Today, my calculus class was held on a hammock. My whole class could fit on the hammock because in my school, the classes are very small—there's just one student in each: me. Incidentally, I'm also the teacher for nearly all of my classes. And my classroom keeps dizzily changing location—one day I'll study calculus in the hammock, another day lying on the sofa, another day sitting at my computer as I work out some equations from a calculus CD. No, my school isn't in the middle of major construction work or a teacher's union strike. I'm homeschooled.
The Only Reason to Study
As I lay there on the hammock, swinging back and forth, my eyes drifting away from “Integration by Parts” up to the infinitely blue sky, I began to reflect on the unique freedom that homeschooling has given me. I thought about how I came to study calculus—I had planned to do pre-calc, but then the wonderful book “What is Calculus About” by W.W. Sawyer caught my eye. As I read it, I became fascinated by the simplicity and logic of calculus. Since homeschooling is largely self-directed, I decided to cover my few remaining pre-calc topics quickly so that I'd be able to begin calculus this year.
I studied calculus slowly. I didn't leave the chapter in my calculus text about integrating trigonometric functions until I had worked through the examples and felt certain that I understood how to find the derivative of cosecant x . Since my grades aren't determined by tests, simply memorizing formulas would have done me no good. For me, the only reason to study anything is to understand it, not to be able to regurgitate information.
Striking a Balance
But don't think that homeschooling is all freedom and no structure. In fact, it's imperative to strike a balance between structure and freedom, and in my house it's my mother who makes sure that my scale doesn't tip in either direction. Over the years, her role in my education has evolved. When I was younger, she sat next to me through almost every sheet of math I studied. Now, I study math on my own—but run to her to explain a new concept or discuss a surprising theorem. Just as important, she counteracts my procrastination. She pushes me to set firm goals for myself, and if I won't, she's very willing to set them for me.
Still, it's easy to slip around a deadline just set by Mom . So we've always used competitions to provide deadlines, and more recently, I've used Advanced Placement Exams to prod myself to learn more, more thoroughly, and in a set amount of time. And, because my parents have organized online AP classes for homeschoolers, two of the AP courses that I took this year even provided classmates and a teacher. Although I've never met most of my classmates face to face, I've had the chance to discuss literature with other book lovers and to argue about Freud with classmates from my AP psychology class. The biggest advantage of these classes, though, has been that they've forced me to stay on a schedule. If I'd studied American History on my own, I can imagine finding the Civil War so interesting that I'd have studied it for three months—and then I would never have been prepared for the AP Exam in the spring.
Learning by Teaching
I've been homeschooled my entire life. When I was three, I learned to read by looking over my mother's shoulder as she worked on phonics with my older brother. I've always been able to learn from what my brothers and sister are learning—a sort of “trickle-down” education. I watched the videos in my oldest brother's French course, for example, long before I could really understand them, and this gave me a boost when I began to study French myself.
Homeschooling has allowed me to take an active role in my sister's education as well as my own. When I was little, Hannah and I used to have a make-believe school together, I the teacher, she the pupil. But our “school” wasn't all make-believe; I actually taught my sister to read, introduced her to division, and led her in messy, joyful art projects. “Sister School” gave my sister an enriched preschool, and it also made me realize that I love to teach.
I've found chances to teach since then, opportunities that I don't think I would have had if I'd gone to school. For example, I started my own elementary version of the U.S.A. Mathematical Talent Search, a contest I've participated in for years, for my little sister and her homeschooled friends. This mini-USAMTS, which I masked as a math club, gave them new ways to talk about math. Like the USAMTS, my contest didn't have time limits, and, instead of asking for a simple answer (e.g. 297 or 45 degrees), it required the club members to prove why the answer is 297 or 45 degrees. But once again, I learned just as much as they did. I learned how to write math word problems that weren't too difficult or too easy. And I learned how to preserve the spirit of fun in the math contest, how to make it competitive but not discouraging, and how to keep the solutions from six different girls straight.
But what is that greatest gift that homeschooling has given me? I think it's that the lines between school and fun have never existed for me; they've always been as intangible as my school's non-existent walls. I can't really tell people how many hours of schoolwork I do each day, because I really feel that I'm learning all the time. Lately, in my free time, I've been reading Platonic dialogues because I've always been intrigued by them. I posted a pen pal ad on a French Web site, and I've chatted with my new pen pals online (where I was delighted to discover a tidbit of French Internet slang: “c” to replace “c'est,” just as we write “u” instead of “you”). This, too, I did in my free time—and not because I'm a workaholic, but because I find reading about Socrates and speaking in French fun.
I said that I'm the teacher for most of my classes, but now I'm not sure that's true. My mother has taught me; Mrs. Staver, my online AP English Literature teacher, has taught me; Mireille and Robert in the French in Action video course have taught me; my little sister has taught me; Plato, Jane Austen, Benjamin Franklin, my 130-acre farm, the 80-year-old lady in my French class at the University of Pittsburgh, and the 13-year-old girl that I tutor have all taught me. So really, my school's classes aren't small; they're enormous. For they're not confined to a classroom. They encompass the world.
Molly Richman is a 15-year-old junior and aspiring French major. This year she is taking a third year French culture class at the University of Pittsburgh.
Selected Homeschooling Resources
The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling by Debra Bell (Word Books, 1997).
The Homeschooling Book of Answers: The 88 Most Important Questions Answered by Homeschooling's Most Respected Voices edited by Linda Dobson (Prima Publishing, 1998).
Homeschool courses
www.pahomeschoolers.com/courses
If you're a homeschooler interested in taking an online AP course, go here to find course descriptions. Now 14 classes are running, ranging from AP French Language to through AP Macro Economics. These courses are open only to homeschooolers, but the courses offered through apex ( www.apex.netu.com ) are open to all, although more expensive.
For more information about homeschooling, contact the National Homeschool Association: PO Box 327,
Webster, NY 14580-0327; (513)772-9580; www.n-h-a.org/