Some think that because we are following what we consider a more natural approach to home education – following our children’s interests and allowing them choices – that we are sheltering our children from adversity and not instilling enough discipline. I’d like to tackle this issue.
First of all, it’s important to realize that schooling as we know it isn’t necessarily education. Children can actually sit for 12 or 13 years in an institutional school and come out knowing absolutely nothing of practical value. So much time has been spent simply following instructions without understanding why and doing mindless repetitious busywork that many children exit school with no idea how to think for themselves.

During the six years that my children were in the public schools I did my best to work with the system, drilling my children on their reading words and math facts, helping them with homework, and re-teaching when needed. I also spent a large share of my time trying to help my children understand why other children were so cruel (to them and to others), why teachers had pets and pick-on posts, why the lunchroom monitor screamed at the children constantly, and a variety of other ?social? issues.

At the time, I didn’t know about homeschooling so I was totally focused on attempting to acclimate my children to this shifting, ever-changing environment while helping them to retain the values we hold dear. Some of these include treating others as we want to be treated, settling disputes peacefully, and non-violence. How do we teach a kindergarten child to deal peacefully with being thrown into the urinal in the school restroom by the class bully? Or the first grader having his food taken off his lunch tray by another student? Since such incidents were unobserved by the adults in charge, my children had to deal with them on their own. Believe me, it’s a challenge to help children understand why they shouldn’t retaliate in kind, and we all know what happens to the child who tattles! As someone whose school experience had consisted of verbal onslaughts rather than physical acts of terrorism, I hardly knew what to tell my children. Reacting in kind was not acceptable, it’s a little hard to ignore such behavior and expect it to go away, and ?ratting? earned the disdain of one’s peers. The social issues were usually a larger part of the re-teaching and discussion than the educational ones. I wonder how often that’s true for the majority of our compulsory-educated children? Perhaps that’s why we hear so much about socialization rather than academics when people hear we are homeschooling. That kind of socialization we can do without!

Our boys were in fifth and second grades when we began homeschooling. Our older son, Ryan, was a round peg in a square hole, an auditory/kinesthetic learner in a verbal/linguistic environment. Even so, when testing was done for the gifted and talented program, he only missed it by three points, in spite of the fact that his teacher sent him to testing right off the playground, telling him he didn’t have time to use the restroom, and without his reading glasses! Talk about a handicap! Squinting and squirming, a child who froze when taking tests, he still only missed it by three points! I’ve always wondered what his score would have been under optimal conditions! Aaron, our second son, tested into the gifted and talented program in first grade, but the program didn’t start until third grade. Bored in school, Aaron spent a lot of time waiting for the rest of the class to finish their worksheets. Meanwhile, he drew elaborate pencil sketches on the backs of his own papers. When his teacher told me at a conference that Aaron was way ahead in reading and math, I asked if there was a pull-out program or if he could do more advanced work. She told me that school policy didn’t allow them to accelerate him. At the time I thought that was weird, but wasn’t aware of anything I could do about it. However, when we decided to homeschool Ryan because we saw what his school experience was doing to his personality, emotional health and general attitude towards himself and life, Aaron begged and pleaded to be homeschooled, too. Why? He didn’t want to ride the big yellow bus or be on the playground without his big brother. He was afraid! He was also bored, bored, bored with school despite his popularity. In later years, their response amazed me when I asked my boys how they would feel if they had to go back to public schools because of a change in family situation! Both of them said they could deal with it but hoped they wouldn’t have to ride the bus. Do parents even realize what their children are going through in the name of socialization and education?

As a beginning homeschooler, I read books on curriculum planning, and researched methods and texts and styles. I read John Holt’s Teach Your Own, missing most of the nuances of his writings, and Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore’s Better Late Than Early and Home-Spun Schools, as well. Based on my own memories of school, and my experience as a room mother, I planned days segmented into subjects, and planned to teach using the ?tried-and-true? methods such as textbooks, tests, drills, and all the rest. Luckily, because of working with my sons, I did realize that Ryan was a hands-on learner, as well as being very auditory. I planned to supplement with plenty of real life experiences and hands-on projects, and since Aaron was very advanced, we studied many subjects together, despite the three year difference in ages. Still, read the chapter, answer the questions, drill and memorize, take the test, were a large part of our home education during the first year. Most of the homeschoolers I talked with used ?school-at-home? methods, too, and one mother told me most seriously that one must have children do every single math problem in the Saxon math books or risk failure. I don’t know for sure how long it would have taken me to realize on my own that children learn best when following their interests, but we were lucky that life stepped in and gave us a huge lesson in March of our first homeschool year.

The arrival of our daughter from Korea, a grieving, needy, sleep-fighting six-month old, wreaked havoc on our careful lesson plans, but freed us to learn serendipitously that our children were capable of learning on their own. In my sleep-deprived fog. our lesson plans fell by the wayside, and I was doing well to keep up with the baby, a toddler, laundry, dishes, and minimal housework. Meantime, the two older boys helped with the baby or the toddler when needed, did their chores as they’d become used to doing, and lo! They spent an inordinate amount of time using the computer. At that time, the only games we had were educational. Donald Duck’s Playground taught money skills, and the Carmen Sandiego games inspired my boys to use the encyclopedia and atlas to find the answers so they could win the game. We had ?Where in the World?? (geography), ?Where in Space??(science), and ?Where in Time?? (history). I finally relaxed and realized they were probably learning and retaining more than they had during my lesson times. And that was how I learned about inner motivation as the best teacher.

We have been programmed to believe that in order for our children to get into good schools, or get a good job, they have to be prepared by spending twelve to thirteen years of their life doing boring things which they hate doing. I’m sure I bought into that once, too. But I adamantly do not believe it now. Life itself includes plenty of things we don’t like. Just because we are following our children’s interests while planning their learning experiences doesn’t mean they always love everything that they have to do: chores around the house, getting along with each other, even doing some of the activities that we do as homeschoolers. Life isn’t always a bowl of cherries, but we don’t have to prepare them for all pits, either, do we?

Many unschoolers take unconventional routes into the arenas of work and higher education. Volunteer work they do by choice as a youngster may lead to a career. The small business they start as a way to earn pocket money as a teen leads to a career. So by following interests they get into a job they love. Granted, even a job you love has it’s downsides - but they learned that already when they were volunteering or running that small business. They’ve seen it modeled by their parents, as well. For instance it’s well known by my children that their father, a painting contractor, doesn’t particularly enjoy scraping an old weather-beaten house but in order to provide a top-quality job for his customer, the prep work must be done well! And they know how much I hate editing and rewriting, but it also has to be done to provide a good product! Still, they also know that we are both working at something we love, so we are willing to take the bad with the good. That’s life!

Home educated kids, especially unschoolers, learn from real life experiences. They are often in the real world, doing community service, running their own small business, or being employed by the family business. They often learn real life lessons much earlier than the kids who are in the artificial environment of institutional school. Think about it! Most institutional schools expect kids to sit and wait for someone to tell them what page to turn to, what lesson to do, and how many pages of homework to complete. Is it any wonder that they graduate to become adults who get a job just to make enough money to make it through until Friday and then party into oblivion? That’s where we get that “watch the clock, when’s the next break?, paycheck to paycheck, TGIF!? mindset. We are living in a culture that programs people to think that their job is a pain, just something they have to do. I grew up hearing my father talk about his job, and feeling that most of the time he hated it. He talked about opening a donut shop, or a restaurant, but never could bring himself to leave the security of that steady paycheck and the benefits of his government position. From my position as a home educator I wonder whether his early programming in the institutional schools attributed to that decision. His work-induced nervous breakdown forced him to take an early disability retirement, and showed me early on that finding a job that’s more than a means to an end is important to one’s mental and physical health.

Here’s a little thought: where else besides school do we shut age-peers into rooms where they have no autonomy, must ask permission to get a drink, use the restroom, or leave the room or building? What does this really prepare people for in the real world? We all know that the only place we will experience anything similar is in prison. So why are we placing our children into such an environment as a regular part of their early childhood experience? Eventually the point comes, often at age eighteen, when people wonder why their kids don’t know how to think for themselves, need to ask their boss about every little detail, don’t have any internal motivation, don’t take initiative for getting things done, live from break to break and weekend to weekend, and whine about the boss telling them every move to make. Unschoolers like to prepare their kids to be as happy as they can be in life by helping them find a job/career that they enjoy. Allowing them to explore their interests is a good way to find such a job or career. If they have an interest that they can turn into a small business, or a career goal to pursue by apprenticeship or mentorship, they can take the good and bad with equilibrium.

Another common misconception: “I would think that the unschooling method would be great in the elementary grades, to get a student enthusiastic about learning, but later they would need some discipline along with the love to learn.”

Unschooling works wonderfully with all ages; I know many, many unschooled teens that are doing very well in college and the work world. We are finally getting to the point where we can start pointing at young homeschooled adults and saying, “See, we don’t need any more proof than that.”

So often people think that allowing a child some choice, or respecting their opinion means there is no discipline. It’s really important to look at what discipline means. It comes from the word disciple, which means follower. So that means we, as parents and disciplinarians, have the role of leading and guiding. We aren’t just turning our kids loose to follow their interests, we are leading and guiding the path they take in following those interests. By finding materials, planning field trips, and providing experiences that relate to their interests, we are leading and guiding them. We are providing external structure and motivation when they need it, but they don’t need as much external discipline when they love what they are doing! When they are internally motivated to learn because they are interested, you don’t have to come down on them to get them to do things. And they retain more, because they are interested.

Why do so many people think that children have to be forced to do things they hate so we have to provide lots of external discipline to get them to do so? Isn’t it possible that if we learn to know and understand our children we can help them learn the same things in a positive way? The word disciple comes from the Scriptures. Jesus guides us by His Example. He doesn’t force us to serve Him but he shows us that it’s best for us if we do serve Him. That’s what we try to do every day when we are working with our kids. We show the kids our enthusiasm for learning new things, we share our love for learning, we model learning (looking things up, taking classes, etc.) and we work with them on things. That’s discipline at it’s best - leading in such a way that the children want to follow.

I’d like to leave you with a couple of quotes that have meant a lot to me during my homeschooling journey:

Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to it’s original dimension.? — Oliver Wendall Holmes

The object of teaching a child is to enable the child to get along without the teacher. We need to educate our children for their future, not our past.? —Arthur C. Clarke

About the author: Marsha Ransom has introduced herself well in these last two articles she has graciously contributed. Stay tuned for her soon-to-be-published book ?The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Homeschooling?. As a state liason for the National Home Education Network, she is responsible for helping home educators find support groups in their area. She has spoken at a number of conferences on such topics as Getting Started in Homeschooling, Relaxed Unit Studies, and Apprenticeships and Mentorships for Teens. She has also been published in several homeschool, parenting and family publications. Look for an excerpt of her new book in the next Family Times.