Why I Don’t Homeschool

I was homeschooled, but my kids are in public school

My dad thinks I should be homeschooling my kids. A few other people have made similar comments recently, asking why I don’t. I guess I seem like the kind of person who would, with my countercultural attitude toward technology and my often-critical stance toward Ontario’s public education system. It would make sense, too, because I was a homeschooled child—from age 11 to 16—and it was a profoundly positive experience.

And yet, I have not chosen that path, apart from a year or so during the Covid-19 pandemic, when I flat-out refused to participate in the joke that was online “learning”. Instead, my mother delivered the giant Rubbermaid bins full of textbooks that she’d kept from my homeschooling days, and I used those as the basis for my kids’ education. We had a lot of fun, the kids and I, and they still talk about those months fondly.

They learned the incredibly important life lesson that focusing deeply on work and doing it well and swiftly means you finish sooner. Some days, they were up at the crack of dawn and done all assignments by 10 a.m. They also say their wide-ranging reading of history books gave them a comprehensive view that school had never managed to provide in its piecemeal approach to teaching.

So, why not do it for the long-term?

There are a few reasons that I’ll explain, but I want to emphasize that I do not think it’s a straightforward, black-and-white debate. School quality varies so widely, even within a single school board, as does parental skill and investment. Individual families must figure out what works for them, based on their unique circumstances. I do not presume to argue or convince; the purpose of this post is merely to tease out the basis for the decision I’ve made up until now—which could change, too! Who knows what the coming years will bring, with most schools moving in an obsessively technophilic direction at the cost of so much else.

A Good-Enough Base

First, and most fundamentally, I do not think that the Ontario public school system is as far-gone as many places in the U.S. When I hear anecdotes about how American public schools are run, I am often horrified. For example, a parent in Texas described kids being issued laptops in kindergarten and spending all day on them, taking occasional “screen breaks” to rest their eyes. Those kids, whose education revolves around prep for standardized testing, did not even get recess most days. Of course, that is just one story, but it hasn’t been my experience. If it were, I would definitely be homeschooling.

Yes, tech plays far too great a role in the classroom, and I’m always pushing back against it, but standardized testing is rarely mentioned and only happens in grades 3, 6, and 9 for a few days. I wasn’t even aware when my son did it last year; nobody talks about it. My kids get two 40-minute breaks in their 6-hour day (half for eating, half for outdoor play), and they attend schools with big, lush, grassy, tree-filled yards where they’re allowed to run freely. Particularly for the younger ones, lessons still involve plenty of reading physical books, doing hands-on arts and crafts, writing things by hand, doing paper-based math practice, and having old-fashioned weekly spelling tests. They elementary teachers put on class plays and still read aloud to the kids daily.

There appears to be more leeway when it comes to what individual teachers can do for their classes. Perhaps this is because Canadian culture is less litigious than American, so teachers are less fearful of getting sued by taking students out of the physical school building. For example, my son’s grade 7 teacher took the entire class on a backpacking trip for two nights where they slept in tents in pouring rain and cooked all their own food over a fire. They’ve gone on trips to the beach, the town pond, the local swimming pool for “swim to survive” training that involves jumping into water with clothes on. They’ve done canoeing, high-ropes courses, museums, potluck meals, and all sorts of sporting events.

I have a sense that there is a decently solid base to work with, at least in our small, semi-rural community. I don’t know if it would be the same if we still lived in downtown Toronto.

I Love My Job

My second main reason is simply that I love my work, and homeschooling would require me to put my career on hold. My mother, an artist, made the difficult decision to stop painting for 10 years while she homeschooled me and my siblings, and even though she is glad to have done so, I don’t particularly want to do it myself. Is that selfish? Perhaps, on some level. But I also spent my 20s as a stay-at-home mom, whose post-graduate plans for law school were derailed by an unplanned pregnancy at a young age, so there is a sense that my time to contribute to the outside world in a meaningful way has finally come.

My littlest child just asked me this morning, “What’s it like to work all day long?” Without pausing for a second, I said, “It’s wonderful!” I have so many interesting projects on the go that I jump out of bed each morning with a real sense of excitement.  I love what I do, from working full-time as a university course editor, to a contract recipe editor, to writing a weekly column for the Globe and Mail newspaper, to giving talks and giving private consultations on digital minimalism, to working on my second book (manuscript is due next spring!), to writing this Substack, of course. My days are rich and full and stimulating.

What Is Education?

As Mark Twain put it so aptly, “I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”  I view school as complementing my children’s learning, and then I fill in the gaps around those 6 hours. Especially because we don’t lose 8+ hours a day to entertainment-based screen time (which is the daily average for adolescents), they fill those hours with reading, practicing music, doing chores, playing outside, socializing in-person, and talking, talking, talking all the time. So much talking!

I assign them books to read and recipes to cook, take them interesting places, introduce them to smart people, give them logic puzzles to solve, engage them in thought-provoking discussions about controversial news stories or political issues or ethical dilemmas. Learning is ongoing in our home, regardless of time or place.

What About Civic Duty?

I also sometimes wonder about the duty we have as citizens to repair and build our collective public institutions from within, as opposed to simply checking out and paying for something better, e.g., private schools. In some situations, I totally understand why one would do that. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my kids’ well-being to “fix” a shattered system; my allegiance to them is far stronger than to that of the “system”. But in many cases, if everyone with means gives up, then there is no hope of repair. Quality continues to diminish, and the gap between privilege and disadvantage becomes an unbridgeable divide—and everyone suffers.

For now, I am comfortable with being a squeaky wheel within a public education system that’s doing a good-enough job. I still believe in Ontario’s ability to change and become a leader in high-quality education (though its latest policy on phones was embarrassingly inadequate).

Having been a homeschooled kid, I’m aware of things I missed out on. Sure, my academic performance surged at home; I was that nerd reading Virgil’s Aeneid in grade 8, doing specialized math, and studying classical Greek in high school. But I didn’t play any team sports, and I consider that to be a great loss, especially when I see how important and formative sports are for my sons.  

Canada also does a terrible job at supporting homeschoolers; you’re very much on your own if you choose to do it. The U.S. seems to do a better job at providing support. Last summer, while enjoying a morning coffee in Dawson City, Yukon, I struck up a conversation with a homeschool family from Alaska, traveling by motorcycle, who explained to me that their kids are allowed to take a select number of credits at the local public high school and participate in team sports. Their son could do senior-level chemistry in a school lab, which obviously cannot be replicated at home. That state-level support, were it an option here, would be a major incentive for me.

This Works, For Now 

This is what works for us now, based on current circumstances in school and at home. I understand why many parents stick with the public system, why others pay for private schools, and why some homeschool. No path is clearcut, and the societal discussion is constantly evolving. The reasons why my mother pulled me out of public school would be totally differently from the reasons I would consider pulling my own kids, and that could be different in another 3 years.

This post is not an argument in favour of one method over another. It’s merely an attempt to pick through my many convoluted thoughts on education. I welcome your comments, but do ask that you keep it respectful, as education can be a fraught topic at the best of times.

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