Read Love in a Time of Homeschooling for Free Online

alphabet garden: A is for aster, B is for black-eyed Susan, C is for coneflower. From there, a blooming arch led to the fourth-graders’ herb garden, overgrown with basil, lemon balm, sorrel, and catmint; and beside that stood the fifth-graders’ butterfly garden. This lovely outdoor classroom also held tiny Edens in little corners not assigned to any grade. Julia’s favorite was the fairy garden, a five-by-five space where three-inch gnomes and winged ceramic creatures kneeled on mossy rocks, mingling among painted toadstools at the edge of a tiny pond. To the left of the garden were a baseball diamond, a basketball blacktop, swings beneath shady trees, and a vast wooden playscape with slides and wobbly bridges and miniature climbing walls.
    The garden made me hopeful for Julia’s education. It seemed a living testament that here were people who cared about nature, community, and children. Decades from now, Julia might look back on her elementary school years with a fondness for that patch of ground.
    And inside the school? There, the class size averaged around sixteen students, led by teachers who were very bright and kind—people the children knew from the local grocery stores, or swimming pool, or churches. As for the families, since our town’s two chief employers were a pair of colleges, Washington and Lee University, and the Virginia Military Institute, most of the parents had a deep commitment to education.
    Nothing about Waddell’s environment would have steered me toward homeschooling. In fact, John and I felt lucky to have such a pleasant school in our town. Many American families are less fortunate, facing overcrowded classrooms, dangerous disciplinary problems, and exhausted or unmotivated teachers. But Waddell Elementary wasn’t like that. In Lexington’s ideal environment, where natural beauty and small-town values combined with the intellect of a college crowd, I thought that Julia might enjoy her school. She might learn in a loving environment, making friends and nurturing her spirit. Everything might be okay.
    Or not. Despite all of the promising signs, Julia’s early days at Waddell were awash in tears. Every afternoon, when I picked her up, she climbed into her car seat and sobbed—“Kindergarten is so haaaard.” She didn’t mean the classwork, which consisted mainly of coloring and cutting and pasting. What she resented was the lack of freedom: sitting at an assigned desk for long stretches of time, filling out the same worksheet as every other child, speaking only when called upon, and having to ask to go to the bathroom. Lack of choice, lack of movement, lack ofsoothing background music. She had entered a fallen world from which she could not escape.
    The trouble, some parents might say, was her Montessori background. Julia had become accustomed to independent work, allowed to concentrate on one task for as long as she desired and to visit the bathroom whenever she chose. If she had been enrolled in a more structured daycare center, she might have gotten used to following the crowd.
    Highly structured preschool programs might benefit some children, but in Julia’s case such a preschool would only have inaugurated the misery three years earlier. And misery it was. Each day, when I retrieved my unhappy child, I remembered the Montessori teachers’ ominous words: “Don’t worry about tears at drop-off time. Was your child crying when you picked her up?” Yes, mine was weeping.
    In part, Julia’s tears were a sign of exhaustion. After attending preschool until 12:30 each day, it was hard for her to sit through kindergarten from 8:30 to 3:00. John and I had both attended half-day kindergartens, and we were skeptical about the full-day routine. Six and a half hours of school activities seemed like a lot to ask of a five-year-old.
    â€œYour child will be tired and cranky,” several mothers had warned. “She’ll need a