By: Natashia Atkinson
Homeschool:
We have been duped into thinking that school is the important part.
Home is the important part. -Todd Wilson
As a homeschool graduate, this quote is seen through a lens of personal experience and common sense and it is entirely accurate.
I know most homeschool parents may not see the fruit of their labors until their children go off to start their life, or create their own family and experiences but every bit of that home life has or is instilling a very important staple currently being lost among our population today.
I had the public school experience until 3rd grade, and when that was just too unsatisfactory for my parents; they just could not swallow the over arching authority and robbing of innocence that kept appearing in my book bag, class room, and conversations. The next solution which is one for many, was private school. My family was not wealthy, but the desire to give me something more safe was worth the stretching of the dollar to get me there. After 1.5 years my parents had come to the determination that private school wasn’t any better. While the private school was full of wonderful and kind families, it was also still full of the “system”, the way that no education status could seem to escape from. Mid year, I was pulled from private school and my parents set on the journey to homeschool me.
Growing up in a family more awake than most I’d known, it was nothing new to me to be doing something “abnormal”. To be on the outskirts, paving a path to what’s right, instead of going with what’s popular was really the norm for my family. Homeschooling in the early 90’s was definitely the pioneering generation, in my state especially. I was raised the rest of my childhood as a homeschooler, and the only thing that was similar to my peers that were in the system was the reading, writing, math, and foreign language I was required to learn and the diploma I was handed at the end. Now, I was doing all these things at home instead of in an overstuffed classroom full of people all lacking the same intelligence but none the less it was “school”.
What I didn’t see then that I’ve continued to see over my adult life now is the impact of home.
My mother ran a family childcare in our home, still does to this day. Not only did I watch her run a business day in and day out at home; which has so much value, I watched her care for children of all abilities, all ages, from all kinds of families. I participated in that daily life and learned how to care for others before myself, learned incredibly valuable personable skills and how to handle situations with all different kinds of people. The list of what has been valuable from that experience alone is pages long. My home and the expectations were my influence from sun up until sun down. My expectations were not rooted in what my peers would do or say about me. The chance of me becoming a slave to my peers or being raised by them was not even on the board.
The family influence of other important people such as my grandmother was rich in my life, and I will tell you, we should all use the brain that our Grandma’s gave us but that’s another blog for another day. I was able to grow richly in my family’s culture instead of society’s. I believe that is what made America thrive in the first place, and I am now a small drop in that pool.
Being so immersed in the home left me the ability to observe gender roles, be taught those incredibly important skills such as providing for oneself, being full of sense in the kitchen, and those ever so important life skills of taking responsibility, being of good character, and never backing down to what’s wrong. These are skills that I may have had the ability to use in a school system but my parents better had hoped that I had seen or been taught enough of it while in their care for only a few hours of the day.
Home is the important part. A person will spend more of their life being an adult, than they will a child. The home is what is needed to make functioning adults, able to thrive and survive in the ever changing society. My home wasn’t perfect, but instead of avoiding all those imperfections; as the current generations seem well trained in, I had to face them, my parents had to face them and we all had to grow as people. I will tell you, a person equipped to face trials and errors is someone I want on my side right now in these times. A person well experienced in dealing with human created issues is someone we need in our communities right now. Well meaning, loving and responsible parents will grow little people into adult people. Who do you want that person to have been raised by? It appears to me there’s 2 choices this day in age.
Another aspect of this is that while academics is important and a necessity for many things in life, it definitely should not be elevated above home. It should be left to what it is, a skill to help you further yourself along in life. It is ONE of the many things needed to survive, it is not the holy grail. And that system would like you to think that all that matters is education; their definition of education, and they would like you to think that they are doing you a favor by taking that out of your hands for you while they mold the future “followers”, I mean, while they help your children reach the highest levels of success(insert sarcasm here).
To homeschoolers, and those contemplating the plunge into the responsibility of your child’s education; you are their source for success in life. You mold and shape the people they were born as. You can allow that to be stolen by a system churning out carbon copy followers, or you can envision the people you want to go forth from your home and set them up for success. That does not happen in a system, it happens in a home. A home rich in family life.
Teach them well and keep them close, Natashia
