Hello steemworld!!
This is my first long form non art related post since... well a couple days ago! Anywho in my #introduceyourself post, I offhandly mentioned that I stopped going to public school after middle school; specifically after 7th grade, and today we're gonna talk about that.
I couldn't find an old kindergarten doodle of my family and myself unfortunately, so I'm presuming it's lost. But I'll add in this really cliche homeschool banner in its stead!
Sauce of photo: http://www.classichousewife.com/about-homeschooling/
So you could say I was your typical and 'normal' student for the first years of my life, I went to school, and did my homework. And probably the best years of my public schooling were when I was in a charter elementary school. Everything was as perfect as anything I had known, we got to paint, play games, do fun projects like making volcanoes and dissecting squids and there was very little monotony. My teachers actively fostered my creativity and drive, and I am so grateful for them all these years later.
But that all changed in middle school, because the charter school finished in 6th grade, and my parents could not afford to send me to a private school. So I got hauled off to my districts standard ol' middle school, and my experience totally flipped. It felt like I was going to prison instead of school; formal greetings, annoying titles, plaster white walls, rows of fluorescent lights and bars on the windows. The classes I had been taking went from explorations of creativity to lecture halls filled with mindless drones penciling away at monotonous material. In one of my favorite classes: art, the painting and doodling was gone, replaced with PowerPoint presentations about art form and history. In science, the hands on dissections and experimentation disappeared and were replaced with printed out handbooks showing us what a lab WOULD look like or how an experiment was SUPPOSED to go. It all felt very draconian. And while that may sound horrifying or pleasing - depending on who you are, the worst part about it, were the kids.
At the time I thought these 'children' were nothing but a bunch of angry, creatively starved and egotistical prepubescent devils, I am now convinced they were this way because of the education system. Anyways it was sad that I had to leave my elementary school friends behind, because these new people were nothing like them. This new bread of peer, traveled in packs, and if you were judged to not be popular enough, well, OFF WITH YOUR HEAD. Since I only owned a couple dresses and much of my clothing was handmade by my mother, I looked somewhat out of place, and in middle school looking out of place is a death sentence. I mostly kept to myself and stayed in the library for much of my free time, but sometimes a clique would wander in, see me and then proceed to mock me, often for not being 'one of them', or being 'lame', because I didn't have the newest purse or whatever else was hip at the time. In retrospect the reasons for the mocking were petty and insignificant. Though unfortunately, I often went home crying to my parents after school, and eventually enough was enough and my parents decided to pull me out.
I should say here that my Mom and Dad are total tiger-parents, both being immigrants they wanted me to be fully accomplished so I could make my own way in this country. So on my first day of home-8th grade, my dad sat me in front of his computer and told me to analyze what I was seeing (he still does that). It just so happened to be a series of algebraic problems, so I did what he asked and thus began a long, long, long process of him teaching me how to teach myself.
Rest assured, my parents did teach me facts and figures but they were more focused on having me build skills. Here's what my average day looked like: In the mornings I did gardening, botany and crafts with my mom, in the afternoons if my dad was home from work, we would do humanities and the sciences and in the evenings I would do languages with my Mom. In every spare minute of time, I was always reading, book after book, and laboring away at whatever assignment was thrown at me.
One of the greatest gifts of homeschooling is the freedom for you to take your education into your own hands and to go at your own pace. So over the course of my middle and high school years, I learned many spoken languages, programming languages, sciences ranging from astrophysics to genetics and much more that you would never see in a public high school! So if you're reading this and your children are currently in a public prison... er.. school, consider taking them out. Sign them up for a YouTube account, get them a library card, encourage them to teach themselves! Maybe even create a Steemit account for them and make them follow all the fantastic scientists, artists, linguists, educators, writers and programmers that we have here on our lovey little platform. If anyone needs more convincing
just take one look at @papa-pepper and his @little-peppers. I rest my case.
As always, much love and many toodles!
Kara
I'm both saddened and encouraged, reading your post. I'm at both an opposite and similar end of the spectrum you're on. The reason I am going to homeschool my children is not because I myself was homeschooled, but because I was a TEACHER, and I realized I never wanted my children to go through what I watched those kids go through/do to each other. Thanks for sharing your story!
I was a bus driver for years.
yes..public school turns sweet adorable children into monsters.
I saw it happen
My granddaughter was homeschooled.
She EXCELLED to the point that she got a scholarship to college.
in my opinion..homeschooling beats publics school hands down.
I couldn't agree more, and that's absolutely wonderful to hear your granddaughter got a scholarship! That is one way to validate all that work! I also wanted to thank you for taking the time to read my post and to let you know I am having a wonderful time reading your work before I go to sleep for the night, I am currently enjoying the Yggdrasil series! Consider me one of your newest avid followers!
I'm glad you enjoy it.
I have serialized other books but you have to go way back to find them.
I'm kind of partial to 'ride the lightning' myself.
Then I will check it out next! 😁
I've been on Steemit since August...and I've been posting books, stories, and other stuff the whole time..
hope you enjoy it.
oh..some of my stuff is available on Amazon in Kindle
.
Unfortunately I am too poor to afford a kindle 😕. But I will be binge reading your content wherever I go!
kindle emulators are free and can be used to read e-books on your computer.
that's what I do.
if you keep blogging on steemit you won't be poor much longer.
I totallly agree with this friend of mine, he might not think im a friend but I really always enjoy what he says thank you.
Interesting topic, and some great thoughts you have there. Same with public schools here in Norway. It's even worse here. They are indoctrination camps, where kids learn almost nothing of value. I mean..the first 6 years in elementary school is probably OK, but then you only learn meaningless things. I mean..I havent used ONE thing I learned in high school. Not ONE thing. English - thought myself through movies and computer games. Math? Got a cellphone now. Making databases in outdated programmes? Sorry school, the world moves faster than that. There are only a couple of private schools in Norway, but they are not that great. I believe you are correct in your observation. Schools are indoctrination camps where children learn to follow rules and norms, and they are learned through social engineering not to challenge the group-think. You'll get bullied if your different. And teachers do nothing to prevent it. The goal is that make bitter, scared tax payers who dare nothing else than to apply for a job as an employee. I mean..why on earth don't we teach 18 year olds about personal economy in school? Take a wild guess. :) Homeschooling is out of the question in Norway. It is so "far out" that the child protective services are getting concerned.
First hello to my fellow norsky (my papa is from norway), and second it's depressing to hear that's how schools their work... I'm hoping that if you have kids or plan on having them, that you are able to homeschool them!
Cool :) Schools are horrible here. But we're not able to homeschool unfortunately. First of all that's frowned upon, and we can't risk the government taking in interest in our lives, that's very dangerous. They take away a lot of children because parents do things differently. And besides, we have three businesses to run.. But hopefully we can "unlearn" a lot of things he learn, and boost his knowledge. I didnt take the red pill until I was 25. Hopefully we can red pill him much earlier. I think the most important thing kids dont learn is the value of money and self love/selfishness . We must unlearn the bad altruism and try to explain why rational selfishness is the way to go. To love yourself. Only then can you do good. Thanks for the reply :)
I've heard about the interference in people's lives in Norway. That's just terrible. I'm from Holland and it's pretty much the same there. I moved to Ireland, and it's definitely not perfect here, but everything is so much slower, any interference from social workers won't come until the kids are 18 lol. It's much easier here than in the Netherlands and they couldn't get me back there if they paid me!
Yeah, I mean, it's not like most people have anything to worry about, including us. But some sources say over 80% of all children who are taken away shouldnt have been taken..that makes you sort of paranoid. Ireland sure isn't perfect, but I like Ireland :)
This post received a 11% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @sensatus! For more information, click here!
Not sure. It depends on the student and the parents. I had a terrible time homeschooling because the curriculum was religious propaganda, my parents weren't able to help, and I wasn't interested in learning. The only reason I did do homeschooling was because I had bad social experiences. I'm not saying homeschooling is always a bad thing, but if normal school is working well for the kid I think it's probably better to stay.
Oh my... I'm sorry to hear that, I am just talking from my own experience. Though I think the big problem is that you had a curriculum that was as restricted as the one you could have had in public school. But yea as I said, it works for some people, my issue is that we assume it works for everyone. Individuality is key.
Wow, inspiring post. I'm still far too young to have my own kids but I do believe that our current educational system is somewhat flawed. I feel like we focus too much on just cramming information to our children that we don't spend enough time to actually really focus on teaching life skills. However, I do think that a big part of having success with homeschooling is the willingness and effort put in by the parents as well. It sounds like your parents did a great job homeschooling you.
Great, post. something to think about. I am not keen on the way most curriculums are taught within the school system. I used to think it was important though for socializing your child. However with the amount of bullying that goes on I think there are better ways - so long as integrating with other children and in social environments is still taken into consideration. We like the premise behind Steiner schools as it is less regimented. I guess it comes down to the child and the parent, it takes a lot of commitment from both sides.
We're homeschooling our kids. So far they're way ahead of other kids their age, and contrary to what others think, they're way more socialized than their regular school counterparts. We try to do lots of activities and experiments, but the biggest thing is time. A lot of time in regular school is waiting for other kids, whereas at home you just do your projects/activities/skills, and move on. And like you, they get personalized attention, whereas in school, the teacher is split between 10-20 other students.
Also, we teach them a lot about mindset, success, and happiness. If you're interested in those kinds of things (and who doesn't want to be happy and successful), I would like into bob procter, tony robbins, earl nightingale, warren buffet, charlie munger, steve jobs, etc. All free on youtube or your library.
I had a horrible experience at school, so I didn't want my kids to have the same experience. I hope yours turns out better.
Thank you for writing such a succinct and detailed response! I am so glad you took the time to read my essay! You are totally correct, homeschooling works really well for a lot of people, I was doing a lot of stuff that my parents did when they were in grad school, when I was in 9th homegrade. Nothing truly compares and I like to think I am a better person because I didn't become creatively or emotionally handicapped by the school prison I almost stayed in haha. My experience in homeschool and school in general is just about over, I finish my chemistry and physics classes at community college later this month. I am only 19, but I definitely plan on homeschooling my own children in the future! I have made sure to write down all those wonderful suggestions you have made! I'm actually going to be talking a lot about this topic in the future!
Awesome, whatever you like to do, find models and learn from them. It's so strange how they said "those that can't do teach". Why do we learn from those who didn't succeed?
We've homeschooled our 9 year old daughter since she was school age and this coming year we are going to try our local district (she wants to) I am so worried how it will effect her in numerous ways! My hubby isn't as worried and thinks we should give it a try, but my mom nerves are at their ends already and the school year hasn't even started. Haha
I was homeschooled up until high school. We school our three kids at home also. I love it.
That's so amazing to hear that! Both that you liked my post and that your children are being homeschooled! They are gonna turn out great! Thank you again for reading my post and then commenting, I know it was long read 😆. I'm gonna try to be doing more things like this talking about homeschool and such in the future, I'm thinking about trying to get a group together here on steemit to build just that! We can use this platform to do some real good!
I use my computer's text-to-speech feature a lot. :)
If you want a great book that goes along with this, check out Free to Learn by Peter Gray.
I'll make sure to do that! Thank you!
Wonderful... You were fortunate to have really good parents to teach you! I homeschooled my 4... and my pedagogy seems similar. I didn't lecture droning on about this or that- that's not teaching. Teaching (at least to me) is developing skills. The most important think I learned in college was how to find out what I needed to know.
I had my kids do research and write about whatever the subject happened to be. Then we went over what they had written, correcting for grammar etc.. Math was of course a bit different where some instruction was necessary. I say you were very fortunate.
I do feel very fortunate! And if I do say so myself, so should your kids! Thank you for taking the time to read this! It means a lot!
Thank you... I'm pleased with the result... both sons run their own successful businesses, my oldest daughter is a pharmacist and my youngest is a stay at home mom with 3 beautiful kids. I couldn't be happier.
That is absolutely incredible! I'm blown away by that! You deserve all the happiness you get, you did an amazing job!
It is encouraging to see positive comments about homeschooling. We are just about to start homeschooling our eldest and I think I am getting cold feet!
Hope you get the time to visit my post about it - https://steemit.com/education/@arrliinn/i-am-a-full-time-working-mom-will-homeschooling-work-for-us
DON'T get cold feet! It's the best thing, the greatest gift you can give your child. If you're wavering I suggest reading, Homeschooling: The Right Choice, by Christopher Klicka. He traces the history of public education and it's real intent. If you want your child brainwashed and indoctrinated (as well as uneducated) send him to public school.
All of my children turned out fine. All well adjusted adults (don't listen to people who say that "you're isolating your kids- they need to be around other children") My kids took part in sports and other activities with other kids. My oldest son has a marketing consulting firm (I don't really understand what he does lol!) that is very successful. My other son has a remodeling company and is a teaching pro at a golf resort. My oldest daughter is a pharmacist and my youngest is a stay at home mom with three beautiful kids... not bad, I'd say!
Thanks for these wonderful words of encouragement! I want nothing but best for my kids and I hope the sacrifice would be worth it in time.
I see your kids have gone far. Now who wouldn't want that for your own children?
I'm here if you ever need any advice... I followed you. My teaching style is simple. If you lecture, kids lose interest fast. You know your own kids better than any teacher, so you can design your lessons accordingly. For subjects such as history, or science, I had my kids read something and write me a paper about it. Then we would go over it and correct for grammar, spelling etc. This helps develop writing skills as well as critical thinking, They have to think about what they're writing, rather than just parroting something from a lecture.
I have a good friend who was a professor where I went to college. He left teaching and went to work at a think tank in Michigan. There he does studies on education... He interviewed the heads of Human Relations depts at major corporations such as GM, Ford, etc. They said the biggest problem they have finding qualified people coming out of college is- Nobody can write clearly. This is because they just don't teach it in schools anymore. The greatest gift you can give your kids is a good education... it will give them a leg-up later on in life!
Thanks @richq11! I have followed you back. I will definitely need help/advice on this and it is great there are people like you to support. 😍
I think a good education is the greatest gift we can give out kids! Always happy to help!
I see a few home schooling people here and there are home educating groups all over the place if you need help, or just want to vent. I'm going to read your post and reply to that as well. Cold feet are quite normal I think. I've been educating my kids at home for three years now and there are moments in those three years when I wondered if I was doing the right thing. And then they do something that shows me that it's the best thing I could have done for them.
Thanks for that! I will try to document and share our journey as much as I can.
homeschool for the win
Great post..resteemed
I totally agree with you. Homeschooling have many positive effects on children. They can learn everything without any limitations in result they become more creative and confident.
Upvoted and resteemed!
Following u, would love to be followed back :)
Hello my friend ,, regards stem i son indonesia help me, this is my name @syehlah, i like posting You @synesthesia
This was a very wonderful piece! I homeschooled my two, now grown sons, and it was more than worth it. The hardest part was the scrutiny we all would get from people that were so sure we were "doing it wrong" because we did not send them to the guv training camps like they did with their own kids. Even people in our church seemed offended by our choice and would take every chance to shame my kids for any thing they may have said or done "wrong", then blame it on the fact they were homeschooled. ARGH! However, the payoff has been that my kids have grown to be responsible and intelligent men that are excelling at what they do and have great social skills! haha ;)
But I ramble, truly enjoyed reading this and will certainly be sharing and resteeming!
I'm so glad you brought up the subject, as I'm hoping to write about my experiences soon. My kids are all educated at home. I pulled my eldest daughter (now 15) out of school when she was in 7th grade. She was miserable and I'd seen her change from a nice kid to a miserable terror in about three weeks. After the Christmas break we decided it was enough. It's the best thing I've ever done for her! My younger children were in kindergarten at the time (4 and 5 years old) so I left them for the year to focus on her. After the summer, they never went back. My youngest who's 2 now, will probably never set foot in school. Thanks for your post. Great stuff!
I never really thought of school as a place that was useful for education. The only reason I don't have a master's is because during my Bachelor's was the time I just had enough and realised I can learn just as much for free online.
But I don't want to undermine the value that school has anyway. School above all else teaches how to work as a community in a society. It gives us friendships and unlocks our emotions, prepares us for the travesty that is the real world.
If we're constantly protected in a lovely private school with a bunch of rich white kids or at home where we might take a break by going to our own little nesting bedroom, rather than, say, hiding in the toilets so that weird kid doesn't start talking to you, how else do we develop our interpersonal intelligence or create valuable connections academically, romantically or otherwise?
These are actual questions by the way, not rhetorical. I always imagined homeschooling to be somewhat tragic in its own subtle way
Awesome!
As a mom who is new to homeschooling, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your post. My kids (now 13 and 8) were in public school up until our out-of-state move last fall, and I worked a full-time corporate job. The transition to homeschooling hasn't been easy and oftentimes I've doubted if I was doing the right thing. Sending the kids to public school would be easier... but the right things never come easy. Reading your post makes me feel better about our choice. Thank you for sharing :)
Nice to hear, @synesthesia. We are planning to homeschool our eldest (3rd grade) and keeping our fingers crossed everything will turn out well.
https://steemit.com/education/@arrliinn/i-am-a-full-time-working-mom-will-homeschooling-work-for-us
Hi Kara- this was such a great read and I'm really pleased to hear that homeschooling was such a positive experience for you. I'm a Speech Pathologist in Aus and have a couple questions regarding your experience with homeschooling as I have a few children who I work with that are really finding it challenging to "fit in" at school and considering heading down the home schooling pathway. Did you have set academic work you were required to complete/provide to an educational institution? How did you find not having ongoing social interactions with kids your age- did you feel this made it harder for you to participate in social experiences as you got older? Would love to hear your thoughts! X
I'm glad you found my work enjoyable ^_^!! These are fantastic questions, and I think I will answer them in an upcoming essay, just because I don't think a simple comment would do them justice!
Awesome! I look forward to following and reading this :) x