It Took a Pandemic to Help Me Find My Way

By Anaïs Tekerian

Years ago, after choosing home births for my girls, doing extensive research on nutrition and health, and indulging in left-of-center politics, I decided homeschooling would be the way to go. 

And then I chickened out. 

My first daughter was an exhausting toddler. It was only once she was happily ensconced in school that I was able to delve more deeply into my writing and performing. And it turned out that both my girls enjoyed public school, happy to go off in the mornings, full of stories to recount in the evenings. Then lockdowns happened. 

A COVID-19 dissident, I perversely entertain some gratitude for being forced to live through the insanity of lockdowns because it woke me up fully to the dysfunction of our institutions. I immediately understood, in April 2020, that remote schooling was an invitation to have technology take over the schools—with the ensuing dumbing-down of the instruction which relied heavily on videos, and the violation of children's privacy through the use of invasive software that now recorded their every heartfelt essay and clumsy oral book report.

I also saw firsthand how much the level of education had deteriorated in the interval between my two girls' schooling, with the benign-sounding "social-emotional learning" being a way to turn children's focus on themselves and the minutiae of petty interactions, rather than using that extra time in the day to encourage collaboration on science experiments or dance choreographies. Moreover, the masking of children and social distancing were so barbaric, I am ashamed that I ever allowed my children to be part of that dystopia.

So while I allowed my high schooler to finish off her last bit of public school, I pulled my younger girl into the world of homeschooling, and we have never looked back.

Many like to think of homeschoolers as a bunch of fringe, white, religious extremists. Funny enough, I haven't met a single one of those in our wide homeschooling community. My daughter's new friends are of varied ethnicity and economic background, and come from households of different political and religious affiliations. The only notable thing is the inherent tolerance of differing views, which is unlike the pervasive leftist narrative that superseded all other possible political expressions in my older daughter's high school, where she and her friends learned to practice self-censorship. (Politics have no place in education. But it infiltrates public schools, and I have had to reprimand the high school for encouraging students to divulge their political persuasions in class through online surveys and such.)

My homeschooler's social circle is wide, and the friendship bonds are tight, crossing age barriers—she has close friends years older and younger than she is. I am constantly charmed by my interactions with her friends, with whom I have carried out long dialogues; because homeschooled children spend a lot of time around other parents (who are often involved in organizing book clubs, field trips, classes), they are never allowed to dismiss me as just another adult human indulging in dull palaver above them. 

Most important to the homeschooling adventure is the joy with which my child addresses learning. To be fair, she was an easy candidate for homeschooling—reading and writing are two of her biggest pleasures, and my husband and I made the decided effort to keep both our girls away from screens for the longest time, so she knows how to fill her time with active pursuits away from a computer. It is therefore easy to effectuate her language education at home, through editing her writing, discussing books, pontificating on questions of grammar at random times of the day.

For math, we assiduously follow the Beast Academy curriculum that resonates with me, and until she gets to a level surpassing mine, we will struggle through our daily doses of math problems. I am lucky to have fallen into a wonderful community of homeschooling parents who organize classes to which my daughter flies with endless enthusiasm. Her classes have included ancient history taught by a professor within the galleries of the Metropolitan museum, financial literacy, science and STEM, theater, and chess, all run by experienced teachers in lessons organized by enterprising mothers. 

It is true that none of these classes are free— except for the book clubs and art classes run by volunteer parents. And while some states offer tax credits and even small grants to homeschooling parents, New York State offers us only a subway card and the obligatory quarterly forms to fill out for the privilege of educating our own children. (Luckily these are not unwieldy.) According to Chalkbeat, the yearly spending per public school student in New York is about $38,000. Including subway costs, I spend less than a sixth of that on my daughter's education. I am lucky to be self-employed, so I schedule my private piano teaching around her needs. As she is able to spend my working time reading or creating elaborate art projects, I have been able to add a few students to help pay for her classes. I know that I am in a privileged position for this.

Imagine if our city offered even a portion of that allotted money per public student for parents to band together and form homeschooling communities aligned with the groups' values? Parents could create structures in which they funded their own childcare and lessons, cooperating within communities to help with any transportation. Underprivileged students could escape issues of school violence and sub-par instruction. Parents could make sure that the education their children received did not include issues that contradicted their ethics or religion. Children with special needs could be given the exact kind of instruction they required, while gifted children could learn at their own more accelerated pace.

If you are not acquainted with the writing of John Taylor Gatto, you owe it to yourself to delve into his work. The Prussian model of education upon which our school system is based was never intended to create self-sufficient independent-minded adults. It was designed to form a population trained to the bell, with the barely-hour-long attention span, a population unnaturally segregated by age and taught to cater to authority. I always wanted my children to show respect to all around them, particularly to teachers, but with the knowledge that their ideas can and should be questioned, and that problematic views should be countered. In my experience, homeschooled children usually enter their classes with the agreement that they are willing participants in this learning environment. They learn at their own pace, and if one day demands three hours of math and another day asks for five hours of writing while other days are almost pure play, it all evens out in the end. Most of the homeschoolers in our circle are at or years above grade level in math and English.  

I will not hide that my life has changed radically since I made the choice to homeschool. Though my daughter is a happy, easy kid, I'm an introvert who rarely has any solitude. I have to tune out loud conversations in cafés to put my thoughts into writing while she's at a class. The mothers (and occasional father) homeschooling alongside me have all given up quite a bit of freedom of movement for this choice. But even from the depths of our exhaustion, there is no regret. The happiness of our children is palpable. And while time doesn't quite go by in the blink of an eye, as old people are fond of saying, our steeping ourselves more fully in their childhoods permits us to learn and re-learn the lessons that they were meant to teach us.

I am glad I found my courage again. I am infinitely grateful for those lessons. 

Anais Tekerian is a writer and musician who has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.