Every year our state home education association has a convention. I don't always attend, but when I saw that this year's keynote speaker was John Taylor Gatto, I signed up immediately. I've never read any of his books, but I've heard a lot about him and wanted to hear him speak.
It was fantastic, totally worth the hours driving and the $30 registration fee. The main focus of his speech was to show what public schools are engineered to accomplish, how they do it, and why they do it. I won't bore you with the details, but I will bore you with the results.
Our public high school has a partnership with the local junior college, whereby kids who sign up for certain classes can, concurrently with their high school diploma, earn an associate's degree. I don't know much more about the program than that, and this year – Emma's eighth grade year – was my year to get it all figured out because high school starts in ninth grade. I don't have any desire to send her to school, and never have. In fact, I want very much to keep her and all the others home through high school.
But the financial-planner-mother in me thought, "Half a college education, free. How can I possibly turn that down?" Ideologically and emotionally I didn't want to do it, but financially I thought it made sense, and I was giving the financial the most weight.
I'm happy to report that, after JTG's speech, the financial no longer has any weight at all, and my desire to educate my children through high school gets all the weighting. I don't have to send Emma away in another year just because we don't have enough money to pay for college. There are other ways for her to get college money, and other benefits to keeping her home. This is such a relief to me!
There were other classes, other speakers, other presentations, and I came away very energized and excited to be educating my children at home. I can't wait to put my book list together, and to start planning next year! Ethan will be in kindergarten, so I'll have five in school. Whew. That's a lot of work.
I can't wait.
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When people find out that I hs, one of their first questions is, "Will you homeschool them all the way through High School, or will you LET them go?" That is a silly question to ask because they are barely in kindergarten and 2nd grade right now. But, my answer is always a resounding "I don't know" *laugh* because...well...I don't. I have no idea what things will be like then, what my kids will be like, how sane I will or won't be, how busy Rick the OB/GYN will be, or if there will be new options to ps or hs then. I will have to see when I get there, but I'm interested to hear what this guy (can't remember the name of the guy you went to listen to) has to say. I'll have to read some books.
I'm glad you found someone who could help you make that decision firm! Good for you for being able to make that hard choice.
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