Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The High School Issue
From the beginning, the agreement in our family has been that the kids will be homeschooled through middle school age and then get to decide for themselves if they want to go to high school. My older son is now 12 and I’m beginning to feel the “high school” noose tightening.
Iulius is not sure what he wants to do about school yet – he has some really good homeschooled friends and has just begun participating in a homeschooling teen group and he currently feels pretty satisfied with his life.
I just don’t know how I feel about it.
I mean, I’m a very big advocate of homeschooling all the way through. You may quite validly ask why I’m even considering the high school issue at all.
I can tell you that academic progress is not at all part of the issue. I’m quite confident that I can teach the 3 of them history, literature, writing, and mostly everything else that’s offered in high school better than any other teacher. My husband can take care of the things I don’t know much about.
I’m kind of embarrassed about the reason I’m thinking about high school for the kids.
. . . it’s socialization!
Well, not really, but it is all about the social aspect of their development. Here are the problems:
1. There aren’t a great number of homeschooled teens around to broaden their social circle; and
2. The homeschooled kids there are often live VERY far away from us.
When the kids are young, there seems to be an unending supply of homeschooled kids for them to hang out with. But, somewhere along the way, the kids start disappearing. Family circumstances change and the kids end up in school, or the plan was always just to homeschool in the early years. By the time the kids get to be middle school aged, it’s like the plague has hit or something. The kids are disappearing all the time.
Our local public high school has something close to 500 kids per class. That’s a lot to pick from. I’m sure my kids would be able to find their little niche and make some really good friends, although the academics would be lacking and somewhat ridiculous (for example, our local high school requires 1 unit of music credit that seems to have to be done there, at the school – my kids’ years of piano training can’t count for this particular credit). While it would matter if Iulius’ best friend left, there would be plenty of kids to hang out with.
But, really, you don’t need that many friends. Whenever adults speak of their high school years, they talk about their 3 or 4 closest friends. That’s all it takes for a good experience.
What if those friends live a long way away? I live in the Phoenix area and Iulius’ best friends live 25 minutes and 35 minutes away. The teen group is a long way away, too. Luckily, we have been doing a kind of pony express thing with the kids where I drop Iulius off half way with another friend (thank you LB), and then she takes them the rest of the way. There’s another teen group a little closer by, and it’s mostly girls – very nice ones, too. While this is basically a good thing for my son, I’ve noticed it’s a little difficult for a 12 year old boy to break into a girls’ group (even if he’s read the whole Twilight series).
But, if he went to the public high school, most of the kids would live really close by. Until he is 16, I just have to drive a couple of minutes to drop him off at a friend’s house. And when he can drive, the drive will be a short one for him, which would probably significantly reduce my anxiety. The bus picks him up in the morning to take him to school and drops him off in the afternoon. It’s so easy.
If only it weren’t for the whole institutionalization and dehumanization thing, I wouldn’t give it another thought.
So, what’s the answer?
I think technology is helpful. Email, texting, webcams, blogs, etc., can help keep the kids connected. But, call me a Luddite if you will, I don’t think all of that takes the place of real face-to-face meetings and hang out time.
I might just have to resign myself to driving a lot.
It also might be helpful if we could get together some sort of network of teen groups and individuals and work together to make more local groups, too.
The other part of the answer is to not send my son to school. Then there would be one more potential friend for other homeschooled kids.
(sigh)
Iulius is not sure what he wants to do about school yet – he has some really good homeschooled friends and has just begun participating in a homeschooling teen group and he currently feels pretty satisfied with his life.
I just don’t know how I feel about it.
I mean, I’m a very big advocate of homeschooling all the way through. You may quite validly ask why I’m even considering the high school issue at all.
I can tell you that academic progress is not at all part of the issue. I’m quite confident that I can teach the 3 of them history, literature, writing, and mostly everything else that’s offered in high school better than any other teacher. My husband can take care of the things I don’t know much about.
I’m kind of embarrassed about the reason I’m thinking about high school for the kids.
. . . it’s socialization!
Well, not really, but it is all about the social aspect of their development. Here are the problems:
1. There aren’t a great number of homeschooled teens around to broaden their social circle; and
2. The homeschooled kids there are often live VERY far away from us.
When the kids are young, there seems to be an unending supply of homeschooled kids for them to hang out with. But, somewhere along the way, the kids start disappearing. Family circumstances change and the kids end up in school, or the plan was always just to homeschool in the early years. By the time the kids get to be middle school aged, it’s like the plague has hit or something. The kids are disappearing all the time.
Our local public high school has something close to 500 kids per class. That’s a lot to pick from. I’m sure my kids would be able to find their little niche and make some really good friends, although the academics would be lacking and somewhat ridiculous (for example, our local high school requires 1 unit of music credit that seems to have to be done there, at the school – my kids’ years of piano training can’t count for this particular credit). While it would matter if Iulius’ best friend left, there would be plenty of kids to hang out with.
But, really, you don’t need that many friends. Whenever adults speak of their high school years, they talk about their 3 or 4 closest friends. That’s all it takes for a good experience.
What if those friends live a long way away? I live in the Phoenix area and Iulius’ best friends live 25 minutes and 35 minutes away. The teen group is a long way away, too. Luckily, we have been doing a kind of pony express thing with the kids where I drop Iulius off half way with another friend (thank you LB), and then she takes them the rest of the way. There’s another teen group a little closer by, and it’s mostly girls – very nice ones, too. While this is basically a good thing for my son, I’ve noticed it’s a little difficult for a 12 year old boy to break into a girls’ group (even if he’s read the whole Twilight series).
But, if he went to the public high school, most of the kids would live really close by. Until he is 16, I just have to drive a couple of minutes to drop him off at a friend’s house. And when he can drive, the drive will be a short one for him, which would probably significantly reduce my anxiety. The bus picks him up in the morning to take him to school and drops him off in the afternoon. It’s so easy.
If only it weren’t for the whole institutionalization and dehumanization thing, I wouldn’t give it another thought.
So, what’s the answer?
I think technology is helpful. Email, texting, webcams, blogs, etc., can help keep the kids connected. But, call me a Luddite if you will, I don’t think all of that takes the place of real face-to-face meetings and hang out time.
I might just have to resign myself to driving a lot.
It also might be helpful if we could get together some sort of network of teen groups and individuals and work together to make more local groups, too.
The other part of the answer is to not send my son to school. Then there would be one more potential friend for other homeschooled kids.
(sigh)
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