Each of us has a relative or two that is truly interested in our choice to homeschool. Over the Memorial Day weekend I was privileged to have a wonderful conversation with a relative of mine, which is reproduced for you below.

For a child's initial foray into learning, I think it's great that parents are able to teach their children and learn (or re-learn in some cases) in a one-on-one environment, because the focus is there and a bond develops between parent and child. Also, in most cases, it nurtures their development into fully-functional and alive, human beings. Alive in the sense of feeling more confident and capable in their abilities, because of the focus and belief of the parents in their children.

What you said; :-) however, I believe that all of these wonderful things--learning together; opportunity for familial closeness and bonding; nurturing, "building confidence", focusing on kids--should continue beyond just the "initial foray into learning" (in your words, actually, I believe a child's initial foray into learning begins at birth--children learn volumes before age five without "formal education". Homeschooling, as I see it, acknowledges this seamless process of learning. i.e.-there is no starting point; learning happens naturally.)

In the middle school and adolescent years (maybe "especially" in these volatile, awkward, confusing years), kids still need these things; I believe that, at those ages, these things can actually boost a child's burgeoning independence and self-sufficiency.

You mention an one-on-one environment. This made me think about how homeschooling is really a misnomer, at least in the way some people view it. It doesn't have to be school at home. It will be, for my family, learning everywhere. Learning from and with people of different ages, talents, and perspectives (who do you think we are going to contact if one of our kids becomes interested in chemistry or engineering????).

But your point is well taken. The focus on the individual child, that homeschool provides, benefits not only the young child, but also the older adolescent, who is free to learn at her own pace, with her own learning style, and in pursuit of those areas which interest her. This, too, builds confidence and not only that, but a love of learning. Learning does not become a game of catch up or jumping through hoops--as traditional school, unfortunately, is for some kids,that can eventually kill the passion to learn.

Now, having said all of this, I worry about parents' ability to maintain the discipline and patience necessary to separate school life from home life.

Ah, but you see, "school life" and "home life" don't necessarily have to be separated--and there is a whole "branch" of homeschooling philosophy (unschooling) that says that you can't and shouldn't try to separate true learning from what we like to call "real life". Even traditional schools acknowledge this, by hyping "special" activities that "bring the world into the classroom" and rewarding kids with adventures into the real world, better known as field trips.

In the real world, there are opportunities to learn all the time--not just the concepts that are usually presented in school in worksheet or textbook form, but so much above and beyond that. So, if a parent and child got caught up spending the day at the zoo or finger painting at home, I wouldn't be concerned at all about this getting in the way of learning. :-)

This whole line of thought begs the question: What is learning? How do you know when you've learned something? What information is worth knowing? Is there a body of information that all people need to know? Who decides what that information is and at what age people should know what information? The way schools typically answer these questions is driven by the need to manage large groups of kids and the strategies employed to do so are antithetical to what is known about how individual kids learn best.

Here's a snappy homeschooling comeback I heard about. A hs kid was being teased by neighborhood kids about how much he (I actually can't remember if the child was male or female) was missing in school. Stuff like recess, and how he didn't know the important stuff you learned in school. The kid's mom taught him this comeback:

Teaser: I'll bet you don't know who the 16th president of the United States was?

Hs kid: No, I don't know. Who was the 16th president?

Teaser: Abraham Lincoln!

Hs kid: Abraham Lincoln. Hmm...now I know who the 16th president of the United States was...and I didn't have to go to school for 6 hours to learn it!

A great example of what learning is and isn't in my own life is Calculus. You remember Ms. Madison? :-) Her drill and kill strategy really worked. After doing hundreds of problems in class and for homework, I got the highest possible score, a 5, on the AP Calc test. But to this day, I wouldn't know where to begin with a Calculus problem! Yet, I do have a passion for language, literature, and history, in small part, because of a handful of good teachers, but mostly because of the reading, learning, and thinking I did outside of school and the strong desire to learn, which was mine before I ever stepped foot in a classroom.

In "Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense", David Guterson, a high school teacher who, along with his wife, homeschools their kids, deals with not only the issue of "learning", but also considers home and traditional schooling from legal, historical, philosophical, and practical perspectives. Guterson is also a novelist, so the book reads easily, he uses not only analysis, but also anecdotes and narrative. One of his many points is how schools have ignored solid, learning theories, sometimes for no reason other than that the theories would be impossible to act upon in the existing structure of schooling in the U.S. In other words, schools and the bureaucracies that support them are more vested in self-preservation and the status quo than making changes that could improve the rather disappointing results that traditional schooling currently yields.

An experiment of sorts, that Guterson has done throughout his years of teaching, is to give the traditional unit test (after much teaching of objectives, reviewing the concepts, announcing the upcoming test, the usual) on Friday and then to give the test again on Monday, unannounced. Not once has a student scored as well on Monday as s/he did on Friday and some students got only half the score on Monday that they got on Friday. So, again, what IS learning?

You mentioned the discipline needed to keep home and school life separate. My guess is that part of your concern is that the parents and the children will lack the discipline to get down to the books, as it were. Aside from the fact that I think that boundary between home life and learning is artificial, I also know that human beings are very "disciplined" about learning those things that they care about, in environments that are healthy, safe, encouraging, and otherwise conducive to learning. For some learners, that means calm, quiet, and order. Other kids need their Walkmens on to really get into a good book. Again, homeschooling can accommodate these various learning styles and preferences and how these styles and preferences can vary from kid to kid, from subject to subject and through time and space.

It didn't require much discipline on my part to spend entire days reading books of my own choosing as a kid or even the crazy task of copying the dictionary by hand (which I tried to do when I was 9!). "Discipline" becomes a problem when learning is viewed predominantly as a means to an end and not a wonderful end in and of itself.

Discipline is necessary when somebody somewhere insists that math must be studied from 9:10-10:00 am using XYZ Textbook and getting less than 80% of the problems right means that you have to redo the odd number problems on pages 11-19. Discipline is necessary when you expect a child to put down a book when she's just getting to the good part because English class is over.

It would be unthinkable for me to suggest that homeschooling parents have no problems with their kids or that discipline is a non-issue by virtue of someone not sending their kids to school, but the discipline required in schools, is very particular to schools where there must be "order" and everyone doing the same thing at the same time, where you've got kids who don't want to be there, much less have any interest in the stuff they are being forced to do.

As an example, one of the biggest complaints I hear about home offices or telecommuting is that it is an absolute must that one is disciplined enough to maintain the separation of home and work or else home becomes work or vice versa and both parties lose out because of a lack of balance.

This idea of home life and work life being separate is a very modern phenomenon and very culturally specific--this does not make it the ideal. Guterson deals with this issue in his book.

Why is there an interest in home offices and telecommuting? Not just because, technologically speaking, we have the capability, but because people are drawn to what is most important: home, wanting to spend more time with their families, a less stressful, comfortable place. Because the lack of balance is already a reality: with home life being the loser. I realize that if someone is being paid for accomplishing certain tasks in a certain time frame while working at home, this has to be done; but, if it is done at the expense of one's family life, then what is the point of working from home? You might as well be in the office, if working at home doesn't allow you to spend any additional, meaningful time with your family.

The same applies, in my opinion, to the version of homeschooling that is essentially "school at home"--you're simply bringing some of those elements of traditional schooling that destroy a true passion for learning into your very own living room. What does this accomplish?

The home office analogy illustrates another point about the variations among homeschoolers. Homeschoolers, who are doing so primarily to "escape" schools, probably have a different experience than those who are not so much running from schools as they are running "to" a way of life and lifelong learning (I count myself among the latter...though I'm not yet an "official" homeschooler). It's like the difference between a person who has a home office, but essentially works for someone else--only the location has changed--versus the person who owns her own business and has more freedom in making choices about her work and her home life.

As a result, stress increases and, what was once an enjoyable, relaxing environment become a negative symbol of frustration. The home office and then the home becomes a "prison" enclosing the individual. Now, admittedly, this is taking it a little far, but it's something in the back of my mind.

You're absolutely right--if homeschooling is essentially school at home, but when living and learning are one--and not competing for a finite number of hours in the day--there is freedom.

Deesha's "Conversation With a Relative" part 2