Reads that Inspired me to homeschool

    In case you're interested, here are a few of the articles/books that inadvertently helped me in making the decision to homeschool Wiggly.  I didn't read them with the idea of homeschooling; it was more like the more I read, the more homeschooling makes sense for our personal situation. If you are unfamiliar with the books, I highly recommend them (obviously, or I wouldn't be posting about them. ;0)  At the very least, it gives you something to chew on about your personal definition of success, how we as parents/caregivers encourage children to learn, and how having the right circumstances to success make all the difference.

    The first book is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  Firstly, I'd like to say how very fascinating this book is.  I've always been interested in psychology and why people behave the way they do, so this was very much up my alley.  This book focuses on the "outliers" in our society (ie. Bill Gates and other highly successful individuals), and how these people came to such high degrees of success and prosperity.  On the flip side, the book also covers outliers in the other direction; for example, the circumstances surrounding an airplane tragedy, and the mediocrity one of the world's smartest men.  
    There are a few chapters that really stood out to me when it came to my son's education starting with the very first chapter. In the first chapter, Gladwell explains using the sport of hockey how even at a very young age, kids who are older for their class/sport and are a little more mature physically and emotionally than their younger peers with later birthdays, are picked for teams and receive better training, hence becoming better, more successful athletes over-all.  And this is all because they were a little more mature as 5-6 year olds.  This same example of being older and more mature at a young age can be seen in the classroom as well.  Students who are older for their class do better in school than their younger peers.  The evidence he provides for backing this claim is astounding.
   
    The same phenomena of the advantages older, more mature students have in the classroom is also explained in Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's book, Nurture Shock: New Thinking about Children.  Here they use elite daycare screenings and gifted programs to show that older, more mature students at an early age have better access to advanced learning, such as gifted programs, not so much because they are truly smarter, but because they are simply a little more mature than their younger peers.  And as a result of better class selections and opportunities, these older children are more successful academically. 

Hopefully, I did a decent job of reviewing these books; both are totally worth your time.  

    So what is a parent to do if your child is wiggly and a bit young for his class? There is factual evidence that the opportunities may not be the same for him as more mature students(and/or girls).  And what if you know your child is more capable than the mediocre work he's bringing home from school each day or the grades on his report card? The kicker was when I read this article, and my decision was final. 

Boys at the Back nytimes.com

It was as if the columnist was at Wiggly's school when she wrote this.  All of the anxieties I was feeling since he started kindergarten but I couldn't quite put my finger on was right there in this article.  The article talks about classrooms being stacked against many elementary school boys because they have less attention span, have less eagerness to learn, and are generally less able to sit still and work independently than their girl peers.  And since behavior is factored in to elementary grades (whether teachers admit this or not), boys tend to have poorer grades than girls even though test scores may be the same.  The article goes into more depth on the effects of these boys being left behind during the primary grades and the gender gap that exists in education. 

    I want my son to have the best opportunity for learning as possible because I know how important it is to get off on the right foot early on.  Put simply, I don't think the public school classroom is the best option for him at this time.  And so we shall homeschool.  For how long? That depends on him.