It's been an interesting past few weeks, to say the least. We're getting our family ready to move closer to extended family, and this makes us incredibly happy. In the transition, we found a charter school in the new area that impressed us. We decided to try it (for little Z) for one year. It might not be permanent, it will all depend on how things go. However, I am so very surprised at how many people (family included) that have jumped at the chance to say how great it will be that our kids will have different points of view to look at, and a chance with a teacher other than myself. This irritates me to no end, and it's not because I think I'm the world's best teacher. It irritates me because people assume that children taught at home are only getting one side of the story (as opposed to kids who are in school).
Knowing the many homeschoolers I know, I am confident that I can state that I am not rare in the fact that my children take classes outside of the home. We have art lessons, group science classes / co-op, dance lessons, church activities, scouting (both boy and girl scouts), library groups, museum guides / tours, 4H, etc.... My children hear so many different points of view in a week, that we have to discuss many of our family values each night. My husband pointed out that some people do Family Home Evening once a week, ours is pretty much nightly. In contrast, when I send my son to a school with ONE TEACHER all day long, he will not be getting this worldly exposure. He will not even encounter the variety of children he encounters now. He'll be sitting with the same 30 children every day for nine months, with the same person's take on the world every single day.
Often, if I try to explain this to the person talking to me, they say, "Well, you homeschool differently than others." While that blanket statement is true (all homeschoolers have their own quirks and methods), I am still extremely confident that those who DON'T have multiple outside of the home experiences are the rare ones. Reading many different homeschooling newsletters (whether they be Christian or secular, classical or un-schooling), the same joke reigns supreme: We should call it car-schooling because we are rarely home. This is why history books on tape sell so well. You don't think we sit at home and listen to them, do you?
So, if you run into me in public, and notice me bristle when someone says, "I'm so glad your child will have this out of the house experience." You'll know why.
