We haven't mentioned anything to our families abroad about our intention to homeschool our girls yet. It's a long process to bring it down to them and make them trust and respect our decision.
We are a trilingual family, the first generation of immigrants to the US whose English language is NOT a mother tongue, want to homeschool our children. Why?
There is no simple and short answer to it. I and my husband haven't been schooled in the US, and we are not familiar with the system from the first hand. I loved going to school in the former Soviet Union, and my husband totally disliked his school experience.
But since we've been living in the US, we've been very vigilant to the surrounding us social environment, and we are growing more and more into the idea of attached parenting and homeschooling. My husband is a self-employed contractor. So he gets to see a lot of families, thier lifestyles and relationships. And in most cases those are very pitiful families. There is very little or no respect, love, communication, understanding, compassion in a family. Kids from "better" neighborhoods go to the "better" schools. But what is "better" if students in one of the high schools in Marlboro, NJ are taught to subcontract their homework and essays to other students for a fee. Supposedly that's teaching them "business relations". Absurd... And when the WTC was going down, one high school student said, "Oh, my God! Is this going to be bad for the ecomony?" That was all she had said, as my husband was a witness! Shocking...
Did we have doubts about us being capable to pull it through? A recently watched report done by John Stssel, "Stupid in America", had become that "drop" we needed to decide for sure that homeschooling is the right path for our children and for our family. We have no doubts anymore.
I've planted a seed of homeschooling into my head about two years ago. I've done a lot of reading and research, met with homeschooling families, given ourselves a trying period to see how we can handle this, and how our children respond to this. I don't believe it'll be easy, but difficulties have never scared me.
And now we won't have to await our children to come home with trepidation hoping that today it was safe in school. Now we won't have to spend hours and hours of tedious homework and then try to really teach them something about the world we live in. Now we won't have to find a way how to squeeze quality family time into their busy schedules. Now we won't have to worry about the negative influence of the peer pressure and the need to be dressed into the brand clothes to be admitted into the "popular circle". They'll know that not blending in but rather standing out is a good thing.
Recently, I've read an excellent book that gave me a vivid picture of what the schools are about in the US. "Dumbing Us Down. The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling", written by John Taylor Gatto, an award-winning teacher of 26 years in Manhattan's public schools. And he raised a good question:
"...What is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be? Reading, writing, and arithmetic can't be the answer because properly approched those things can be taught in less that a hundred hours-and we have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time. Why, then are the kids locked up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years?"
Wealth dominates the schools in the US. There is a major segregation of working poor and well-off families. In reality kids do not get the real picture of the social structure of the society, but rather a distorted one. So why the first question about homeschooling is always about socializing. And what about it? Modern schools are not the right place to acquire that skill. Participating in real life and learning from that experience is. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand", wrote Confucius.
Discovering meaning for yourself, and discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How can this be done by locking children away from the world? Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual. It should teach you how to tackle the challenges and grow, it should make you spiritually reach, a person who loves whatever you do, wherever you are, whomever you are with. It should teach you what's really important in life.
"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten", B.F. Skinner.
10 comments:
Great post! I need to read "Dumbing Us Down". It will be the next on my list for the library. You have some wonderful thought provoking points. I love the Confusius quote. That is something that I remind myself. My kids all learn differently but the one thing that they have in common is that they are very hands on.
I am so happy to find your blog. I am an American, although my husband is an immigrant from Colombia. One of our reasons for homeschooling is to help maintain two cultures for our children and two languages that they can fluently read, write and speak. In a homogeneous school system, everyone is supposed to learn the same thing, and their Hispanic culture would definitely be marginalized.
Wonderful! I cannot encourage you more...as homeschooling has been more rewarding and successful than I had ever dreamed! You will not regret it!
Great Post. I can tell you have put a lot of thought into beginning the homeschool adventure!
Thanks for this great post!
I'm so excited that YOU'RE excited about your homeschooling adventure.
And let me tell, it DOES work. I'm the oldest of six in my family, and I'll graduate this June. We've all been homeschooled right from the very beginning. There couldn't have been a better way to go for us.
I'll be going to a local uni' this fall, and I feel that the education I got at home was every bit worth the so-called "lack of socialization," "lack of teacher expertise", "lack of [insert comment/concern here]". I'm nervous, of course, but feel very prepared for the challenges that await me on campus.
I enjoyed your article! I would like to ask all you dual-culture homeschoolers out there about it--my brother and his wife would love to homeschool, but she doesn't speak English all that well and they are both worried that their kids would not learn good English-writing skills if she were their main teacher. (Their primary language at home is Korean.) Is this something to worry about, and how can I help them figure out what to do? Sorry if this is inappropriate--I've never found anyone to ask about this.
I think I'm the rigth person to answer this.
You know, I'm learning English, I'm from Mexico and living in the US and homeschooling my 4 kids. The oldest is reading very fluently in both, English and Spanish. He is just 6yo.
I can read English, I can write a little but I don't speak English yet.
We are learning together!
Once they are reading, you are just watching them learn by themself.
The important thing is to infuse the love for learning from the begining. And that does not have language.
Irlanda Salas
I used to worry about how our kids are going to learn to speak English, but not anymore. As long as she has English speaking friends and speaks English outside the home, she'll be just fine. Maybe she isn't as fluent as other kids her age, but I know that she'll catch up. Even though sometimes she asks me to help her out to express herself in English, but in a long run it's absolutely beneficial to know another language(s) in life. She'll be 5 in August and she reads in Russian (sentences!). She knows all the Latin letters and the sounds and trying to read as well. I guess I'll blog about that :)
Thanks, you two. I'll run it by them. But it might be more my brother's idea than hers--dunno yet.
And a brag on bilingualism--my one niece is two and can get along in four languages!! She doesn't talk much yet but understands English, German, Russian, and Polish. She knows that when her mom says something to her in Russian, her grandma can't understand it and needs English. Wow.
Loved your post! I preferred John Taylor Gatto's "A Different Kind of Teacher" to "Dumbing Us Down", you may also want to read that one.
I also want to suggest the great book which I had a hard time putting down as it was so rivoting, "The Way It Spozed To Be: by James Herndon. This is a unique look into one school teacher's first year of teaching. It was first published in 1968.
Welcome to the homeschooling community!
(My family also practices attachment parenting.)
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