Introduction
Where We’ll Go in This Book
What do you do if school isn’t a good fit for your child?
Some kids just don’t mesh with school in big, obvious ways: they’re viciously bullied or repeatedly harassed. They’re threatened with suspension. They battle you over homework every night.
Other kids suffer in less visible ways. They sit, bored out of their minds, hour after hour, week after week. They spiral quietly into depression. They start using legal or illegal substances to make it through the day.
What do you do when you see your child’s spark fading? What do you do when you witness a creeping anxiety in the brave child you once knew? What do you do when you run out of reasonable explanations for this continued suffering?
People are complex. You may never figure out exactly why school stopped working for your kid, but youcan reasonably assume that school—not your kid—is a large part of the problem.
This is not a book about how to reform the education system. While that subject is vitally important, reform is not something for which you can afford to wait. Nor is this a book that argues for tearing down public schools, which provide certain essential services to our society and genuinely work for some kids.
This is a practical book about what you can do, beginning today, if you believe that mainstream schools, which I call conventional schools, may be a bad fit for your child.
Attention is a precious resource, and you may be wondering if this book is worth your time. Allow me to provide a brief tour of the ideas and arguments you’ll encounter in the pages ahead.
In this Introduction, I first address the issue of privilege, explain how conventional schooling transformed into an institution that can harm kids, and introduce some of my colleagues in the hope that you will not write me off as an isolated crank.
In Chapter 1, I take you on a tour of the wide world of radical alternatives to school. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be an outside-the-box learner in North America where we enjoy a thriving ecosystem of alternatives: private and public, school-based and home-based. This ecosystem is so dynamic, in fact, that it sometimes feels like the Wild West. Some alternatives might inspire you, while others could send you screaming in the opposite direction. Some cities and towns are packed with great options, while others are deserts. Homeschooling will occupy much of our discussion; I’ll encourage you to think of it as a handy meta-tool instead of a specific method of educating (i.e., doing school at home). Homeschooling is a legal, viable option in all 50 states of the U.S., in all 10 provinces of Canada, as well as in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and some European countries. If you live outside these areas, your situation might be trickier, but the large-scale trend is undoubtedly positive. Today you enjoy more options for thriving outside of conventional school than ever before.
In Chapter 2, I acknowledge the reality that for many jobs today, your kidwill need a college degree—which is why i
