Why We are Homeschooling

Background: As our oldest daughter is getting ready to graduate from high school and go off to college, and with three more children in the pipeline, this milestone is a good time to reflect on why we’ve been homeschooling our children and to determine if the results are what we expected.

Before I continue, I want to state three things.  First, homeschooling is not for everyone.  It’s almost impossible for single parent families and dual income families to homeschool.  Second, I am not lifting up my nose at the public or private school systems.  I grew up in a public school environment and was blessed with wonderful teachers.  The intent of this article is not to say that homeschooling is better.  I merely intend to point out what my wife and I saw as good reasons for homeschooling as well as some of the advantages we discovered along the way.  And third, this article is not intending to list all the pros and cons.  Each family is different, and mileage may vary.  This is my perspective on my family’s experience with homeschooling.

We weren’t originally intending to homeschool our children.  Though my wife had set up a pre-school coop with three other mothers and their daughters, the plan all along was to send our daughter to kindergarten.  We visited several kindergartens, including the local public school system and some private schools, and my wife made an amazing discovery.  She believed that she could accomplish in a couple hours at home what the schools were accomplishing in an entire day.

Of course, if you stop to think about it, that made sense.  A classroom with ten or twenty children is going to have so much inertia to overcome as they try to get anything done, especially with kids at that young age.  Kids would get in line to go to the bathroom; kids would get in line to go to the cafeteria; kids with questions would wait with their hands raised while another kid’s question was being answered; and teachers would need to explain things multiple times to make sure everybody “got it.”

We decided together that we would try homeschooling the year of kindergarten, and then we’d play first grade by ear.  To make a long story short, after each school year we decided to try it another year, and suddenly we found ourselves with a high school senior who’s ready to go on to college.