Another person's view of home-schooling

I cut and copied this from another person's facebook. The author is Collette Deneault/Oldham
My views on homeschooling were the typical concerns:
(1.) I felt they weren't being socialized (based on one family I knew
whose kids did not know how to socialize.)
(2.) I felt they couldn't possibly be learning as much as I was
"teaching"……..I was sure every kid was dying to know their
multiplication tables through music…..
And (3.) to top off my ego, I was sure that I was doing a much better
job with 25 kids, than a mom could possibly do one-on-one with no
curriculum bought materials.
Then it happened. I became a grandmother and my grandkids were going
to be, not just homeschooled but unschooled. This required some re-
direction on my part. But fortunately, I didn't need too much
persuasion as my last few years in the classroom were convincing
enough. This together with reading lots of books, magazines and sites,
I was able to re-define what education meant to me.

First of all, teaching to the test had become the cornerstone of
"teaching". And if a student scored lower than a 4 on standardized
testing, he/she would be pulled out for extra "help". Any time for
planning fun activities got taken over with the recording and
analyzing of data. I slowly went from teacher to secretary in four
years. Each day became more cloned until everyone had to be on the
same page in order to compare/contrast. More workshops were brought
into the school, business consultants were hired (education having
become a business I suspect), and more curriculum was put into our day
with nothing removed. Recess was slowly taken away and kids were
forced to read or at least hold a book…..to help state scores.
Eventually, the school day was extended by a half an hour, a double
guarantee that more structured time would definitely help scores. No
school wants to be a school in need.

At one point in my teaching career, I decided to graph actual
"teaching" moments. Not necessarily learning moments but "teaching". I
came to the realization that I had about 2 hours a day where I had all
the kids at the same time. Pull out programs, designed to help kids,
were doing anything but that. Whether they needed it or not, these
kids were removed from a rich literature discussion and were made to
sit around a round table learning the sounds of the vowels and reading
rhyming books with absolutely no plot and no interest level. Anyway,
of those two hours of "non-interrupted time" in my class, kids were
still going in and out of the room for various reasons (nurse, school
store, bookmobile, banking, bathroom etc.). Moreover, any "new"
concept from our richstate driven curriculum was not necessarily a new
concept for everyone and for some it wasn't even important. Educating
children at school was practically becoming synonymous to torture for
both the teacher and the student. So you can imagine when the concept
of unschooling came up, I was more than ready to embrace a system of
learning that could indeed be called learning (and keep my grandkids
out of this bureaucratic mess).
And now back to my 3 original concerns:
(1.) I now see that socialization in a classroom may not be the
socialization you want your kids to model. Besides, contrary to
belief, there's little time in the day for kids to be kids and no time
in the day for kids to interact with adults. In a school setting,
adults are the people who tell kids what to do. A teacher does not
have time to have a conversation with each child every day. A home/
unschooled child, on the other hand, learns to communicate with
everyone, no matter what the age. I've come to realize and more
importantly witness, that socialization in the real world happens in
the real world and not behind closed doors with a bunch of other kids
the same age waiting for a teacher to tell them what to do. I'm
speaking from experience. I did that. I'm guilty! I'm glad I'm living
long enough to see the other side of the coin.

(2.) Yes, I now realize that kids at home ARE learning at home and as
a matter of fact, they are learning much more at home. They may not be
learning the government regulated curriculum, but who says you have to
read at 6, study eskimos at 7, egyptians at 8, the solar system at 9
and the constitution at 10. And when's the last time someone asked you
what 3/4ths of 7/8ths is? I find it much more rewarding to have my 6
year old grandson (who can't read yet ….and is not coded for this
"flaw"), to come flying in, in the morning to show me how his magnet
under the table moves his magnet over the table. From this we had a
discussion on magnets that would have taken me a day to set up in a
classroom and two days to deliver to a 3rd grade class, (certainly not
to be taught to a 2ndgrade class).

(3.) Lastly, yes, my ego took a much needed face lift. I no longer
believe that my 30 plus years in the classroom was more beneficial to
any child whose parents chose to homeschool. If I had to do it over
again with my own kids, it would be really wonderful to not have to
wake them up from a warm bed, stuff breakfast down their throats and
put them on a noisy bus only to be delivered to some other adult who's
in charge of 25 other kids, and then have them sit there all day being
told what to learn with little socialization. And in addition to
sitting on a hard seat most of the day next to some kid who may be
annoying, they all must walk down the hall quietly, hurry to eat, rush
outdoors to play in a 15 minutes recess disguised as socializing in a
sea of kids who are exactly the same age. Very realistic! And you
mustn't forget the kids who never get recess because the teachers keep
them in for extra help or better yet, take away their recess as a
punishment OMG! This really really does happen!

In summary:

A day in the life of my grandkids would go like this: Happy engaged
kids learning everything they WANT to know, eating when they are
hungry and resting when they are tired.

A day in the life of a schooled child: Happy or unhappy kids engaged
or not engaged in learning or not learning, eating when they may or
may not be hungry and unable to rest if they are tired.

IN SCHOOL I believe that

Some kids learn all the time

All kids learn some of the time

But not all kids learn all of the time

But for unschooled kids, they ARE learning ALL of the time. They are
living life and learning everything that need and want to learn.

The choice is evident to me!

Collette Deneault ~Teacher for 30 plus years & Grandma to 5