So You’re Thinking About Homeschooling by Lisa Whelchel

I truly loved this book. I know this has been a running theme on my book reviews lately, but I can’t help it. This one is good. Lisa Whelchel grew up as an actress of the TV show The Facts of Life. She now homeschools her three children and is the author of several books. This book is written in a very clever manner. Whelchel takes her experiences and stories of homeschooling families she has met and creates 15 different fictitious families who each demonstrate various aspects of homeschooling. I love the imagination and creativity in her writing. Each family offers brief insight into their homeschooling lives, and I found myself intrigued by each one of them while also being able to take something of value from each different experience.

Whelchel is a Christian, and this book is endorsed by Focus on the Family, a popular Christian organization. While it is a great book for any Christian homeschooling family to read, it also offers plenty for those of differing faiths as well. Christianity is not mentioned in every family’s story. This book offers valuable insight to the diversity of homeschoolers, and most importantly, gives confidence in our ability to homeschool our children. So many wonderful pieces of information are contained in this book that for this review I am going to simply quote my favorite parts.

“We were having so much fun you couldn’t have paid me to send my kids to school.”

“I remembered thinking on Hunter’s first day of kindergarten thinking, ‘Why am I sending him off now just when he’s getting really fun to being around?’ As he got older I thought, ‘ And why does the school get the best part of his day, and I get the dregs when he’s tired and cranky and I have to force him to do hours of homework? They have him for seven hours- why can’t they get all the work done in that amount of time?”

“Time to get to know your kids is a luxury of inestimable value.”

“I came home to spend more time with my children and ended up becoming best friends with my husband. Who would have guessed that homeschooling could be good for your marriage?”

“Homeschooling is as much about home as it is about schooling.”

“Homeschool children whose mothers had a little more of smattering of education beyond high school scored nearly as high as kids whose mothers had a college degree and teaching credentials! Not bad, huh?”

“The average homeschooled child scored 87 percent on standardized tests, compared to the average public school student who scored 50 percent.”

“I knew that I had done my absolute best to teach my girls how to be kind and respectful, but it is hard to compete with the world’s influence when your child is away from you eight hours a day.”

“We may have begun to homeschool because of peer pressure, substandard education, and the bad attitudes our girls were picking up in school. But what will keep us homeschooling are things like seeing the girls rediscover the joy of learning, the rebuilding of family relationships, and having the privilege of once again being the primary influence in our children’s lives.”

“I believe that I’m the best teacher for my children… because there is nobody in this world who cares more about our children’s future than (my wife) and me.”

“I’m not interested in seeing my children either convert or adapt to what passes for the needs of society these days.”

“I’m not ashamed to admit that my educational goals for (my children) do not include making sure (they) fit into society.”

“I just wanted to pass the test and get on to the next book so that eventually I could get on with real life. I was just marking time in school, waiting for life to begin. I don’t want that for my kids. I want them to be thrilled about life now and to be prepared for what lies ahead.”

“If you want something done right, then do it yourself.”

“There is no way a teacher can adjust her teaching style twenty-five times a day to meet the needs of everyone in her class… I can give my children the individualized time, teaching, and learning tools they need.”

“There is a bond between homeschoolers that transcends geographically defined neighborhoods to form an instant community.”

“We found there’s lots to be learned from just living!”

“It is enough for me to know that my children are growing into sensitive, self confident, independent young people- and I have homeschooling to thank for that.”

“Before we had children of our own, I worked as a preschool teacher. I saw the same kids from seven o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night, and I had wondered why their parents even bothered having children at all.”

“I wasn’t willing to give some stranger twice as much time as I got in the day to shape and mold my child.”

“I love learning now! And my children do too.”

“Many of the finest schools are now recruiting homeschoolers. Why? Because they tend to be self-motivated and more involved in community service and extracurricular activities, and they consistently score higher on standardized achievement tests than their public school counterparts.”

“These kinds of lessons in sacrifice, compassion, service, and integrity cannot be taught in the classroom situation.”

“What does it profit a mom if she gains the whole world and loses her children, their hunger for knowledge, their compassion, and their appreciation for things that are of real value (as opposed to what the typical American child considers important). Sometimes less really is more.”

“What I soon discovered, however, was that home provided him freedom within a structure. His classroom was just the opposite, offering confinement within chaos.”

“Conventional schools can be failure traps for children who, by nature, are not quiet, compliant morning people able to concentrate for long periods of time.”

“There will be some who will look back on their traditional education and think, ‘Ninety percent of what I’m using in my life and career is stuff that I learned on my own, either outside of school or after I graduated.”

“I had read a book encouraging parents not to push their kids to grasp concepts before they were ready. I like this philosophy. Why do schools teach and reteach the same things over and over again every year throughout the elementary grades? Doesn’t it make more sense to wait until the child is ready and then teach it to him once?”

“Children who love to read are usually very easy to unschool because their own passion for learning is often enough to motivate them. Most learning can be accomplished by reading good books.”

“If we are supposed to making a difference in the world, what better way to do it than by training our children to become beacons to the world?”

“We don’t think God was crazy when He said children are a reward.”

“Many parents who choose to do so because they want to be the primary influence in their kids’ lives.”

“Indeed, our responsibility, I like to think of it as our privilege, to train our children and shape their character is the main reason we homeschool.”

“You can’t schedule a ‘teachable moment’ and the less time you spend with your children, the fewer opportunities you have to seize these moments when they present themselves.”

“I don’t want to leave it up to someone else to make sure my children develop good character traits in addition to good study habits.”

“Do I really want (my kids) learning evolution as fact, politically correct agendas, written history, tolerance as a subject, and how to put on a condom?”

As you can see, there are many wonderful things said in this book. It is not a book about how to “start” homeschooling, guides to curriculum, various laws, or resources. It simply offers wonderful knowledge of why parents choose to homeschool and how many of them make it work. If nothing else, you’ll take away the vast diversity of families homeschooling works for and may just be inspired to try it yourself.