I have homeschooled five of my children for variouslengths of time. I had help from friends, other parents,and community resources, but precious little from any of the rot I had learned in the “College of Education” in our State Land Grant University.
THe first time I started homeschooling was when my eldest had lost most of her prior knowledge while in Kindergarten and gained non at all, was in a “Montessori” public school program in which she was not permitted to use the materials she needed most (fine motor), and had a teacher whose notes home I was constantly blue-penciling as her ability to write was laughable. Oh yes, and then when my second child who had been in Special Education as a preschooler, got ZERO transition from the school, and in fact their staff managed to FORGET a two hour “transition ” meeting…I simply decided “enough.” It took less time to homeschool those children than it did to fight with the schools so they might do their job.
I spent 6 years homeschooling 4 kids at that time. All transitioned, at the top of their classes, to a small nonpublic school, and then to larger public high schools. All have been doing well in University, the eldest is in grad school, second (who had early intervention, graduated with Honors in English (in 7 semesters while working 32 hours a week), third is a Dean’s List Japanese major, currently in Tokyo for Junior Year, and fourth just started as a Freshman and has one Dean’s List semster so far.
Youngest child “needs” special Ed. Notwithstanding this, he is now at home except for therapies. The school personnel at his previous placement managed to toilet un-train him and to teach him that the best way to get out of doing work was throwing a big enough hissy fit to distract the licensed personnel. We are still working to modify these behaviors.
Obviously, from my experience, licensure and socialization are both red herrings. And I am no kind of religious fanatic, by the way, merely a fairly middle of the road Conservative Jew.
