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Posted by Kate on 11/29/2008, 11:54 pm, in reply to "not enough peanut butter"
Homeschooling was not something I really wanted to do. I had friends that homeschooled (including the one that had encouraged me to join this new church). I hung out with the homeschoolers in the summer so my kids could participate in the activities and play with the other children. Virtually all of the other families we met were homeschooling for religious reasons -- Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, all different denominations. We just didn't feel led to do that. In fact, during the school year, it was a wonderful break when my older boys went to school, and I had time with just the toddler.
But...my boys have ADD, and were having great difficulty focusing in school. Both read very young and were very bright. The oldest one's teacher kept complaining about his distracted behavior and lack of concentration, and he was on medication for it. The younger one was bored to tears in class and disruptive and getting into trouble, and they were pushing me to put him on meds, too. Then my oldest started showing signs of severe depression -- at age eight! -- so that was enough, and we pulled them out to teach them at home.
My methods were...different than other homeschooling families' we had met. We didn't buy all Christian textbooks. Sometimes we didn't use textbooks at all. Some of the other families were appalled and outraged that I taught my kids mythology, and evolution, and art history with actual naked people in the paintings! What was wrong with me? The only time the nudes disturbed my kids was when my oldest pointed out that flying babies with no diapers on was a terrible idea, because they could do a heckuva lot more damage than pigeons.
As co-leader of the homeschool support group in our small town and the surrounding rural area, I went to a few homeschool conventions. I remember being surrounded by a gaggle of women in denim jumpers, with cute little apple-shaped buttons down the front, many with head coverings and/or hair in neat braids, carrying tote bags with stenciled schoolhouses and sayings like, "My 12 children are a blessing from the LORD." And then there was me...misbehaving curly hair (certainly no head covering), blue jeans, Birkenstocks, tie-dyed t-shirt. You could say I sorta stood out.
So this one particular gaggle was talking about how we shouldn't send our daughters to college because they would be exposed to all of these secular, worldly ideas, and it was just much better if we trained them to be mothers and wives and keepers at home.
I opened my big fat mouth and said, "Really? What if God doesn't plan for your daughter to get married? What if there is no husband in her future, remember Paul said it was better to remain unmarried... Or what if her husband dies and she is left to support her children -- shouldn't she have an education so she can get a job to take care of those kids?" There were lots of raised eyebrows and shocked silence, but I forged on ahead, glutton for punishment that I am. "And you know, I'm teaching algebra for 7th to 12th graders because a lot of the moms in our group are intimidated by math. Any moms that plan to teach their kids at home would benefit from some refresher college courses in Math, English, History, Science...all the basics. Then they will sharpen their skills and be better teachers."
Oh horrors. I suggested not only their daughters go to college, but that THEY would benefit from college classes. You could have heard a pin drop. All these ladies stood there gawking at me like I'd just gotten off a bus from Mars.
Alrighty then...I shut up again, red-faced, and slunk off, leaving the scandalized whispers behind me. But I'd had just about enough of this constant shutting up and keeping my thoughts to myself.
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