Got this from a friend today, I thought it was pretty good.
Mrs. Jones prefers packaged curriculums, and every year her children work through their grade-appropriate textbooks right to the last page. Her homeschool seems so nicely structured and orderly! Mrs. Smith loves to write her own literature-based unit studies and her children wear out the numbers on their library cards. Her children's unit study notebooks are very impressive and her family seems so well read. Mrs. Thompson is more of a classical homeschooler and can't imagine a day without Latin, Greek, and logic. Her budding Rhodes scholars seem destined for academic greatness. Of course, Mrs. Peters is something of a free spirit and really loves to do hands-on projects and real life learning with her children. Last year they recreated the entire city of Rome using Sculpey clay and her children all won blue ribbons at the county fair with their homemade cheese, hand-knit afgans, and their beautiful jams.
Then there is you. You go through each day doing the best you can. While you pray for God's guidance and really do want the best for your children, you can't help but think that if you were more like Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Thompson or Mrs. Peters, your children would be better off. After all, they each have very good reasons for doing things the way they do, and they can each make a case for their methods being the best for children.
Let me let you in on a little secret. If the textbook mama had to write her own unit studies, she would probably tear her hair out. If the laid-back mama tried to follow an intense classical program, she and her children would all be miserable. If the classical mama tried to just relax and fly by the seat of her pants, she would come undone. If the literature and unit study mama got hit up with a stack of textbooks and workbooks she would feel like she'd been thrown in jail! You see, all of those methods are good - just different.
There was a time that I would end up in tears some nights after happily settling in with a stack of new homeschool catalogs. There were just SO MANY ways to educate children! It seemed like whatever I did, my children would be missing out on some essential method or plan or approach. We need to remember different families will educate their children in very different ways. God isn't in the business of creating cookie-cutter children, and it is truly beautiful to realize that He will equip each of us to teach our children in the way that is best for them and for us.
The whole system works well until we start comparing ourselves to others in ways that defeat us. If we allow ourselves to be blown about with the winds of every homeschooling method we discover, our inconsistency will harm our educational efforts instead of h elping them. Please don't misunderstand - as our seasons in life or our circumstances change, we will find our homeschooling endeavors flexing, changing, and growing with us. If God calls a textbook mama to turn Charlotte Mason (or visa-versa), it will be a GOOD thing because God did it . . . . but if that textbook mama goes CM because she feels guilty about not having nature studies, she will just frustrate herself and her children.
and then forward the whole list to the techie thread. Or maybe a good dousing of individual posts/requests is in order?
