Decisions Decisions

My apologies for a longer then usual post. As you will see, this was not the intended outlet for this information.

What follows below is part of an email exchange I had with a friend over the past few days. I am posting it here with his permission.
He and his wife recently decided to begin home schooling their child. Kris and I both agree that at minimum, home schooling should be considered in equal proportion to other education options for Aiden. Home schooling has undergone drastic changes with the advent of the Internet and the mass school shootings of the past 10-15years. Some good points are made below. I'll be somewhat disappointed if this post does not draw out some impassioned responses.
Here ya go.....

Motivation: We'd been unsatisfied with his 2nd grade teacher for most of the year. The rumor is that she'll be retiring after this year but, to be honest, I think she retired at the beginning and just forgot to stop showing up. Around the middle of the year he started balking at going to school which was bizarre since he absolutely loved K-4, K-5 and 1st grade. His complaint was that there was 'too much work'. To make a long story less long, we figured out that since he was well above the No Child Left Behind bar he was receiving little to no attention. Instead he was given worksheets to do while the teacher focused on the kids that needed help. His teacher never actually collected these worksheets so he stopped doing them and just stuffed them in his desk with no consequences. Of course, this spilled over into our home life where we would tell him to do something and he wouldn't. So, not only was he not learning much, what he was learning was that he could decide what he did and when. Not good.

Around this time I had picked up a copy of The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer (fascinating read, btw) and discovered that she had also written a book called The Well-Trained Mind (co-written with her mother, Jessie Wise) where they detail their interpretation of the Trivium which is an ancient method of education emphasizing Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric (descriptions from the book):
Grammar [1st - 4th grade]"During this period education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts: rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics - the list goes on.

"Logic [5th - 8th grade]"The time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationship between different fields of knowledge, to the way facts fit together into a logical framework." "The logic of writing...includes paragraph construction and support of a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts; ...the logic of history demands that the student find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires the child to learn the scientific method.

"Rhetoric" The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses her conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. The student also begins to specialize in whatever branch of knowledge attracts him/her.

Getting Started, Different Options
There are different ways to 'homeschool'. One of the most common is to enroll your child in a 'cyberschool'. These are online charter schools where the school determines the curriculum and you, the parent, teach it. The school will provide tests for you to administer, etc. They will also provide all books, workbooks and typically a computer and some sort of reimbursement for high-speed Internet. Your school district is required to turn over your tax money to the charter school and it is therefore "free".
Similar to above there are other schools in which you can enroll your child which will provide the framework and you provide the instruction and tuition.

Finally there is the path which we chose: to go at it on our own. We could not find a school, cyber- or otherwise, which followed this idea of a classical (trivium-based) education. Also, I really wanted to be able to pick and choose his curriculum and pace which would have been limited somewhat by having him enrolled somewhere.I'm not sure of the processes involved in enrolling in a cyber school since we did not do that. The sections below relate to the method we chose.

Legal.
Homeschooling in Pennsylvania is really easy. You can do whatever you want until the child is eight at which point you have a couple hoops to jump through (we had to jump through them since we had already enrolled him but if you never enroll your child then you can wait until he's eight.) You need to turn in a notarized affidavit to your local school district along with a list of educational objectives for the year. At the end of each school year you need to hire a teacher to go over your child's portfolio of the year and they simply have to determine whether or not the child 'has made progress'. Also, you must either log hours(900) or days(180) of study/instruction. Finally, your child must take three standardized tests after third, ???? and ???? grades.

Curriculum
There are several recommended curricula in every area listed within The Well-Trained Mind with pretty detailed descriptions. We'd be happy to our choices with you, just let us know. We spent approximately $500 for books, etc. for this year.

What's Great
I know what he is learning every day, no more: "What did you learn at school today", "I dunno."
We've seen an incredible improvement in his attitude and behavior. He's still a child, of course, but things are markedly better.
He's learning things.
He knows that Mesopotamia means "between two rivers" and can identify them (Tigris & Euphrates) and find them on a map.
He has memorized 4-5 short poems (8-10 lines)
His handwriting (printing, actually) has improved
After every history lesson he has to identify two main facts/ideas and write them down in grammatically-correct complete sentences
He is doing very little independent study right now. As such, we are there to catch & correct errors as they happen so they don't become poor habits.

Much more schedule flexibility.
It's pretty easy to skip a day of school due to a hectic schedule. Also, we were able to run off to Florida for a couple weeks last month and are planning on a trip to Colorado next month. We can take our school with us or not, our choice.
Related to the one above, we can do school year-round. By taking more frequent breaks we can avoid burnout and by going all year we can avoid re-teaching things that are typically forgotten during the summer.
We can typically fit in a full day of instruction/work before lunch (and we're still covering 3-4x the subject matter that his school was.)
We can monitor his 'socialization'. Surrounding him by a group of poorly-monitored peers is counter-productive. How can children teach each other how to act in a civilized manner? Instead, we try to put him in situations with his peers which are structured (karate, Power Hour, volunteering in Treasure Cove, soccer).

What's Not Great
Much more schedule flexibility. It's pretty easy to skip a day of school due to a hectic schedule.
24/7 parenting with no breaks. This can be tough, and with me working from home we're around each other a lot.
Structuring the rest of the day. We can typically fit in a full day of instruction/work before lunch (and we're still covering 3-4x the subject matter that his school was) which leaves a lot of time for the boys to get in trouble. The temptation to let them watch TV or play on the computer just to get them occupied is ever-present.
Doing my homework. Making sure I'm ready to teach his lessons.