There are many reactions that are common, even stereotypical, when a homeschooler tells someone that they were homeschooled. Growing up as a homeschooler, I was always asked the same questions:
“Do you get to sleep in until whenever you want?”
“Do you have homework?”
And, my all-time favorite: “How do you make friends?”
When I graduated from high school and started going to college, I started getting a new response, but one that still expressed a certain amount of stereotyping associated with homeschooling. They would say “You were homeschooled. You don’t seem like you were homeschooled.”
I was never quite sure how to respond to a statement like this, and no, not because I lack the social skills to answer a simple question. I couldn’t figure out how to respond because it’s honestly a super weird thing to say to someone. What was I supposed to say? Thank you?
Okay, full disclosure: sometimes I did say thank you.
The fact is there are a lot of stereotypes about homeschooling. Homeschoolers are thought to be socially awkward, overly sheltered and innocent, and incapable of dealing with or understanding the real world. The knowledge that I didn’t fit easily into these stereotypes was encouraging to me, but it was also a reminder that most people have no idea what homeschooling is all about.
So let me teach you. Prepare to get homeschooled.
To start, let’s have a little vocabulary lesson.
Homeschooling is a term that is broader than most people suspect. Have you ever heard of unschooling, cyberschool, or car school? Put simply, there are many different ways to be a homeschooler, which makes stereotypes all the more ridiculous and inaccurate. A term that I think is more helpful is “self-directed learning” as opposed to homeschooling. Self-directed learning gets at the heart of what homeschooling is all about, which is creating an environment for young people to engage in the learning process in a way that is natural, enjoyable, and as beneficial as possible to the whole person, not simply their report card.
So let’s move on from preconceived notions about this whole homeschooling thing and talk about what self-directed learning is all about.
For me, growing up in a self-directed learning environment, the lines between learning, school, and the rest of the world were blurred. Nature hikes were opportunities to study biology while trips to the grocery store gave me a chance to practice math and budgeting. The couch in my living room was my English classroom while the roof outside my bedroom is often where I studied history. The coffee shop down the street was my study hall where I completed research papers while also writing novels. Too often, traditional education subliminally feeds us the lie that learning happens within the confines of a school building. Whether this is explicitly taught or not, this is the impression that many take away from their experience at school: Learning is school. The world is everything else. These things are mutually exclusive. Putting learning into a box so constrictive (and often viewed as negative by the common school student) does a disservice to the young person in question, teaching them over time that learning is something that happens to them, not something they do.
Self-directed learning puts the reins of responsibility into the hands of the young person. Their education is what they make of it. Rather than teachers, they have an array of mentors and facilitators who are there to help provide resources, sharpen understanding, and challenge when a challenge is due. This model is vitally important because it relabels a kid who struggles with trigonometry but exceeds as a musical composer not as a failing student, but as a capable one. Learning is a natural process. It does not need to be forced; it needs to be encouraged. There is an important difference between the kid who wakes up terrified of the test he has to take and the kid who wakes up eager for what he gets to learn today, and not just the fact that the second kid probably got to sleep in a little.
I could go on for about a month about the benefits that I experienced for myself and indirectly from self-directed learning. That being said, there are obstacles to this model of education, which are often the source of the negative stereotypes that are directed towards homeschooling. The fact is that some of these stereotypes can be true. Some young people who are homeschooled do struggle in social situations. Some homeschoolers do miss out on important educational milestones. Some homeschoolers feel isolated because of their education. So how can we approach homeschooling and self-directed learning that meets these obstacles and overcomes them? I believe the solution comes down to two competing reasons for homeschooling in the first place.
The problem, as I see it, is that some parents homeschool in order to shelter their children from the influences of the outside world. They fear what happens in school: bullying and negative influences of risky behavior and anything else that they wouldn’t want their kids exposed to. While this is a logical thing to want to protect your children from, know that in homeschooling your children as a form of protection, you are systematically making that young person’s world smaller.
I believe that homeschooling should have the opposite effect. I believe that a homeschooler’s world should be bigger because he or she does not go to school. They should have the opportunity to explore and meet diverse groups of people and learn all about ideas that are foreign and strange to them. This cannot be done through sheltering. It can only be done by engaging the young person with the world at large, seizing every opportunity to get out of the house and find a new environment, because new environments are where learning happens best. Homeschooling can be powerful if it builds a world for the young person that is bigger than what they would have experienced in school.
The fascinating thing about the human mind is that no one learns the same. No one experiences the world just the same as anyone else. For some, the structure of traditional school might be a place that they can excel and reach their fullest potential. The simple fact is that, despite these successes, traditional schooling often deprives students who don’t fit the mold. Self-directed learning is a natural way to expand the minds of young people beyond their school and show them that the world is a place where they can learn despite where they are or what time of day it is.
So I’m finished saying thank you when people tell me that I don’t seem like a homeschooler. Homeschooler is one of the best things that I am. If you ask me about it, I’m sure to tell you more about it than you ever wanted to hear.
