why they homeschool

When people ask my why I homeschool, I often turn the question around, explaining that I just couldn't think of a reason that was worth trading childhood for. I apparently passed this view down to my children.

These past few weeks I've been slowly seeding how-about-the-Free-School thoughts into the minds of the two middle boys. The oldest definitely wants to go. The youngest goes over my dead-ish body. My view on the matter hasn't changed. It has come up as a way of dealing with the instability caused by my faulty brain. (See sidebar.)

The boys were initially confounded on the question of how school would be better than life. I told them that some children enjoy immersing themselves inside a seething mass of age peers. The Storyteller nodded thoughtfully and said it would be fun, because in a group of age peers he'd dominate. About that I have no doubt. Storyteller-of-the-iron-will was born to take names.

But the Scientist does not give a hoot for interpersonal dynamics. He is all business. He considers himself a professional learner, science being his thing. He can not figure out what advantage there might be to placing yourself in a group of age peers, or any group for the purpose of learning, that is based on anything besides having questions in common. He is convinced that it would just be a pain in the ass. He uses the word complicated because it is the closest he has to the word bureaucracy. My only answer to that one was that he might try more new things that way. He does not like new things, but I told him that he thought kayaking would be a pain and now he likes that. By doing so I convinced him to give the Free School a try for a week.

Then they found out that they'd be at school from roughly 8ish to 3ish. I knew better than to mention that they'd still have to do all the same homeschool work from me after school, but just learning about the 8-3 part of the schedule was enough to immediately change both of their minds. "Oh, no, then," Storyteller said, laughing at the absurdity and shaking his head like he was getting the thought loosed from it. He likes peer domination but he doesn't want to make a career out of it. The Scientist simply walked out of the room, body language for, "you already know what I'll make of that," and he has since shown anger when I've brought it up, not wanting me to waste his time talking him into another waste of time.

So my children have voiced back to me reason I never sent them to a school: it's not worth trading the days of their lives for.