Disspelling the Doubts of Homeschooling

This month, I decided to google search for some topics for a post. One of the most popular topics I found was about how bad homeschooling is. So, I thought I'd dispel some of these doubts about homeschooling.

1) The first anti-homeschool result I found was from http://www.ehow.com/list_6603210_reasons-against-home-schooling.html. It said, "It is difficult to understand how a parent or parents can provide their children with the same level of academic opportunity as an entire staff of trained professionals. They must depend upon a self-planned curriculum or those they have found elsewhere. Each curriculum varies widely in efficacy and can lead to different levels of learning. A school setting offers specialists in each field, including music, art and speech. As bright and dedicated as a home educator might be, he/she simply cannot fill all of those roles." You don't need a curriculum to teach. We actually only have two curriculum we use, one of which we use rarely. The rest is just things like writing blog posts, or taking music lessons. No one person is filling in all the roles. Many people are filling in all the roles.

2) Another search result took me to a site called http://teacherrevised.org/2009/05/30/the-case-against-homeschooling/ Number seven on the list said, "God hates homeschooling. From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord." Theoretically Jesus was homeschooled. At the time Rome didn't have free schools, and you can't say a guy who was born in a hay trough was rich. So who schooled him? Exactly, his parents.

3) The next site I found was a site called http://www.educateexpert.com/argumentsagainsthomeschooling.html. My favorite argument from this site is the third argument. It says, "You need to think about when it comes to the arguments against home schooling is the distraction factor. If a child is schooled at home, the result can be that the child does not take their studies seriously, especially when a parent is their teacher. This behavior could thus result in poor grades." True they could be distracted, but that doesn't mean they'll get bad grades. Even as I write this post, Rebecca's computer is playing the annoying, almost jazzy music that comes with her Kitty Care video game. I think that's distraction enough. Yet I still write this blog post, and the last thing I'm thinking about is watching her play her game. It is still possible to work at home without distraction, you just need to know how to avoid being distracted. Don't adults get distracted at their jobs, too, and have to learn how to deal with it?

4) The next anti-homeschooling thing I found was the third or fourth comment on http://www.pjnet.com.my/ftopict-3660-.html. It said, "I personally dislike homeschooling because it deprives the children from interacting with other kids their age. This does limit their social skills." I think people against homeschooling take the term to literally. They think that we only school at home. However, I honestly think we school more away from home than we do at home. With the many field trips and events between our two homeschool groups we really only homeschool at home on Thursdays, some Fridays, and Saturdays. That's four out of seven days that we are interacting with other homeschoolers. So, socialization isn't a problem.

If this blog post didn't dispel some of the doubts about homeschooling I don't know what will.

Massacre Grounds

Thanksgiving Tuesday is coming to a close here at our house, and we'll be working on turkey leftovers for the rest of the week. We celebrated early due to the homeschooling parents' crazy work schedules, but the good news is that both Mom and Dad will be off for Christmas this year for the first time in three years. Woohoo!

While the turkey was in the oven, we took a short hike to the Massacre Grounds along the northwestern slope of the Superstition Mountains off of First Water Trailhead. The Tonto Forest Rangers have closed the dirt access road to the Massacre Grounds, but the trail can still be reached by parking in the Crosscut Trailhead parking area, and heading southeast along the dirt trail following the many rock cairns. Here are a few shots of the ones I photographed along the way. We all thought this was a cool way to keep track of a pretty unused trail. We never saw a soul the whole afternoon. The entire trail with the new trail access is about 5 miles round trip with approximately a 1000 foot elevation gain with great views. We could see Four Peaks and even the Phoenix skyline distantly to the far west.

The Massacre Grounds take its name from the alleged massacre of the Peralta mining family by the Apaches around 1848 because the Apaches held this part of the Superstitions as a sacred place of the "Thunder God," and the Peralta family continued to mine there and transport the gold back to their home in Sonora, Mexico. There are many different versions of the story, but it is thought that after the massacre, the Apaches dumped all of the Peralta gold in this area, and subsequent miners have attempted to locate it here. As with all of our Tuesday trips, we try to make it as educational as possible, and we frequently remind the kids, "Hey, you could be in school right now," but they really liked this trip to the Massacre Grounds on Turkey Day because of the relation to the massacre of  "Alfred the Turkey" (I don't know why they started naming the turkeys -- we buy them wrapped in the grocery store just like most people do.) Anyway, Happy Turkey Massacre Day, for those of you that have not yet celebrated! Hope you, too, can enjoy a nice Thanksgiving hike!