Homeschooling

Homeschooling is something I have been giving a lot of thought to lately. Yes, admittedly Spud is not quite 2 yet. Also, given the time of year of his birthday, he will be one of the oldest starting his grade level. So, there is actually 3.5 years until Spud starts School. Sweetpea will be starting one year later.

However, I don't know if it is ever too early to start considering something as important as your child's education. Let's face it, even if they don't attend post secondary, most children will go to school from kindergarten through grade 12, so 13 years of their life. This is more time then many adults spend in a career. I don't think it is ever too early to consider how to approach it.

When we were children, there wasn't alot of thought given on "how to approach" school. You registered your child in their designated school and they attended it. If you were in a city, like we were, maybe you had a choice between public and catholic school. If you were rich, like we weren't, you might have considered private school. Home schooling was only for the kid who was so badly behaved that he got kicked out of school or for the family that was really really religious and didn't want their children exposed to heathen culture.

So I went to regular, public school. And I turned out alright. I had various challenges while attending school, socially, academically, and less often behaviourly. Challenges exist in all aspects of life, so in and of itself, I don't consider this a reason not to enter the school system.

I have 2 main reasons why I am considering homeschooling.

1. I truly believe that the school system is broken.

Really, truly broken. I'm not going to go into detail on the reasons why I believe this right now. (that would be a whole other post... or perhaps a book.) Suffice it to say that I firmly hold this opinion.

Having said that, I think that there are many people that can function well in a broken system, learn to play the games, get what they need academically and come out of it with glowing success. This brings me to my next consideration.

2. I don't think that Spud is one of these people.

Spud already doesn't like to follow the "rules".

I bring the kidlets to a weekly playgroup that meets at a community centre. One of the things that often occurs are group activities.

A few weeks ago the activity was a parachute activity. A group of children very close in age to Spud (some older, some younger) enthusiastically participated in parachute games, waving the parachute, mushrooming it, bouncing balls on it.

Spud ran on top of it. Spud pulled on it. Spud had no interest in following what the rest of the group was doing. I tried to convince Spud to participate in the fun the other children were having. But, Spud was having fun. He was quite happy with his activities. His fun only stopped when I had to pull him away so as not to disrupt the rest of the group.

Now, I realize that Spud is a toddler. It is very early to make large assumptions about how he will function in school based on one activity. However, it is just the biggest example of a tendency that I have been noticing over and over. Spud likes to do things his own way. He likes to explore and discover. If something can't be done, he is going to try to do it so that he understands why it can't be done. I already forsee the inability he will have to believe or do something just because a teacher "says so".

And I don't see this as a bad trait. But, I also don't see it as a trait that works well with conformity. I do think that our school system is all about conformity.

And so, I am considering whether home schooling might be the option that works best for Spud. I will certainly have to consider it all over again once I start seeing how Sweetpea grows up.