Le Sabot Post-Moderne

Our church struggled with that for awhile, but the really militant homeschool-only families left and now we have a good mix of home-schoolers, Christian schoolers and public schoolers. Nobody seems to begrudge anyone else their schooling choices. (Hmmm, school choice, what a concept!)

"The Duchess wishes me to note that homeschooling IS the ideal in the early years, when education is more a matter of nurturing than hard-core"

I would agree with The Duchess on that point. For the later years I think a quality Classical Christian private school with high parent involvement is ideal, if it's affordable and available. Like you pointed out, the co-op idea is also a great way for homeschoolers to consolidate resources and share various scholastic abilities. In many ways that seems to already be happening all over the country. What many people used to call homeschooling is in many instances very loosely structured private schools. I've always thought that the homeschooling movement will continue to slowly organize itself into various forms of private school structures in the future.

Once again, I'm pretty much right there with you. Homeschooling as THE WAY is irritating to me, and heart-rending stories of jumper-clad mommies who tear up when they overhear their daughters homeschooling their dolls make me want to gag. Homeschooling is the way you educate your kids, not The Royal Way. "Sacramentalize" is a very good word, because a lot of these people have a really poor ecclesiology and substitute lifestyle choices for an honest to goodness Reformed sacramental spirituality.

But the Duchess is right -- homeschooling is the best thing in the early years, and offers some advantages in the later years as well. I don't think I'm quite at the point of saying that institutional education (for lack of a better term) is actually better in any given situation where there is a choice, and where the parents do have the abilities and resources to pull off homeschooling well. American culture has so many forces pulling people away from a covenantal, Christ-centered mindset that even a "really good Christian school" might be inferior in terms of long-term discipleship. But I consider that a matter of opinion and liberty in any case, and I believe that there are many particular cases in which those choices, abilities, and resources are not available, and so the ideal is moot.

When my older boys were teens, our homeschool group (those of us who had teens) recruited some teachers for them. As a result, the kids who wanted to learn German learned it from one of the German profs at the university who attended our church and was glad to supplement her income this way as well as enjoying the enthusiasm of the homeschoolers. The German prof recruited grad students to teach various levels of Spanish. A newly retired high school physics teacher--who only retired because she had had it with spit-wad throwing kids--was able to transition more gently to retirement by having a small class of non-spitwad tossers. A grad student from the university music education department was glad for the income and experience gained in helping the homeschoolers have a band experience. A disabled philosophy professor on medical leave from the university couldn't wait for Tuesdays and Thursdays when he was able to teach his beloved subject from the comfort of his easy chair, with his oxygen tank handy. And so on.

It was great. Unfortunately the woman who so creatively pulled this together came under fire from various mothers about the cost and various other things. Gripe, gripe, gripe. I thought it was an amazing provision for my children. I don't see anything like that on the horizon for my youngest.

Kathy

King's Kid-

That's great... I wish the same had happend in the church I mentioned. Some of the nicest people you've ever met. And a small core of not-so-nice. I'm glad your church came through well. :)

Inkling-

Your thoughts seem to go in the same direction as mine. I /love/ the idea of Classical School, and would definitely send my boys to one. And you're right that the homeschooling movement seems to be naturally evolving in the direction of cooperation. I think it's good.

pentamom-

Good thoughts. I would still lean toward institutional learning for the later years. Particularly if the children are gifted. Parents simply can't specialize in all academic fields the way a group of teachers can. It's a matter of division of labor, to my mind. Another area where I lean strongly towards school-schooling is when the primary homeschooling parent is the mother, and her 'students' are teenage boys. Boys shouldn't be that close to the apron at that age, IMO... (But I'm not dogmatic about it, so please no one feel judged if this mirrors their life-circumstances...)

Kathy-

That sounds like a great situation. It's a shame people had to mess it up. While I don't agree on a theological level with the phrase "Hell is other people", I can sometimes sympathize with the sentiment behind it. :P

Finally someone speaks some sanity. Our family has a name for these folks as well, Jumper People. (As in "Invasion of")

Lana!

That's awesome. . . :) Some of them can be sweet and just mildly frumpy. Some get a little scary. We had the doily-lady at one church -- she had this compulsion to sew lace onto every available sleeve or hem of every garment she and her daughters wore. And the women coordinated everytime you saw them. I kept expecting her to channel Bill Gothard in a Borg-like voice saying, "You will be assimilated."