Why I’m Homeschooling My Two-Year-Old

Homeschool

Mar 5

I dabbled with the idea of homeschooling for two years. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was something I could commit to.

While I love being a working stay-at-home mom, the idea of sending her off to school and getting a sliver of my freedom back was a bit enticing.

However, I concluded that homeschooling was the best option after I discovered that Dakota is a highly sensitive child (HSC). Without going off too much in a tangent, HSCs are marvelously aware, empathic, and intuitive.

For Dakota to thrive, she needs to be in a supportive environment with someone (me) who understands how she processes the world and empowers her sacred sensitivity.

With that being said, I’ve spent countless hours researching about public education and homeschooling. What I found was shocking—but it resulted in resounding confidence to teach my daughter. Will you allow me to share my discoveries?

History Speaks For Itself

Public schools were never designed to nurture creativity and freedom of learning in children—they were designed to do the exact opposite.

The public education system in the United States (and many other nations) originates from the 18th-century Prussian model to produce docile and obedient subjects. Although Prussia no longer exists today, it was a German military state that used public education as a way to control the masses and brainwash its citizens into loyalty.

The five purposes of Prussia’s mandatory schooling were to deliver:
1. Obedient workers for the mines.
2. Obedient soldiers for the army.
3. Well-subordinated civil servants to government.
4. Well-subordinated clerks to industry.
5. Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

“…but what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace ‘manageable.’” –John Taylor Gatto, Author and Teacher

Horace Mann, an educational reformer, traveled to Europe to study the Prussian model of schooling. His affinity for order, obedience, and efficiency of its education system was brought back to the U.S. where he established public schools in the early 1800s.

During the height of the industrial revolution, there was an increasing demand for compliant, punctual, and literate workers. Factories saw an opportunity to use public schools as a way of producing the type of workers they needed. This is precisely where the term “factory model of education” stems from.

“Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adults it needed. The problem was inordinately complex. How to pre-adapt children for a new world – a world of repetitive indoor toil, smoke, noise, machines, crowded living conditions, collective discipline, a world in which time was to be regulated not by the cycle of sun and moon, but by the factory whistle and the clock. The solution was an educational system that, in its very structure, simulated this new world.” – Alvin Toffler, Author of Future Shock

History shows that public schools were created to stifle creativity, instill obedience, and create compliant factory workers. What’s even worse is that the model hasn’t changed in almost 200 years, even though we’re living in a post-industrial era.

This isn’t to say I’m against teachers. On the contrary, public school teachers shouldn’t be blamed for state affairs. Just like students, they are pawns of the same broken system.

No matter how good their intentions are, at the end of the day, they’re being told what and how to teach to meet standardization requirements.

“It’s not that teachers are bad people or that schools are intrinsically evil places, it is that we’ve removed children from the world and placed them into a special world created just for them and we act as if there is no other possible way for children to learn, despite evidence to the contrary.” – Patrick Farenga, Homeschooling Advocate

Why I’m Homeschooling “Early”

Dakota turns three-years-old in October, so initially, I planned on teaching pre-school in Fall 2020. However, the more I buried myself in homeschooling research in preparation for the school year, the more I found myself taking a detour.

A slight shift in my perspective caused me to examine the core reason why I wanted to start teaching when Dakota would be three-years-old. The answer? Because it’s the rule.

Well, I’ve been playing against the rules for a long time, so why start following them now? I realized there shouldn’t be a set age where children start school. After all, babies start learning and making sense of the world from the moment they join us earthside.

John Holt, a renowned author and educator who founded the Unschooling method, said that “learning is as natural as breathing.” When I read this quote, it dawned on me that I’ve been homeschooling this entire time.

Mélange of Methods

Out of eight popular homeschool methods, I decided to homeschool with a combination of Unschooling, Montessori, and Waldorf education. There are pros and cons to each one, which is why I’m incorporating my favorite aspects of each method into Dakota’s program.

Unschooling

Unschooling is based on the concept of child-led learning, meaning education happens from a child’s natural curiosity and love of learning. Holt believed that children learn the most effectively from their own motivation.

There are no textbooks, curriculum, tests, or grades. Instead, children are given the freedom to choose what, why, when, how, and from whom to learn things.

Although not giving any tests may seem radically unconventional, I challenge you to think back to your own high school experience. You probably remember preparing for tests, but how much of the material did you actually retain after the test? I’m guessing the answer is little to none.

“When students regurgitate memorized information, they are unable to digest it—that is, to process it into knowledge through understanding. The very act of memorizing is a substitute for understanding, which is the key to retaining (as in learning) information. To memorize information for a test in order to repeat information on the test inevitably results in forgetting the information after the test.” –Robert Hach, Teacher

With unschooling, children have the opportunity to pursue their passions entirely. A seven-year-old child who loves math can advance to fifth-grade level math. Another child who doesn’t necessarily enjoy doing traditional math work, but loves to bake, can still get a wonderful grasp on math and chemistry.

Unschooling recognizes that life and learning are synonymous. If you’re interested in unschooling, then reading John Holt’s book How Children Learn is a great place to get started. In this piece of work, he shares his interactions and observations with young children and their natural way of learning before it gets limited in school.

Montessori

Montessori emphasizes the importance of tidy and prepared environments to foster self-directed activity and experiential learning.

Dr. Maria Montessori, the founder of the Montessori Method of Education, observed that children need to move and learn through hands-on experiences. That’s why didactic learning materials were designed for them to work with.

Instead of memorizing numbers on flashcards or math concepts, children learn by counting and adding concrete materials. Instead of memorizing letters, children learn the alphabet by tracing their fingers on sandpaper letters.

In addition to math, language, and science, Montessori has two other academic areas: practical life and sensorial.

Practical life activities help children develop skills used in daily life, including dishwashing, sweeping, watering plants, and food prep.

Sensorial activities teach children about the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

If you follow me on Instagram, then I’m sure you’ve seen how often Dakota participates in practical life and sensorial activities.

Waldorf

The Waldorf method is rooted in using imagination, art, and nature to educate the “whole child”—the head, heart, and hands.

One aspect that makes Waldorf stand out from other methods is that art is integrated into every subject. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, believed that using art to teach different subjects reaches every kind of learner (i.e. kinesthetic, visual, auditory, etc.).

The main focus of early childhood education is play. Children are encouraged to learn through the art of storytelling, movement, free play, and music. There’s also a huge emphasis on daily and unstructured outdoor play.

What I like about Unschooling, Montessori, and Waldorf is that all of these methods understand the importance of child-centered learning.

Free to Learn

The idea of handing my child over to a soul-crushing institution, with people I don’t know, for six hours a day, five days a week, and thirteen years is unthinkable.

I don’t want my child to learn how to conform. I don’t want her to bury her true self to fit in with others. I don’t want her to spend the majority of her childhood and adolescence under fluorescent lights. I don’t want her creative energy to be suffocated by authority and discipline.

Rather, I want her to revel in her divine individuality. I want her to ask questions fearlessly. I want her to harvest ideas like flowers. I want her to immerse her senses in the natural world. I want her to learn by her own curiosity and desire. I want her to unfold and evolve as a brilliant and wild spirit.