The Most Popular Girl in the Room

Last updated on: August 22, 2014 at 4:02 pm by Rebecca Frech

The Most Popular Girl in the Room 2014-08-22T16:02:41-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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It used to be, a few years ago, that people would ask me what I did for a living and I’d cheerfully reply “I homeschool our children,” and their eyes would either glaze over in boredom or scan the room in panic as they looked for a way out of the conversation. I knew what was happening, and I accepted it. What I was doing was weird. Most people heard the word “homeschool” and instantly inferred “freak” or ” fanatic.” I was the person no one wanted to talk to at dinner parties because our educational choices for our children made people uncomfortable.

Fast forward a few years, and things began to change. Something has happened in this country, and I’m seeing it in social settings. Far from being the weirdo in the corner, I’m now the most popular girl in the room. Once I say “I’m a homeschooler,” I can be sure the questioning will begin in earnest. How do we do it? Where do we buy curriculum? What kinds of tests are required? How did we get started? Can I recommend something for people to read? Do we like it? Do our kids like it? What about prom? (They always ask about prom. It’s weird.)

I have spent quite a bit of time pondering this shift in attitude. I think there’s a small part of it due to my own confidence, just as I’m sure my insecurities about homeschooling in the past didn’t invite conversation, but I don’t think that’s anywhere near the whole story.

First of all, people now are much more likely to actually know a homeschooling family or someone who has been taught at home for at least part of their educational career. The more familiar we become with things the less likely we are to think of them as odd. The more of us there are, the more we will be accepted. It’s pretty simple really. (Until we reach some sort of tipping point and need to be addressed in some way, but that’s a paranoid post for another day.)

Then there are all those geniuses in the news. I love those kids. Please let the homeschool nerds keep winning the National Spelling Bee, geography bees, science fairs, and engineering competitions. May they continue to excel in dance,sports (looking at you Tim Tebow…get out there and play, man! Do it for the homeschoolers!), and the arts. The more positive press there is the more people say to me “You homeschool them? I guess they must be pretty smart then.” and I hear that A LOT already. I’m all in favor of good press, so let’s keep dominating the nerd stuff because it makes us all look better and makes others curious about us in a good way.

But most of all I’d say it’s the culture around us. Parents are looking at the world, their local schools, and the government and questioning whether or not those are the comrades they want helping them to raise their children. The more parents give traditional schools a hard look, the less they like what they see. There’s an agenda in those government schools that becomes more apparent every day, and it’s making people nervous. The idea of teacher unions running schools and not the parents is disconcerting at best. The dumbed down curricula and focus on social rather than academic lessons has parents wishing for alternatives.

And then they meet me, and they begin asking innocent questions of why and how. Before very long though they begin asking how it would work for them and if I thought they were capable of teaching their own children. (The answer is almost always Yes.) While I doubt that the majority of dinner party questioners will end up teaching their own children, I’m intrigued by the fact that the questioning and nervousness seem to be nearly universal in our social circles. Parents aren’t happy with what’s happening in education and they want things to change, often drastically.

Just last week I spent the better part of a football game discussing home education with a member of our local school board where he frankly admitted that the local district could not offer the same education to children that I could because of the regulations and special interest groups. If he were starting out today, he said, his kids would be learning at home because it would be better for them. When the people on the school board would rather not put their own kids in the schools because of the mess that they are, things are changing drastically around here, and it’s no wonder they all suddenly want to talk to me.

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