Have you ever asked someone a dangerous question? Sometimes, as homeschooling parents, we ask questions that we already know the answer to, but sometimes, we seek information or perspective from our children, so we ask a dangerous question. It usually starts with “What do you think …?”
I asked my own children a question like this not long ago. After being directly involved in their education for most of their lives as a homeschooling family, I asked them what they thought was the most important thing that I had taught them. Difficult, huh? At the time I asked this question, my children’s ages ranged from sixth grade to college graduates, so I expected a variety of responses. I assumed you might get an answer on a particular unit study that we did that everyone loved, or a cooperative homeschool lesson that was memorable, or maybe even something like how to organize my work, that’s one in! the one that spent a lot of time! But that’s not what they came up with, to my great surprise.
Essentially, each of them answered something similar to the same thing. They said they valued the fact that it had taught them to think critically, to think for themselves, and to know how to find an answer or study a topic when they knew nothing about it to begin with. They went on to describe how they had learned that what I taught them and what they did with it were often two different things in the sense that I couldn’t control whether they “got it” as much as I thought, because the end result was ultimately their responsibility. I had to make them repeat that. They had learned that their learning and growth was their own responsibility based on how they used what I taught them. Woof! What a true statement, not only for homeschooling, but also for life, and from nothing less than “baby mouths”!
That is our role as homeschoolers, isn’t it? Teaching our children how to learn, how to prepare, how to think for themselves, and ultimately take responsibility for the use they make of that information and training, for themselves. Learning to process information for the purpose of applying it It’s critic. Knowing what you need to learn is only half. You have to stick to it, act on it, do something with it, and that’s the job of all students, regardless of age. My job as a homeschool educator is simply to give my children opportunities. I need to give them quality information and do it honorably. They you must act accordingly.
I am so blessed that my children have learned this, and I am so blessed that they “get it.”