Our first home schooling experience was in Israel and it lasted 42 days.
It started while in the middle of her 6th grade we pulled our daughter out of school. We did not know anything about home schooling at the time. In
Israel it was not really a viable option. Pulling out of the public school system was an act of desperation and protest. It was the result of the town’s refusal to let us move her into a private school that we thought would better suit her. She stayed home for 42 days. By then, as result of many talks with town officials and some publicity, we were given the permission to register her in the school of our choice.
Those 42 days were an eye opener; they were also a terrifying experience. Suddenly we were not in the main stream. We were outsiders, looked upon by friends and family as weird, a little crazy, irresponsible and most of all, breaking the law. Home schooling in a place were there aren’t any guidelines, support groups, yahoo groups, is a very lonely experience. But by the end of this period we found out that something very deep and unchangeable has happened, we gained freedom. Freedom from so many ideas and misconceptions that we accepted as part of our lives, never bothering to check or confront. We also found that we were not alone, there were others out there doing the same thing facing the same questions, and willing to share their experience with us.
When we decided to pull our youngest daughter in the middle of a school year. It appeared as a sudden and uncalculated act but the truth was that we were observing her for some time. We saw that she was unhappy, the way only parents know that something is wrong. On the outside she was an A student and took part in the school activities. We thought, naively, that it is enough that we, as caring parents will make the decision. It turned out that we were wrong. We were informed that only a professional evaluation would satisfy the board ofeducation, that there is actually a reason to authorize a change of schools.
Pulling out of the public school system then was an act of desperation and protest. These 42 days were however the window through which we saw for the first time the new terrain that we set up to discover a year later. This was the beginning of our journey into what was, at the time, an unknown territory for us, and is now, 3 years later our choice. Staying with home schooling was a long process of learning, connecting with other people and taking responsibility for our daughter education instead of leaving it in other people hands. Our home schooling did not start that year, in Israel, we started it a year later while living in Idaho and are doing it ever since. We are more confident better able to plan and less confused and worried about the consequences.
Home school anywhere is a journey in which you have to be active and aware, others have done it before you but the journey is never the same, for everyone has to write his own story and draw his own road map and that is the challenge and that is the beauty.
* In 2001 when this took place there were only 30 home schooling families in Israel. You needed to get a special permission from the Ministry of Education, a permission that took up to a year to obtain and was only good for 1 year. The Ministry of Education issued this past year 61 permissions. . All in all there are about 100 families organized in 2 groups. Some families choose to home school without permission.
Ariela Zucker Maine, 2003 * This is a revision of the original posting.