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Homeschooling is the topic today, and I’m going to be getting into some of my thoughts on why you should homeschool your kids. And I want to try to encourage you in setting out on that journey. I intend to dispel some of the myths and preconceived notions that might give you pause. And I want to cover the positives as well as highlight several methods and approaches to homeschooling.

Why Homeschool?

What’s the deal with homeschooling? I’ve had several people ask me to talk about this in the past few months so I figured I’d give you my take on homeschooling and what it means to us. And I wanted to kind of go over some of the means and methods that other people follow. I hope you take my thoughts and my words and think critically about what I have to share here and apply it to your life as it makes the most sense for you and your family.

Freedom –

Frankly the freedom to change your family schedule and be flexible is wonderful. Let’s say there was a sickness or an injury that necessitated that your family move for a short time to help someone or get treatment in a different city. The freedom to just pick up and go is great. Life happens and sometimes tragedy strikes. Conversely, what if there was a fantastic opportunity for someone in the family to do something amazing or wonderful, or to learn in a unique way, homeschooling affords you the flexibility to not be held to a single school location or jump through the hoops of changing schools.

Time –

Homeschooling allows you the choice to let children go as fast or as slow as they want or need to with learning any specific subject. Comparing this to public school, you have set subjects and a set amount of learning must be done to complete the grade. Nothing more, nothing less. Additionally, if one of the children excels at reading, they can progress as much as they want to, they won’t be held back a grade level to keep pace with their peers. So this can greatly enhance the efficiency of learning by allowing massive leaps forward with certain subjects while relieving the time burden later on for subjects that are more difficult for the student to learn.

Family –

It’s inherently a more family focused and family involved type of learning method. So if having a family who knows each other and are knit together is on your priority list, then homeschooling might be a great solution. Personally I like the idea of my kids growing up in an environment surrounded by family members instead of strangers.

Diversity of Experiences –

To compare, public school has generally a single adult teacher and a classroom of peers that are almost all the exact same age and experience. This is close to a monoculture of ideas and experience. Only one person in the room has authority and experiential wisdom, how sure are you that every one of those teachers holds the same values and care for your child as you do? What about growing up spending the vast majority of their time with people the same age and foolishness level? I think homeschooling wins just based on one simple fact, that the child grows up interacting and learning from people much older, as well as much younger. A homeschooled child grows up knowing how to communicate with younger siblings as well as elderly people and everyone in between. How much more well rounded of an individual will you raise? I want my kids to be comfortable interacting with anybody, not just those who are their same age and definitely not learn the whole clique social order garbage.  

True Learning –

Homeschooling allows your children to experientially learn about real life. You can’t get that kind of learning through most of public education. Sure you’ll learn some real life lessons there, but for the most part it’s very much not grounded and based on what life is really like. I’m a big fan of bringing experiential learning to my kids, to be there to keep them safe, but to allow them to fall down and scuff up their knee. To grow some of their own food, or build something real. Create something of value and sell it to earn money to do something really interesting. In my mind, true learning happens when you desire it, when you want with the deep gut desire to learn something, you do so quickly and effectively. If you really don’t want to learn something but it’s necessary, it takes a lot more effort and time to do so. But if you really want it, then learning a skill or a knowledge set is much easier just because you have the desire for it. Who has time to waste learning useless facts?

Skill Development –

We kind of touched on it, but homeschooling let’s you focus on teaching skills to your children. How many high school kids graduate with a great set of skills that will help them through their adult life? I want my sons to leave my household as young men who can raise and hunt for their own food, change tires, repair machinery, build a house, change a diaper, bind a wound, cook a good meal, and teach themselves anything they want to learn. Not many eighteen-year olds can run a chainsaw, change the oil in a truck, and also have a discussion on genetics. I was 14 and could milk a goat, drive a standard transmission truck, put up bales of hay in a barn, garden, write short stories, read and understand poetry, change diapers, feed a baby, shoot a gun, chop down a tree with an axe, or set up a self contained ecosystem in a glass box.

Personalized Education –

Again, we touched on this a little, but personalizing the educational experience for your children is something we can do when we’re homeschooling instead of sending them off to a government school. Let’s say you have a kiddo who is great with mechanical stuff and wants to build engines and do mechanical things. Then you can slant their education strongly towards that end. You can research what will set them up for success later in life and guide them down that path meanwhile setting them up for success. Even if they decide to change their minds, most likely their natural leanings will be in the same type of work and those early life experiences will be likely to help them no matter what they do.

Moral Values –

Last but not least I want to bring up morals. If you are teaching your kids, they get raised in an environment that is inherently in line with the values you want to pass down to your children. I dunno about you, but I’m untrusting of anybody to care for and care about my kids in any way that is a fraction of the degree that I do. My wife and I care about these boys like nobody else in the world could, so the idea of handing them over to a stranger to shape and mold is just honestly absurd. They are our responsibility

Perks –

Oh, and if you want to, you can wear pajamas all day.. Just saying…

Homeschooling Styles

Public School at Home –

This is basically taking the state approved or some curriculum and using it at home. This is regimented, facts, tests, grades, and regurgitating information. I’m not a fan of this type of learning because it forces everyone into the same shape and mold. This is the stereotypical John Dewey approach to socialistic education. It excels at churning out cogs for the socioeconomic system that makes up most of America today and in my opinion is one of the main reasons for the downturn and degradation of this nation. I understand that this methodology can work just fine in a home setting by focusing on what each individual child needs at a given time, and being sensitive to differing growth rates, but in my opinion, not the best method. You might as well just send them to a public or private school.

Unit Studies –

This is a pretty cool method that I’m a fan of. The basic premise is that you take something that the child is interested in and dive into the topic. Take turtles for example, if you have a little boy who is interested in them, you could go to the library and get books on turtles, go see some turtles, scale up or down in depth and involvement depending on the age and abilities. You could give a writing assignment on turtles, do an art project that’s turtle themed. Look at turtle anatomy and measure shells and bones, learn about their physiology.

The idea is to take something they are keenly interested in and bring a whole bunch of school subjects into the mix. Spelling, typing, research, writing, reading, mathematics, etc… It’s often a way to effortlessly learn a multitude of disciplines while making it really fun to learn. Be careful you don’t go too far with it or else your children might be hesitant to share interests. Be sensitive to the fact that you need to keep it fun and interesting, to reward inquisitiveness and the love of learning.

Eclectic Homeschooling or Relaxed Homeschooling –

This is basically what I remember my parents doing for all of us kids growing up. It’s what I’ve seen is the most commonly used method among homeschoolers. This method is just a mishmash of whatever fits and works for the family and lifestyle. It may mean using textbooks for certain subjects while adding unit studies and other learning methods for less critical subjects. It’s probably the most comfortable and easiest for the primary educator because the steps and lessons are all planned out ahead of time and you don’t have to think too much about it from day to day. I’m not a huge fan of the textbook finish the prescribed lesson kind of learning. It can really be a weight on a kid’s mind and make learning difficult or repulsive. Accepting minds learn quickest and easiest, if it’s broken down into a matter of doing a lesson for the sake of finishing it, some children might not do well with that kind of learning. I for one was and still am someone who can learn anything I set my mind to, do it quickly, and have fun learning; IF and only if I think it’s relevant to me and if it helps me accomplish a goal. So be mindful of that in your children.

Unschooling –

This is a method of homeschooling that is more natural and interest-led, child-led learning. Unschooling is more about learning from everyday life experiences and not centered on formal lessons and textbooks. I think this is a two edged sword type of learning. It takes a disciplined and close knit parent to guide a child well with this kind of method and even then I think it’s giving too much freedom and independence to a child who in my mind needs constraints of some kind. Most unschoolers are very loose with how children spend their time and it seems to me like they mostly allow the child to just play all day and not really learn anything. Proponents of this method say that there is no difference between living and learning, and that children will learn no matter what we think. Giving extreme freedom like this can enable a child to become a master at something at a young age. But could cause failure when confronted with higher education should they decide to pursue a degree at a university. I think it all depends on the personality of the child and how eager they are to learn. Some might excel with this method while others will be lazy slobs who just want to play video games all day.

Charlotte Mason Approach –

This is something I’m looking a lot more into, just discovered it while doing research for this episode. This method is all about allowing children to learn through real life experiences and builds experiential knowledge. And the methods are different than most, it uses things like:

• Living Books: Stories, or books written by an author who has first hand knowledge or real passion for the subject, it is usually written in narrative or story form.
• Nature Studies: This means spending time in nature, observing, interacting, questioning and identifying what they see and feel.
• Dictation and Narration: Learning spelling, punctuation, and grammar by studying selected portions of living books, and also telling in their own words what they read, saw or heard. This cements the new information in their minds much more than rote recital.
• Hands on Math: Emphasize understanding concepts with physical objects first before moving to less tangible symbols on paper. Using real life examples like pieces of pie or pizza or sandwiches to communicate mathematical principles.

With this approach to teaching and learning, it’s not just about reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead the focus is on three core elements to what education is. An Atmosphere, a Discipline, and a Life. The Atmosphere is the environment they grow up in, the ideas that rule our lives as parents. The Discipline is the training of good habits that will serve them well as they grow up. And the Life is that the educational materials presented should be given as living ideas, no dry summaries of facts and boring repetition. Some basic principles are:

1. Short lessons (keep is short and sweet, engaging and interesting)
2. Habits of attention and perfect execution (By keeping things short, the habit of paying attention is built until as a young adult they have learned to attend to their work. Also doing their tasks with honor and respect establishes a habit of doing well and not being slothful)
3. Varied order of subjects (Mixing things up so that the same topics aren’t taught every day keeps things fun and interesting, avoids drudgery, boredom, and burnout)

Typical Arguments Against Homeschooling

You’ll always hear this argument. “But what about socializing your kids” My response is “What kind of socializing are you talking about? The kind where a child goes to a group of equally ignorant peers where they experience pressure to conform to the norm, learn that expression of self and love of oneself is the end all goal? I look at the typical high school kid and that’s not the kind of young person I want my sons to become, they’re self centered and have no sense of balance. School age kids these days seem to almost all seek to gratify themselves and glorify a godless culture of debauchery and are the most entitled little brats I’ve ever seen! Those school age kids grew up and went to college and now there are people who deny natural truth and say that things like gender don’t exist because they don’t “feel” like it. Feelings don’t trump facts. If so called good socialization turns out adults who pitch fits and scream obscenities because their feelings get hurt by a differing opinion, then by golly I want my kids to not get a drop of that kind of socialization. No safe spaces or trigger warnings on our homestead.

I think they’re mostly concerned that homeschooled kids will be dorky, or nerdy, and have no friends, or be incapable of communication. Well here I am a homeschooler who talks to over a hundred thousand different people every month, who travels all over the country teaching about sustainable living solutions and helping people establish homesteads, farms and orchards. I say the proof is in the puddin, I’ll have this sweet fruit and anybody who wants that other kind can be welcome to it, but not us. And what’s wrong with being dorky… It’s worked for me!

But anyways, I hope this was a good overview of some reasons you should consider homeschooling, and if you’re one of those who’s been asking about it, well I hoped I tipped you off to some methods you can do some research on to gain a little confidence before you start that journey. It can be as easy or hard as you want to make it. Just remember learning should be fun, and the most important thing your kids should have when leaving your educational care is a hunger and a desire to keep learning. If they can learn how to go find the knowledge they seek, and a hunger to always be learning, then it doesn’t matter if they are “up to snuff” or at a grade appropriate age group. If they can do nothing else than basic mathematics, and have a cursory understanding of how to write a well thought out idea, but they have a passion and an interest that can turn into a career. Then in my opinion you’ve succeeded as an educator. I took the GED just so I could get into college and was embarrassed to find out that I had actually finished the real test. I thought I had been given a shorter practice test. It was astonishing how little they expected a High School graduate to know. The test administrator was previously disdainful of homeschoolers and changed her mind after she saw my almost perfect test score and my confusion.

So I say that not to brag, but to encourage you that if you have been hesitant to start homeschooling because you don’t think you’re qualified or good enough, just do your best. Good is good enough, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.  

Alright guys, that wraps things up, I hope you enjoyed this topic, if you want to follow up on this or ask questions, please hop on facebook and join the discussion in the community group, lots of great ideas and encouragement get shared there every day!

Until next week

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”