What I Learned as a Homeschooling Parent:

Rebecca Rupp, Mary Griffith

"True education is something that each person does for him or herself."

As promised, today we continue with sharing the wisdom of two more veteran homeschooling moms who have written books that have helped countless homeschooling families enjoy learning at home. Here they share their answer to “What have homeschooling parents learned from the experience?”

Rebecca Rupp on Homeschooling Lessons

Each homeschooling family doubtless has its own list of unexpected revelations. What Randy and I have learned from our homeschooling experiences could fill a book. Homeschooling has been much more than we ever expected. In a way, it’s like those little sponge capsules about the size of a vitamin pill – the kind you drop in water and suddenly it swells to the size of a pancake and turns into an octopus.

We’ve learned, from hands-on experience, that a true education is something that each person does for him or herself. It’s not what we teach that makes an education; it’s what they learn. This may not sound like much: these days it’s accepted homeschooling dogma. Observing it in practice, however, in our very own living room, was something else again. I hadn’t realized that “pursuing theor own interests in their own way” was going to be so emphatically individual. Each of our sons assimilated something different from his homeschooling experience and used it to build a unique education – and the outcomes, in each case, are not necessarily the educations we would have chosen for them. Instead, these are the educations they chose for themselves.

When we decided on homeschooling for our boys, starting some eleven years ago when our oldest was just reaching kindergarten age, we had a number of goals in mind. We wanted to raise children who could think for themselves, undeterred by peer pressure. We wanted the boys to develop as individuals, with the confidence to march to the beats of their own – perhaps very different – drummers. We wanted the boys to have time and freedom to pursue their own interests and set their own goals.

There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” Homeschooling gave us just what we wished for. It turned out three unconventional and independent thinkers. This means that our sons don’t always think like we do and it means that we don’t always agree with other. It’s not quite what we expected. But we wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Mary Griffith on Homeschooling Lessons

I’ve learned that my children are just as curious as I am, that they want to know how their world works, and that they’re capable of learning far more than I am capable of teaching them. I’ve learned that my children are essential members of this family, that they often find solutions I’ve missed for problems we’ve faced. I’ve learned (and keep learning, over and over again!) that my children are the best judges of how and when and what they need to learn. I’ve learned that my children, like me, learn most from doing real, useful work rather than from make-believe projects. I’ve learned that learning is the best part of life, that learning is something I will do until the day I die. And I’ve learned that my children already know all this. They won’t need to be thirty-five years old before they finally figure it out.

You can read much more wisdom like this by dozens of the most respected voices representing over 500 years of homeschooling experience in the timeless Homeschooling Book of Answers edited by Linda Dobson.

Answer from Mark and Helen Hegener coming up this week…don’t miss it!

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