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As someone who's seriously looking at homeschooling my kids, I'll give you my reasons (briefly, because obviously it's a complex issue) I see a lot of similari

As someone who's seriously looking at homeschooling my kids, I'll give you my reasons (briefly, because obviously it's a complex issue) I see a lot of similarity between the school system and having a regular, steady job. The risk is known, and the outcome is, with a high likelihood, going to fit between a fairly narrow band. It's safe, it's socially acceptable and everyone else is doing it. Homeschooling is like leaving that regular 9-5 job (something I did 9 months ago now). It's higher risk, it's not socially acceptable (not amongst my friends anyway) and only nut-cases do it. But... there's the potential for much higher reward. My kids have nice teachers, but they're not the sharpest tools in the shed and have almost no intellectual curiosity. I want my kids to develop a love of learning, of discovering new things and of understanding. I want them to know that I don't know everything, that no one does. I want them to be curious, to question and to explore. I most certainly do not want them to spent the next 12 years of their life sitting at a desk. A quick anecdote from only last week. One of my daughters is 8 and learning about the Solar System. She's loving it and reading everything she can find. They had an in-class test and one of the questions was "How many planets are there?" She answered 8-13, unsure if the teacher was after dwarf planets, and was marked wrong; the 'correct' answer was 9. When she tried to explain that there were 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets, the teacher didn't want to know.

tremendo 18y ago
Also considered home-schooling and remember having many doubts as to whether in the end my kids would fare better or not. I feel we've been able to nurture their natural love of learning mostly by unschooling. My fear of the school system was that it would effectively kill this love of learning, and in fact, we did give up on public school after 6 months of what really only seemed like crowd control. My son would sit quietly at school not really doing or learning that much, and then let out all his energy and frustrations at home. Fortunately changing school to one that follows Montessori method has worked really well for him and my daughter. They get much more personalized attention, they satisfy their curiosities and make tangible progress in different areas. For our particular case I don't believe we could have done better with home schooling. BTW my son was for several months an astronomy freak and would have given the same answer as your daughter. I hope you had a talk with the teacher, and explained to your daughter that she's in the right.
- cubicle67 18y ago
  Thanks. We've looked at Montessori, but there's only one school here (far south of Perth) and it's a bit out of our budget and has quite a waiting list. I'd also be interested in pursuing any other alternative education styles, but because of location we're limited. In the unlikely event that there's anyone here who knows of other styles of schooling in the Rockingham area, please let me know :)

tremendo 18y ago

Also considered home-schooling and remember having many doubts as to whether in the end my kids would fare better or not. I feel we've been able to nurture their natural love of learning mostly by unschooling. My fear of the school system was that it would effectively kill this love of learning, and in fact, we did give up on public school after 6 months of what really only seemed like crowd control. My son would sit quietly at school not really doing or learning that much, and then let out all his energy and frustrations at home. Fortunately changing school to one that follows Montessori method has worked really well for him and my daughter. They get much more personalized attention, they satisfy their curiosities and make tangible progress in different areas. For our particular case I don't believe we could have done better with home schooling. BTW my son was for several months an astronomy freak and would have given the same answer as your daughter. I hope you had a talk with the teacher, and explained to your daughter that she's in the right.

cubicle67 18y ago
Thanks. We've looked at Montessori, but there's only one school here (far south of Perth) and it's a bit out of our budget and has quite a waiting list. I'd also be interested in pursuing any other alternative education styles, but because of location we're limited. In the unlikely event that there's anyone here who knows of other styles of schooling in the Rockingham area, please let me know :)