Their questions are normally very polite and curious…like what you’d ask when you meet someone from another country.

I think a lot of it depends on the context. Who are you talking with? What is their interest? Are they just being polite?

One of the things I find effective is to just give out little bits. Most people who ask about homeschooling don’t want the two hour lecture. I have a thousand facts and ideas about homeschool, but I try to give a short answer. If the person is really interested, they’ll ask for more.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify!

~Luke

This parental CONTROL over a child’s education is not so much about gaining ruling authority as it is about giving your children the content that is right for them when they are ready. It’s about using your knowledge and love as a parent to give your child what is perfect for them. In some ways, what you say: Parent-protected learning.

On the other hand, it is true that Sonlight encourages parents to control/guide what their children are learning and how. This does go against the completely open “unschooling” method, and does reject the idea of a child’s complete “individual educational freedom” is paramount.

Why?

Because our job as parents is, I believe, to see what our children are capable of doing/their direction/purpose and point them down that road so they can run down it. For some, they have found that directed “unschooling” is the best way for them and their family. And that’s fine. For many, many families, however, Sonlight continues to provide tools and resources that help parents more easily encourage, grow, and inspire their children into a life-long love of learning.

In fact, giving children complete freedom–without input/guidance/control from parents–has led to many of today’s issues, as Dr. Sax points out so well in his book.

But beyond this, I encourage you to read more about Sonlight, and why parents both love and dislike Sonlight, and also some of the company’s stated goals. This may not be what you are looking for for your family, but by rejecting Sonlight you are choosing to give your children something else… which is making a choice for them… as you should.

~Luke

Ten years ago Nance and I tried to respect the concerns of homeschoolers who didn’t want us to call our family’s education freedom “homeshcooling” so we started using the phrase “parent-directed education” — but we quickly realized that wasn’t it. What we believe in isn’t parent-directed but parent-PROTECTED education.

Real education freedom is for the learner and that means no ruling authority, not merely exchanging one ruling authority for another.

Wherever the basis of instruction is control, coercion and compulsion, we use other words: training, schooling, programming, conditioning, remediation, indoctrination.

But real education, learning in individual freedom? Hardly.

It’s not real education freedom when church, state or even the parent-teacher controls what the child learns, knows and believes.

That means there’s a lot about homeschooling that isn’t real education freedom then. I happened upon the Sonlight commercial curriculum site today for the first time, where I found a list of pros and cons for homeschooling. Guess what the number one “pro” reason was? CONTROL.

I sure hope I made some sense! But I think it’s an important point to make. Maybe it’s just a theoretical one, because we all know all schools aren’t “good” schools or “bad” schools, which makes your newest post more relevant. :]

It seems, somehow, that YOU, good parent, should never take the “school’s job” unless the school somehow proves itself to be awful. So, more schools becoming truly awful would propel more “regular” parents to homeschool.

I find the argument against religious home education a bit odd myself. I was a conservative Christian BEFORE I began home-educating, but I began home-educating for secular reasons.

Of course, now that I AM teaching at home, when I pick out curriculum it has God and stuff in it. (Eeek!)

It takes vigilance and some amount of organization to even know what is going on, much less formulate a response to it and begin to build enough support to pressure lawmakers.

And I really think the next level of educating the mainstream folks should be focused on the people who have influence over education policy.

Perfect illustration is as follows:

Here in the state of Texas, a bill was just passed (SB 1440) which allows state welfare officials to seize your child without parental permission so that they can interview that child by transporting him/her to a place that the officials deem appropriate.

Now, I know this bill wasn’t aimed at homeschoolers per se, but it does have some really bad consequences for the homeschool community since any Child Protective Services official can basically ignore the 4th Amendment and take your kid away to eventually make the child say anything the officials want (and in Texas, CPS and homeschoolers aren’t exactly the best of friends, so you can connect the dots and draw your own conclusions as to how this bill, if it becomes approved by the governor, can easily be used to punish/harass law-abiding homeschoolers).

Did you know that in the Texas Senate, this bill was passed unanimously? That’s right, not one Senator voted against this bill.

Like I said, informal chats are best for democratizing the homeschool message, but focusing on communicating our message to someone who “has a seat at the table” when it comes to deciding homeschool rights is also critical.