I wonder how many homeschoolers start their journey in February. Every year there is a new wave of parents and children who become fed up with the failures of the education system. I’m seeing a lot of frantic questions as families choose to escape mid school year.
One of the common concerns is about making sure the child stays on her learning course. I understand the fear of “falling behind,” but the school has been lacking, not the home.
When responding to an “I don’t want her to miss anything” question, I replied with this:
There’s a lot you want her to miss. That’s why you’re pulling her from her current arrangement, right?
Trying to “keep up” with a system that has failed you and your daughter is not the way to go.
The first step is to stop with institutionalized education and observe what its effects have been. Notice the damage and heal before moving forward. Your daughter has seen many more hours in a classroom than even the most driven home educators employ in a full year. You both need a break.
This is the doorway to deschooling. Parent and child must escape the assumptions trained into us by generations of compulsory schooling. It looks like a vacation at first, but becomes unnerving when you realize how many things about your own path that you have not examined. I believe it becomes life’s mission to know oneself. As we observe our children, we observe ourselves. Home education gives you a clear, broad window into your child’s life and a mirror by which to examine your own.
