I was not homeschooled like the Captain, but there's no question about our choice for our future children. We will homeschool them. And here's my top 7 reasons why!
1. Homeschoolers have more of a life
When I was in school I got up early every morning, went and stood out in the cold to wait for my bus, endured the bus ride to school, endured the classes and the other students and the teachers for eight hours, came home on the bus again, and then had to do homework before I did it all again the next day. My homeschooled friends were always having paintball games while I was in school, or going to the pool or something. Most of my phone calls with Aisling when we were growing up would somehow involve me saying “I can't, I have school that day.”
The beauty of homeschooling, they did their school too, and played paintball and built forts and crawled around in the creek and got covered in leeches. They spent way less time doing school than I did but guess what? Aisling and the Captain and all of their siblings are super smart. They spent their time learning in the school room but they also ran around and did things. If they had gone to school would they know that their younger brother is practically the next Da Vinci? Would their older brother have made three cd's of his own music? Would Aisling be on her way to being a famous director with a ton of experience making films in her back yard?
2.Falling in love with the teachers.
That sounds terrible I know, but hear me out. Children naturally fall in love with the person they see spending the most time taking care of them. When you're 6-14 years old and you spend eight hours a day with no more than five teachers you start to get attached. They either become parent figures to you or they become your jailer.
When I was in school I always wanted to please my teachers. So now I remember every single time any of my teachers disciplined me. The one time my third grade teacher sent me to the corner because I was talking in class I spent the rest of the day crying.
And if you think Private school is a better choice, I was hurt the most by my private school. There was one teacher who I looked up to more than any teacher before. He was fired in the middle of my junior year and no one would tell us why. I went to class that day and refused to be comforted. To me, they might as well have fired my dad.
3. Do teachers really care about your kids?
If I were to walk back through the halls of my old schools how many of my teachers do you think would remember me? Probably most of my high school teachers remember me, I had most of them for at least one class every year. Public school teachers though, I don't think any one of them would. Think about it, they have a new crop of about twenty to thirty kids every year. If you don't stick out in the crowd you'll just get overlooked. Also, by the time they know everyone's name it's almost time for the next bunch to come along.
Teachers are also constantly busy trying to keep the entire class on the same page of the book. A class of very different kids. The kids who don't want to learn get behind, the kids who are geniuses get ahead and get bored. The obvious answer is to put all the smart kids in one class, and all the dumb kids in another class, right? That's great, now all the kids know if they're smart or dumb. And believe me, all the other kids know it too. The kids in the smart classes lord it over the dumb kids and the dumb kids decide they'll never be anything in life.
Teachers can't see everything that goes on in their classrooms either. My brother was being picked on for over a week before the other kid punched him in the back and my brother put the jerk in a choke hold. Guess what part the teacher saw? Guess which kid got in trouble? The kid with the ruined shirt, bruised neck, and chipped tooth. My brother. Could the teachers be bothered to hear about him being abused? No, they just suspended him.
Also, they get every holiday and every summer off work and spend most of their time whining about not being paid enough. Remind me what they do to get paid again?
4. Proximity.
When people are around each other long enough they'll start to be attracted to each other. What does school do? Put lots of kids together every day. I've heard stories about kindergartners talking about their boyfriends and girlfriends. Isn't that kinda young?! By the time they're in middle school they'll be making out in the hallway! Oh wait, they do.
When I was in seventh grade I saw a class mate of mine with some boy's hands down the back of her pants. These kids couldn't have been older than thirteen!
And if proximity doesn't make them crazy the teachers make sure it happens with sex class. They cleverly call it “Health” but what it is is “Don't do drugs!” “Here's the laws on who you can legally sleep with!” “Don't drink anything a stranger gives you at a bar!” “Wear condoms!” “Don't have babies! They're noisy!” Never did I hear them say not to have sex before marriage. (Except in the Christian Private school, if any teacher has ever done health class right my health teacher in high school did.)
And now it's getting even creepier. They're trying to teach kids not just about sex, but now things like homosexuality. Lets not just make kids curious about sex, lets make them curious about sexual perversions by telling them that it's just as natural. Next they'll start telling them drugs are just a fun pastime.
5. On that note, is school really the place Christian parents want their kids?
Except for a few good private schools, things like homosexuality, evolution, atheism, and who knows what else are shoved down kid's throats every day. School is a battleground for your children's hearts and if you don't spend more than eight hours a day with your kid to make up for the time they spend hearing lies, you're probably losing the battle.
Wouldn't you rather your child be well equipped to go into battle instead of just being flung in before they're mature enough to understand? If they first learn what they believe, and why they believe it, and if they have an active friendship with God they'll be more likely to not only fight in the battle, but win for their King and His Kingdom.
I'll use the example again of the Captain and his siblings. They were homeschooled and now that they're in college they're actively witnessing and are able to not only recognize when their professors are lying to them, but can respond intelligently and respectfully. Not like me who thought for most of her life that God made the dinosaurs, didn't like them, and then started over with people.
6. Who says parents can't teach their kids?
The public school system would love you to believe that you're not smart enough to teach your kids. But why not? A college education has become so commonplace in America today that it's safe to assume that everyone (except me) has one. And we tell college students that they're the smartest people in the entire world after graduation.
Sure, they just spent those four years doing as little homework as possible and spending every available second drinking booze and smoking pot, but now, now they're college grads, so they must know everything. (If you were one of these people just imagine letting your drinking buddies alone with your children all day and you'll start to get an idea of why I don't trust teachers.)
If you've graduated high school you probably know your colors and your numbers, and how to read and write. While you teach your kids the basics you've got plenty of time to buy yourself a math book and brush up on your multiplication tables before you need to teach them to your kids. And when they get to high school, who says you can't learn with them? I never learned trigonometry, and even if I can't figure it out, the Captain's dad and his two brothers are like, super math and science guys. If Grandpa has to get a few emails of me asking if I got the answers right, so what?
Plus, if you're teaching your kids you know what they're learning and when, mainly things that they're too young to need to know.
7. I love my kids.
I don't have them yet, but I already love them. I dream about watching them play, I pray for them, I pray for their future spouses, I plan what I want to do to give them the best life I can. I promise, just give them to me and I will love them forever.
I went to public school, and private school, and even a little bit of college. Why would I put my children through the things I went through, just because I went through them? Who would ever think to themselves that they want their children to be beaten up on the playground? To be told that they're not pretty or smart? To have viscous rumors spread about them? To give their trust to teachers who didn't deserve it? To be harassed by other students, including sexual harassment? To have the teachers call them a liar when they ask for help? To feel like they have to cheat just to get by?
No.
I will not sit by and let the school system do to my children what it did to me.
