are homeschooled and there are important things that need to be said about education nowadays. In a twist that may seem ironic, I not only homeschool my kids using liberal methods, but I am also a certified teacher who tutors kids in the local school district with disciplinary problems and chronic health issues. Years before I had children I taught 5th grade at a local public school, but at this point I tutor mainly high school and middle school kids, and am so busy most of the time that I have a regular, full-time schedule from student to student during the year.
Many people who know me have inquired as to why I work for an organization like the public school when I clearly embrace homeschooling in it’s most radical form in my ‘alter ego’. They would like to know why I participate in the ‘dumbing down’ of our kids in the nation’s federal education program when I am clearly against the indoctrination of children in almost any form, and their methods are so clearly the antithesis of everything I believe in. The answer to these questions are simple and complex at the same time and it will take months for me to answer them completely, but the most immediate reason is strictly practical. I am a stay-at-home mom the majority of the time whose husband does not make the kind of salary that enables me to throw caution to the wind and forget about gainful employment entirely, so I tutor because it helps me to earn money and map my schedule around my own kids’ needs. In addition to this, the children I work with (difficult as they are) are a wonderful inspiration to me and expose a side of education that is often pathologically hidden from those who practice the greatest and most time-honored sport in our society, fence jumping.
I have seen countless unusual situations in my 15 years of teaching in the classroom, in the homes of poor and disadvantaged children, and with my own, homeschooled children. Over the last couple of years interesting patterns have emerged among people I have worked with from rearing children to conform to public school expectations, to the reinforcement of behavior using fear and assorted cocktail medications, to the final subjugation of our kids following years of conditioning designed to fit them neatly into a society that they were groomed to join from the beginning.
I am not here to say that there is anything more totalitarian about this society than those that existed in the past, and I cannot claim that the knowledge we gain will do anything to protect us in the future. The fact remains, however, that while mankind has been at war with itself since the beginning of time, this is the very first moment that we have the ability to actually threaten the biological stability of the planet. We have been gleefully killing each other for centuries, but we have never yet been wholly capable of wiping out existence as we know it. Therefore, it seems eminently logical to find alternatives to doing things at this point, and to raise children who will not only break the bonds of ineptitude with original new solutions, but who will also have the courage to see those innovations through and follow them to their logical conclusions despite ridicule and opposition.
This blog is going to be covering countless issues relating to children, homeschooling, and general educational theory, but it will also be about the lighter side of raising and working with kids, because without the joy of discovery, learning, and growth in a free environment, the challenges that ‘educating differently’ present on a daily basis would hardly be worth the effort for most of us, and would certainly never benefit the children we love so dearly.
The fact is, experience in life forces us to realize that experts are few and far between if they exist at all, and the only way to educate children is to develop new ideas and place ourselves squarely in the path of that which we do not understand, until we understand it. We cannot ask children to undertake tasks that we are not willing to try ourselves, so if nothing I ever write here is of significance to anyone else, at least it is reinforcement for the road I have chosen and the means of pushing my own parameters in order to raise healthier children.
So, shall we begin? I look forward to blazing new paths and challenging conventional stereotypes whatever they may be. Anything and everything is possible on the subject of children.
Anonymom:)