Home School: Part 1

                 

                          

        

...all images taken at the abandoned District 34 schoolhouse near Florence, Kansas.

This blog is, of course, intended to record the renovation of the house on Wise Road and showcase the “good life” we hope to lead in the country. But I also created this blog to serve as a space in which to explore the idea of home education.

Even before my daughter was born my husband and I contemplated the possibility of homeschooling our children. Over the years many things have attracted us to homeschooling: freedom, academic rigor, consistency, and flexibility, to name a few. But these are not the only or the best reasons to homeschool. Even as I type them I find them so vague/cursory/superficial as to be almost not worth listing. As I post here I hope to explore the deeper/more fundamental reasons that we are considering homeschooling for our family.

When we purchased the property on Wise Road we took the first definite step in the direction of home education, for if we spend half of our time in the country our children will not be attending traditional schools.

This decision has caused me not a little anxiety. For on top of the already daunting decision to take on a major home renovation, to add the work and responsibility of owning a second property, as well as the decision to live part of each week away from our beloved friends and family (not to mention away from our favorite coffee shops), there has been the additional burden of beginning a whole new project: the colossal responsibility of educating our children ourselves. You might be thinking that this in itself is the crowning example of our folly—more than our purchase of the disaster-I-mean-house on Wise Road. And you might be right. But over the years, as I have thought, read, and prayed (though that not nearly enough) I have grown to suspect that *for our family* this *might* be the wise road. Perhaps even the road to wisdom? 

Why? You may ask? Why should you homeschool? What’s wrong with public schools? What’s wrong with Catholic schools? What about socialization? What about your own weaknesses, foibles, preferences, political opinions, etc? Aren’t you just trying to create little mini-mes who reflect every opinion you hold? 

What if they become religious nuts?

Or worse... what if they become...weird?

What if you ruin your kids?

And believe me, these are questions that I have asked myself, will ask myself again. Perhaps, in the end, these questions will lead me back to traditional school, with all its legitimate joys and very real hardships. 

Perhaps.

But perhaps we won’t find out if the road we are on is the “wise road” or the way of folly—unless we walk down it.

And perhaps these questions are not even the right questions. Perhaps this is not the best way to begin a discussion on education, either for those considering home school or those contemplating which (more or less) traditional school to choose. In the following posts I will attempt to start at the beginning. But--where is the beginning?

Surely the first question we should ask is: what is the purpose of education? What is it for? What is it’s end? Surely we cannot answer the queries “which school?” “which curriculum?” until we have determined what school is for.

Stay tuned.