Recently I was discussing the difference (or really the similarities) between a Master’s thesis and a PhD dissertation. My Master’s thesis, which I needed to complete in order to graduate, was finished in or around 1992, possibly 94. I can’t for the life of me remember the year and I have no idea where my physical degree is.

I mentioned that my thesis was about Homeschooling and tumblr user, RJ asked me about it.

It would take a year to find the actual paper in my basement, so this will be lacking facts and figures, and really just a short summary of what I was looking for and my conclusions.

To start a little background: my secondary education was a bit convoluted. My first semester I took nine credits that ended up not counting. They were supposed to count towards the liberal arts portion of my degree; the core courses. At the time, I was in the pre-law program to prepare for continuing on to law school at the end of four years.

Sometime between my taking the courses and the next semester, we (the class of 1988) were told that these were not included in the core classes that we could choose from; no grandfathering in for us. Nope. So I was nine credits short to start out my freshman year and had to make them up. (The credits counted but as electives, not as core.)

After two years of pre-law and public speaking and anxiety that makes my current anxiety seem mild, I switched majors to elementary education, and spent the next two years playing catch up there. I lost all opportunities to take pretty much any elective because I had to take the required education courses and student teach for an entire semester right before graduation. I was immersed in the education field and I was something of a respect authority at all costs kind of person and so much of my thinking on the professional educational world was pretty much etched in stone.

My Master’s was less strict. The only public school (that I could barely afford) was a state school about thirty miles from home that took about two and a half hours to get to on a good day. They did not have a Master’s in education, only secondary education, which I was not remotely interested in, but I could do a kind of independent study for a Liberal Arts Master’s Degree and title it Educational Issues. This let me learn about all kinds of educational things that I normally wouldn’t have learned – for example, whole language, cooperative learning, child development and so on. If I could make it sound like it was part of educational issues, I could take it.

I’m a much more diverse educator, embracing more of what works for students rather than what works for the organization of a classroom. Having spent a decade in early childhood education, many lessons can be gleaned from preschoolers that translate easily to any other age, but what I learned after undergrad is a discussion for another time.

This long-winded and complicated introduction is more to show you my naiveté in regards to alternative forms of education, one of them being homeschooling.

I was not familiar with the term homeschooling, but it was one of the recommendations from my thesis mentor, or whatever he was called at the time – can’t remember. I do remember that I was expected to furnish five pages with a bibliography, proving or disproving my hypothesis, and I gave him more than fifteen pages.

Pretty sure, I’ve dawdled enough; the time has come to reveal my deep, dark secret:

I was not a fan of homeschooling.

In fact, I was of the mind, as an almost professional educator, someone who not only survived fourteen years of public school, four years of religious school, four years of a college education and nearly two years in a master’s program that homeschooling was a ridiculous waste of time.

How could a parent with no formal educational background other than attending school be qualified to teach their children?

Pretty condescending, huh?

I was in my twenties and nearly finished with a formal education. I pictured my mother sitting at the kitchen table trying to teach me algebra or even holding a gym class and I snickered.

My opinions were absolute and nothing in my educational experience would serve to change that.

Two things changed my mind, and consequently the entire direction of the paper.

The first was a book: Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax, a homeschooling family in northern California. Three of their sons went to Harvard. Homeschooling was kind of a new thing for non-hippie. Their isolated homestead made it somewhat of a non-choice, but one that they took on and succeeded with four boys. This book really opened my eyes to the reality of homeschooling rather than a homeschooling movement. It didn’t gloss anything over; there were bad days and good, and this worked for this family (and many others as I was soon to discover.)

Living in a less isolated part of the country, Long Island, New York, I thought that I’d never find a primary subject to interview. I was wrong. Right in my own neighborhood. In talking to a homeschooling Mom, she invited me to spend a couple of hours interviewing her and a couple of her homeschooling colleagues (or other moms) while their kids did one of their group days.

This was one of the things that really put a wrench in my thesis: the ever popular, how will your kids learn to socialize? That’s a big part of school and that was a large part of the dissent from the professional educators and school districts. Families who homeschooled were doing a disservice to their kids by keeping them home.

These women spent a lot of time with me. They also appreciated my honesty and tolerated my original thesis that I thought homeschooling was not something that could ever be widely spread or successful.

Of all the kids, I think two were middle school aged and the rest were elementary school with one or two preschoolers for a total of about twelve, but that is just a guess. (If I find the paper, I’ll edit the post.) There were mixed genders, and for the most part, the Dads (I believe all of these families were two parent households) worked outside of the home, but when they were home, they took over some of the teaching, bringing the kids along on house maintenance, lawn care and the usual things that you would expect in a middle class, suburban home.

These families were, as I expected, a little more conservative than the average family I encountered, and I believe all were Christian. In addition to this homeschooling group, they also belonged to church groups and the kids went to summer camps at various times in their lives.

There was no ‘breaking up the monotony’. It was fulfilling and a rich experience for all of them.

If a child was sick, they wouldn’t necessarily miss a day of school. They just took more naps and had their activities at a slower pace.

There wasn’t a whole lot of television or video games, although to be fair, this was the early 90s and a computer in every room or laptop on every lap wasn’t the norm yet.

This group kind of followed the school schedule. They had group get togethers at rotating houses. There were trips to the library, trips to the park, and other field trips as a group.

When I was there, the kids spent most of the time outside doing water activities. As I recall, one of the Moms was outside or the oldest boy was in charge. I don’t think there was a pool, but more of a sprinkler or a slip and slide; perhaps a baby pool. I found the yard activities to be perfectly safe whatever their supervision was on that day.

I also recall that one of the kids spent most of the interview with his head on his mom’s lap. I believe he wasn’t feeling well.

The answer to the socialization question was another question: How much socialization do they really get at school when they’re expected to sit at a desk all day and not talk except to answer the teacher’s questions. Even at lunch, they can’t choose where they sit, who they sit with or what they eat; or when. Do they eat when they’re hungry or when the teacher decides that this time fits into the schedule of the rest of the school?

She didn’t have to convince me about teaching mixed ages. When I was in kindergarten, I was in a mixed age class with the first grade. Homeschooling kids go at their own pace, have more individual attention, and if a younger child doesn’t understand something, the other children who have mastered it can help or tutor, a benefit to both the teacher and the learner of the children.

The children determine their own curriculum. A child centered, interest-based curriculum is something that will keep the child’s attention since they’ve suggested the subject matter. It is then up to the mother (or father) to figure out the best way to integrate the subject into the skills that the children should be learning.

I’ve always felt that the two most important things you can teach children are basic math and how to read and understand. If you can read, you can do anything.

About eight years later, I almost homeschooled my then-five year old. We ended up deciding against it for a number of reasons, but it was definitely on the table as a viable option. We were happy with our choice, but I’m now, and have been since this research paper, a strong proponent of homeschooling as an option as well as parents’ rights in the public/private school setting.

I came into this with preconceived notions, but I was willing to listen to people who were actually doing it as they told me the good things and the bad things about their homeschooling life. I completely changed my mind. I learned a lot and I was given a glimpse into a world that I ordinarily wouldn’t have seen.

I’m grateful to those parents, who despite knowing my views on their lives and lifestyles, still welcomed me into their home to see first-hand what I really couldn’t learn about from traditional educators or from books about homeschooling. We learn so much by doing, and that is one of the tenets I find with homeschooling that schools are only beginning to embrace. However, from my own experience, I see that they are going back to commonality and minimum standards instead of excelling and experimenting and trying out new things, one of the bonuses of having the kids run the classroom so to speak.

Here it is, just about twenty years later, and I still remember those lessons I learned from real homeschooling families, some of which are to keep an open mind and be willing to change it, keep an open heart and listen to it, ask questions without judgment, we all have something to learn from each other, and different isn’t bad; it’s just different.