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By Root 293 0

decide whether you want to homeschool? Obviously, if you’ve picked up this book, you’re at least intrigued by the idea. Equally obviously, you need a lot of information to help you decide. The rest of this book will tell you how homeschooling works for families who’ve been at it for years and for families who’ve just started. We’ll talk about the academic research into its effectiveness, about the legal rules governing it, and about the variety of possible approaches to learning at home. We’ll cover some practical aspects of homeschooling: where to look for materials, how much it can cost, and how to evaluate what you’re doing. Most of all, we’ll try to give you some idea of what homeschooling can be like from day to day and what you can typically expect at various stages of the process.

While you’re reading this book, try to think about what you want for your children, what abilities and knowledge you’d like them to have as adults, and how homeschooling might help to achieve those goals. Think also about how your family works and what methods you would be comfortable with. It might help to consider the following questions and to reread them occasionally as you go through the book. These aren’t questions you need to answer definitively or specifically before you ultimately decide, but thinking about how you might answer them will help you as you gather information and determine whether you want to take the plunge into homeschooling.

Why are you considering homeschooling? Are your reasons educational, social, political, religious, or some combination of these? How will your reasons affect your family’s approach to homeschooling? Your methods? Your choice of materials?

Who will make the decisions about homeschooling? Can everyone in the family live with the consequences of those decisions?

How would your children feel about the idea? How do their expectations compare with yours? Do they have friends and activities outside of school? Would homeschooling be a major adjustment for them?

How do your friends and relatives feel about homeschooling? Will the feelings or opinions of others (friends, family, officials, “experts”) cause problems for you? How will you deal with them?

How much planning do you want to do? Can you trust yourself and your children to learn, or would some kind of packaged curriculum better suit your style?

How will teaching your kids at home affect your life? What trade-offs will you have to make? Will the benefits be worth the sacrifices? Will money be a problem?

And the absolutely determining question that you must consider seriously: Do you genuinely enjoy spending time with your children? This is not “Do you love your children?” or even “Do you like your children?” The question is whether you enjoy spending large amounts of time with your children every single day. No matter what your reasons for homeschooling are, homeschooling will not work if, aside from the normal, everyday squabbles and upsets we all go through, you do not enjoy each other’s company most of the time.

CHAPTER ONE

Does Homeschooling Really Work, or What Do We Tell the Grandparents?

EXPERIENCED HOMESCHOOLERS—those who’ve been at it for at least a couple of years—often forget how scary the first year can be. New homeschoolers have so many new ideas to think about and so many possible options to consider, all while they’re trying to make themselves comfortable with the idea of dispensing with such a traditional part of American childhood. No matter how attractive and plausible the idea of homeschooling sounds, it’s hard to avoid that underlying worry about whether it’s really a reasonable and effective means of education.

New homeschoolers may alternate between two extreme fantasies about the long-term results of choosing homeschooling for their families. The first may be prompted by some lovely late autumn afternoon spent watching your daughter patiently working with her younger brother to organize a collection of fallen leaves by shape and color. Maybe they’ll grow up to be respected scientists, you