In Christian schools there is a kind of clique that I never saw in public school: homeschooled kids. A sign of derision in these schools is one finger held across two fingers of the other hand, forming a sort of "H." Homeschooled kids are ridiculed for their ignorance of the finer points of coolness and, even worse, for their refusal to put on the straitjackets of trend-following and status-seeking. Homeschool kids sound like my kind of people.
I wish I had been homeschooled. My sister was educated at home (using the Calvert system) for the primary grades. She and my mother worked for a mere two hours a day, and even then my sister skipped a grade (it helped that she's brilliant). She wasn't homeschooled for religious reasons, it was simply because my family was living in a country with a public education system that wasn't up to my parents' standards (no, not the U.S., in case you were wondering).
Here in Canada I was sent off to the local elementary school to learn the many shades of boredom. Things improved as I entered French Immersion and then the I.B. (both hotbeds of social awkwardness), but school still involved a lot of marking time. I certainly had a lot of fun, safe within the bosom of the geek clique, but I also regret not having both the accelerated learning and the extra free time of homeschooling. I also regret that I was limited in the number of subjects I could take at school since they took so long to teach in a group setting.
People sometimes worry that homeschooled kids won't have any social skills. Frankly I could not have been any more socially inept so I don't think being taught at home would have made matters worse. If anything, being exposed to more literature, history, and philosophy might have given me a better understanding those creatures who frightened me so.
I'm thinking about this because I've come across countless homeschool websites in my quest for a "do it yourself" classical, liberal arts education. It's wonderful to think that there are so many children out there getting the kind of deep and broad education that is simply impossible for stingy-taxpayer-funded public schools to provide. They say that it's never too late to have a happy childhood; I'm hoping that it's never too late to get a good education at home.
