Maybe Homeschooling is Easier Than You Think
Maybe Homeschooling is Easier Than You Think
It’s one way to resist toxic campus environments
Imagine paying tens of thousands of dollars so your children can spend four to seven years under the tutelage of the world’s worst therapist.
Too often that comes pretty close to describing the modern college experience. Universities routinely toss out wisdom that’s been accumulated over centuries and backed up by modern psychology in favor of fashionable claptrap that makes students miserable.
Psychologists have long known that people who believe they have a good deal of control over their life outcomes are more likely to be happy. But colleges teach students, especially those from minority groups, that systemic “isms” will undermine their hard work.
Our minds are threat-generating marvels, but those who embrace Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) learn how to separate the countless fake threats from the relatively few real ones. Too bad universities fill students’ heads with microaggression dogma, which trains them to interpret benign, everyday interactions as threats.
And that’s just the beginning. Universities whip up tribalism, encourage fragility, and leave students with broken moral compasses.
But as frustrating as college can be, it’s important to avoid myopia.
Gen Z’s mental health crisis didn’t start in college, and there’s plenty of blame to go around—parents, social media, tech companies, pop culture, and so on. Some of the worst lessons are taught at ordinary schools across the nation.
Yes, many excellent schools exist, and if your kid goes to one of those, please know I’m not referring to your situation. But often the same fad-happy herd thinking that pollutes the college environment also pollutes high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, and preschools.
How to start replacing madness with sanity?
Homeschooling is one option. My wife and I homeschool our nine-year-old son, and we’ve found that it helps foster independent thought and counteracts consumerism, social media obsession, and other forms of anxiety-producing groupthink.
From time to time, I write about homeschooling, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the level of interest the practice generates. I’ve also noticed plenty of unwarranted trepidation.
Many curious parents hesitate to take the plunge because it seems too hard. And it’s true that homeschooling comes with plenty of challenges and frustrations, but which education option doesn’t? When it comes to homeschooling, parents often fixate on the hard stuff, and ignore the other side of the ledger.
Here’s an upside down thought for you to ponder: Maybe homeschooling is easier than you think it is.
Dropping off kids at school can be almost as irritating as navigating a Trader Joe’s parking lot, but homeschoolers get to avoid all that early-morning angst. And much of the rest of the day might also be easier than you expected.
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Starting is Easier Than You Thought
I’ve spoken with parents who feel overwhelmed by taking the first step.
What will happen on the first day of homeschool!
I don’t know what I’m doing!
What if I fail!
At first glance, it can seem daunting.
You have to juggle math, science, reading, and so much more. Homeschool parents might look like jugglers who somehow manage to keep 10 balls in the air. You probably can’t juggle 10 balls, but I bet you could juggle one.
Choose one topic, and begin with just that topic. Go ahead and play to your strengths. If you love reading, begin with reading. Take your time. Once you get the hang of juggling one “ball,” add another, and another. And don’t worry, you’ll never have to go all the way to 10.
But what about the rest of the day!
Relax, your easier-than-expected day is just getting started.
Letting Kids Explore is Easy
My wife and I once toured a preschool where the principal proudly showed off her detailed schedule. Some exercises were as short as 10 minutes. In most schools, class periods range between 30 and 60 minutes in duration. But frequently interrupting a child with bells or the singsong voice of a preschool teacher makes it less likely that the child will develop the passion for learning schools say they want to promote.
Kids need time to explore. They need time to consider the options you’ve provided. If your daughter is really loving a new book she chose from the book pile, she won’t want to stop reading after 10 minutes. She might want to keep reading for hours.
If, at the end of your first week of homeschooling, your daughter hasn’t learned any fractions but she has read a book, then bravo! It's time for both of you to do a touchdown dance because, in one week, she pulled off a feat that less than 50% of American adults accomplish over the span of a year.
Free Play is Easy
From spinach to long division, parents are always trying to finagle their kids into loving what they need. Yet so many of us overlook some very obvious common ground—free play. Kids love it and need it. Free play teaches them how to build confidence, deal with other humans, and resolve disputes peacefully.
Parents should think of play as being packed with goodness like spinach, but too many of us dole it out cautiously as if it were Halloween candy. Well, parents, it’s time to listen to the Queen of the Freerangers, our friend Lenore Skenazy—let your kids gorge on play!
Here’s where the easy part comes in.
Free play means parentless play. Fear not fellow free range parents in training, you can still lurk. Well, sort of. Think of yourself, not as a cop or a coach, but as a lifeguard who only departs from under the umbrella if someone is in serious danger.
Imagine—your kids run wild outside for a couple hours each day, and you’re mostly not involved. What are you going to do (or not do) with that time?
So try replacing your old image of yourself as a homeschool parent—harried, confused, and frustrated—with a new image: You’re skipping the morning gridlock, focusing on one subject at a time, and giving your kids the space they need to explore and play. In the meantime, you can work on whatever you’ve been putting off. You might even get to do a little bit of nothing.
It almost seems like you’re up to something shady, but not only are you not a bad parent, you’re a model to all the other parents. You can even smugly lecture all the skeptical moms and dads about all the science that backs up your free range time.
Imagine that.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post. His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.
We don't home school our children, as we have a great charter school nearby, but I can attest to the benefits of free play. We let the two of them (boys 5 and 7) roam the neighborhood on their own until dark, and they have great adventures with all the other kids in the area. At any given time there will be 3 to 15 kids running around together.
People also worry about the expense of homeschooling, but I can find used textbooks for as little as $6 online. For some subjects you are better off using nonfiction books than textbooks. If I’m not happy with one book or resource I find another.
My daughter is starting 10th grade and the most distressing aspect of her Geometry course last year was my realization of how very little of it I have ever needed to know. I enjoy carpentry as a hobby and was disgusted to recognize that I use more algebra than geometry, and a year of my teenage math education was devoted to geometry! I was wracked with guilt over her inability to retain geometry detail until this epiphany.
So much of my professional education was either prerequisites (to keep PhDs employed as much as to prepare me for higher level courses) or graduation requirements (to keep PhDs employed) and has had little relevance to anything I actually do professionally or personally.
Some minutiae is needed for standardized testing, but the big picture is what is most useful in adulthood. Your kid doesn’t have to be memorizing as much, which is the focus in most schools, and instead can be learning how to apply information. My parents instilled in me the importance of thinking rather than just coasting on a wave of detail. This has served me well.