People like to leave things on library shelves for other people to stumble upon. It's like the lowest-risk possible form of flashing. Religious tracts are also fairly common: I think the daydream is that someone will be looking for a book on elephants or something and "Bam!" discover religion. That is a lot more innocuous, but both situations occur.

When you say "leave the house" are you talking about literally leaving the house, or only scheduled activities? The reason I ask is that my son is only 18 months old (here gathering data for homeschooling), but there is no staying in the house all day. If we had a fenced yard, maybe, but even then, I doubt it. A daily walk is just an absolute requirement: if we haven't gone anywhere, he will bring us things (shoes, suntan lotion, the stroller . . .) and knock on the door until we go somewhere. My husband (who is the SAHP) walks him every day--sometimes to the park, sometimes to the grocery store, sometimes the library, but always a good long walk. Then, when I get home from work, we often walk to the park half a mile a way--that he can do without the stroller. I thought this was really normal, and that all toddlers were easily bored and needed stimulation. But I see several people here with toddlers saying they have several days a week at home. Do your toddlers not drive you crazy?

Another issue with history is that it can really be hard to decide when "simplified" becomes inaccurate, and really hard to resist filling in details about what happened when the truth is often that we just don't know. "Real" history isn't a narrative: it's a huge pile of primary sources. Any attempt to shape those into anything approaching a narrative will be inaccurate for some value of "inaccurate". I mean, look at Squanto. It's not incorrect that a Native American named Squanto probably existed and was probably of great help to the Pilgrims in figuring out agriculture in the new world. However, any attempt to give Squanto a personality--to talk about his motives, to make it alive, is to put an interpretation on it and moves you away from "100% really happened, for sure" territory. Then there is the simplification issue: Is it "historically inaccurate" to just not mention his personal enslavement and the wiping out of his people by smallpox? I think these are really big questions that any history teacher has to grapple with, and there aren't simple solutions to them. As kids age, we can help them see these dilemmas, but it's not really feasible to start with anything other than narrative history--which runs the risk that later they will feel lied to.

And sometimes, you have to fake it. I teach high school economics. AP exam is tomorrow. Do you know how excited I am about fiscal and monetary policy right now? Not at all. We've done it to death, we've done it inside and out and backwards and forwards. But some of my kids will just today, for the first time, be really ready to hear it (because they were zoned out or not ready the last 10 times) so I have to go in here in a few minutes and teach the three powers of the Fed like I just discovered them myself, pristine and shinning on the first morning of God's creation. It's not fun, but it's not fun to be perky to a cranky commuter at 6 AM if you work at Starbucks, or fun to be nice to your mother-in-law when she's fretting about the right color beige for her walls. And sometimes, if you fake it, you find the enthusiasm, because they get enthusiastic, and that inspires you.

This is really the same argument at two-income vs SAHP or HS vs PS. What you are looking for is a big decision that, frankly, no one makes casually and involves a ton of work and sacrifice. There was a thread a while ago about explaining why you homeschool without sounding like a jerk: it's a problem, because you can't pretend you don't think it's a big deal, considering all the blood, sweat, and tears you put into homeschooling. And since almost everyone here has a SAHP, I think we've all been on the same side of that argument: you don't want to say someone else is making the wrong choice, or doing wrong by their kid, but, well, you don't stay home in this day and age unless you feel pretty strongly about it. I guess what I am saying is that whatever one chooses, it can be really hard to thread the needle and make the point "I feel really really really strongly about this FOR ME, but I in no way have any opinion about you and what is right for your family". Even if you are telling the truth, people don't believe you, and frankly, sometimes people don't mean it. Sometimes when they (sometimes me) get in groups that are totally like-minded, a lot of judgmental ideas come out.

I think the internet tends to be very shaming to everyone, because it's so easy for people to lie, and to judge, and to present themselves as achieving an ideal and condescend to those that don't. When you know someone in the world, you often see the gap between their claims and their reality: I used to work with a woman that was really smug about how well she fed her children and how much she LOVED healthy food and really had this "If anyone enjoys Doritos, they must be really unsophisticated" kind of attitude, but I also saw that she brought McD's to work for breakfast twice a week. If I'd pushed it, I am sure she would have explained it was because she was so busy, on account of her kids being so needy, but that she's have preferred an egg white omelet with feta and fresh greens. And I am sure that would taste good. But she also really enjoyed the McDs. I guess what I am saying is that if all I had heard were her words, I would have felt shamed by my own tastes, my own . . .self. But because I saw her actions, I didn't. On the internet, we only get the words.

I think it's really hard to look at your house and see how it reflects you, because so much of what makes a house unique seems like the default: a house is just a house. I am reminded of my grandmother. Years--decades--ago, she says to me "I don't know why people from other countries are so attached to their "cultures". I don't have a culture". And I was like (heavily paraphrased) "Grandmother, you have certain ways you celebrate Christmas and Easter and Halloween, and you had 12 kids, sent them all to Catholic school, pushed them all through scouts, sent them all (ok, 11) to college, whatever the cost. You took them camping every summer, baked them a cake a every birthday, and named each and every one after a saint". And she said "Well, that's not a culture, that's just what people do". I worked at a grocery store for about month in college. Before that, I would have said my groceries said nothing about me, that I bought "standard stuff", and that there were only one or two distinctive items. But after working there a week, I discovered that there are no standard groceries. Every single weird thing I couldn't imagine anyone buying is actually bought by tons of people. And things I thought of as just normal--stuff everyone buys all the time--rarely crossed my register. I guess what I am saying is that our homes seem such the default that it can be hard to see what they reveal. But I think Hunter's point is good: if you aren't the kind of person who will enjoy the work of prepping BFSU, don't use it: a kid who was in the same house as BFSU but never used it is not better educated than someone who had a workbook and a series of boxed experiments. Trying to find the materials, method, or approach that is 100% best for your child without ever a thought for what your own strengths and limitations are is basically pride ("I can do ANYTHING for my kid!"), and it will hurt your child, because they won't get the perfect version of that perfect curriculum, they will get the deeply flawed presentation of it that is all you can manage. And in reflecting on past years, you need to look at what you did, not what you used.

I think for kids in the middle, this kind of thing works great. I think for very strong and very weak students, it is less ideal. A certain type of very strong student would react to this sort of structure with the idea that because they CAN redo everything until they get 100, they must, or they should. That's not really reasonable: if you make a couple careless errors on a math test and get a 92 instead of a 100, its really a poor use of your time and emotional energy to go back and take a whole different test over stuff you already know to make a 100. You end up with a kid that is taking three quizzes a day and can't focus on new stuff because they are still fretting about the old stuff. A certain type of weak student, on the other hand, has trouble really pushing themselves if they know they have a fallback if it doesn't go as planned. This is the kid that would bomb the test or homework three or four times in a row because they'd never get around to really trying, because it's always easier to lie to yourself and tell yourself you'll try next time: this time, you'll just kinda guess on every question and hope it works out, just to see if you can get away with it. This is the same kid who would rather get a 70 on a test they didn't study for than a 90 on a test they did study for, because they think the 70 when they didn't try proves that they are inherently smarter/better/talented but that they 90 they got after studying shows they couldn't master the material. I also fear losing the instructional benefit of a test: tests are supposed to be assessments, not teaching tools, but sometimes kids walk away from a test smarter than when they sat down. Sometimes they've never really focused on the material before, and only being under the gun makes them really stretch themselves. Some kids just can't make themselves THINK until they have to. As a teacher, I've handed tests back to kids and told them to go correct them. Other times, I've told a kid that their best best strategy was t push forward. It depends on the kid, the material, and the assessment. As a future homeschooler, I hope to be wise enough to match my son with the approach that works for him.

I can see the emphasis on skills and curiosity, but content matters to me, as well. My son isn't really even pre-school age yet, so we are still gathering information and making long-range plans, but I know it's really important to me that he know things. I want him to know wow many planets there are in the solar system, and what makes each one different. I want him to know why a T-rex never fought a saber-tooth. I want him to know who fought whom in WWII and when that was. When he walks outside, I want him to see oaks and maples and fruit trees, and mockingbirds and bluejays and grackles, not "trees and birds". And I want him to enjoy knowing those things, to understand that knowing those things gives depth and complexity to his experiences. If I could sum it up in a word, I want him to have context for all the other things that will happen to him in life.

Because doing the hard stuff is how he gets the better understanding of the grammar: if the composition were easy, there'd be no point in doing it. That said, it would be reasonable to do it in smaller pieces.

Magnets vary tremendously. I have known some that were everything they were billed to be, and others where the kids and teachers coasted because the selection process meant they had good enough test taking skills that their state numbers would always be good enough, and no one ever noticed or cared that they weren't really living up to their potential. One significant difference in a magnet program is the lack of sports. In an average High School, the sports season rotation defines the year, provides much of the social events, is basically the spine. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, that's not there in a magnet program.

In Melville's "The Encantadas", he compares the Galapagos to a "penal conflagration". Kids are pretty sure that's really, really naughty.

I think one reason that this is difficult is that no one makes the decision to home school because they sorta kinda think it might be better in some ways. It costs too much and is too much work to be a casual thing. Our son is still too young for K, so no need to justify it yet, but when talking about our plans I sometimes say "We have some wacky ideas about education". It suggest we are the weird ones, and I don't really have any problem being the weird one. If someone wants to ask "What wacky ideas?", well, that's an invitation to start talking about Classical education and idea-focused and more science and social studies and SM and all the other things that will bore the crap out of them. But that's a focus on what home school can do differently, not on what public school is doing wrong.

It helps you notice when things are wrong: yes, you can always go look up information, but if you are at work and someone is giving a presentation and their data is from 2011, not 2012 as they meant, it sure is helpful if someone notices that the numbers seem off, and can go look before big decisions are made on poor information. It helps you see how things have changed: if you are reading a new recipe, it's helpful to be able to remember other, similar recipes well enough to see how this one is alike or different, and understand what the finished product will be like. It helps to remember names and biographical details of people you meet, which is invaluable in terms of both your social and professional lives.

I think the opposite of "idea-focused" is "student focused", where you let the students' interests shape the scope and sequence. An idea-focused education is going to prioritize developing a child who knows a great deal about a wide variety of things, from the workings of nature to the foibles of human nature, and can discuss those things comfortably. A child-focused approach is going to prioritize developing a child who has deep self-knowledge, is happy in their own skin, has a life-long passion for learning, and has the tools needed to learn anything they set out to master. All of those are good goals, and I think all educational philosophies hope for all that, but you do have to have priorities. Actually, I think there are a lot of educational programs that give very short shrift to any art or music, simply because of time: art and music always seems to come after math, science, all the language arts skills, social studies, etc. A kid that practices piano ten hours a week is "serious" about music: a kid who plays baseball ten hours a week is just a normal kid with a normal team practice schedule. I don't think even classical programs generally emphasize art and music, and I don't think it's a defining feature. I completely agree with this. Chasing the unicorn of perfect integration is silly, IMHO: better to let the kids discover connections between things they are studying, and if that means they have to remember back six month ago, that's a feature, not a bug; it helps review and solidify stuff. Furthermore, people always seem to think integration means chronological integration. Connecting themes, ideas, tensions, and conflicts will naturally arise as long as kids are exposed to sophisticated source material.