We are always seeking stories and articles from unschool and homeschooling families!

We welcome a diverse range of people, families and experiences.

We will pay you or you for each article/story we print and for each of your photos we use. See our writer’s guidelines for more submission information and payment rates.

We are currently in search of your experience, insight and wisdom in the following areas:
We want to hear about the fresh, bright ways your family is learning and exploring the world together
Tell us about the ways you have successfully dealt with challenges in your family, ranging from divorce and illness, sibling or familial conflict, boredom, nay saying friends and relatives and more.

1. Tell us how you have learned to maneuver the challenges of letting go of control and honor your child’s inner compass.
2. How do you live harmoniously with video games and television?
3. Tell us about your special child or teen, or ask them to tell us: how have their unique drives, passions and interests led them to something exciting, revolutionary, inventive… earth-shattering in some way?
4. Do you have an unschooled child or teen who has chosen to attend school? Tell us about the journey.
5. Has your child or teen left a school environment and become an unschooler? Tell us about the transition.
6. Has your child or teen (or your family) started a business that has been an extraordinary experience?
7. Are you a grandparent who is unschooling or homeschooling your grandchild(ren)? Tell us about it!
8. Are you a teen or young adult who has chosen to continue self-educating and not attend or aspire to college?
9. Do you have an unschooled teen who chose college?
10. What have you learned from your child or teen as they have blossomed and taken charge of their education, their world?

Join us in making homeschooling a rewarding experience for today’s and future at home education families.

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Write For Home Education Magazine

I could never imagine the future without an understanding of the past.

Home Education Magazine’s recent past is complex and confusing. It will take time before that story can be told. But for our lapse in service, for issues missed and for the confusion that was caused, I apologize. It will take weeks, maybe months, to sort out all of our readers’ specifics, but it will be done. Your understanding and patience are sincerely appreciated.

This is Volume 29, number

Before we had published Volume 1, Number 3 we were told that our magazine would do more harm than good, and that the only chance for families to live such a life with their kids as we were promoting would be to slide under the radar, and thus avoid the scrutiny of authorities. We were told that a magazine would have a vested interest, would develop a following, would draw money and power, would promote one right way to homeschool and thereby drive events, push an agenda, and in the end could not be trusted to truly help families homeschool.

What was this critic saying about our passion? Looking back, I see that the criticism was to protect how this person’s family homeschooled: underground and out of sight. Knowing a little about his family, I will say they did have a wonderfully rich and interesting life, but thirty years ago many families also had wonderful, rich and interesting lives – underground and out of sight of the authorities.

By the time we heard this critique of our passion for what Home Education Magazine could be, the numbers were already against an ideal of homeschooling being out of sight of the authorities. The other part of the critique I took as something worth pondering – could Home Education Magazine truly be trusted to help families.

Beyond the fact that money and power can warp perspective, there was something else, something deeper to the truth of homeschooling.

“…the right way to homeschool, drive events, push an agenda… could not be trusted to truly help families homeschool”

This statement had its impact; it put me on notice then and affects my decisions now. I came to believe the essence of support for homeschooling would be respect for families – all families. And I came to believe that homeschooling was best served by remaining as grassroots, bottom-up as it possibly could. As it turned out, this statement was prophetic to the homeschooling movement and the forces that did, in the end, push it around.

As our little publication grew and we met more and more homeschoolers, what was striking was the diversity among the groups of families who were drawn to homeschooling. As the numbers grew and the authorities took notice, families in state after state banded together to work with legislators and school authorities to craft relationships.

Looking back is planning for the future.

What still amazes me is that within a few short years, with nothing more than a passion for our kids, collectively we took on an entrenched, pervasive, well-funded institution with a mandate by law, and carved out space for families to live their lives together. It did not take many legislative action days to convince me that the diversity of homeschooling families, working together, won this victory. What state legislator looking at their constituents, a group who defied pigeon-holing yet showed a unified front, could deny their request to assume responsibility?

The laws and regulations which resulted are not perfect; far from it. But the necessary space was created, and the bigger conversation – about trusting parents – was started.

Then came the politicians. The constituency chasing, evangelical politicians denying diversity, pushing an ideological agenda, driving events, fomenting religious divisions, portraying a ‘one right way to homeschool’ and claiming the victories of a grassroots movement as their own. Over the years Home Education Magazine has documented their actions and published warnings that following this path will weaken homeschooling freedoms in the end.

The unity of purpose which had won homeschooling freedoms in the face of conventional educational practice came under threat and was severely weakened in some areas, totally lost in others. But in my mind the biggest loss was the momentum which had been gained on the greater, often unspoken question: Can parents be trusted?

Homeschoolers – citizens – are ahead of the government in addressing this question and it is very sad that the effective leadership which homeschoolers were collectively providing was sidetracked.

The devisive political forces which pushed homeschooling around in the late 80′s and early 90′s appear to be losing their grip on homeschooling. At the same time a new generation of parents are looking at homeschooling as a way forward for their families, even while conventional education institutions, both public and private, have adopted the trappings of a homeschool model.

Looking forward

The challenge going forward is to support families’ individual choices while continuing to work for the kind of independence that homeschooling can offer.

If you enroll in a public charter or virtual school are you a homeschooler? If you enroll part time, for sports, or science, or band, are you a homeschooler? Much virtual blood has been spilled on this issue over the years. The answers can seem simple. If you enroll in a public school program you are enrolled in public school. If you teach your kids at home regardless of the program you are a homeschooler. But the questions are too simple and these answers don’t reflect the reality which is much more complex.

Some state organizations have wrestled with this issue. In Virginia, homeschool activists, while supporting all choices, were able to draw an early distinction between public virtual schools and homeschooling. In Washington state, homeschool activists were able to work effectively with their legislators and it is now illegal for public school programs to advertise to legally declared homeschoolers.

The lesson which will take us forward is that the same state-level grassroots activism we saw in the past still exists, and it is what has best maintained homeschooling freedoms.

Remember, these school programs, whether public or private, are actually following a path that modern day homeschoolers rediscovered. And while I still have concerns about keeping homeschooling distinct from schooling, I trust families and I believe homeschoolers can continue to lead the way forward.

Looking ahead, Home Education Magazine’s renewed mission is once again simply to foster networking and understanding between the diverse groups of families who homeschool or teach their kids at home. To these families I would say “You are the parents who will lead the way for the next generation, just as it has always been”.

“Home Education Magazine’s bottom line is a belief in families, all families, and support for how you decide to assume your responsibility. Regardless whether you are a homeschooler, an unschooler, buy a canned curriculum, enroll in a public or private charter or virtual school, or hide underground, you have only one shot at raising your kids, and you can find support for that in every issue of Home Education Magazine.”

Mark Hegener
once again Publisher
Home Education Magazine

Published in the Volume 29 Number 3, May-June 2012 issue of Home Education Magazine.
Subscribe to HEM.

Looking Forward

From a lovely blog called A Homeschool Story:

“Parents: choose your battles, pick your subjects, the ones you believe in, the ones that speak to your child; her developmental readiness, his interests, and delve into them with all you’ve got. Let them have your time and energy and enthusiasm for this present moment, this present topic. Let them find their own passion with your help. Go ahead, read the fairy tales, the botany lesson, but give it all you’ve got. This is what is meant by blocks in Waldorf education, this is what is meant by unit study and by child-led learning. Depth, focus, fire.”

~HEM contributing writer Angela Chenus

Worth Quoting

I have been remiss in keeping our Home Education Magazine readers and supporters updated, but there is good news to share on several fronts.

Regarding the lawsuit which has created problems for us for many months now: We are awaiting the plaintiff’s signatures on the settlement agreement arrived at on October 13th. There has been some back-and-forth about wording, but we have no reason to believe the statement won’t be signed sometime during next week or so, and thus bring a long-awaited end to the lawsuit.

The Sept-Oct issue should have arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes by now; if you’re a subscriber and have not received your issue please give it another couple of days, but then don’t hesitate to contact me personally at helenhegener@homeedmag.com and let me know you haven’t received it. If you do write, please include your current mailing address so I can double-check our database, and include an email address or phone number, whichever you prefer, so we can contact you.

The November-December issue will, alas, be late, but we’re hoping to have it out before Thanksgiving. It will be a very special issue – you won’t want to miss this one!

Our digital edition is almost ready to release, and it’s beautiful! Just before I left Alaska (more on that later), I was surprised by one of my sons and his fiance, who presented me with a new iPad! The back is inscribed “We love you Mom!” and it brought tears to my eyes to know that these kids had done this for me, to make my work while traveling a little easier. It is a magical machine, and I take it everywhere with me! One of the most delightful things it does is download all my favorite reading material, and that has been a lifesaver! I can keep up with what I want and need to without lugging either a computer or issues of magazines and newspapers – it’s all right there in a little gadget I can hold in one hand, and the new digital HEM looks amazing on it!

About my travels: I’m back in Washington (state), where the HEM office was located for many years, with our oldest son, John, who’s helping me with chores, maintenance, and getting this place ready for the changes ahead. For those who haven’t followed our family over the years, or for those who haven’t kept track, a bit of backstory:

My parents built this home in north central Washington, and we bought it from them when they moved back to Alaska in the mid-1980′s. We raised our five kids here, all unschooled of course, and it was a delightful time filled with family and friends, horses, dogs, explorations, travels, and seemingly endless adventures. But like all good things, it did end. Our kids grew up, had kids of their own, and moved away. Our four sons moved to Alaska, our daughter moved to another part of this state. All are doing wonderfully, and we all remain close, even as the miles separate us.

But no one wants to live here any more. Alaska is our home now. My son John and I flew down from Alaska a week ago to move the last of the family’s things out of this place, and we’ve had help from my daughter and my sister, who both traveled here to help. It’s not a sad time, by any means, because so much love and so many good times happened here, and we know leaving here paves the way to building new memories, new adventures and new good times. We are grateful to have had this beautiful place to be, and we are equally grateful to be moving on with our lives.

We are also moving on with Home Education Magazine. The November-December issue will see some significant changes, but the heart and soul of the magazine are intact and as steady as ever. There have been some rough patches with this atrociously harassing lawsuit, to be sure, but that’s behind us now, and we see a bright future, and many more years of helping homeschooling families find joy and strength and peace in living and learning together.

To that end, I’d like to leave you with this excerpt from an editorial I wrote 21 years ago, which ran in our Nov-Dec, 1990 issue:

“Our great American public education system has raised a generation that is uncertain of itself, a generation in which those who have the heart to strike out confidently on their own are the exceptions to the rule: business entrepreneurs, home birthing families, breastfeeding mothers, owner homebuilders, and backyard gardeners. These people are not considered the mainstream of our society, rather they are those who’ve taken a different path, they’ve heard the beat of a different drummer, and they’ve answered the call. Of course they and their notions are gaining ground within the society-at-large. Plain old common sense always seems to win out in the end.

“But that sense of uncertainty, of ‘are we sure we’re doing the right thing,’ of wanting to ask the advice of the ‘experts,’ is a very pervasive thing. The conventional institutional wisdom plays on this uncertainty. They play it up. They point it out to those who have the audacity to try a few faltering steps on their own. It takes a strong conviction to go ahead on one’s own in our present society.

“The very success of homeschooling is putting it in greater danger with each passing year. Knowing that today’s parents have lost their self-confidence and have been instilled with a need for official approval, it will be easy for the institutions to ‘lend a helping hand’ with homeschooling. The freedom and flexibility that we now enjoy, that ability to meet our childrens’ needs that the schools so envy, is going to be a prime target for the educational establishment. In order to maintain our autonomy we must first recognize the danger, and then act together in developing effective networks and alliances, both within and outside of the homeschooling movement.

“In their new book, ‘Taking Charge Through Homeschooling,’ Larry and Susan Kaseman also refer to Dr. Pat Montgomery’s writing: ‘When Pat Montgomery says, ‘I encourage homeschoolers to realize how what they’re doing fits in the broad scheme of resurrecting the family as a pillar of society,’ she is framing an issue, empowering homeschoolers, attracting the attention of potential allies, and giving life, energy, and focus to the homeschooling movement.’

“Homeschooling parents are now being hailed as having a good idea. We must find ways to share this good idea without compromising the very freedom that makes it possible.”

Thanks for reading, and thank you for your continuing support of Home Education Magazine. Here’s to a bright future for HEM, and more importantly, for homeschooling!

Helen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Helen Hegener, publisher
Home Education Magazine

November Update

Do you remember when you first learned about the idea of homeschooling your children? Did it seem naturally right for you, or did you have to think about it a while, find out more information, discuss it with a few people, read a book or two and warm up to the idea first? For the majority of parents the decision probably came only after a lengthy exploration. For many it came even harder, with long nights of wondering if it was the right thing to do, heartfelt discussions with family and friends, hours of poring over books and magazines.

Why is something so obviously good for parents and children approached so cautiously and carefully? Why are we so afraid of trusting our own feelings, our own ideas, without validation from others, and often from experts?

Somehow, somewhere along the line, our basic human right to confidence in ourselves and acceptance of ourselves was jeopardized. Most of us rely on experts for everything from growing our food to filing our taxes, so it’s no wonder so many parents are anxious about homeschooling, because they have no confidence left in themselves. But making mistakes is how humans learn. Not knowing something is no reason for anxiety, it is simply a new opportunity to be seized!

Homeschooling parents come to understand and accept that there’s a sense of a shared journey, travelers’ tales on the road, instead of a leader shouting back directions to those behind. ‘This is what we do’ has a different attitude about it than ‘This is what everyone should do.’ Support groups for homeschoolers have long heralded the approach to share ideas instead of rules, encouragement instead of dictates.

Homeschoolers have always been viewed as pioneers in education and family issues, and we’ve always liked this analogy. The pioneers had to be brave, courageous and confident souls, working together, supporting each other, blazing new trails, building foundations for those who would come later. Because those courageous homeschool pioneers forged ahead, parents now have a wealth of support, and part of the adventure comes in supporting those just starting their journey. Support your local homeschool group, so they can continue to support new homeschooling families!

Pioneering the Way

There are 14 years of archived articles from Home Education Magazine available to read here at the HEM website. From the Jan/Feb, 1997 issue through the current Nov/Dec 2010 issue, the HEM archives offer a wonderful assortment of writing from the oldest homeschooling magazine still being continuously published.

The feature article writers and regularly scheduled columnists who’ve written for HEM over the years provide a very broad perspective on homeschooling issues, and they’ve tackled some tough subjects for our readers, such as the openly questioning article by Ruthe Matilsky titled On Unschooling and Life from our March/April, 2001 issue:

How unsettling it is sometimes when I think that we have scoffed at the script and now we have to take responsibility for how it all turns out. If we’d done what was expected of us, nothing would ever be our fault. Right? Of course my husband and I don’t believe that, but I can’t help worrying. The standard good-parent line is, “All I want is for my child to be happy.” That’s easy to say when the kids are little, but what about a twenty-one-year-old daughter who is not on the college track?

Then there was Dropping the Bombshell by LauraJean Downs in March-April, 1998:

Those of us who homeschool are the experts in in-law relationships, right? We simply get on the phone and say something like,”Hi Mom! I just wanted to let you know that we are going to homeschool all of the kids next year. Have a great day!” The relationship just continues as smoothly as it always did, right? Wrong!

Another complicated subject was tackled by M. S. Beltran in Homeschooled Teens Can Rest Easier from March/April, 2004:

My daughter’s late rising has brought about a great deal of eye rolling and gaping disbelief from those who cannot imagine life outside the pre-set hours of institutionalized education, even though they are aware our child is not a part of that institution. Is it stubborn adherence to tradition that keeps people holding the early bird in such high regard, while the night owl is chastised for being lazy?

And there was the delightful Reflections of a Homeschooled Homeschooler by Rebecca Bangs Amos, Nov/Dec, 1999:

When my parents shared their plans of moving to a 500-acre farm in Northern Vermont where they would educate their children themselves, their friends responded with, “Are you crazy?” My friends wondered how I could even consider having my mother and father for teachers.

Issue after issue, year after year, Home Education Magazine’s feature article writers captured the essence and the excitement of homeschooling, the concerns and the questions of homeschooling families. Visit the HEM archives – it’s all free – and learn why HEM is “More than just a magazine…”

14 Years of HEM

In December, 1983 – 27 years ago – we collated twenty pages of typing paper into the first issue of Home Education Magazine. We were very proud of our little fledgling publication with typewritten pages and hand-drawn illustrations, and over the years we’ve been honored to publish hundreds of outstanding writers and the best articles, interviews, and reporting on homeschooling to be found anywhere. We’re proud that HEM has contributed to the understanding and encouragement of countless homeschooling parents, and those wanting to know more about homeschooling, be they parents, teachers, legislators, researchers, or the media. It’s a good feeling to have co-founded a magazine which has touched so many people’s lives in a positive and informative way.

We’ve witnessed, and to a large degree chronicled, the growth and development of the homeschooling movement. What started as a handful of parents resisting the state mandate of compulsory school attendance for their children has grown and matured into an increasingly complex multitude of reasons, methods and approaches to learning, and that is how it should be. Any idea whose time has come – home birthing, organic gardening, computers – will change and grow as more and more people see the wisdom and sense of it and make it a part of their lives.

But education in this country, both public and private, has also been undergoing many changes in the last few years, and the repercussions of those changes are finding their way into our homes. Our ever-increasing supply of technological marvels, from multitasking super cellphones to computer and video programs which defy imagination, have affected education in ways that are only beginning to become apparent. Online reference tools, homework assistance web sites, online college courses, cyber-schools, and even video games all contribute to a sense of education as an ongoing, never-ending pursuit, and that’s good; most homeschoolers already know that to be true. But as the changes take place, as computers and the Internet move the building blocks of learning out of brick and mortar schools and into our homes, education policymakers wrestle with increasingly tough challenges. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, co-founder of the technology-based education company K12, commented, “…parents are the greatest resource possible; they are like unpaid adjunct faculty whose engagement is crucial to future success.” Unfortunately, as the mandates of a public school education filter into the home, so too will the attendant assessment, accountability, testing and tracking measures, that’s just how it works.

The lines between homeschooling and public schooling are becoming blurred, and even deliberately erased, to the benefit of a variety of organizations, individuals and business interests. Some say that schools moving out of the classroom and into the home is a good thing. We’re told what we’re seeing is just the natural evolution of education, and homeschoolers should reintegrate with the schools for the long-term benefits to all children. But public money cannot be spent on services, however well-intentioned, without some form of accountability, which means some form of oversight and assessment. And if parents can not be trusted to mold and shape their children’s learning, thinking, and values without state oversight and the inevitable interference, where will that leave us?

Adapted from an editorial © 2003 by Helen Hegener

Where Will That Leave Us?

As I check my feedreaders for information and news about homeschooling, I’m surprised by the number of articles and blog essays which appear these days; it seem as though the annual back-to-school parade now necessitates an almost parallel reporting on the cutely-tagged ‘not-back-to-school’ crowd. As a result, homeschooling seems to have become a media buzzword, and I ponder that development for a moment…

Searching the term buzzword, I find an interesting definition at Wikipedia:

A buzzword… is a term of art or technical jargon that has begun to see use in the wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context by nonspecialists who use the term vaguely or imprecisely. Labelling a term a “buzzword” pejoratively implies that it is now used pretentiously and inappropriately by individuals with little understanding of its actual meaning who are most interested in impressing others by making their discourse sound more esoteric, obscure, and technical than it otherwise would be.

I do believe that definition fits the description of what we’re seeing. The term homeschooling is being utilized to describe everything from the tutoring of Hollywood starchildren to public-school-in-the-home. Bona fide homeschooling is slip-sliding away.

Somewhere along the line in this country families were sold a bill of goods by the powers that be. Parents were led to believe that children couldn’t be trusted to learn; they needed to be tricked, coerced, or forced into it. Families certainly couldn’t be trusted to see that their kids were learning, therefore, schools would do it. For anyone interested in learning more, John Taylor Gatto, Larry and Susan Kaseman, Patrick Farenga, Grace Llewellyn, Ron Miller and many others have all written extensively about how and why it all works. This pervasive and wrongheaded approach didn’t leave room for children to dawdle, to daydream, to explore options and chase dead ends until they were satisfied with the results. This system demanded that children choose, on its timetable, what they would be and what they would do with their lives, or it would be chosen for them.

Then, more or less beginning in the mid-1970′s, parents started saying “Enough! No More! We can trust our children to learn, and we can be trusted to help them determine what’s worth learning.” Homeschooling blossomed and grew into a dynamic national movement which is still growing rapidly over 35 years later.

But there’s been change in the air for a long time now. With homeschooling more of a comfortable option, no longer such a fringe element, the parents coming to homeschooling now are keying on very different factors than their pioneering predecessors, and are focusing on simply using whatever form of education works in preparing their kids for the economic merry-go-round, the proverbial rat race. One can’t help wondering how these parents will deal with increasing standardization through national education goals, school-to-work programs, and a renewed emphasis on testing and assessment. The parental reaction today seems to be toward buying back into the system – changing the face of homeschooling in the process.

A look at the educational reforms of the 1980′s shows that homeschoolers were clearly at cross-purposes to the vision policy-makers had for the lives of our youth. While the experts and professionals were scrambling to convince the public that they had the answers to all of our social problems, we stood fast, loudly and clearly proclaiming “No thanks, homeschooling works for us.”

In stark contrast, many of today’s homeschoolers want to be part of the public education reform movement. In the past few years they have worked to help the public schools embrace homeschoolers, to lure them back into the fold with their own language, with a smoothly orchestrated series of steps. First offer access to the educational resources, then create the hybrid public school/homeschool programs, then simply segue back into business as usual.

When parents start asking questions about homeschooling, among the first concerns we hear are “How will my homeschooled children get into college, or how will my unschooled kids find a good job?” These are the overriding concerns today. We rarely hear people ask “Will homeschooling make my kids nice people?”

Nice people. What a concept. But isn’t that what this tired old world really needs more than anything else? Nice people? We live with a mind-numbing combination of social confusion and cynicism. Movies and television, mirrors of our society, reinforce all the mindless stereotypes. Generations poke fun at each other, each insisting that the other just doesn’t understand. But how can they understand? The underlying basis for mutual understanding – simply spending time with each other – has been schooled right out of this society.

Homeschooling offers a way to hold the center, by encouraging families to simply spend time together. Agemates, social peers, fellow workers and just plain friends are important, of course, but central to everything we do is our family, the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas who love us, no matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter how long between visits or phone calls. If we can’t hold our families together, what makes us think we can hold a viable society together?

As homeschoolers we need to defend and protect the right to nurture and educate our children as we see fit, and not as social engineers dictate. We need to resist increasing overtures from the experts and professionals who would assure us that they can do it all much more effectively, much more efficiently. We need to hold the center for the homeschooling families who follow.

© 2010 Helen Hegener

Holding the Center of Homeschooling

Homeschooling. The word brings to mind images of colorful books piled on a table, a well-used collection of pencils and paper and scissors and glue, the waxy-sweet smell of a freshly-opened box of crayons, an assortment of kitchen-science ingredients in boxes and bottles of different shapes and sizes. Fall days collecting leaves, spring mornings examining pond life, long lazy summer days at the beach learning about everything – and nothing at all. Homeschooling is a warm and cozy word, evoking images of parent and child engaged in sharing, exploring, learning about life.

Homeschooling is not often associated with prescription drugs and hypodermic needles. We don’t often equate it with learning medical terminology and care-giving procedures, or learning how to administer life-saving techniques or determining when to call 911. We don’t often think of hospital visits or figuring out the intricacies of insurance paperwork as educational. But if homeschooling is about learning what we need to know to get along in life, then the lessons awaiting us at the other end of the spectrum, when our parents grow old and we who were once children become learners all over again, are as important as those we teach and learn at the beginning.

Somehow, somewhere in the development of our present-day social structure, it was decided that separating and specializing the stages and phases of life would be beneficial. And to a certain extent, I suppose it is. Young children often have a kind of energy and sheer unbridled enthusiasm that would tax the patience of an elderly person, and the mellow interests of an octogenarian would scarcely keep a toddler entertained for long. There are obvious benefits to having particular spaces and special times for each, and yet so much is lost in the process of keeping them separate, distinct, apart. As homeschooling families have relearned how to live with various ages of development, and so too have many of us relearned how to live with various stages of ability and disability.

There was a popular saying many years ago, which advised something along the lines of: “If you institutionalize your children when they’re young, they’ll institutionalize you when they’re your age.” An entire generation turned away from institutionalizing their children, and now that generation is facing the “other end” of homeschooling, and some of life’s most difficult lessons. What we learned by homeschooling our children – patience, acceptance, how to learn what we needed to know – is being brought into play as we face the challenges of our aging parents.

In Internet chat rooms and on email discussion lists the conversation often turns from helping our toddlers learn to helping our parents survive. One typical exchange highlights the similarities: A long-time list member explained that she hadn’t been active on the list for several weeks because she’d been helping her parents after her father suffered a debilitating stroke: “I never imagined that there would be so much to learn about how to deal with this situation; I feel like I’m a little kid again trying to understand confusing concepts that are just beyond my grasp. Is this what it was like when my eight-year-old was trying to learn to read? Just a jumble of nonsensical words and strange symbols and even when someone patiently explained what they all meant I’d just stare at the papers in my hand and nothing would come together for me and make sense? That’s such a helpless feeling!”

A message board member described her mother’s passing away: “Even while we were getting her things ready for the funeral home I kept thinking this couldn’t be happening, this wasn’t true, there’s been some kind of mistake, because it wasn’t long enough ago that she and I were snuggled on the couch reading Each Peach Pear Plum and Where the Wild Things Are. And now I feel like a wild thing myself, and I want to stomp off to my room and have an imaginary adventure and when I get back I want to find a nice warm plate of something she’s fixed just for me. I want to be a little kid again, and I want her to be my mom again.”

It’s so much easier dealing with the younger generation. The snuggly babies, the cute toddlers, the inquisitive youngsters and even the teenagers who are blossoming into young men and women and struggling to figure out their place in the world. Their perspective is endless, unbounded, unencumbered by the finite realities of life. It’s joyous and inspiring to be in their company, to share in their plans and dreams and schemes and limitless expectations.

It’s harder when we come up against the realization that there are indeed limits, that there are plans which won’t be achieved, dreams which won’t be fulfilled. We learn to deal with disappointment, frustration, heartache and heartbreak. And yet what we’re really seeing, what we’re becoming a part of, is just the full circle of life. This is how it’s meant to be. If we can hold onto perspective, if we can accept the bad as just part of the larger good, these difficult lessons can do for us what the less complex lessons in reading and writing can do for our children: make us stronger, wiser, more capable, and more prepared for whatever lies ahead.

© 2004 Helen Hegener

The Other Side of Homeschooling

Not long ago I received an email letter from a mother expressing doubts about her ability to homeschool her children. That in itself is nothing unusual, but the letter had a slightly different quality about it; I’d like to share a paragraph with you:

“I’ve been reading about homeschooling, and especially unschooling, and it sounds so exciting! The more I learn about it the more I know this is what I want to do with my own children, but I still have so many questions needing answers. The one weighing heaviest on my mind is ‘What if I mess up?’ By that I mean what if my children don’t learn to read despite my best efforts, or what if their handwriting and spelling skills turn out to be only mediocre? What if they reach adulthood with no idea what the Magna Carta was, or who wrote Moby Dick, or how to multiply fractions? As you can see I have some grave doubts about my ability to be a good teacher, especially because even with two years of college under my belt I still don’t know what the Magna Carta was, I never read Moby Dick and have no desire to, and multiplying fractions is still a terrible mystery to me. I seem to be getting along just fine in life without these particular bits of knowledge, but who knows if my life might have been different, somehow richer, if I’d learned those things? How can I not want the very best for my children, and how can I not worry about the potential for doing them educational harm by taking them from school?”

This letter struck a chord with me because I clearly remember worrying about the same concerns, and, truth be told, I still do. When one of my adult kids asks me how to spell a word I wonder, ever so briefly, if we shouldn’t have done a little more in the language arts department. When I watch my youngest son sounding out words to himself I have to resist the urge to ask him if he wants me to help him with reading skills; he’s told me many times that he doesn’t need any help. With over twenty years of unschooling under my belt I still worry about their learning, so I can easily understand this young mother’s concerns.

A similar question was brought up on one of our email discussion lists last week, and again, I’d like to share a paragraph:

“I’m currently having fears about how his ‘education’ will be perceived by others. This is totally about how it looks from the outside — something I normally try to not let be a decisive factor. If someone should talk to my son, they’d find that he still counts on his fingers to add and subtract, and gets a blank look on his face when the subject of multiplication comes up, has never “studied” history or grammar. Inside, I’m confident about what he knows and how he’s learning, but when I think about how it looks to other people… I get nervous. Anyone else ever experience that?”

I nodded to myself as I read those lines. Yes, I’ve felt that way many times. When our kids work out math problems, by which I don’t mean workbook problems but real life situations in which math is needed, I know they’re not using the standard schoolish approach to manipulating numbers. They each seem to be working with a different and individualized understanding of math which they worked out for themselves, an invented adaptation of the principles and procedures which works for them, and which is quite mysterious to me. They’ve all tried explaining their various approaches at one time or another, but my school-crippled math phobic mind just can’t see the connections they make.

I had doubts about this approach until my children grew up and went off to work at various jobs where math was a necessary skill. They all did just fine, and rose to positions of responsibility, even in fields in which traditional math was of primary importance. Either their freestyle math served them well or when they needed to learn a more traditional approach to math they simply did so.

I think having doubts about our abilities is, in part, what makes us compassionate and caring, by allowing us to relate to the doubts of others. I also think how we treat those doubts within ourselves makes us who we are. I acknowledge my concerns, and sometimes I discuss them with others, but I usually try to find a different way of viewing the situation, another perspective which helps me put things in focus.

For example, the young mother who wrote to me asked “How can I not want the very best for my children, and how can I not worry about the potential for doing them educational harm by taking them from school?” Her perspective is obviously that school offers a safe educational experience, and that not sending her children to school might somehow be educationally harmful to them, a concept clearly supported by the education bureaucracy, political leaders, big business and the neighbors down the street.

My perspective, on the other hand, would be to view school as the potentially harmful situation and removing children from it’s influences – not just the school building but the schoolish approaches and attitudes toward learning – as the safest approach to their education.

Doubts are normal, and doubts about doing the right thing for our children helps make us good parents. But the pervasive nature of schooling, coupled with its mandate to promote dependency on experts and credentials, fosters a reliance on institutional solutions at the cost of family or community based approaches. This is no coincidence. It is the stated reason for public schooling, and has been clearly and unequivocally documented.

Schools and schoolish approaches are a poor substitute for truly integrating the basics of reading, writing and mathematical skills into one’s life. When we perceive schools and schoolish ways as the aberration, and not the norm, everything changes.

Doubts? Yes, I’ve had them. Still do from time to time. But when I look at the results of the decisions I’ve made the doubts dissolve into perspective, replaced by a confident smile. © 2003 Helen Hegener

Doubts