You get both pictures of manly men Mel Gibson and Hugh Jackman holding stuffed animals!

The internets are abuzz at the recent Salon article by Andrew O’Hehir and his attempts to explain why he and his wife have chosen to homeschool their children.

I myself have gone back and forth, up, down, and sideways on whether to homeschool our 1st grader. 

In one sense, the thought of a curriculum tailored to my child and his specific interests greatly intrigues me.  My little one is definitely an out-of-the-box thinker, and I would like to keep him that way.

In this thought, I have an ally in Mr. O’Hehir:

The real purpose of all this formal schooling is to get the kids out of the house and train them to stand in line and follow instructions while mommy and daddy get back to their ultra-important lives as economic production units. 

Uh, a little defensive there, are we Mr. O’Hehir? There is a definite tone of holier-than-thou to the article, and I think that is what has made people react so strongly.

But it’s weird, because some days I feel like what he wrote is the absolute truth, and other days, I wonder exactly how I would be teaching my kid to learn how to function without me in normal society when all he does is see me 24/7. I also know that I have some serious shortcomings and perhaps even a mental block when it comes to anything but the simplest of mathematics. Would I really be doing him a favor by becoming his math teacher, or would I pass on my phobia to him, even without meaning to?

So my husband and I are literally taking the public school thing on a day by day basis. I’m willing to homeschool if for even one second I think that going to school outside the home is doing him a disservice of any kind.  And that includes both social and academic learning, and I’ll be honest, right now my son needs more social interaction than I think I could give him at home.

What about you? Have you thought about homeschooling, or has it never even been an option for you?