This blog is part of Educating My Boy: Chronicles of a Free-Schooler

Volume One of My Book House: “In the Nursery” More

This blog is part of Educating My Boy: Chronicles of a Free-Schooler

While going through emotional breakdowns and making life changes I don’t expect myself to be “teaching” or my son “studying” an awful lot. Math has completely slipped but we do keep on plodding through my version of a liberal arts “curriculum.”  As I pick books and read and discuss them with Jack I give education more thought than I probably ever did. I am determined to give my son an excellent education. (Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon… and for the rest of his life.) More

When a couple of months ago I told a close friend of mine that I was going to home school Jack she was not at all surprised. “I was expecting it,” she said. I myself had not expected it, how could she?! She said that she sensed I was going in that direction. I swear I was not aware of it myself. But, there’s an old friend for you... I guess when you know someone since seventh grade you sometimes see things about them that they don’t see themselves!

I had been running a homeschooling series by Denny Mather, a contributor on this site. Apart from my professional interest in children’s education though, I had a personal interest in homeschooling because of my nephew Theo who was homeschooled since sixth grade. My sister-in-law, Jean, decided to home school her son when she moved to a small town with a culture her family was not at all used to. Theo was more than miserable. He was getting sick. When Jean decided to pull him out of school and pretty much single-handedly teach him I was kind of shocked – not shocked in disapproval but shocked because I had never seriously thought about homeschooling. I remember thinking smugly to myself, “Poor Jean, I guess that’s what happens when you move to Hicksville: no liberal folks, no decent education.” I thought we privileged people in politically correct, upscale San Francisco have nothing to worry about! Really, I thought exactly that: Nothing to worry about.  More