How Can We Not?

"Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found him so - because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday, it made going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious."

- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876)

If there was ever a book about playing hooky, it was Tom Sawyer. The young hero of this classic American book - a staple of every junior high reading list - is skipping school from the first chapter. That Tom is a smart kid. He knows that all the magic of childhood lies elsewhere, not in a classroom. Escaping school, carefree and barefoot by the Mississippi River, he is at his imaginative, creative, adventurous best.

Is this book an anthem for homeschooling, or what?

I still get a funny feeling once in a while when I'm wandering around town during the daytime. Here I am in my late 30s and I still sometimes feel like I'm supposed to be in school. You know how when school was in session, and you had a doctor's appointment or something, some kind of excuse for not being in school, and it felt deliciously subversive to be out on the street, among the living? I still get that slightly giddy feeling of freedom from time to time.

I want my daughter to feel that freedom is her natural state. Not something that she has to steal a taste of, like forbidden fruit.

Yep, we've pretty much decided that we're going to homeschool Amelie now. When I started this blog the jury was still out. But the more I learn about it the more I think, how can we not?

homeschooling
Tom Sawyer