As a blissfully unattached single devoid of responsibility for anything (except my rent) and anyone (save my bevy of blissfully unattached friends), I've always found nothing more frightening than the prospect of having kids of my own to feed and shelter. Recently, though, I've been dwelling on something far scarier: educating them — myself. With an estimated two million kids from all economic classes now schooled at home, this isn't just idle worrying on my part. And considering I will surely never make enough money to pay for private schools — and fancy myself always living in hip urban centers with shoddy public schools — somewhere down the line home schooling might actually prove the most attractive option. After all, I do write articles every week on how to fix the nation's schools. How hard would it be to actually do it?
As much as I love formaldehyde, I was more drawn to the informational seminars. They promised to
enlighten home school parents on, well, the very topics just about every
parents everywhere obsesses over. What to do if your kid has ADD? How to
discern your child's learning style and resolve conflicts? What kinds of foods
help children concentrate — and keep them from bouncing off the walls?
Unsurprisingly, the "Designing a College Preparatory High School
Program" was bursting at the seams with parents. They probably made a
beeline there from the vendor doing brisk business selling Princeton Review and
Kaplan SAT prep software. With support systems like this in place, home schooling certainly wasn't the lonely endeavor
I'd imagined it — long days chained to the kitchen table with a couple of
library books and low-tech science experiments of my own making. And after an
exhausting day in Denver, I'm at least willing to admit home schooling to the
realm of the possible — even the doable — provided I can ditch the lesson about
the sheep's brain.