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Home-schooling for Homesteaders

The One-room Schoolhouse is Alive and Well

by Sheri Dixon

 

As modern day homesteaders, we believe from our heads to our hearts that we MUST reject a lot of what is taken for granted by the rest of our society.  Not just on a whim, or a curious fluke in our personalities, but by the very real knowledge that our modern society is not well in many ways, and if we continue to immerse ourselves and our families in it, we will soon be ailing right along with it.

So we make the move from the city to the country, limit (or eliminate) electronic mind-killers like the TV and the Playstation, and boot those young’ns outside to run wild and free without the fear of traffic, or kidnappers, or drive by shootings.

They rise early in the morning to the sound of the rooster, the smell of the earth, and a breakfast of natural whole foods.

And then, they go... where?

If your children are between the ages of 5 and 16, they go to school, of course.

Here in the U.S. of A., we have a ginormous monstrosity called the Public School System.  It’s a wonderful idea in theory, and the reality of it is that MOST of the time, in MOST of the places, it works reasonably well.

But, just like everything else, we as parents must do OUR homework regarding our local school(s), for, beCAUSE our country is so big and so diverse, and beCAUSE by the very nature of "federal control" things that are supposed to be standardized in a good way generally get standardized in a mediocre way, whether your family’s assigned public school is going to be a great one, an acceptable one, a miserable one, or an outright dangerous one is very much a crap shoot.

And here’s the funny part (if you are a fan of dark humor): WHERE the school is located does NOT dictate what your children's experience will be.  There are many, many inner city schools populated by teachers and parents whose dedication to their children is amazing, and many, many schools in affluent communities whose children are routinely dying of drug overdoses while their parents are chasing the next monetary goal.  The majority of public schools, like the majority of the rest of life, fall somewhere in that huge grey middle area.



Chapter One - Our Public School Experience


Oddly enough (for a home-schooler), I’ve had good public school experiences, both personally and with my children's education.

I attended public schools back in the day of small classes, teachers who commonly came to dinner at the homes of the students, room-mothers there almost daily to help with projects, and the ability to go to the bathroom without needing a key to get into it.  Oh yeah, and there was no such thing as metal detectors at the front door, or school security.  Every door into the school was unlocked, all day every day.  Up until my older boy was in high school, this remained generally unchanged - even in the dark days of the mid 70's race problems in high schools, there was no lock down, and if you moved in an already mixed group (like I did), there was no fear - only a sad confusion at the rest of the mess, but we felt that most of the time anyway.

My daughter tested into our local public school system’s Gifted and Talented Program.  By that time we had moved out to the country, but were still within the urban school system.  The Gifted and Talented Program had been set up in, unarguably, the most inner of the inner-city schools, in a city of over 80,000 souls.  They had set up the program so that 50% of the students were those who tested into it, and 50% were neighborhood children whose parents chose to have them attend their neighborhood school, rather than be bussed out of the neighborhood to the nearest "normal" school.

   

 

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