Enough with the JW homeschool horror stories already!
I homeschooled my 2 kids for about ten years, starting when my son was in 7th grade and my daughter in kindergarten. Junior high landed on my son with both feet. Within a few weeks it was so bad that he would not go to school under his own power: we not only had to drive him to school, but had to drag him out of bed and dress him. The issue was plain physical bullying, not jaydub fear of worldly kids. Hell, they didn't even know or care that he was a jaydub, or a gifted kid -- he was smaller than they were, and that was enough reason to stuff him into garbage cans and other amusing tricks.
So we took him out of school, and began with a study of John Muir, which he adored until I tried to get him to write a paper about it. He was more interested in trying to do some of the stuff John Muir did.
He did a lot more fighting about assignments, and eventually trained us to leave him alone. He did most of his learning behind my back, and today he is an artist and spiritual seeker. He lives very simply -- ten days' semi-skilled labor will pay enough to keep him alive for several weeks. So he has plenty of time for brain adventures. He lives pretty much as Eric Hoffer used to, come to think of it.
My daughter was getting into the middle school years about the time I had my religious breakdown, so we kind of blew off middle school. She followed in her brothers' footsteps during the high school years, learning behind our backs, and has turned herself into a writer. She hasn't really gotten the work/secondary education thing down yet; we're starting to work on that now. I'm less satisfied with the way her homeschooling experience has turned out, but I know we can find or make her a place in life that she won't hate ;)
Gently Feral
