Thoughts on Homeschooling

This has little to do with Maggie and what she's doing. I'm mostly writing this for me to sort of straighten out my thoughts on the matter. This is about how I plan on teaching Maggie and why. That said, feel free to skip this one.

So, even though I hated school pretty much the entire time I went (all 17 years or so (ick!)), it never occurred to me to homeschool any future children I had. I didn't even think about it when I was pregnant. But at some point I saw or read something that gave me the idea and it was like an epiphany. I was sure that was what I wanted to do.

The reasons I don't want Maggie in a school (public or private) are probably too many to mention. Bullying (which is rampant in every school in America, regardless of any demographics), sexual harassment, learning mindless obedience, having teachers that don't like you, learning crap you don't care about, being ahead and bored or behind and frustrated, having zero control over most of your waking hours, being separated from your family for most of your waking hours, teaching to the test, consistently being taught and tested in ways that are accepted as the least successful ways of teaching and testing (ie paper and pencil) and on and on.

However, when I first decided to homeschool, I thought I would pretty much teach what's taught in schools now but teach it to Maggie in the best way for her so she could be more successful with the material.

But now I feel like about 99% of what's taught in schools is worthless. I think that 99% is probably different for everyone but beyond maybe the 3rd or 4th grade almost nothing is essential to know. Reading, writing and basic math are essential in life but beyond that, does it matter if I know the difference between a rabbit and a jackrabbit (an actual TEK for first graders)? Who cares? Not me. The more we force knowledge that kids see no reason to know, the more they resent school and come to hate learning. That's a whole nother thing so I won't rant about that.

Moving on. I believe that beyond the basics, kids should learn what they want to learn. However, I know I do better with structure and so does Maggie. I also know that things like video games and TV are addictive. So I wanted something where Maggie was self-directing her learning and had some sort of structure. Enter Project-based Homeschooling.

The idea of PBH is that you have set project time however often you decide but that's the end of your decisions. The child chooses her topic, her materials, her project and you assist as needed. Maggie wants to learn about space (shocking!). We went to the library today and I got a ton of books for her (I wanted to get a wide variety for her and then let her narrow them down). I found some documentaries on netflix and I'm sure there are lots on youtube. From here, I pretty much plan on trying to take the backseat and let her lead. This, of course, takes a tremendous amount of trust and I do feel a bit scared about it. I am excited to see how she takes to this and what she'll get from it.