Home Schooling Can Be the Ultimate Educational Experience

Education is one of the prime functions of parenthood.  Shortly after our offspring is born, the nurturing of the child with love and the very basics of life are the initial lesson.  What happens thereafter can vary greatly from parent to parent.  

 

There are many terrific parents in our society. However, it seems that for many others, parenting pretty much ends not long after a child’s birth. That certainly wasn’t the case for me and my son David. 

 

Children normally don’t enter any regular classroom environment until pre-school or kindergarten.  But a lot can be taught to a child before then.  It was natural for me to expose David to many simple things in nature by taking him to local and state parks.  Many things are found along a simple trail or by a creek.  Teaching can include concepts like the changing appearance of shadows at varying times of day. 

In the early 1990s, I did a story on a top high school diver who was home schooled until about seventh grade.  Upon attending school, she was ranked #1 in her class for two straight years!   I then researched and found that, once in school, the average home schooled child was in the 93^rd percentile academically.  That knowledge and the strong bond I had already developed with David made his early education choice an easy one.  

 

In addition to writing and working part-time at Western Union, I home schooled David from most of September 1994-June 2000, and did likewise with two of his half-brothers for most of those last three years. 

 

During home schooling, the children and I participated in countless events and activities through the North County and West County Christian Home School groups, and they were the only children whose primary teacher was a male. I handled all the teaching after the first three weeks. We were also the only ones who didn’t use a pre-packaged curriculum.  Finally, instead of just doing the required 1,000 units in a calendar year, with 600 being core units, we averaged about 1,300 core units of some 1,700 total units.

David also won two spelling bees, took violin lessons at a regular school, and played two years of Catholic Youth Council basketball through another school.  I also involved him in Cub Scouts and he had ample time to go to the park down our street and play sports and do other acitivites with the neighborhood children.

In addtion, David was doing just about all high school work well before he went to regular school in fifth grade.  He was ultimately one of just about 25 in his high school class who graduated Summa Cum Laude among some 500 students.  Both of his half-brothers, who had struggled to maintain 2.0 grade point averages, became 3.0 students once returning to public school.

A few years later, I attended one of the monthly meetings of St. Louis Mensa, held at the Washington University extension on Forsyth.  Back then, there was a special guest speaker or forum based on a different subject.  I will never forget the one that concentrated on various forms of teaching.

The panel was represented by teachers and administrators of public and private schools, magnet schools, and Montessori schools.  There is just one thing I currently recall about the exchange between panel members and the crowd of about 50 Mensa audience members. 

There were a couple panel members who, when asked about home schooling, immediately brought up the anti-socialization argument while offering no positive comments about home schooling.

 

At that time, I not only suffered from large group anxiety, but also had an extreme phobia about anything that resembled public speaking.  Nevertheless, I stood up, knees and voice shaking, and gave all on hand a detailed account of what home schooling could mean to a child.  Not only can it be a favorable way of helping keep a child's distance from many of the bad influences of life, but it's also a prime way of helping him build self-esteem and self-reliance.

I also firmly believe that home schooling is the best means of teaching a child HOW to think and not WHAT to think regarding the heavy doses of indoctrination evident at many schools. 

 

My life has been chock full of hundreds of highlights in writing and work awards, and activities saurrounding sports, travel, social functions, vacation planning, scrapbooking and other creative projects, astronomy, dancing, volunteer work and the like. But home schooling is probably the decision I've made for which I am most proud!