Pam Hartley

----------
>From: [email protected]
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] Digest Number 1281
>Date: Wed, May 30, 2001, 9:53 AM
>

> << I learned the hard way about what was best for me, how
> I learn best, what my own goals were. I could have avoided all of that had I
> been "allowed" out of school at a much younger age. I am positive of this. >>
>
> I loved school. I look back now and see things I wish could have been
> different


Giving my kids the choice of going to school is the only thing left, I
think, that I have any real angst over in our homeschooling decision.
Luckily it has not been much of an issue. Brit said, once, that she'd like
to go to school. I asked why, and she said, "I think they paint more there."
<g> I told her she was welcome to paint as much as she liked at home, and
would that do? It would.

But if it *really* came up, it's my cold sweat issue. On the one hand, I
totally believe that choice is where it's at. On the other hand, I totally
believe that for 90% or more of kids, schooling is really, really bad (and
some of the really, really bad happens without them even knowing it, much
less knowing to ask to get out of it -- some of the really, really bad is
stuff that happens to kids in school-at-home situations, for that matter).

So, here I fence-sit. <g> Knowing me, it is probable that if they really,
really, REALLY (have I said "really" enough in this post? Really!) wanted to
go, I'd find the best possible school scenario, be ready with subversive
counterpoint <g>, and let them. "You can't" isn't a phrase I use much, or
want to.

Pam

Stephanie Currier

Candy writes
>>>I can understand people who loved school sending their kids to school but
I
have never understood the people who hated school defending it and then
sending their own kids!
Candy>>>


When I've asked others that question, the response I've gotten is usually
along the lines that if they themselves
had had the advantages that they now provide for their kids, they would have
loved school.
I felt like that at one time, and spent my later school years thinking "If I
have kids, they are going to have the lessons and
the tutors and the cheering mom on the sidelines." "They are going to be too
busy to get into *trouble.*"

Most of the schooling parents I know and talk to at lessons or
whatever, are implementing the plan that I had at 17, of "making their kids
competitive," to make up for what
they didn't do, in some cases. Not all. I try not to think in terms of "all
schooling parents..." etc.

Some of the schooling parents I like the most, are just not able to
homeschool, they feel. They are protesting Fcats and
telling their kids that they are not their grade. I'm cheering them from the
sidelines.

Steph