Why I Continue Home-Educating Simon

I can't claim that I continue to home-educate Simon--now in fifth grade--because he couldn't hack a public school. Although he hates writing, and couldn't care less about math, his academic skills are more or less at grade-level. Given the right teacher and a small classroom, he would do well enough. His auditory processing skills still leave a lot to be desired: if the topic is complex and/or I fail to nab his interest, he needs lots of re-focusing and repetition. However, given a little extra attention, he gets through the material. On the up side, if he is reading an exciting novel, or discussing history, I can't shut him up, and I struggle to cajole him onto a new subject. While reading an Usborne abridged edition of a classic this week, he said: “Mom, I'm going to read Great Expectations all the way to the end and skip everything else today. OK, Mom?”

Furthermore, I can't claim that there is absolutely no school out there in this great country that would fit my exacting demands. Somewhere there is the perfect classroom for Simon. Maybe not in Miami. School might require a move. But if Simon woke up tomorrow and said he wanted to go to regular school because schools have girls, or a computer animation class, it would take a lot of work, and maybe lots of money, but George and I would find an appropriate placement. The school might not be academically challenging enough, but the library is a three minute drive away.

Finally, I can't argue that the larger home-schooling environment is throbbing with academic challenges that could never be matched by a school. Home-educators tend to organize themselves into online social networks. Once organized, members arrange for enrichment classes, field trips, and weekly social gatherings. However, with some exceptions, the enrichment classes here in Miami are fun but not demanding enough for us to leave the house; the academically challenging field trips are few and far between and, sadly, poorly attended; and, the social gatherings, usually in the form of a park group, although much enjoyed by all, have a very fluid and unpredictable quality. Families move in and out of home-educating, and they move in and out of park groups. Every time Simon gets attached to a home-educated child, it seems that child moves across town, or matriculates in the public school system, or goes to Europe for half a year.

As I write this, I have already decided on the curriculum we will be using for middle school. Simon thus far has expressed no interest in going to school—from the neighborhood kids, he's learned that schools have nasty teachers and lots of homework. For as long as he does not demand to go, George and I will not send him.

Without elaborating too much on the problems of the public school system in Florida and nationwide, what follows are the reasons why I continue to home-educate.

It boils down to two reasons—content and conversation.

I can choose the content Simon masters in one academic year. I get to do that, and not a public school teacher with 900 SAT scores (average for teachers in the US) and a mandate to teach No Child Left Behind. I can buy a curriculum and add to it, or I can make it up piecemeal. Hours and hours on the internet and at the library, and I can come up with a challenging and compelling reading list that stays as far away from textbooks and mind-numbing worksheets as possible. I can find the best foreign language program, the most enjoyable Latin course, the most appropriate history books, the right math program, art history introduction, and music appreciation teaching tool. Day by day, I try to light a fire--or two-- trying to elicit curiosity and interest in Dickens, or Lincoln, or Louis XIV, or Beethoven, or Velasquez, here and there taking a break to write a paragraph, or practice long division.

Once he has a head full of stories, full of interesting content, I can ask him to think critically about those stories, teaching him how to frame and answer questions imaginatively, always entertaining multiple perspectives. This is what it means to be educated: To have a head full of stories and facts that one can deploy imaginatively and critically.

Being home-educated, Simon has the time and the means (the curriculum I cobble together) to read and poder shelves and shelves and shelves of content. He can do it lying on his bed, at the table, at the beach, at the computer, with a friend, over cookies. It's a pretty grand way to spend the day.

The second reason I home-educate is the conversations I have with Simon. Unlike the mothers of schooled children, I know exactly what my son is reading every minute of the day—often I am the audience for his reading. If he is reading Great Expectations, we can talk about it over lunch, and some more over dinner with George. A little visit to wikipedia, and over dessert I can explain what the word Bildungsroman means. I can ask Simon to think about all the ways in which Pip grows up in the course of the novel. I can mention that Dickens wrote the novel because like Pip, Dickens' heart had been broken by a woman. I can explain the words unrequited love. We can rent the David Lean movie. We can talk about how Great Expectations compares to other Dickens Simon has already read (all abridged). We can talk about the mines, the factories, and the orphanages in England; the very poor, the destitute and the wealthy; the terrible inequities—a word I would need to define. We can get a documentary about Dickens, and then talk about that some more.

Last weekend I found myself in Boston having lunch with old friends. They asked about Simon. Would I continue teaching him through high school? I could hear in their voice their doubts about where all this might lead. My friends are the products of New England private schools and good colleges. Their daughter teaches history at a public middle school in a posh Boston suburb. I took a deep breath and said it all depended on Simon. I told them about the power of girls. I tried to make them laugh. Of late, Simon notices girls. Their hair. Their interests. Who is beautiful and nice, who is not. My best made academic plans may crumble in the face of Simon's prurient interests.

But I hope they will not. I dearly wish I can make his days enjoyable, and keep his mind turned on by ideas and concepts and texts, because I want the conversation to continue. For him. But also for me. For now, I get to read and think about Dickens and Lincoln, and unrequited love, and grave inequities. My mind and my days are hitched to work that matters.