schooling

Doug and I have been talking a lot lately about homeschooling our kids. We're not religious fanatics, and we don't think our kids would get shot up by psychos in trenchcoats, we just hated making dioramas in English class and want to shield our children from such horrors. In all seriousness, we see the neighborhood kids coming home from school at 4 or 4:30 to then do 1-2 hours of homework (in elementary school) which doesn't leave them much time do play or do other activities. We think we could teach them what they learn in school in half of the time thereby leaving them lots of time to be kids. This blog post, however, is not about whether or not we will homeschool our children. That is a post in and of itself. This post is about what happens if you do homeschool your children.

If you choose to homeschool, you are inevitably lumped in with other homeschoolers. There you have the very conservative Christians, the rebels, the weirdos, and hopefully a few normal parents who just want to try something different. In reading some homeschool blogs that are by non-conservative Christians (not that I'm opposed to the conservative Christians, but I wouldn't choose a curriculum aimed at the conservative Christian crowd because I'd choose a curriculum aimed at the advanced student crowd and from what I can tell, the two are mutually exclusive). Anyway - my basic point is that traditionally, homeschooling is full of whackjobs. Now, I'm willing to admit that Doug and I might not be so far off of that norm, but in reading the blogs of other homeschool moms and dads, I have to laugh. The non-Christian centered ones are largely organic, tree hugging, naturalist parents. Ones that serve dishes like seedy broccoli salad. Hemp? Nutritional yeast? If I put that in front of Doug, I'm pretty sure he'd say, "look - I took you for better or for worse, in sickness and in health... but I'm damn sure I never signed on for this." Elisabeth would forego dessert because she wouldn't put any of it in her mouth. And that kid will eat nearly anything to get dessert (as an aside, yesterday I taught her how to swallow peas whole, like they are pills, so she could get her dessert. See? excellent homeschooling mom).

The homeschool moms who blog are so organized. So neat. And they don't cringe at the idea of poster paints. I am not that mom. Seedy broccoli salad shall never grace our house. I wouldn't know where to find hemp if I tried. If we homeschool, it will be because of efficiency reasons. And avoiding ridiculous tasks like dioramas. And if we homeschool, you should all stay tuned as I'm sure this space will become hilariously funny. I just hope I don't have to blog from a jail cell.

p.s. I need a group of local friends who want to start a sort of co-op school where we'd each teach a subject or two (I'm clearly responsible for physics. All of my MIT friends need to immediately cease and desist the laughter). So all of you folks who currently live in NYC, seriously - it sucks up there. Move here. Teach your kids with me. It'll be fun. I can promise you no nutritional yeast!! Another ideal situation would be a school where we could keep them home 2-3 days/week and teach them some subjects then send them to school for the remainder of the week.