Suzanne's Homeschooling Website

"If I thought of a future, I dreamt of one day founding a school in which young people could learn without boredom, and would be stimulated to pose problems and discuss them; a school in which no unwanted answers to unasked questions would have to be listened to; in which one did not study for the sake of passing examinations." - Karl Popper

"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year ... It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of enquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail." - Albert Einstein

Homeschooling has always appealed to me, but I never thought I would do it. Not that I didn't feel I could teach my own children but that I didn't think I could do it and have the career I planned to have. As we all figure out sometimes, life doesn't always go exactly as planned.

My oldest daughter attended two months of preschool when she was 4 years old. The experiences she had changed her a lot. She began acting like the other children and not wanting to play with her younger brother. We took her out of preschool for several reasons but it was then that I began researching the homeschooling option.

I attended a homeschooling workshop in the spring, before my daughter would have been registered for Kindergarten. When I met a woman who is homeschooling her children and works outside of the house. She said they homeschool at night and on the weekends. It was then that I realized I could still homeschool and have a career so we decided to homeschool our children. My yearning to homeschool arose in part from my own experiences in the public school system - - the bullies, the boredom, the lack of respect among students and teachers...teachers towards students and students towards each other. I also realized the wonderful benefits of homeschooling - - the individual one-on-one instruction, the variety of socialization opportunities with both children and adults of all ages, the flexibility to learn whatever, whenever and however you and your child wants, the opportunities to strengthen family values and relationships and much, much more. My husband also agrees with these philosophies, though it has taken a while to introduce him to the different varieties of homeschool, especially "unschooling" (child-led learning) where traditional methods are replaced with relaxed learning opportunities which involve real-life experiences and hands-on activities.

"Unschooling isn't a method of instruction, it's a different way of looking at learning." -Linda Wyatt

We plan to homeschool all of our children through high school but I will always leave the option open to them to attend school if they want at a time when I feel they are able to make such decisions for themselves. For now, we are enjoying the adventure of educating our children at home.

"Most of us have forgotten what it was like to follow our own noses, to ask our own questions and find out own answers. Years of educational treatment have convinced us that learning is, and can only be, the result of teaching. We grow up into adults who insist that our children "receive" an education. We trust neither ourselves nor our children."
~~ Aaron Falbel ~~

Once when asked John Holt was speaking to a school audience, describing his views on their structured curriculum, a student asked him, "But surely there must be something important enough that everyone should learn it?" He thought for a moment and replied, "To learn to say 'I'm sorry', 'I don't know', and 'I was wrong'." [unpublished anecdote]

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