Home Schools Run By Well-Meaning Amateurs

Custodian Dave Arnold has many opinions about education in his article on the National Education Association website: "Don't most parents have a tough enough job teaching their children social, disciplinary and behavioral skills? They would be wise to help their children and themselves by leaving the responsibility of teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects to those who are knowledgeable, trained and motivated to do the best job possible."

While Mr. Arnold seems to have assured himself that parents are capable of homeschooling a child who is "severely handicapped" or "bedridden with a serious disease," he doesn't believe that we're capable of inspiring a love of learning in our own healthy, curious children. Such children, he maintains, should be given over to professionals who have been teaching for "10, 20 or 30 years," not directed by gullible amateurs like us silly, well-meaning parents.

Apparently Dave Arnold doesn't know the etymology for "amateur" is French, derived from the Latin "amator," which means "lover," and from "amore," which means "to love." All things being equal, does Mr. Arnold believe that "professional" teachers would care for our children if their paychecks were suddenly eliminated? Any student who has attended public school during a teachers' strike can answer that question. Does he believe that professionals love teaching so passionately, so selflessly, that they would forsake their salaries to educate my child, who they have not known for 10, 20 or 30 years but who I have known intimately from the moment I became aware of his very existence? A child whose holistic education I make my sole profession, my magnum opus?

I have forsaken a salary--and much more--in order to commit myself to my child's upbringing, and I passionately love learning along with my children. I don't prefer to "leave" the "responsibility" of teaching to anyone else, partly because, ultimately, I'm the person completely and totally responsible not just for my child's academic education, but for his whole education--academic, social (yes, some people still worry about a home learner's social life. They need only look at a homelearning family's calendar to reassure themselves), relational, emotional and spiritual. I very firmly believe, after fifteen years (that's 48 man-years between my five children) of teaching my own, that this is the very best holistic education my child could ever receive. Academic circles are increasingly finding this to be true. Ask any teacher which students are most successful and s/he will point to the ones whose parents are most involved in their child's education and activities. Autodidacts are filling college campuses, sought out by employers for their eagerness to learn and their self-motivation in addition to their excellent educational foundations. Most often, a customized home-directed education is superior to a teach-to-the-test, mass-produced one. This alone, a superior education, is reason enough for me to give my child the freedom to learn at home.

But the bigger reason I choose to provide my child with a diverse learning environment in the safety and security of his own home is because I do passionately love what I do, as passionately as I love the very child.

"Leave" that "responsibility" to someone else? No thank you. I prefer to embrace that privilege for myself.

I don't want to miss a moment of it.