Most children are going back to school sometime this month. We homeschool and officially begin our next school year on Wednesday. I've always wanted to blog about our homeschooling in detail, but I long ago decided that it would be too intrusive. (Anyone wish all of their school days were forever captured and searchable online? I thought not.)
Is anyone in your home headed back to school this month? Are you?
69 comments:
School shouldn't start until the middle of September.
It's no wonder the kids aren't learning anything.
Big transition year for us. My son is starting a private middle school and daughter starting preschool. Meanwhile our oldest is starting her sophomore year in college.
Sometimes I think of taking online classes or working through the Kahn Academy.
We follow a year round schedule at our house. It does seem like the traditional school year has crept back farther and farther into August.
I find others' blogs about their own homeschooling very helpful, the more detailed the better. And yet...
So it goes.
Our district has crept toward a year round calendar. I hated it at first but grew to like it, with a summer just long enough before boredom set in and then some extra weeks off during fall and spring (good times to vacation when crowds were not so bad in family destinations.)
But what I never understood is why they made June and July the summer months instead of July-August. It's usually much hotter in August than in June.
Can you share why you homeschool, Freeman?
I enjoy reading about it and wish I had the capacity for it.
I can relate to the privacy issues though as I often wish I could blog about my parenting experiences but feel constrained.
I think Penelope Trunk has a refreshing outlook on homeschooling.
Oh I definitely would love that. I had a great childhood, including school. I never took school seriously, I just loved to learn. Consequently I did great in classes I enjoyed and just squeaked by on the boring ones. Fortunately, I loved science. I'd love to see how I leaned about plate tectonics or cell metabolism again. Maybe I'm a geek, but all I remember is the science classes. The rest is a blur, even "Human Sexuality 101". I only remember it was a popular elective in high school and was taught by a handsome young football coach the girls loved. It was the Iphone of classes.
Sometimes I consider going into teaching to get summers and holidays off.
Freeman, I'd love to read a blog about your homeschooling experiences.
Is there some way you could do it by using a pseudonym and making sure any photos didn't include your faces or other 'identifiers'?
I'm sure your children, when grown, would appreciate reading about their school years.
It's been over 12 years since our family finished homeschooling.(One of the best decisions we ever made.) The resources you have available now blow my mind.
I'd love to home school. It would be fun to relearn along with them what I'd forgotten. Field trips would be common, very common, and everything possible would include labs of some kind. Read Moby Dick, and go visit a tall ship, and go whale watching.
The absolute best part about raising the two kids I did was teaching them stuff. I just loved it. They are both around thirty now, and luckily I work with them everyday and still get to do it. Now days they often they teach me something back.
Freeman/
I once queried you on an AA post as to whether or not you had ever looked into the homeschooling program The Calvert School, Baltimore, provides, which I believe to be preeminent, but you never replied. Are you aware of it and have you ever surveyed the program? If so, opinions?
I am only aware of it because of two books given to me by
my parents as a child written by a former Headmaster (V. M. Hillyer) of the school entitled: "A Child's History of the World" and "A Child's Geography of the World." which I regard as the two best such tomes EVER written for children (check out the RAVE reviews on Amazon) They are good reading even for adults. I have the original hardback 1924 un-PC versions of the books, but I understand the "modified" current PC versions are very little altered, mainly having to do with artwork depicting African natives, etc. GO SEE!!! (Both the Books AND the Homeschooling program--which is heavy on writing, essays, btw, with a "portfolio" of work kept on each subject.)
Oldest goes back August 19th. We have a fall break. I was always back in school by mid August, but my nieces still live in that district and they've gone full year round so they started two Mondays ago. Yikes.
We have a charter school that we've been very happy with. Sometimes I think about homeschooling, I have a teaching degree. But I don't think I would have the ability to do science very well. And science and math are probably the most important subjects for future career prospects.
The schools in our area still adhere to the after Labor Day schedule for back to school. This is for the traditional summer holiday agricultural reasons.
I wish that I had had the opportunity, time and means to home school. Nevertheless, I think my daughter got a pretty rounded education even in our itty bitty school system here. Perhaps BECAUSE it was an itty bitty school with very few students, the kids got more one on one attention than in a more populated and more technologically equipped school. There were less than 30 in her graduating class. She went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from a prestigious private college in Southern California.
Heh.
Three of our kids go back to school this month. Two to college, one to public high school. Our oldest launched off into his very own full adult life this summer with a real job and responsbility and everything.
I've always admired people who can home school and do it well. I have a friend who home schooled all four of her children. The youngest two she did while simultaneously starting her own independent practice. They went to the office with her and did their school work. She supervised between patients. Her kids are doing well - good colleges. Good careers.
I went to a regional public high school where my favorite class was gym class. Study hall was a distant second. It would have been intolerably boring except I got to read the encyclopedia.
There were maybe three or four classes where I liked the teacher and didn't have to do homework. My grades in those classes weren't so horrible as the rest.
The foregoing should suffice to explain why I have no strong opinion on the matter of homeschooling.
We homeschool to individualize education.
Virgil, I think I did reply to that but late. Using the two books you mentioned are part of our plans. We're using the updated history book this year. We pull from a lot of different things.
I have a six year old grandson going into first grade. His kindergarten teacher seemed to consider his ability to read well a nuisance. If his first grade teacher has the same attitude, I think my daughter will consider home schooling.
She has degree in music ed. from Madison, she is a stay at home mom (who also has a 4 year old girl), and her husband makes a comfortable living.
I admire home schoolers very much and I hope my daughter follows your path.
Bago:
"Read Moby Dick, and go visit a tall ship, and go whale watching."
I think they call that unit teaching in education. Yes, it sounds so fun.
@ DBQ. I agree that your daughter was probably better educated because there were no bells and whistles. I am constantly surprised with the parents at my daughter's school who freak out because the kids don't use the computers enough. Kids will get the technology part down fine--they're surrounded by it, but they need someone to teach long division.
Although I am a big fan of Kahn Academy. We did some of the math this summer so she could stay afloat.
We homeschool to individualize education
The best possible reason.
The only thing I dread about the whole back-to-school thing is the traffic that it will create. Can't we just teleport things already? Please?
We have kids in public elementary and preschool. My wife isn't fond of the local school system, but feels overwhelmed at the thought of preparing lessons in many subjects for kids of varying ages. She and I also share a notion that we like the idea of socialization at a non-home school. We don't have research studies to back it up; it's just a hunch we both have, and we haven't really challenged our assumptions about it yet.
Freeman, I would welcome links, if you have them, regarding how home-schoolers deal with these things. We both suspect that there are good ways of dealing with them; we just haven't taken the time to research.
I wish I had been homeschooled. We had the perfect situation for that too. Five kids. It's sort of set up automatically that kids teach younger kids. We really dug teaching our little brother stuff. Had that been actually facilitated and run as a program it would have been more fruitful than public schools. I think.
We had math flash cards that you buy, among other kinds, I had tons of language cards, the kids all go through them, and basically absorb it like sponges.
We changed schools right at the beginning of my Fourth grade. I ended up in a depressing Quonset hut class, I recall a lot of dirt surfaces, paved surfaces, sparse trees and grass, and everything in black and white, I recall North Korea but it couldn't have been that bad.
And dodgeball with an over filled ball that went ping when it hit you. That right there was child abuse.
And the new class was doing some weird kid competition where everyone remained seated except one stood by the first seat first row and the seated kid and the moving kid who is knealing next to the seated kid to take in the competitive card at the same time
MATHS!
Flash cards. We did that at home. The winner moves to the next seat, the loser takes the seat the winner keeps moving. I'm brand new to the class, not liking this at all, inside I'm crying my eyes out like all the kids pictured earlier all at once, I want out of there so badly but I'm stuck, and they get to me, and I lose my chair and I'm moving. And moving. And moving, and all I want is to sit down and disappear, but no, I have to keep moving, like being poked with a stick to perform I hated every second of that and I
will not ever forget that horror.
Then I got to a desk, knelt, answered a math question, and all the kids in the class went eeeeeeeeeew, and uuuuuuuuuuh and ooooooooooh all at once, so I moved and asked the next kid, why did you do that? And he said I just beat the guy who beats everybody, they were all waiting for that, and I'm new, and now that makes me competitively top and I thought in that instant, "oh shit" I must lose as soon as I can, my heart was not in that game, not one bit, and I cursed those flash cards we used on my little brother, and I did sit down soon enough and got out of that situations.
That episode showed me early the insidious power of flash cards. You get bored with them quickly and go through the whole stack.
Elementary schools now suck for boys, in my opinion. With so many female administrators and teachers, they have no patience for boys who tend to exhibit a little more restlessness than they'd like. And if there's a drop of rain, or it's a little chilly, they are quick to cancel outdoor recess for an indoor classroom alternative. Not conducive to boys who need a little more room to run at that age.
I can see why Ritalin and equiv. are used more. When teachers think a boy is a little too rambunctious for class, they quickly advocate ADHD medication so that the boy will act more to their liking in the classroom. Feet forward and hands on desk and all that crap. We need some balance back in the schools and some understanding that boys need physical outlets.
A niece teaches at a charter school in Harlem and the teachers went back already in the last week in July. That is nuts IMO when the students don't start til late August.
Chip, I was a Marine brat. We stayed put in California, during the times Dad was shipped out.
But we did move from house to house. I think we were in a different house for each grade, including my taking first grade twice. (Dad got out right before third grade, and we moved to Ohio.)
I have keen memories of all the houses, and the routes to school, etc. With Google maps I was able to more fully piece together my time there, geographically. And I have screen shots of some of the houses we lived in. Sigh. But I loved it. For being such a homebody I never had a problem with the excitement of moving to a new house.
From what I've read a common complaint about public school education is the frequency of testing and/or that teaching is teaching to a test and then another test and so forth and so on. Is the home schooling approach laissez faire when it comes to tests? Or are there generally accepted guidelines as to when to test?
The Blonde's two favorite nephews go back to college the end of August.
PS Agree with rh.
In this cases, the practice is to conform to the teacher unions and their unending vacation days, known as conferences.
And Schmoe too. The Blonde has a nephew, smart but undisciplined (parents' doing), the union teachers hit him up with more drugs than Saint Skittles had when he jumped Z.
Kid's a zombie.
feels overwhelmed at the thought of preparing lessons in many subjects for kids of varying ages.
She wouldn't have to do that. There are different approaches. If you wanted to buy a program, you'd buy one that was "open and go" and/or one that was made to span all of the age levels.
She and I also share a notion that we like the idea of socialization at a non-home school. We don't have research studies to back it up; it's just a hunch we both have, and we haven't really challenged our assumptions about it yet.
I've never felt that way about it. I don't remember the people at the schools I went to being particularly well socialized. Random kids I see out and about don't seem to be particularly well socialized. Homeschoolers are going to be like private and public schoolers; some are going to be weird, some aren't. A good way to find out what homeschooled kids are like is to wander around a big homeschool event. That's usually enough to answer the socialization question. On average, homeschooled teenagers seem to be more adept at talking to adults and homeschooled kids seem to be kinder to younger children. Those are must my impressions though.
As for getting together with other kids, you have all of the usual outside activities like sports and clubs, group lessons, homeschool groups, the neighborhood, etc.
Studies are dicey. Nobody has the funding to do a study without having an interest in the outcome.
With that caveat in mind, there are studies showing that homeschooled children grow up to be involved adults. There's probably more buried in here.
Is the home schooling approach laissez faire when it comes to tests? Or are there generally accepted guidelines as to when to test?
Depends on your state's regulations.
In Arkansas, students in third grade or higher must test once a year. There is nothing riding on the results.
Other states are different.
Some states require a lot. Some states require nothing at all.
Freeman, re: socialization, I agree with your premise that public school kids aren't better socialized necessarily than home-schoolees (for lack of a better term). I know some adults who were home-schooled who are perfectly adapted to society, and I know some adults who matriculated from public schools who are closer in personality to Ted Kaczynski.
To clarify, my wife and I feel like at some point the child needs to live and work in a society with all different types of people in it.
Our thinking, admittedly not very deep at this point, is that schooling with other kids doesn't automatically make a kid better at socializing, but it will make them start to figure out how to cope with many of the things life will throw at them.
Thanks for links; will check them out when I have time!
Our thinking, admittedly not very deep at this point, is that schooling with other kids doesn't automatically make a kid better at socializing, but it will make them start to figure out how to cope with many of the things life will throw at them.
I've heard that, but it's not been my experience that the methods of navigating social life useful in school have been useful in adult life. In fact, I'd say my adult life has been almost entirely foreign to my school experiences.
I agree on getting kids out and about with different kinds of people. There are endless ways of doing that.
To clarify: this was not supposed to be a rah-rah homeschooling post. Parents can figure out what type of school is best for their children and their situations. There are probably different best fits.
This is meant as a general back to school observance.
I would be interested in reading about your home school curriculum. We have a friend who was a professor @ Kansas University back in the 80's. She was appalled @ the students who could barely read or write. When this professor moved to Seattle to get married and raise her 3 sons, she homeschooled them. This was before it became common. She would help folks who needed help setting up a curriculum and then turned it into a biz, which grew every year.
Rah-...
Oh...
Well, I'm interested in this because we're definitely interested in homeschooling when the time comes. And I guess is already here, even at 15 months. Just less formal like.
I wish I could say I have a back to school. I graduated in June, yay!, so don't have any back to schooling for me for the first time since Fall '08. I don't wish for more of that. I am very happy I'm done.
But, I've been teaching non-stop all throughout the summer. Adjuncts are the day-laborers of academia. No benefits, no job security, take everything that is available. Teaching 3 classes this summer. So I'm thrilled to have the work, but wouldn't mind a little break.
Well, I'm interested in this because we're definitely interested in homeschooling when the time comes. And I guess is already here, even at 15 months. Just less formal like.
That's true. When you homeschool from the beginning, there's not always a major transition into school; you're just continuing to do what you've always done, adapting to the child's level in all things.
To clarify: this was not supposed to be a rah-rah homeschooling post.
Nope, doesn't sound like that at all. I'm big into live and let live, so I'm glad you seem to have found an approach that works for you and your family. I'm edu-curious, I guess you could say, as we haven't found the public system to be all that great; certainly not great for boys.
Paddy O, I hear you. I finished my graduate degree a few years ago. Glad I did it, but would not do it again in the future. I love to learn and I love to teach, but I'm done chasing sheepskins.
I did go back to graduate school after several years in the regular workforce. All in all, a very enlightening and humbling experience. And hard.
I'm looking for ideas, especially out of the box ones, for character education. The school will require "service hours" but seems pretty flexible on the definition and to me the point is to teach the value of charity.
Any suggestions?
Freeman Hunt said...
To clarify: this was not supposed to be a rah-rah homeschooling post. Parents can figure out what type of school is best for their children and their situations. There are probably different best fits.
My youngest goes to the local public school. The long summer break works well for us. Generations of my family have failed miserably to learn a second language and I am keen to break the curse. She speaks Italian to her mother during the school year but gradually falls behind the Italian kids because she mainly speaks English at school and with other kids. By spending more than two months each year in Italy she catches up, simply by playing with the kids there and reading books. It is a painless way to become fully bilingual, possibly the only way someone with her genetic heritage could achieve this goal.
I'm seeing mentions of Calvert.
I have been using Calvert as the basic structural framework for homeschooling my son during his middle-school years. We have been homeschooling entirely since my son, now 13, started 3rd grade (before that, he was in a "collegiate-type" private school), and over the years I have used a number of different approaches and quite the array of different materials, both off and on line. (Huge Kahn Academy fan here, btw.)
We are going to continue with Calvert for 8th grade, with the new twist (for us, that is) this year of paying for the independent supporting teacher/grading/transcripting portion of the program. (I want him to get used to being accountable again to external teachers, again--a skill in itself, IMO.) That doesn't mean I won't be supplementing and individualizing in a variety of way, of course!
By the way, while Calvert has been providing in-home schooling through 8th grade for many, many, many years, what is new about the service is that, starting in the fall of 2014, they will be implementing curriculum at the high school level, starting with 9th grade and adding 10th grade in the fall of 2015, 11th grade in 2016 and 12th grade in 2017.
I did not use Calvert during my son's elementary school years, though I do have a sister-in-law who used the service for one or two years with each of her older kids, now in competitive charter schools, when they were in elementary school. This is why I'm familiar with "A Child's History of the World," and, in fact, my son read that during summer visits with his aunt and grandparents. Officially, we used the history and geography program developed by Susan Wise Bauer of "The Well-Trained Mind" fame, and I would recommend that as well. I miss Singapore math, frankly, but Calvert math is solid enough and there are plenty of ways to supplement.
If anyone has specific questions about Calvert at the levels with which I am familiar, I would be happy to try to answer them. Nothing's perfect, ever, but if folks are looking for a more structured, out-of-the-box experience, Calvert might well be a good option.
Joe, I'm done too. Only school for me from now on is the kind they pay me to attend.
I think elementary schools are not so great for boys, in particular, and in my case I think this is often enough true even in the case of private ones. (This was certainly our experience.) If I may inject some food for thought, let's not forget that whether a school is private or public, the teachers have been educated, by this point, in mostly the same types of education schools, with the same types of philosophy etc. etc. There is also much more cross-over in materials and teaching approaches used by both public and private schools than I think people sometimes realize, and the quality of those materials and the nature of those approaches did, indeed, have a lot to do with our decision to pull our son from school altogether.
what is new about the service is that, starting in the fall of 2014, they will be implementing curriculum at the high school level,
Wow! I did not know that.
Just an additional resource -- for computer coding and language at home try www.codeacademy.com
Free.
JAL:
There has been a lot of fun and learning over the years in doing Arduino and Makerbot stuff, as well, just for starters. There is so much out there, which, obviously, you know. Cheers!
There are fun implications having to do with Raspberry Pi, as well, in terms of education and both the availability of access and the access to availability.
The other thing I should probably mention is that Calvert, in its earliest grades offerings, has been steadily adding a Singapore Math option. This was not on offer several years ago, but it is now. The reason I didn't think to mention that right away is that my kid is just enough older that there wasn't that serious option at the time (his time). Therefore, this fact still doesn't jump immediately to mind when I'm thinking of Calvert and younger kids (though Singapore Math, which we did use independently, obviously did).
Don't want to mislead, unintentionally or otherwise, and certainly don't intend to, either way.
Here's something else I think it's worth putting out there for people to consider on their own.
***
One thing more: Please never forget that I do not believe in "one size fits all"; I do not think that it's impossible to hold two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time; and, above all, I do think that people can, and should, make up their own minds as to what's best for themselves, their families, and their children.
Also, I think that the very most cool people are able to "get" both 21st century and, at very least, 19th century tools and how to use them both, effectively. People who don't get tools, the very worth of them and those who can actually use them, aren't very useful in the long run. C'mon now: Are they?
A few years ago, in graduate school as a matter of fact, I met a guy who had gone to a private school in Maryland called St. Jerome's. He told me how the curriculum is based on the classical learning principles from the era of the late Roman Empire. Primary education was based on the trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric, and secondary education was based on the quadrivium, which covered math, music, science, and something else that escapes me.
Anyhoo, it sounded like a compelling basis for education. I may have to revisit it to see how it's being used in homeschooling. This guy really had a great experience with it, and was a little let down with a conventional grad school experience.
When you homeschool from the beginning, there's not always a major transition into school
Freeman, I think that's actually something we miss out on --
the "normal" rites of passage everyone else gets to experience.
I get all weepy watching commercials of parents sending off their kids to kindergarten for the first time -- but we've never actually done that!
In our home, we make a very big deal of the first day of school. My husband takes the day off from work, and we get "school pictures" taken; then we do something special as a family. School starts in earnest the next day.
The other thing we do a lot of is ... lunch boxes!! :) It's a small thing, but the kids get really excited about it. Plus, it forces me to get lunch ready ahead of time, and that has the added benefit of not needing to stop everything so we can make/clean up from lunch every day.
The one thing I really don't worry a whole lot about is "socialization." My husband and I have very passable skills there, so the kids can benefit from that, at least :). Plus we do so much in the community -- not very "traditional" as schooling goes -- and that exposes the kids to many different types of people and opportunities to interact.
Schools themselves are set up in such a way that kids really aren't allowed to "socialize," especially not with a wide range of people. The skills you get in school -- sitting quietly for long periods of time, waiting in line for everything, getting permission for everyday functions like going to the bathroom, eating only at scheduled times (having to do with factors unrelated to actual needs of the kids), having the day divided neatly into 38-minute segments -- really don't translate into general life skills. (OK, sometimes you have to wait in line. But is that so hard to learn in real life context? Plus, talking and moving while in line is rarely forbidden in real life.)
My kids' friends -- not necessarily home schoolers -- are of a variety of ages, not limited to kids born in the same year. They are attracted to kids with similar interests, skills and ability levels. I think that's more "real life" than being warehoused with same-aged kids regardless of interest, ability or any other factor.
JAL, thanks for the coding resource.
Eileen- I love your adaptations!
Your comment about having passable social skills hits home for me because it's actually the opposite for me, and a big reason that I've chosen not to homeschool. We're basically hermits, so at least the kids get more exposure to socializing through school.
My take on the problems with the socializing they get there is a bit different though. It's not the structure that is a negative, but what happens during the unstructured times. I find that there is a toxic, alpha kid dominated hierarchy in the schools. It was probably always that way but teachers used to nip it in the bud, whereas now they only focus on physical aggression and the psychological, manipulative behaviors go unchecked (actually rewarded, as the worst offenders become the leaders of the pack.)
So the socialization they get at school is largely negative, but I feel incapable of delivering a better model. For our child entering middle school we've chosen a private school that addresses some of his academic (special) needs but also has an interesting social program which we hope will be effective.
C Stanley -- Yeah, the stuff you mention is the really bad stuff, and my personal opinion is that there is nothing I could do to them at home that even comes close to the kind of damage that can do. Providing a rich social experience is not my forte, but because we take this adventure pretty seriously, we're always trying to find ways to make it as positive an experience as possible across the board, even when it's hard.
I'm kind of a hermit, too -- we live on 10 acres in the country, and my only problem with it is we're too close to the neighbors! :) My husband is a golden child, a true extrovert. We balance each other pretty well. My oldest daughter is a lot more like her dad, and making sure she has lots of opportunities to enjoy that side of life is hard for me, but we do it -- just like we expect her to plug through certain traditional subject matter even when it's hard.
Life is full of tradeoffs. The important thing is finding the right balance for your own particular mix of personalities and abilities in your own family -- and it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing.
Oh, and by "passable skills," I only mean we know how to get along with others, are respectful and appropriately behaved in groups, and can carry on a polite conversation with pretty much anybody.
I didn't say I actually "liked" engaging in such activities!
But I guess I do it well enough that most people think I'm an extrovert. Which makes me laugh. After I've had some time to recover, that is. :)
All the introvert and extrovert aside, what we're interested in is creating various physical workshops throughout our in-real-life home, with extensions online when it makes sense. *Who* we're interested in has to do with that.
This is not a new thing.
We're basically hermits, so at least the kids get more exposure to socializing through school.
What an interesting thing, that is.
I mean, how interesting it is how "School" makes it easier for even some of the more supposedly individualist, self-sufficient among us to operate, if not function.
Send the kids to school, and leave us alone. That's what my parents did, for example. Just sayin', LOL.
; )
[Everything old is new again.]
We'll order now what they ordered then,'cause everything old is new again, so get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails, and let's just go backwards when forward fails. I mean why the hell not, it's easier, the wails.
I too often have to wonder if the real reason that people are pissed off about the state of public education has to do with their being irritated that they have to pay attention to it, much less even take it into their own hands. "Why should I not be able to just blithely send my kids off to public schools, as happened for barely more than half of the 20th century [never mind in a truly unprecedented way, historically speaking]?" Is what I think is the fundamental gripe. Or beef. Whatever.
I too often have to wonder if the real reason that people are pissed off about the state of public education has to do with their being irritated that they have to pay attention to it, much less even take it into their own hands
I'm no expert on the history of education, rcommal, but it does seem to me that historically parents have rarely been directly involved in their children's education. (The fact that they have other more pressing responsibilities would be a key factor in that.)
Rich people had tutors, or high-class schools. Poor people who valued such things taught themselves. Even as average families began to increasingly value a basic education for their children, they banded together as a community and hired a teacher.
I think I read somewhere that the current model of public education was designed to prepare the majority of children to work in factories. It probably works pretty well for that in some ways. The rich have always sought to educate their children to be the next generation of leaders; and if you live in a rich school district, you're more likely to get that from a public school. Poor districts, not so much.
If it weren't for the aching problems arising in massive public education -- poor outcomes, unsafe environments, emphasis on social values (at times at odds with parents' values) over basic content, etc. -- most people wouldn't give it much thought at all. School is just something everybody "does" (the fact that it's required by law notwithstanding).
School environments are well-defended against change, for a variety of reasons. For those with the interest and the resources, homeschooling makes a lot of sense -- kind of a "courage to change the things I can" mentality. Those unable or unwilling to go that route, yet are unhappy with what public schools offer, have a much harder row to hoe.
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