The Third Degree

I suppose it's not surprising that people might want to understand our decision to home educate. But it can be stressful. While having a very pleasant night out with some of my oldest friends, the conversation turned to our "home-schooling" (their terminology, which demonstrates one of the fundamental misunderstandings that are so difficult to challenge - that we all attempt to provide miniature schools-at-home).

Relaxed chat turned into feeling like I'd been given the third degree, with all the predictable questions: "what about socialization?"; "what we do about science?"; "surely there can't be enough 'experts' in enough subjects among home-schoolers to provide a balanced curriculum?"; "how many hours a week in our timetable?", etc, etc?

I started by trotting out the standard and very easy answers to these questions, the things that home educators understand through the process of living this life. That our children's social lives are far more rooted in the diverse relationships that they will encounter in the real world (as opposed to being herded into age-specific groups and coerced into the same space at the same time, regardless of personal disposition). That, in an information-rich society, anyone who needs to learn about anything can find ways to draw on the necessary resources. That any learning undertaken in the real world is highly efficient, so that a new concept that takes 10minutes to discover could, in a school environment, take a term's-worth of lessons paced to the average student in a class of 30, with all the attendant targets and repeated explanations and registration periods that go with this approach.

But, do you know, at a certain point, I thought to myself, "Why am I bothering?" I know that there are people who I'll not convince, and it's a waste of effort to try to change their opinions. It's too easy to come across as defensive when it's preferable to hold to the mantra that "It's working for now and if it stops working, we'll find another way of doing things". After all, I'm sure that my friends would be deeply offended if I queried every aspect of every lesson and every extra-curricular activity that their children undertake at school. I'm sure they'd tell me it's none of my business. Rightly so.

So, here's a New Year's Resolution that I firmly intend to make: I'll no longer waste energy attempting to justify our choices to those who will not be swayed, but instead will simply do my best to ensure we live and learn to the full in our own way.