Marching to the Beat of a Different Drummer

Here's a fantastic blog post written by Joyce Burges, co-founder of National Black Home Educators:  


Marching to the Beat of a Different Drummer


This quote really drives it home: 


I learned many things during the first years of teaching my children. I didn’t realize the pressure we were under until we were set free of the educational “mess” of which they were part: The prepackaged curriculum, the one-size-fits-all model, the bullying and the negative socialization. Homeschooling allowed us to discover and experience pure, superior learning and a customized learning environment.


If you read into some of the commentary, you'll see an interesting question presented by a teacher.  She describes the extensive work that goes into preparing lessons "to standards" and expresses her disbelief that the "average" homeschooling parent could be capable of such excellent prep across all subjects being taught.  On the HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association) website,  a homeschooling mom by the name of Joy Rose offers an excellent response to this very question: (she's given her permission for this to be reposted)

The standards were devised to gather as many as possible under this one-size-fits-all education. The fancy learning that teachers receive, and all the fancy work they do to prepare each lesson, are all meant to mitigate the fact that she is teaching 20-30 children whom she has not known before the beginning of the year, each with his or her own learning style, and she has to try to get the largest group of them to understand the lesson she is presenting.

When you are teaching your own children, whom you birthed from your own body and whose personality you began learning *in the womb*, children you have taught everything they have ever known, you don't need to go to such lengths to make up for the drawbacks of teaching a large group that you don't really get to know personally until at least a quarter of the way into the school year.

In short, all of that extra training and knowledge that teachers claim you must have in order to teach your children are all meant to *try* to approximate the level that *you have already attained* by your own experience and instinct.



So moms and dads, if you're concerned with your ability to educate your children "to standards"....don't be.  :)