TechnoMom’s Home Education FAQ

What is tru­ly annoy­ing is that so many peo­ple have pre­con­ceived notions about home­school­ing and home­school­ers, but those who have been the most vocal in their oppo­si­tion to it seem to be the least will­ing to do any actu­al research or to lis­ten to any­thing that does­n’t agree with what they “know” about it (the “My mind’s made up, don’t both­er me with the facts!” crowd). And while these words prob­a­bly won’t ever be read by any of the peo­ple who’ve told me what a dread­ful mis­take I’m mak­ing, this is my chance to say them, at least, with­out inter­rup­tion. If even one per­son reads them hon­est­ly or gets any infor­ma­tion here, then it will have been worth the time it took to write this web page (above and beyond the sheer vent­ing val­ue, which is significant).

• Is teach­ing your child at home real­ly legal? Don’t you have to be a cer­ti­fied teacher or something?
  In Geor­gia it cer­tain­ly is. In fact, some form of home edu­ca­tion is legal in every one of the Unit­ed States, although state laws do vary wide­ly. Geor­gia requires that I file a Dec­la­ra­tion of Intent with the school sys­tem each year as well as month­ly atten­dance reports. Geor­gia law states that chil­dren must be instruct­ed in read­ing, lan­guage arts, math­e­mat­ics, social stud­ies, and sci­ence. In Geor­gia, it is legal for a par­ent or guardian to teach his or her chil­dren as long as he or she has a high school diplo­ma or GED. Tutors may be hired to instruct chil­dren as long as they have a bach­e­lor’s degree, but need not be cer­ti­fied teachers.
• Isn’t home­school­ing some­thing that only Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists do?
  Nope. The move­ment to return edu­ca­tion to the home was­n’t even start­ed by Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists in this coun­try, but by more lib­er­al thinkers who object­ed to the rigid­i­ty of the pub­lic schools. Gen­tle Spir­it mag­a­zine has done a mar­velous four-part series on the his­to­ry of home­school­ing in the US, and there’s no way I could do any­thing like the job Cheryl Seel­hoff already did in explain­ing it, but it seems to have been tak­en off the net.
  While Chris­t­ian home­school­ers became very vis­i­ble in the 1980s and 90s, there were always oth­er peo­ple edu­cat­ing their chil­dren home who either weren’t Chris­t­ian or were home­school­ing for rea­sons oth­er than reli­gion. Home­school­ing is get­ting far more main­stream now than ever—even Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er asked her moth­er to con­sid­er it, say­ing “it’s not just for scary reli­gious peo­ple anymore.”

  Admit­ted­ly, it can be hard­er for peo­ple who aren’t con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to find sup­port groups, prepack­aged cur­ricu­lum, umbrel­la schools, and oth­er resources to help with home­school­ing —but they are out there, and there are more and more resources all the time.

• So home­school­ing has noth­ing to do with your reli­gious or oth­er beliefs?
  While reli­gious issues weren’t the pri­ma­ry rea­son for my deci­sion, they cer­tain­ly con­tributed to it. I live in the Bible Belt, and there’s a lot of de fac­to Chris­t­ian indoc­tri­na­tion that hap­pens even in pub­lic schools here. I pre­fer that my daugh­ter not get infor­ma­tion from school teach­ers that con­tra­dicts what she learns at home. I don’t hon­est­ly think there is any way to com­plete­ly sep­a­rate one’s beliefs from edu­ca­tion, so I believe that any­one who tru­ly wants her chil­dren edu­cat­ed accord­ing to her own belief sys­tem has to either be her chil­dren’s pri­ma­ry teacher or send her chil­dren to a school that is based on a phi­los­o­phy with which she agrees. My reli­gious beliefs aren’t those of the pre­dom­i­nant par­a­digm here in Geor­gia, so it makes sense for me to turn to homeschooling.

  As for beliefs oth­er than those that are strict­ly reli­gious, I don’t under­stand how any lib­er­tar­i­an can send his or her child to a gov­ern­ment school for indoc­tri­na­tion, or how any lib­er­al can do so in the South­east­ern U.S. I’ve also heard far too many sex­ist, racist, homo­pho­bic, look­ist and oth­er big­ot­ed remarks from school offi­cials to trust that they won’t be mak­ing such remarks to or in front of my child, and I don’t want her to pick up those poi­sons. (And if oth­er chil­dren make those remarks, school offi­cials sel­dom inter­vene or con­tra­dict the state­ments at all.)

• What about social­iza­tion? How will she learn to get along with oth­er people?
  If you think much pos­i­tive social­iza­tion is hap­pen­ing in any aver­age school (pub­lic or pri­vate), you haven’t been in one late­ly. In the ele­men­tary schools that Katie, Rowan, and Geni have attend­ed, at least, the kids aren’t even allowed to talk to each oth­er most of the time in the cafe­te­ria. Talk­ing in the halls gets them in trou­ble, and they’re fre­quent­ly ordered to be silent on the bus­es to and from school. So where was that “social­iza­tion” hap­pen­ing? Oh, in the class­room. Right. Yeah, kids get lots of time to social­ize there.

  So, when the kids get any­thing like a recess, they have “social­iza­tion” time. Oh, and while wait­ing for the bus in the morn­ing. What’s that, maybe 45 min­utes a day? At most?

  So here my poor kid is, iso­lat­ed at home away from all oth­er kids. Except for Rowan and Geni, of course. And the many chil­dren in our neigh­bor­hood (I’m not kidding—there were about 25 neigh­bor­hood kids hang­ing out around the place while we were mov­ing in!) Oh, and the kids she sees in the dra­ma, dance and Span­ish class­es she takes. And the oth­er mem­bers of her Girls Scout troop, and the kids she sees as home­school­ing sup­port group play­days and those she sees week­ly at soc­cer prac­tices and games. Oh, and there are the kids (who don’t live in the neigh­bor­hood) who gath­er at our place for D&D games every oth­er week­end or so. Yep, I’m real­ly wor­ried about Katie being iso­lat­ed from her peers.

  In all hon­esty, around Atlanta, at least, it’s more dif­fi­cult to decide which activ­i­ties and social oppor­tu­ni­ties we’re going to par­tic­i­pate in and to keep from being over­com­mit­ted than it is to find oppor­tu­ni­ties for socialization.

  Of course, the oth­er kids she inter­acts with aren’t all exact­ly her age, and they would­n’t all be in the same grade with her if she knew them through a school set­ting. And pret­ty much all of the inter­ac­tions she has with oth­er kids are super­vised by me, Sam, and/or oth­er trust­ed adults. I can’t quite bring myself to think that’s a bad thing. Just how many times in your life after for­mal school­ing have you been in groups of peo­ple who were all with­in twelve months of your own age? Does­n’t hap­pen much in the real world, does it? Katie is learn­ing to inter­act with old­er and younger kids, kids her age, and adults of var­i­ous ages—just like she’ll be doing for the rest of her life.

• How can you pos­si­bly teach your child as well as pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors could?
  Hon­est­ly, I can do bet­ter. I know her, have known her all her life, and always know what’s hap­pen­ing in her life that might affect for­mal stud­ies. I have one-on-one time with her and don’t need to spend time cod­dling those who aren’t get­ting some­thing as quick­ly as she does or accom­mo­dat­ing stu­dents with learn­ing or behav­ioral dis­abil­i­ties. I’m able to choose the mate­r­i­al that reflects her interests—and mine—and we can spend as much time as we like on a top­ic rather than fol­low­ing a school’s strict cal­en­dar. I don’t have to get any­body’s per­mis­sion or arrange for a bus to take us to a muse­um, book­store, or any­where else, or try to sched­ule library vis­its so they don’t con­flict with oth­er class­es time there. I love her, and I have far more rea­son to care pas­sion­ate­ly about her edu­ca­tion than any hired pro­fes­sion­al of any sort ever will.

  Yes, there are things that I don’t know, and that I may not be able to teach her. There are, how­ev­er, many class­es for home­school­ers for just that rea­son and there are cer­tain­ly many pri­vate tutors avail­able. There are also oth­er peo­ple in our lives who know many things that I don’t know, and who Katie and I will approach for help in learn­ing those things.

  While it’s dif­fi­cult to gath­er sta­tis­tics on home­school­ers for sev­er­al rea­sons, those that are avail­able show that home­school­ers con­sis­tent­ly out­per­form pub­lic schooled stu­dents on stan­dard­ized tests. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the lit­er­a­cy rate in the Unit­ed States has gone done since the advent of com­pul­so­ry school­ing. Think about it—when most peo­ple taught their chil­dren them­selves or sent them to church-spon­sored schools, the lit­er­a­cy rate was high­er than it is now, when free pub­lic schools are avail­able to every child in the US and par­ents are legal­ly required to obtain some sort of edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren. Why does that not sur­prise me at all?

• You can’t pos­si­bly pro­vide the resources a school can!
  Oh, I beg to differ.
  • Com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy? Katie has access to a PC with inter­net access pret­ty much 24/7 with lit­tle to no wait­ing (and since we plan to expand our home LAN short­ly, what wait­ing there is now will soon be a thing of the past). Also, since it’s our equip­ment and our net­work, she gets to learn to work with the com­put­ers at a far deep­er lev­el than if she were sim­ply using sys­tems some­one else had set up for her, then for­bid­den her to change at all.
  • Lab equip­ment? She’s used a micro­scope and been able to do var­i­ous lab exper­i­ments here at home, and nev­er had that at school. Yes, those kinds of things will get more expen­sive as she gets old­er and more advanced in her stud­ies, but I don’t antic­i­pate any trou­ble find­ing access to any­thing she needs in Atlanta.
  • Books? We have more at home than in any class­room she’s ever entered. We buy both non-fic­tion and fic­tion books as the need (or whim) strikes. We also go to the pub­lic library sev­er­al times a week (which has far more resources than even the best school libraries).
  • Peri­od­i­cals? Well, there are usu­al­ly copies of two dif­fer­ent dai­ly news­pa­pers avail­able around here. In addi­tion, we are the Mag­a­zine Peo­ple. The ones that the kids read on a reg­u­lar basis that come to mind right away are: 
    • New Moon and New Moon Net­work (the girls read New Moon, Sam and I read New Moon Network)
    • Archae­ol­o­gy’s Dig
    • Muse
    • Time for Kids
    • The Blessed Bee
    • Zil­lions
    • Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s World
    • Kids’ Wall Street News
    • Sci­ence at Home
    • Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s Explorations

    I had no idea that there were so many mag­a­zines for kids when I was one—in fact, I don’t think there were. I knew about crap like Tiger Beat and Teen (mag­a­zines which do not come into this house­hold) but would have been fas­ci­nat­ed by New Moon. I know those mag­a­zines weren’t avail­able at my school and aren’t avail­able at the schools Geni and Rowan attend now. Of course, there are also quite a few pub­li­ca­tions around the house that aren’t mar­ket­ed to or writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for chil­dren, and the kids read those as well sometimes—Rowan espe­cial­ly likes Discover.

  • Then there’s the whole fine arts thing —can’t for­get that. 
    • Visu­al arts? We have more art sup­plies (of high­er qual­i­ty) in this house at any giv­en moment than I saw in 12 years of pub­lic school­ing. Var­i­ous kinds of crayons and pens and oil pas­tels and col­ored pen­cils and paints and spe­cial draw­ing pen­cils and a whole mess of spe­cial paint brush­es (but we always seem to need a new one or two for each project) and what seems to be every kind of paper known to mankind (con­struc­tion, trac­ing, draw­ing, ban­ner, newsprint, fin­ger paint­ing, poster­board, grid­ded in var­i­ous fash­ions, spe­cial papers for the var­i­ous print­ers to make T‑shirt decals or mug inserts or what­ev­er caught some­one’s fan­cy this week). There are glues and glit­ters and stick­ers and sten­cils and stamps and ink pads—look, imag­ine going through the arts and crafts aisle at Zany Brainy and grab­bing some of every­thing. That’s what the craft sup­ply area looks like. I sup­pose one might argue that my needle­work sup­plies should­n’t be count­ed since I acquired most of them in my pur­suit of the stitch­ing hob­by going back to well before I had Katie. I con­sid­er them school sup­plies now, though, as the kids know there are box­es of fab­rics and fibers and bead and pat­terns and but­tons and rib­bons and glues and such that they can use to their hearts’ delight.
    • Music? Katie’s been sur­round­ed by good music since her con­cep­tion! We have an ungod­ly num­ber of CDs, cas­sette tapes, and even some old LPs on vinyl (I sus­pect the exis­tence of some 8‑track tapes in the garage, but I’m avoid­ing find­ing out for sure). The music avail­able here ranges from Bach to Rock­apel­la to Clan­nad to the Back­street Boys to Ani Difran­co. We have two met­al flutes, one wood­en flute, an oca­ri­na, a drag­on whis­tle, two very nice key­boards, a cou­ple of recorders, a dhoum­bek and var­i­ous small­er per­cus­sion instru­ments, and are work­ing on adding a real­ly good dig­i­tal piano to the mix so we can start play­ing with midi. We reg­u­lar­ly make music at home or with var­i­ous groups and will arrange any for­mal musi­cal instruc­tion in which the kids show inter­est. Katie has already had sev­er­al years of piano lessons and may return for fur­ther study. I would like for all of our chil­dren to take at least one year of piano sim­ply as a sol­id ground­ing for fur­ther musi­cal study or life­long music appre­ci­a­tion. As for mak­ing music with groups, there are home­school­ing choirs and bands in the Atlanta area as well as oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties should any of the kids decide they’re interested.
    • Dra­ma. Oh yes, we’ve got dra­ma —good role­play­ing demands it, and the kids are get­ting bet­ter all the time! Katie’s also tak­ing a class with a group of oth­er home­school­ers, and is inter­est­ed in find­ing a more advanced class when this ses­sion is over—and adding voice instruc­tion. And we have trunks full of cool cos­tumes to be used in play­ing dress-up or stag­ing plays—I dreamed of hav­ing those kinds of things to play with as a child!
    • Dance. Katie has tak­en jazz and bal­let for five years. She’s con­tin­u­ing her study­ing of those dis­ci­plines and mov­ing on up in them.
  • Should the kids devel­op inter­ests in any­thing for which we don’t cur­rent­ly have mate­ri­als or equip­ment on hand, it’s quite easy for us to acquire or get access to what­ev­er is nec­es­sary for them to explore that inter­est. We don’t need to get approval from any­one or sub­mit bud­get pro­pos­als or seek grants to fund such pur­chas­es. We can just make it happen.
• But there are all those field trips!
  How many field trips do your kids actu­al­ly go on a year? When they get there, how much time do they have to real­ly explore the place? In a total of ten years spent in pub­lic schools in the metro Atlanta area (three in Cobb Coun­ty, sev­en in Gwin­nett Coun­ty), I had one trip to the zoo and one to the Capi­tol Build­ing. (My two years in the city schools of Gads­den, Alaba­ma did­n’t include any field trip. Those were reserved for the spe­cial edu­ca­tion kids but they seemed to take a lot of them.)

  We have annu­al pass­es to Stone Moun­tain Park, Fern­bank Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Museum/Science Cen­ter, SciTrek, and Zoo Atlanta. Oth­er places we’ve vis­it­ed or are plan­ning to vis­it soon include the High Muse­um of Art, Atlanta His­to­ry Cen­ter, South­east­ern Rail­way Muse­um, Carter Cen­ter, Wren’s Nest, Michael C. Car­los Muse­um, Oglethor­pe Uni­ver­si­ty Muse­um, and the Ten­nessee Aquar­i­um. While we’re up in Ten­nessee, we’ll prob­a­bly go down to Ruby Falls and see Rock City and who knows what else. We can do that, because nobody makes our sched­ule but us. We’ve already had more “field trips” in our few months of offi­cial home­school­ing, both with groups and as a fam­i­ly, than I had in my entire school career.

• Uh, gift­ed pro­grams! She’s miss­ing out on the gift­ed programs!
  Well no, she’s not. In our coun­ty, at the ele­men­tary lev­el at least, what used to be called the “gift­ed pro­gram” is a pull-out pro­gram. Kids are tak­en out of their nor­mal class­rooms and go to a spe­cial class once a week to engage in fair­ly sil­ly games and the occa­sion­al extra assign­ment. Around the sev­enth grade, as I under­stand it, there are some inte­grat­ed class­es for the chil­dren in those pro­grams in some schools—advanced math or social studies—but not at all mid­dle schools, and not for all stu­dents. Every­thing we do is part of the “gift­ed pro­gram” because it’s all set at a pace and lev­el designed to engage my gift­ed child. As for social­iz­ing with oth­er gift­ed chil­dren, there’s anoth­er gift­ed child in this house­hold and most of our friends’ chil­dren are labeled gift­ed by their var­i­ous schools. Should we find the need for more for­mal inter­ac­tion, we’ll turn to Men­sa or a sim­i­lar organization.
• Come on, you have to admit that she’s miss­ing some­thing by not being in school.
  Oh, absolute­ly! Cafe­te­ria food. Sex­u­al harass­ment (yes, it does start that ear­ly). Peer pres­sure to smoke, drink alco­hol or use recre­ation­al drugs. Homo­pho­bia. Sub­sti­tute teach­ers who have no cre­den­tials oth­er than get­ting to the school if they’re called. Hav­ing to get permission—or being denied permission—to take care of basic bod­i­ly func­tions like going to the bath­room. Being told to stop as soon as she’s got­ten inter­est­ed in a sub­ject because the sched­uled 20 min­utes is up. Feel­ing like she isn’t as good as some­one else because she does­n’t look like the cur­rent ide­al, or does­n’t have the hottest clothes, or does­n’t live in the right neigh­bor­hood, or whatever—or being pres­sured to not asso­ciate with some­one else for those rea­sons. Get­ting the idea that she’d bet­ter hide her intel­li­gence because it’s not fem­i­nine, or because being smart just isn’t cool. Bul­lies. Those love­ly fre­quent lice checks, because some par­ents just won’t ever take care of their chil­dren’s infes­ta­tions. Liv­ing on some­one else’s sched­ule. Yep, hap­pi­ly, she’s miss­ing lots of things that most peo­ple take for grant­ed in their chil­dren’s lives.

  After read­ing Mary Pipher’s books Reviv­ing Ophe­lia and The Shel­ter of Each Oth­er, and remem­ber­ing the cli­mate when I was in school in the 70s to mid-80s and know­ing that things have only got­ten worse, I had no doubts about the kinds of things I want­ed my daugh­ter to miss. And Sense of Self: Lis­ten­ing to Home­schooled Ado­les­cent Girls by Susan Shef­fer was one of many sources that helped me to real­ize that deschool­ing Katie would be health­i­er for her than pub­lic or pri­vate schooling.

  There’s also the issue of high pro­file vio­lence. One month after the infa­mous Columbine shoot­ings, a kid pulled out a gun at Her­itage High School in Cony­ers, GA (Sam’s alma mater), and start­ed shoot­ing his class­mates. That same week, a bomb was found—yes, a real one, not a fake one—in a bath­room at Berk­mar High School in Lil­burn, GA (my alma mater). I don’t want my child in a school where any freak want­i­ng a tar­get-rich envi­ron­ment can walk in and start shoot­ing (or set off bombs, etc.). Yes, some­body could come into our home and start shooting—but it’s unlike­ly a stranger would choose our home as a tar­get. I know that my abil­i­ty to pro­tect my child when she’s with me or in our home is far greater than any school’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect her.

• But you can’t be sure she’s get­ting an edu­ca­tion as good as what she’d get in school!
  Actu­al­ly, I can be sure she’s get­ting a far bet­ter edu­ca­tion than she would get in the local schools. I’m using the local school board­’s cur­ricu­lum stan­dards for each grade as the absolute min­i­mum. Far more of our mate­r­i­al comes from a com­bi­na­tion of The Well Trained Mind: A Par­en­t’s Guide to Clas­si­cal Edu­ca­tion by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer and the Core Knowl­edge Foun­da­tion’s mate­ri­als. The school’s stan­dards don’t come any­where near the breadth or depth of the stan­dards set forth in WTM or by the CK Foundation.
• The only peo­ple who pull their kids out of school are the ones whose kids are hav­ing prob­lems there, or who did­n’t do well in school them­selves, right?
  No, that isn’t the case for us or the vast major­i­ty of home­school­ers we’ve encoun­tered. Katie was a straight “A” stu­dent, nev­er had one dis­ci­pline prob­lem, and had lots of friends at school. Even though she missed many days of third grade due to her father’s ill­ness and death she was a straight‑A stu­dent and was nev­er chal­lenged aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in the slight­est. I was the vale­dic­to­ri­an of my high school class, was involved in many activ­i­ties, and had plen­ty of friends. The fact that both Katie and I were good at jump­ing through the hoops the schools set up does­n’t mean we think they meant a great deal or were set high enough.
• How can you stand to spend that much time with your kid?
  That’s the ques­tion that always shocks me and tells me a lot more about the per­son ask­ing (and, prob­a­bly, his or her child) than my answer can ever tell him. If you don’t like spend­ing that much time with your child because you just don’t like being around chil­dren much, why did you have a child in the first place? If you don’t like spend­ing that much time with your kid because of how he or she behaves, why haven’t you both­ered to raise a per­son who is pleas­ant com­pa­ny? News flash: I love spend­ing time with my daugh­ter! She’s a great per­son to be with! And her father and I actu­al­ly thought out the fact that we want­ed to raise a well-behaved, intel­li­gent, thought­ful, fun-lov­ing per­son well before we ever had a kid!