Well, should you?
I’m way past that point, of course, but I thought, since it’s the season, it might be a good time to re-share some posts I wrote nine years ago about homeschooling. As is always the case, many are struggling with schooling decisions, and as time goes on it and the culture shifts, it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier, the decision, that is.
The TL:DR of my posts is: The first set of my kids went to regular school – both Catholic and public (high school for two of them – IB programs). By the time the second set came around, the landscape had changed – both the school landscape and the homeschooling landscape. In short, the school landscape, even in Catholic schools, was getting worse, but the homeschooling landscape was become far more doable, with the advent of the Internet.
Interesting, I think, that the advent of computers and the internet definitely made institutional schooling worse (a hill I will die on) but was integral in the growth of homeschooling, both in terms of ease of access to resources and educational opportunities, and community-building.
Well, this isn’t very TL:DR is it? I’ll try again.
As we entered the 2010’s, my dissatisfaction with the education my kids were receiving in their well-intentioned, competent school grew – and theirs was, too. The cost-benefit ration was way off. Finally, my own conscience started to bother me. I was perfectly capable of teaching these guys up to a certain point and facilitating their, er, educational journeys after that. I had the time. I had the financial resources to do things like travel. It became almost a moral imperative. A conscience-scratcher, for sure.
And how did it turn out? Fine. And varied, as most homeschool, er, journeys go. The older one was in sixth grade when we began. He homeschooled 6th and 7th, and then went to the local Dominican-run school for 8th (they had had issues before, which a parent of one of his friends assured me had been fixed, and they were.) – and then the local Catholic high school for, well, high school. The youngest was in second grade when we began. He homeschooled most of the rest of the time, with a couple of years in the Dominican school, then did high school at home, finished in three years and went off to college, which he will finish up this coming year.
Zero regrets on my part – and I think they’d say the same. One went to school for high school, the other studied at home, mostly self-directed, with a bit of tutoring and a lot of music study – and I think both would say it was the right thing.
So here are the posts I wrote back in 2016 about all of this. They’re available via the tab above, but here you go.
