Blog Mission Statement

One of the challenges faced by homeschool parents is that the things we or our children do sometimes become referenda on homeschooling as a practice. I am sure you can think of many examples of this both in the news and in your lives. The other day, my husband and I were discussing the way that a conversation he and N. were having at a park get-together may have different ramifications in public than it does in private. In this case, N. asked Tim what 5 and 7 make because he was counting the people on each side of the picnic table and Tim told him 12 and then he asked N. what 7 and 5 make. N. thought for a little while and then said, “12!” This kind of conversation is typical for them at home and has no stakes. It is not a quiz and if a few seconds of silence go by, Tim will tell N. the answer, or he might not even pose it as a question, but simply state it as additional interesting information. Because as a general rule we don’t quiz N. (and I really hate when people do this as a way of interacting with kids – quizzing them on “their colors” or “their shapes” or “their letters”), I am quite sure that when these kinds of conversations take place at home, N. experiences them as pressure-free, as part of the general give-and-take of information and questions that constitutes our days.

But out in public, at a picnic table with other kids and parents, this conversation might have a different resonance. Maybe N. feels pressure to perform, to come up with the right answer when all those people are listening. It might well look to the other parents like we are showing off, trotting out our trained monkey, trying to prove how successful our homeschooling is.

Tim pointed out that in blogging about our homeschooling experiences, we are vulnerable to the same problem of distortion. So far, the tone of my writing for this blog has been just about equal parts boasting about my child’s awesomeness and self-righteous statements about the awesomeness of our parenting choices. I don’t really mean it to sound that way, but it does, in part because of some choices I’ve made about what to write about and what not to write about, and in part because I am taking private moments public, where they lose some of their context.

So, if I am concerned about privacy, performance anxiety, and boasting, why am I blogging? I started this blog for the following reasons:

• To document (some of) what we do as we homeschool/unschool
• To articulate our philosophy of education, for ourselves, our friends and family, and whoever else might be interested
• To ponder our child’s progress through various stages of learning
• To connect with other families who homeschool/unschool, from whose blogs I have learned so much

My topic choices are guided by the knowledge that someday my son may read this blog and I don’t want to write something about him that he is someday mortified to discover is out in the public sphere. That may well happen anyway, but I am trying to avoid it.

Despite its pitfalls, I am enjoying blogging so far. I like writing about the many, many things regarding children’s lives and education that I have strong opinions about, even if this makes me sound like a self-righteous braggart. As the non-stay-at-home parent in our family, I feel connected to our homeschooling adventure by blogging. As a scholar who labors for months and years writing things that few people read, I find the feedback on my posts addictively gratifying!