Many of us, myself included, did very well at a mediocre American public school. It seemed, to my young mind, a colossal waste of time — an eternity stewing in a mind-numbing prison where, I honestly believe, I learned very little of real value. In elementary school, I learned to read and write and do basic math — all valuable and arguably necessary. But once those skills were mastered, the repetition and boredom were staggering while curiosity and creativity were largely squelched. I, like so many others, digested and regurgitated supposed facts for the purpose of measuring my education, all the while deleting the uninteresting bits — that is to say, most. History — everything that has ever happened to anyone on earth — was reduced in watery concoctions of dates and white men warring, down to a bland slurry of facts, which, it turns out, are roundly and regularly disputed. Literature — an endlessly fascinating well of human imagination — became the staid list of someone else’s favorites, picked apart and served out of context. In my own limited free time, I learned to play tennis, wrote overwrought adolescent poetry and read widely. I learned about politics from my father, who made it fascinating in all its filthy, operatic glory. I bowled and biked, explored music and food, and stumbled through the minefield that is teen relations. And looming at every moment was that awful, massive, brick box waiting to swallow me 5 mornings a week, only to spit me out a little less curious and a little more pissed off every afternoon. I graduated on the dean’s list, proud family watching, and felt no brighter for it. 13 years of what?

Sorting through today’s educational choices is a daunting and byzantine task. Throughout 25 years and four kids, I’ve tried just about everything. We’ve been to public elementary and high school (middle school is a lower rung of hell), a charter high school, community college, and private four-year college. We’ve done Waldorf, nursery schools, and a parent-run homeschool co-op that looked like a messy playgroup with swipes at academic pretension. Internships and jobs, volunteer work and community classes — you name it, we’ve done it (except private school — can anyone really afford that anymore?). We’ve settled on, and had the most success with, homeschooling.

What have I gleaned from this chaotic existence? Many things — curricula are arbitrary and dull (and not always correct or reliable), testing is a virtually meaningless exercise, steeped in stress and competition, built to serve business and government (Core Standards, anyone?). Most public schools spend enormous chunks of time managing and herding their charges. Recess and the arts have been cut to bleeding. Children desperately need to play — every day, for years. They need to get outside and they need plenty of unstructured time. The arts are vital. Surround them with music, art supplies and, especially, books — stacks and stacks in every room. Reading should be a pleasure, therefore they should read what they want. They gave me Madame Bovary at 15 and my review amounted to, “huh?” Julius Caesar was crammed into my head at 14 and it was so torturous that I entertained fantasies of assaulting my muscled, gun-toting English teacher. I read Bovary again at 35 and the light went on. And I discovered the brilliance of Shakespeare after reading and seeing many of the plays with the maturity and interest that they require. Looking back, it seems that some of my youth was fantastically squandered on things that meant nothing to me at the time and had no impact whatsoever on my development, except to give me a dim sense of my own dim sense. I think I became a voracious reader in spite of the books tossed my way throughout my school career.

Homeschooling is, by turns, brilliant and boring. We’ve managed thrilling successes and crashing mediocrity, periods of exalted inspiration and bouts of profound laziness. I have rules, I get frustrated, it has been overwhelming at times. I’ve had mixed results with various educational approaches and four different learning styles, one for each kid — one size does not fit all, despite the classroom model. The socialization myth — you’ve heard it, homeschoolers don’t have friends, don’t know how to live in the real world — is moronic. My biggest challenge has been to manage too many social opportunities and “real world” activities. Sports, music lessons, art classes, book clubs, camps, dances, potlucks, concerts, parties, plays — on and on. Years have been trimmed from my life ferrying four maniacs over hill and dale to fulfill their socialization needs. The beautiful thing, though, has been the flexibility. Flexibility to change anything that’s not working, to travel and explore new territory, literally and figuratively, and to constantly question. And the experiment has been validated over and over again.

Each one of my kids felt the need to try school in their teens — the oldest and youngest went to 9th grade at the local public school, the second to community college at 16 and the third to a charter school in 10th grade. Every time I worried — hand-wringing, heart-thumping, no sleep kind of worry. Will they be okay? How far behind are they? And each one ended up shining, almost immediately (once they figured out the structure of the thing — schedules, lockers, social politics) — ahead of the crowd academically, favorites of the teachers, and socially adept. I have to admit I was shocked — pleasantly so, of course, but how was it that the school kids had been sitting in classes for a decade while mine were home — doing seemingly very little, at times — and yet they were still able to slide in, very late, and thrive? It’s not because we’re smarter, trust me. We are undeniably normal.

My kids are bright and capable, but not because of anything I “taught” them. Perhaps it has more to do with the time and the space that they’ve had to just think and grow — and be. We’ve been able to dabble in life, in an environment built for curiosity. Lots of books and conversation, supplemented by real world experimenting — lots of sleeping in and pondering the universe (and, yes, lots of laziness and arguing and second-guessing — this is real life, after all). And, perhaps most importantly, much lower stress levels. The public school system has grown so concerned with standards and measurements that there is no room for growing humans. It doesn’t take 13 years to learn everything the schools try to teach — you can learn it all (and much, much more) in much less time from the world, from life. And you can choose your passion. If only we all had the freedom and the support to do it. For what it’s worth, they all returned to homeschooling.

I have a good friend, an esteemed college professor, who has said that he spends most of freshman year trying to “undo the damage” of high school. He says that these kids don’t know how to think — they know how to “do school”. They approach him at the beginning of the semester, in droves, asking, “How do I get an A?” They ask, “What, specifically, are you looking for?”, about each project. He tries to reprogram (or, more appropriately, deprogram) them and teach them to think, to leave behind concerns of assessment and competition and tap into their own best logic, creativity and intelligence. This is what we’re doing to our kids — teaching them to test, to conform, to be concerned only with measurement and assessment, instead of learning and growth. Instead of curiosity. Many of them will perform well and graduate, but what will they really gain if they don’t learn to think for themselves?

The world educates us as no schoolhouse can. I know some cherish their early schooling — most of them went to innovative private schools. But for the vast majority of us, the real learning starts the day we walk away — regardless of when that happens. We take jobs and internships, learn to navigate the world, maybe try higher education, where we have choices and professors who hopefully have passion for their specialties. These days, technology provides us the ability to learn just about anything with the stroke of a finger. It has laid the world at our feet, if we know how to use it.