Homeschooling: the key

I stumbled into the homeschooling community eight years ago when I applied for a job as a Shakespeare teacher at a homeschooling center on craigslist.  In my five years teaching in the Portland, Oregon homeschooling community, I was blown away by the enthusiasm, curiosity, and joy in learning my students had.  My husband and I, still several years away from having children of our own, realized that of course we would homeschool our children. 

Having made the decision to homeschool first, for us homeschooling has been the key to understanding the life we want to lead: an integrated, supportive, and encouraging family-centered life with every individual learning, growing, and following their passions. 

Attachment parenting, living a lower-income lower-cost lifestyle in a small town with more flexible working hours, extended (what a silly name!  I'll call it "exactly the right amount of. . .") breastfeeding, sleeping with our baby, not worrying that our almost-two-year-old is not yet speaking much, taking our baby to parties and on vacations with us. . . for us, knowing that we are going to homeschool makes all of these other decisions obvious.

We've read some inspiring and compelling books about homeschooling, but we've begun to notice that books that are not consciously about homeschooling sometimes give the very best arguments in its favor.

Just today I was rereading a section of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and I came across this paragraph in the section on Organizational Mission Statements:

"Now, in the early stages - when a person is new to an organization or when a child in the family is young - you can pretty well give them a goal and they'll buy it, particularly if the relationship, orientation, and training are good.

But when people become more mature and their own lives take on a separate meaning, they want involvement, significant involvement.  And if they don't have that involvement, they don't buy it.  Then you have a significant motivational problem which cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it."

Wow!  Isn't that a searing indictment of public schooling?  And notice that he is assuming that the "relationship, orientation, and training are good": this is a best-case scenario! 

People wonder why kids aren't more motivated at school, why they say "school is boring", or wonder "why do I need to learn this?".  It is because they are not allowed "significant involvement" in their education.  They don't get to choose what they are learning.  Their intrinsic motivation is stifled and curbed.