Dakota Beacon

Last week I heard two different podcasters advising concerned parents that they probably aren’t intelligent enough to home school their own children.  I have advice for them:  look at the statistics before you open your mouth to attempt to intimidate these caring parents.  Please.

It is certainly true that home schooling is a “big decision” - either way!  It is equally consequential to leave the educating of your child to the schools - public or otherwise (most of them use the same basic curriculum).  You cannot avoid making a decision.  It is a decision to home school; it is a decision not to home school.  So cross off the idea of decision avoidance.  You must weigh the pro’s and con’s, as with any reasoned decision.  So - why are you considering home school?

There are, of course, the social reasons - bullying, either by other kids or by teachers or administrators.  

There are very real academic reasons.  Look at the unbelievable failure rate of our public schools.  Baltimore is one example, but it is not atypical.  While math is a real problem for these kids, so is reading - as of 2022, Baltimore public high school students were reading at only elementary levels as well.  Meanwhile, across the boards, home school students out-perform them.  This should really surprise no one.  And at the bottom of the heap of this academic failure are non-white students.  So this would seem to perpetuate disadvantage.  Few kids can read “at their grade level” or do simple math.   History, of course,  is “history” and has been for at least a couple of generations now.  And it is sobering to realize that the bar is going lower each year as well.  “At level” might really be at a lower level.  (If you doubt this, just take a look at the books found in remote one-room schoolhouses in the late 19th Century.  You will be shocked - they will challenge post-graduate students today.)  Watch some of those man-on-the-street interviews if you still have doubts, where intelligent, successful-looking young people guess at what year we won our independence from Mexico.  Illiteracy is a scandal in our colleges.  A few years ago I read where the University of North Dakota was mandating remedial reading classes for entering freshmen who could not read.  And these kids pay for this failure all of their lives.  So let’s not try to scare parents by telling them they are probably not intelligent enough to teach their kids.

And then there is the moral reason.  It turns out that a whole lot of gender dysphoria was deliberately planted and cultivated in the minds of little pre-schoolers in kindergarten that they were “assigned the wrong gender” or were “born in the wrong body”.  The results have been disastrous.  They are peppered with porn disguised as children’s literature.  And parents are at best discouraged from objecting and at worst kept in the dark altogether.  

Many of our schools have become dangerous places to entrust with our children.

So - you might have decided that home school is the way to go.  It isn’t an earthquake.  It is a carefully weighed, reasoned, deliberated and sober decision.  (Worst case scenario - you could decide to put them back in the school if you find you are really overwhelmed. They won’t have missed a thing.  Learning takes place at a glacial rate there, if at all.)

The first thing to do is to make absolutely sure that your kids learn to read properly.  That is, phonetically, not the way they teach “reading” in school.  Where to begin?  As a home school mom myself, I’d say start with Samuel Applebaum’s Alpha Phonics.  It is self-explanatory.  Applebaum has written many books expressly to help guide home school parents.  Once you have worked through Alpha Phonics (it might take a couple of months, total), begin the McGuffey’s Readers series.  There will be some repetition but this will only reinforce the skill.  And don’t forget to read to your kids!

Next, pick up some little arithmetic workbooks at the dollar store and get out your button jar and begin to learn basic math.  Then, once the kids have a solid grasp, get some play money and some actual coins and teach them about money (too many people - even some adults - have no real understanding of what their credit and debit cards are based on or know what money is).  Perhaps teach them how to save and account for money through managing a small allowance - put them in charge of this important life skill early.  

Get an analogue style non-digital style clock face (or make one yourself out of a paper plate) and teach them how to tell time if they don’t have a digital device to just tell them.  It is also good to see how time passes on a clock.  

You must teach history - but this is mostly fun.  It is a story, a fascinating epic story, with real heroes and villains and real adventures and feats as well as some tragedies.  Start with our own and work back later on to earlier chapters of human history.  Use all resources.  Books, of course, biographies, movies or television series, such as Young Washington, 1776, John Adams.  Remind them that a movie doesn’t have enough time for total and complete accuracy.  But these are great conversation starters, they bring historic figures and events to life.  Challenge them to research their own topics in history and their own heroes and tell you what they learned.

If possible, and if your child expresses interest, provide a keyboard or guitar and some instruction (and this could be DVDs or videos if you can’t afford or find a teacher).  At least listen to great music together.  Listen to Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Mozart, Debussy, Bobby Darin, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Doris Day.  Talk about it.  See where their interest leads.  

Go to a museum, an art gallery or a band concert in the park once in a while.  Or even a dance recital.  Go fly a kite.  No, really!  And explore the aerodynamics of it.  Collect and identify rocks or wildflowers, feed the birds.  Just make sure you don’t “over-school” or overthink everything.  Leave lots of time for kids to “kick the can” and explore their own special interests.  And on a family vacation away from home, talk about the geography or the cities and their history and character.  I have seen the mouth of the Mississippi River in New Orleans.  And I know people who would never believe that up in Itaska Park I walked across it at its source.  Or that it seems to rise out of a sort of misty, glistening swamp, almost like out of nowhere.  Or to assure a child in Tennessee that the dirt in North Dakota is actually pitch black!  Or tell a North Dakota child that in Georgia the dirt is orange.  Teach your kid to cook dinner - it’s great fun and potentially a math lesson.

One of my kids was fascinated by skyscrapers (probably because her uncle and grandmother took her to the top of the Sears Tower when she was very little), malls, baseball and cars.  She is now a walking encyclopaedia of famous architects, the motor industry and baseball stats.  She wrote a sci-fi novel about a minor league baseball team.  Another was intrigued by archeology and ancient languages and music.  He is, as a result, a multi-instrumentalist, an aficionado of Archeology Today and knows several languages, modern and ancient as well as the history of pop music and the Top 40.  He has produced his own original DVD album.  Another fell in love with vintage fashion, old movies, theater, opera and dance.  She is an award-winning choreographer, a human catalogue of the entertainment industry, a published paper doll artist, maker of an independent movie musical and she is an accomplished jazz singer who studied flute and also plays the harp.  Together, they have traveled across America and Canada, performing at Celtic and Scottish festivals.  Everywhere we went we learned about the geography and the people who live in our countries.  All of them are happily and gainfully employed.  Two of them own their own homes, one effectively supports our family home now.  None of them has ever “done drugs”, none is tattooed, all of them are solid taxpaying citizens.  All of them are patriots who participate in our country’s political life in their own ways.  And not one of them was ever inside of a school before age 18 - and that was to perform a lyceum program for other kids.  They are all published journalists.

We   attended concerts, festivals in the park, went to a Chautauqua on one occasion, watched people blowing glass, spinning pots on a wheel, weaving on looms.  We went on little nature hikes, watched sheep trials, went to dog shows.  Sometimes we baked cookies.  

Don’t neglect to teach them plain, ordinary good manners.  Knowing how to behave in various situations will stand them in good stead as successful adults.  They can practice at the family dinner table (for God’s sake, bring this back!), at restaurants, in a movie theater - wherever you go.  Insist on good manners (and good English).  It will make your adventures together the more pleasurable as well.

The world is a huge place, much bigger than a classroom.  Your child might want to paint a landscape - or just their bedroom walls.  Or maybe build a birdhouse and decorate it or help mend a fence in the back yard.  These are all learning opportunities.  Learning is really a lifelong endeavor, not a period of one's childhood.

When the kids reach junior high/middle school age, make sure they learn the Constitution.  And here’s a great help for middle- and high-school kids:  Hillsdale College offers top-notch courses FREE online in many disciplines - economics, history, literature and other topics.  I particularly endorse their Economics 101 for this age group.  And there are others such as Prager U, Hoover Institute, etc.   They are all well worth the time, easy to access and FREE!  There are some standard options as well for kids of high school age - a number of good, accredited high school correspondence (or online) courses are available for them to actually earn their high school diplomas.  

Some parents may choose to co-op with others to take advantage of special skills, knowledge and experience they might have.  This pool of knowledge and skill, your local library and the internet plus your kids’ natural desire to learn will power you forward.  My sister had the opportunity to learn photography from a company which had state-of-the-art equipment and technology simply by working free, independently, as a sort of apprentice, in exchange for learning.  She went on to win two international awards for television news production.  One of the top-most sports successes in America began by repairing bicycles at a local shop as a part of his school experience.    

Don’t be afraid.  After all, you brought them into the world - that’s a big step, a responsibility.  You can do more.  Home schooling is an adventure I would not have given up for the world!