For most of my life, I’ve felt like a bit of an outcast because I was homeschooled.
One of the first things that comes to mind when people hear “homeschool” is the denim jumper-wearing family of 8.
That’s a pretty tough act to follow. In most cases, the homeschool families I met were a lot more prone to wearing jeans than denim jumpers. However, I think there’s a measure of truth to the usually-dorky nature of homeschool families.
Most people never think that some parents are ok shopping at thrift stores if it means being able to afford the cost of homeschooling. I’m still looking for an adult friend of mine that still wears their JNCO jeans…some things simply don’t matter.
If you ask a classroom full of small children what they want to be when they grow up, their answers will differ a lot more than the same group of kids 10 years later. Why?
Because their dreams were crushed.
These kids were taught that it was ok to sit in a chair for 8-12 hours a day and do something they don’t want to do, because it will someday help them. Well, I really question this line of thinking.
Kids need to work smart, not hard. Forcing yourself to sit in a chair for 8 hours isn’t a way to safeguard your future – it’s simply a way to teach kids how to be compliant and complacent in their lives, while placing their fate in the hands of somebody else who sees them as a number – not a beautiful soul.
My parents were smart; they saw the digital future and they were diligent in training their kids how to be fluent with computers. That’s like giving your kid a fishing boat and a net when you see a school of salmon headed toward your village. My Dad kept working on that ‘boat’ until he was swept away at sea, and I now continue to find hints of him as I travel my own oceans.
There is one mindset I see displayed better in homeschooling than in any other model of education:
Hands-on experience to learn how things work.
My parents bought us bags of cheese doodles, and then took us to the factory where they were made. We took a break from eating cheese doodles for a while after that.
Every time we watched a movie, we had to write a ‘theme’ that explained the core ideas, messages and values in the movie.
We learned how to summarize something and quickly learn how to pull out the ‘big idea’ in a concise manner.
What better skill set to train a child than this – can you see how this core competency helped me become a successful consultant, where I daily have to summarize complex ideas to people and then present them as a concise plan that solves their problem?
A lot of parents are disgruntled with the American educational system, and they have a right to be; it failed. It ceased to become a place where kids could learn valuable skills they need to live as functional human beings, and instead became a cesspool for mediocrity that deprives children of the environments, understanding and atmosphere required to learn properly.
As a parent, I have one responsibility:
Train Atlas to be prepared for life as an adult.
It’s my job to teach him how to live, work, treat others and to thrive as an individual, and I don’t think there’s anybody more equipped to teach him these skill sets than his parent.
See, one way to look at humans is to see whether or not they are a ‘working model’ as an adult. A child can learn how to provide for a family when they observe the people doing it on a daily basis.
Learning censored American history that isn’t even remotely close to historical accuracy does nothing to prepare a child for life.
So, why are we sending our kids to a place that teaches this nonsense?
That’s a good question.
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