Why Home Educate?

On a mailing list, they were asking how people got into homeschooling. So, my late night comments were:

I made the decision to homeschool my [future] children about 5 years before I met my wife. [Turned off some of my dates with my insistence on home educating.] In fact when I learned about home education in mid-80's, I was so excited to find out I was already practicing it myself [autodidactic with computer science or C.S.] that I dropped out of my C.S. PhD studies and haven't looked back since.

My wife married me in spite of my insistence and took about 5 years before she "bought" into doing it herself. The "break through" moment for her was when she interacted with a church friend who had a home educated teenager. When we moved to Austin, we joined a church with
many home educating families (including the pastor's family) and that gave her the confidence to start herself.

What's making me to blog is when someone commented that at least one person's reason for homeschooling is about no longer waiting for external assistance. Well, I was going to reply but decided to blog instead:

To me, home education is all about empowerment: I can do it myself! In highschool, I learned calculus and then computer science independent of the teachers (mainly via book reading). This helped me gain confidence to learn all kinds of other subjects (art, theology, music, history, etc.). I didn't have to learn things at the teacher's pace but my own and in my own terms. Waiting for someone to do something for me is a waste of time and energy. I've taken control and taken charge: if I want to learn, then I'll take the time to learn it [via books or other writings or through paid trainer]. And since I'm paying, I can quit and change any time I choose.

It all started as merely educating myself and then I logically extended the same to my children [even before I got married : I was that confident]. If I (or my wife) can teach it, then we just do it. If it's new, we take the time to learn it first or better yet learn/explore together with my children. If I can't learn (or don't have the time), then I delegate and pay [or barter with] someone who can.

But now I want to take charge of all kinds of things: from personal protections[i.e., police and fire] to political independence [stopped voting in summer'04] to spiritual growth [check my Men's Study blog for being "far out"]. I've been contemplating starting my own business but I haven't made the leap yet. Sigh...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Righs Reserved.