Why do so many parents stop homeschooling just when their children need them most? If you are tempted to exit prematurely, check your clock. It may be later than you think.
A couple of years ago I saw a store display for digital clocks that were supposed to set themselves, adjust for daylight savings time, and, in the case of a power failure, come back on displaying the correct time. I was mesmerized at the thought that I would never have to deal with resetting my clocks. Giddy with excitement, I purchased two.
When I arrived home, I plugged one in next to my bed where I could see it whenever I awoke during the night. The other I installed in our exercise room. I set both to display mountain standard time and to adjust for daylight savings time. I was thrilled at the prospect of never having to adjust them again.
I noticed that the other clocks in the house—the old undependable kind that need to be reset from time to time—never quite kept pace with my super-duper self- setting clocks, but what would I expect? After all, the literature that came with them said that they were set by a tower in the Atlantic Ocean. Their time keeping abilities were clearly superior.
I soon noticed, however, that there was a two-minute difference between the identical clocks regulated by the same tower. That was a little disconcerting, but since I could not manually reset them, I pushed that information out of my mind.
As the months passed, I noticed that the two clocks were displaying times that continued to widen the gap between their time and the time on my other clocks—although they did continue to be exactly two minutes apart from each other. Finally, in desperation, I checked the time displayed on my cell phone, the time reported on the radio, and the time displayed on the television. All of them agreed with each other. I began asking other family members what time it was, and when they consulted their watches or cell phones to give me the time, they all agreed with the manually set clocks in my house.
In one final attempt to rectify the situation, I unplugged my self-setting clocks and gave their little digital brains a chance to clear. I then plugged them in again and found that they were still two minutes apart and that one was still displaying a time that was six minutes earlier than the regular clocks and the other was still displaying a time that was eight minutes earlier than the regular clocks. Although I had done everything I knew to rectify this situation, absolutely nothing had changed. When I consult either of those clocks, I must add the appropriate number of minutes to the time they are displaying because it is always later than I think.
This experience got me to thinking about homeschooling. Many parents sacrifice a great deal to homeschool their children through elementary and middle school. They give up one income and readjust their lifestyles so that their children will be protected from the negative influences that are so often present in the public school system. They work hard to teach the reading and math skills that are frequently lacking in public school children. They give, and give, and give some more to ensure that their children will really learn their lessons in geometry and history and literature, but when those children are ready for high school, they turn them over to the public system.
Parents often make the decision to allow their children to go to a “regular” high school partly because the children pressure them. They, naturally, want to be with their friends and to be like their friends. But there is something else that comes into play that is more often than not the real reason that parents opt to enroll their children in the local high school. By the time the children are ready for high school the home teacher is often so tired and over-extended that the temptation to “set them and forget them” is almost irresistible. After all, as their children’s educations advance, it seems likely that they will be better trained by various teachers who specialize in the subjects they teach than by a home teacher who teaches every subject. Logic says that if they live in a good school district, their children are in good hands. The thought of being able to “retire” as a home teacher can make almost any parent giddy with excitement.
Before you enroll your children in your local high school, however, take time to think about the consequences. Once you turn them over to the professionals, you can no longer regulate the process. If they begin falling behind—either scholastically or morally—you will not be able to reset the mechanism. All that information being beamed from that tower that controls their little brains will read as correct. One day, after it is too late to do anything about it, you may take a good hard look at them and discover that it’s later than you think.
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