Under the label of gentle, I am lumping together several different homeschool styles — Charlotte Mason, unschooling, delight directed.
This would be the opposite of a school-at-home, textbook, or classical style of education.
I am not here to criticize people who choose a more rigorous method. My focus is to defend gentle homeschooling against the opponents who demand that everyone fit the mold of traditional learning styles.
In my experience, the criticisms of gentle learning aren’t direct attacks but subtle statements that create doubt and fear.
A child can’t get into college if…..
Xyz curriculum is not enough….
You have to …..
Usually the homeschool mom who says these things is honestly trying to help. She sincerely believes that her way of rigorous school at home is the best way and the only way to success. While I support her freedom to choose her own style of education for her children, I disagree that it is the only way to success.
First of all, I think that our definitions of success may vary greatly. Most critics of the gentle style of learning value college admission over any other criteria. Pre-requisites to college admission are an outstanding high school transcript, so making high grades and taking AP or dual enrollment classes are important to them.
I understand that mindset. But I don’t espouse it.
My thinking is that high school is for high school. College is for college. We will take each step at a time, not worrying about college credit or advanced level courses during the high school years. Just like I was in no rush to teach Emma to read, I am not in any hurry for her to take college level courses. There will be a season for that, and I’m not rushing those seasons.
You actually can get into college without any previous college credits or AP classes. In fact, you can get into college without an amazing GPA as long as your transcript and potfolio reflects passions and skills that set you apart from the norm.
Colleges are not looking only at grades and test scores. They actually care about the human they are admitting. At least, that is the case at the colleges that have studies Emma wants to major in.
For me, success in homeschool is not college admission. It includes these things:
- a grasp of basic academics
- a natural curiosity
- the ability to write and speak well
- mastery of life skills
- an awareness of personal strengths and passions (whatever they may be)
- development of those personal passions to a higher than average level of proficiency
- the ability to research, evaluate arguments, and make good decisions
I do want my daughter to go to college, but that is not my measure of success. If she gets into college and lacks the characteristics above, I would feel like a failure.
Honestly, I don’t think getting admitted to college is that big of a hurdle. I think finishing college is a huge accomplishment.
I was one of those almost perfect academic students — very bookish, highly verbal, and always finished quickly on tests and make excellent scores. So what? What difference does it make now? No one cares about my GPA or college scholarships. So why invest so much energy into those things?
My skills of writing, speaking, and reading are essential to my success as an adult. Those were worthy of investing in. But school failed miserably at teaching me people skills (despite all the cooperative groups I was forced to participate in), foreign language, technology, and how to foster creativity. I wish some of my academic time had been diverted to those life skills that I had to learn the hard way on my own.
When a critic tells me that gentle homeschool doesn’t work, that it isn’t enough, she is saying there is a single path to success.
I have established that my critic’s meaning of success and my meaning of success may be at odds. But besides semantics, I disagree that there is a single path.
We are all unique. God loves variety. Just look at the world he made! Why so many insects, fish, and plants? Wouldn’t a handful of species been adequate? God glories in variety! Why are there so many names of God? Because God is a multi-faceted Creator who cannot be summed up in a single descriptive label.
We, created in his image, are like that. We are complex and varied from one another. Why channel us down a single path to education especially when the possibility for individualization is so real in a homeschool setting?
I’ve always thought it a huge waste to chose to homeschool and then copy school at home when you could forge your own path and suck the very marrow out of learning — in your own style.
Gentle learning embraces this reality that we are all uniquely varied in the image of God. He had given to each of us a very unique set of abilities and skills and more importantly, a calling.
That single path of rigid and traditional homeschool success does work for some people. But it does not work for everyone. The gentle approach, whether it be Charlotte Mason, unschooling, or delight directed, does work to get students through college and into a productive life as adults. The gentle approach makes room for individual differences and unique callings.
This is the path I have chosen. This path is right for us.
This post is just one in the iHomeschool Network link-up: Answering the Homeschool Critics. Click to read more answers to objections about homeschooling.
I’m standing up and applauding this post! So many times people have projected their fears onto our unschooling. What they don’t understand is the confidence I have because my children are each developing their own passions and skills at the perfect, God-ordained times. And our definition of success isn’t bound up in grades or ranks, but in them finding their purpose and head-longingly pursing THAT. Whether it includes college is yet to be determined. I do know they will be able to think for themselves and be passionate about what they love to do, no matter how odd or diverse that it.
Thank You!!!! In preparing to attend our homeschool convention I have been overwhelmed with information about AP, CLEP and dual enrollment. You are correct, high school is for high school. College is for college. Our goal should not be to push our children through college as quickly and as cheaply as possible. If we do that we are cheating our children.
Thank you for putting so eloquently that which is in my heart, even though I do fight those fears of rigorous academics. I’m still trying to find the balance for our upcoming high school years, a balance that seemed so easy when I was dealing with middle school… What is it about approaching the high school years that makes me doubt and question all that I believed in the years leading up to now?
I needed this encouragement! Perfect timing, my friend.
What a great article, Jimmie. In 13 years of homeschooling, I have never heard the term “gentle” homeschooling, but I absolutely love it. I have never regretted “gently” homeschooling my firstborn (who just finished his junior year in college) or his siblings. My only regret would probably not being even MORE so! This post will hopefully build confidence in those who keep hearing that they must be more rigorous or who are tempted to ditch their natural style of homeschooling for one that seems more “academic.” I see it done all the time and it’s heartbreaking! Well done!
I’m new here, but have been homeschooling for 10ish years. All that time, I never even considered there was a need for defending a certain style. Didn’t we choose hsing precisely b/c each child is different? I mostly prefer a classical approach, but regularly incorporate Charlotte Mason methods, my children do choose some of their courses, and I even took a year off of math for one child while he found his own way back to the fields of math. Oh, you can bet I had to defend that one, but never to other homeschoolers! We are here to lift one another up. Thank you for doing just that.
It’s so funny how quickly I changed my mind about those gentler forms of homeschooling once I realized how much I HATE schoolin’. I went from school-at-home to classical to CM in about 3 months after I started really homeschooling. (Past kindergarten, I mean.) As it turns out, I had some unlearning to do. 😉
I should clarify: Last year, we were what I like to call classical unschoolers. Which means I had a lot of plans and said to heck with that and did whatever we wanted and needed to anyway. 😉
Appreciate this post Jimmie, thanks for sharing. I have a hard time with labels all around 🙂 – you explain your approach well, and I’m in the same boat of not understanding why the need to copycat traditional schooling at home. We ARE all unique!
Thanks for the boost to my homeschool day!
All I can say is “AMEN” to that! I, too, will have my oldest daughter just starting high school and I’m fighting near panic attacks over it. From transcripts to grades to credits to the SAT’s. Enough of this! I started homeschooling to educate my children with a more individualized focus and to keep eternity in front of them. At the end of your life will it really matter what college you graduated from or what scores you got on the GRE’s? Education is about far more than merely passing a test. Leadership, character training, life skills, and the confidence to understand that it’s the job of the student to learn are far more important than any standardized test.
LOVE this.
Jimmie,
Bravo! I’ve been swimming upstream in this area for 20 years of homeschooling. I applaud the way you approached this topic and for your willingness to follow the path that God has put before you with your own homeschooling. God has a specific plan for each of us and we must be true to His calling.
Hooray for your “gentle” approach to the topic….and from my own personal perspective…HOORAY for “gentle homeschooling.”
Faith and Courage, Lori Lane
Thank you. This was very encouraging on the eve of our “required” yearly test. It reminded me of why we homeschool.
Why are we homeschoolers so hard on ourselves? Why do we feel we have to justify our methods to the world? I have almost made myself physically ill with these worries. Yet, my children are so wonderful, hardworking and caring! My first born just graduated from college and got married all in the month of May! I let him basically educate himself and follow his interests. (he is so hands on and clever everything ‘schoolish’ I devised for him to do seemed insipid) My oldest daughter will graduate next year from college and she just loves to learn and is now training to be a volunteer firefighter, works full time in the summer, and has her own photography business! Yet, I still worrying about my remaining 3 (16, 13 and 11) “making the grade” living up to “standards” why is that? I think that will be my summer goal, to embrace whole heartily gentle learning! And enjoy my children’s callings! And my own calling for that matter! What a great definition of gentle learning! THANKS, this came at a great time for me…we are putting together our portfolios and getting ready for our evaluations to prove that we are meeting the ‘standards’…when we really just want to be in the garden being productive!!
“My thinking is that high school is for high school. College is for college.”
How much stress would be avoided if more parents thought this way!
Thank you for this! I have a 13 year old and the pressure is on – people are starting to ask about college prep and I’m stressed about how to continue with our gentle approach through the high school years. This was so encouraging and inspiring! 🙂
Hey, as the mom of 2 teens about to start dual enrollment in college, as well as 3 younger children…I can tell you that yes, absolutely gentle homeschooling methods work! We started out more rigorous and no one was happy, it just wasn’t a good fit for us. We’ve been delight-driven/relaxed/eclectic for a long time now (LONG time) and what happened is that homeschooling became less about learning because it’s school and more about learning for the sake of learning, for the joy of it. Homeschooling morphed from something we did to something we were, and something that won’t stop once the kids are out of the house and on their own.
Well said! Currently, I have two kids in college. Both were unschooled. And yes, I agree with the statement about characteristics. My children know much but what makes me proud of our homeschooling..what I view as accomplishment.. is actually the people they’ve become. Those are the things I do the “mommy brag” about..not their grades.
I love this! I sometimes wonder if our gentle almost-unschooling approach is enough, and reading posts like this helps me with my confidence 🙂 After all, I didn’t decide not to put my kids in school just to replicate school at home.
I told people today that I liked your post more than I liked my own post in this series. And it’s true. You have SUCH a spirit of grace that I have really been working toward but haven’t, uh, quite reached yet.
And you have a wonderful way of getting right to the heart of the idea. “Sufficient is the day for its own trouble,” right?! Let’s not get so focused on the future that we miss the awesome, wonderful, amazing thing that is our life with these young ladies NOW.
You warmed my heart today. Thank you so much for this!
Really appreciated this. Thank you so much for clearly articulating the validity of the choice to educate gently.
So wonderfully stated, bravo! I called our style of homeschooling eclectic since I vacillated between traditional and gentle (love that term BTW). I finally let go and let our daughter learn her way and she blossomed. Her way did involve dual enrollment, but she wanted it, not me. Our goals were much the same as yours and I think we achieved them nicely. I think I know I truly succeeded in our goals when DD went to a history professor freshman year of college and requested to be admitted into a full(closed) senior level history class because she loved the subject and want to learn more! The professor let her in and she got an A….not that grades are important. 😉
Another great post Jimmie. Couldn’t agree more that there is no one right way to homeschool (homescholing four kids sure demonstrates that!) Also absolutely agree that high school is for high school and college is for college. Kids have got the whole of the rest of their life to be an adult. They should enjoy being kids while they still can.
On a related point so much academic success at university is actual related to character and life skills rather than what we think of as academic skills. My older kids are both at university and are amazed how many of their classmates go out partying before an exam rather than studying, don’t bother to do some assignments, only start large assignments the day they are due, skip breakfast and lunch and plan on eating dinner after an evening exam then wonder why they found it hard to concentrate.
Bravo, Jimmie!
Great post Jimmie! There is more than one path to success!
I love this article! While I do use a lot of pieces and ideas from classical homeschooling, our actual methods are just a lot of togetherness, reading together, etc. We homeschooled our older children using these methods with great success. After a three year experiment in the public schools, we are pulling the younger four back out of school to get back to the life we always enjoyed living before!
A very nice article that is a balm to this 13 year veteran homeschool mom. Yes, it is very important to make time for creativity.
We are what I have coined WW homeschoolers. The WW stands for whatever works for that child. And the homeschool part is because it is far easier to say we homeschool than it is to explain what we actually do.. Granted, when someone asks, we can wile away the hours discussing the WW part.
It is interesting to see your list and your hope for your children to read, speak and write, and yet you would call classical education rigorous.
Teaching those three skills is the underlying thrust of classical education. CE is about being a learner for life and encouraging the skills in our children to make them so. And I do believe it is possible to gently educate classically. I think when people see classic home education they envision The Well Trained Mind which is very rigorous. Diane Lockman of the Classical Scholar wrote a book called Trivium Mastery that lends itself to be very gentle in nature. It would be worth checking out.
ahhhh, this post was such a HUGE encouragement. Thank you SO much for taking the time to write this. I am new to homeschooling and I really struggle to answer the critics, especially when they are close family and friends, who think my kids are ‘missing out’ by not being in school. I am a trained teacher who never planned to homeschool, but I think you hit the nail on the head with your list of criteria for homeschool success. It really solidified in my own mind the WHY I am doing what I’m doing. Thanks again
Such an encouraging post, thank you so much. I felt all of the worry fall away 🙂 Tara.
I love, love, love this! I am more drawn to a more gentle approach and it is the best approach for my creative girls, BUT every once in a while I hear those moms talking about rigor and I get all panicky and think I am screwing my kids up. I pray and stress and stress and pray. It means a lot to know I am not alone.
Thank you! I homeschool my 3 kiddos, (8,6,4) and am constantly asked why we aren’t a part of this group or that or why don’t I have my kids in more classes like ballet or tap and blah, blah, blah! Honestly, sometimes the guilt creeps in and I think maybe I’m cheating my kids from all these career and college options but then I stop, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I want my kids to have a childhood full of free playtime where they can discover their own interests and passions. I never want my children to have overcrowded, stressful childhoods, overcrowded by pointless lessons and subjects that they will probably not enjoy or use!