To School or To Homeschool...

Mentally, I’m having an internal war over school issues and I’m not even in school.  The options are: return to homeschooling or continue sending my girls to the charter school they’ve attended for two years.  Quite honestly, I’m stuck in the decision-making process.  We are currently four weeks away from the start of school and my mind is gridlocked.  Their school is the best school around, but I question whether it is really better for them than being taught at home.

My youngest daughter, Cameron, is 5 years old now and enrolled in kindergarten.  In South Carolina, kindergarten lasts all day and is mandatory.  Where we used to live, in Arizona, kindergarten was a half-day program and was optional.  I prefer this schedule because I think that very little is learned in kindergarten that cannot be learned at home through daily activities.  Most of the other things learned in kindergarten, I would prefer for Cameron not to learn; such as back-talking, overreacting, throwing tantrums to get one's way, whining, catching viruses, and the hierarchy of the elite social pecking order.  Cameron is sweet, innocent and beautiful because of it.  I’m just not ready to see the last five years of doe-eyed innocence disappear into a sea of snot-nosed brats who berate, taunt, tease and insult as a way to teach other kids the ropes in life.  Not that the adult world is without those people and these flaws.  But I question:  Why does my daughter have to go through it now?  Wouldn’t she benefit from staying home and learning from life itself with us as her guides, rather than being thrown to ankle biting wolves with a taste for the tang of innocence?

Not only are the moral issues a concern, but physical safety is on the top of my red flags list as well.  My husband and I work hard to keep our children as safe as possible.  Even still, we do not believe that hiding them from the world is the best method to achieve safety.  Quite the opposite is true, in fact.  Our girls know and understand many of the worst dangers life has to offer.  They learned first-hand at a very young age what it feels like to lose someone they love.  Together, they watched Storm’s childhood best friend slip away, despite modern medicine, great doctors, an excellent hospital, and her incredibly loving family who would have given all of their own lives to save her.  Throughout that experience we never wanted anyone to tip-toe around reality with us, so we took what knew and openly shared it with our girls for the same reason.  We cherish their youth and innocence but we also respect their intelligence and empathy.  No one can tell me that children can’t grasp danger or death either.  The moment I looked into Storm and Kacy’s eyes, ages 6 and 3 at the time, and told them that Marissa had died; they knew.  They knew then that death is permanent and life can be wildly short and unfair.  

It’s been almost four years.  The girls have healed, but never forgotten.  Their childish intuition brought us closer though.  They feel that time spent with close family and dear friends is intensely superior to time wishing they had been with them more.  The death of sweet Marissa has shaped who we are as individuals and as a family more than I ever thought one event could.  I’ve been unrealistic in the past, but I’m not naïve enough anymore to think just because kids are young, they will be safe until adulthood.  Instead, we teach our girls about dangers and how to think critically and quickly to deal with them.  We don’t live in a constant state of fear, but we encourage cognizance.  Rather than waltzing through life with blissful blinders on, our girls understand that keeping their heads up, making eye contact with others and being aware of their surroundings makes them less likely to get injured or become victims.  Along with critical thinking and marksmanship, we also instill compassion, selflessness, self-sufficiency and responsibility.

In the past two years, I’ve seen that any attempts schools makes to teach values are just that; attempts.  I feel there is a good bit of difference between a child who is taught values versus a child who is instilled with values.  Unfortunately most adults in modern society do not practice values themselves.  So how can I expect to see any semblance of morals or values in the generation running amok in school?  Teachers are no longer available to teach the basics of education like reading, writing, math and research skills.  Instead, they are expected to raise children for parents who are increasingly busy chasing their own social lives, their multiple jobs to fund their many desires, or their Tweets, cheeps and peeps on their portable computer phones. 

While children in the United States already spend around seven hours a day in school for ten months of the year, there is a major push to add more school time.  More!  In one typical school day, with no extra-curricular activities, my daughters will spend 6.5 hours at school, 2 hours getting ready and commuting, and another 1-2.5 hours on homework.  That is a total of 11 hours of our day that revolves around school.  Since children require about 10 hours of sleep each day, that leaves 3 hours for sports, music lessons, ballet classes, dinner preparation and Family Time.  Ahhh…Family Time.  This term conjures images of The Cleavers gathered around the dinner table to eat together and maybe even read a book before bedtime.  This is what modern Family Time has been reduced to and yet, this is merely a utopian image.  Realistically, Family Time for most school families I know involves fast food dinners, homework time in the backseats of minivans, and texting each other for communication.

Maybe I’m nuts, but I just don’t think three hours of free time is enough for us to squeeze basic tasks in, much less enjoy each other’s company or reverse the negative behaviors learned in twice that time at school.  I almost wonder if I’m just crazy and getting empty nest syndrome way too early in life.  I mean, most moms I know celebrate the first day of school as though it were a national holiday.  Don’t get me wrong, I love kid-free peace and quiet on a regular basis, too, but at what cost?  Where is the microscopic point where the scales tip one way or another?  I see it this way; on one hand I can throw my kids back to the school wolves to become liberally indoctrinated dutiful future employees so I can be free to do my own thing.  Or, on the other hand, I can keep the girls home with me, teach them the basics of education in minimal daily time and have them help teach each other.  The simple act of staying at home with us will prevent most of the moral ruin that is so rampant in society and they will learn useful skills never covered in schools today.  The trade-off is that I won’t have freedom anymore.  I admit that at times, I look forward to having more free time to write, to grow a blog, and to start doing this writing thing as an actual business.  But I continue to question whether my half-hearted desire for more free time outweighs what is better for my girls? 

I’m beginning to regret having sent them off to school two years ago.  I feel I will never convince my husband that homeschooling is not as difficult as I made it before.  At the time, I thought I was a failure because I nearly beat my head against the wall, just trying to teach Kacy her alphabet.  It seemed so simple, yet I failed.  She eventually learned, but she still has difficulty reading and writing.  I guess one benefit of having sent the girls to school is that I see now that it wasn’t my fault.  Neither was it hers.  In fact, there was no fault at all.  By stepping back and cutting us both some slack, I’ve learned that Kacy has tremendous strengths in other areas.  Ask her to come up with math answers, or score a goal in soccer or create a business plan and she’ll stomp the competition into the dirt until they sob dust-filled tears of defeat and beg for mercy.

As I figure out what to do about this upcoming school year, I pile unending reasons onto my mental scales and weigh the two options.  Mostly I ask myself, at what point does a need for freedom become more important than my responsibility to raise my daughters to the best of both my abilities and theirs?  If I truly want both, what will it take for me to be able to handle homeschooling and grow my writing life too?