Editor's note: This is another article in my effort to dispel myths about learning and showcase ways people are thriving and learning without being "schooled." The purpose being that educators discover alternative ways to foster learning that may be more effective for some children.
Distracted and bored
Twenty-one years ago, my parents were faced with a dilemma about where to send my brother and me to school. The small private school we attended didn’t offer middle school, and the public schools in our rural Georgia county were at the bottom of a state typically at the bottom of the nation as far as education was concerned. What to do?
At that point, homeschooling was a fledgling movement that boasted only about 200,000 students in the entire country. But we knew friends doing it, and they seemed to be doing well. My father has always had a creative, entrepreneurial spirit, and so on the last day of fourth grade, I came home from school, and never went back. Not until college, anyway. I suppose you could say we were homeschooling before homeschooling was cool.
And boy, was it cool. People ask me now if I liked it. Yes, I liked it. It worked extraordinarily well for my brother and me for two very different reasons. I was a nerd. I read everything I could get my hands on. I cried when summer break came. My brother, on the other hand, was... well, easily distracted. We’ll call it that because back then you weren’t “diagnosed” and no one was taking meds for distraction. But if a butterfly flew by the window, you can bet that was it for his attention to the day’s lesson. He was on his way to hopelessly failing the fifth grade, while I was bored to death waiting for everyone else to finish their work in the fourth. Enter homeschooling.
Stars and a swingset
