Home Schooling is NOT Dangerous!!

Well today is the first day of my new NON FICTION challenge and I will admit I started a little early and read the first book in the days between Xmas and New Years. So this is my review. 

 

Title - The Year of Learning Dangerously
Author - Quinn Cummings
Publisher - Published August 7th 2012 by Perigee Books
Non Fiction Category - Education and Homeschooling

Excerpt from WSJ 


A Year of Learning Dangerously
My Review

If you homeschool your children for religious reasons, then I would strongly suggest that you do NOT read this book.

This books is the story of Quinns irreverent and hilarious journey through a year of homeschooling her 10 year old daughter in Los Angeles.

The daughter was NOT removed from public school for religious reasons. She was removed because she supposedly could not cope with the maths.

At the same time that Quinn and her partner Daniel, were homeschooling their daughter, Quinn was also learning everything she could about what it meant to be a home schooling mother.

Quinn made the time to attend several homeschooling conferences throughout the year. Pretty much all of these conferences were run by religious or ultra religious home schooling groups. The Duggar family in Arkansas (19 children and counting - TV reality show) were mentioned as they also homeschool their 19 children for religious reasons. In fact their religion is exactly the reason why they HAVE 19 kids.

Quinn also attended a homeschooling prom, and a homeschooling graduation ceremony.

Her comments on the people she met, the clothes she wore in order to fit in, and her opinion of the various different homeschooling curriculums, were often funny and I was often left giggling as I was reading.

The main reason I chose this particular homeschooling book, is because Quinn Cummings was a child actor. She was nominated at age 10 for an Academy award (for a movie called The Goodbye Girl) and she was also on a TV series called Family - also starring James Broderick, Sada Thompson, Meredith Baxter Birney and Kristy McNichol.  These names wont mean anything to youngsters these days, but 30 years ago (in the 1970s and early 1980s) these were BIG names and FAMILY was a well loved series. 

Quinn later gave up acting because she hated being forced to live her life in the public eye. She now owns and runs several online businesses. She has also been blogging online since 2005. Her blog is called the QC Report.

While I did think about homeschooling my son when he was a baby, as he grew older, his personality made that pretty much impossible.

My son is a very strong-willed boy and everything in his day, has to be negotiated. He negotiates what his time he has to go to bed, and how much time he gets online pretty much every day. He used to negotiate how much homework he would do before he went online, until he discovered that if he did all his homework at school, then he would not have to use up precious computer time, doing it at home. OK so he does still spend a lot of time online. But his writing, vocabulary, spelling and even his typing skills have all been well above his grade level. I consider that to be a excellent payoff.

So I gave up the idea of homeschooling, and began doing the afterschooling instead. This is what Quinn calls "part time" homeschooling.

From the age of 18 months to 3 and a half years, my son and I would walk along the street to his daycare every morning, and I would tell and show him the colours of all the cars parked along the street. I even explained difference between silver and grey (one is shiny and the other not). By the time he was 4 years old and ready for school, he had pretty much potty trained himself at age 2, he knew more colours and shapes than any other kid in the class and he had a vocabulary that stunned even me. He could even spell the word electricity because that was in his favourite book about trains that I was reading to him pretty much every night at bed time.

I can still remember him as a 3 year old, telling me one day that he would be "back in a jiffy, Mommy" Most kids dont even know that the word jiffy, even exists these days. He not only knew that word, he used it correctly as well.


I had a quick look at Quinns Blog and it appears that she and Daniel continued to homeschool their daughter. The most recent posts have indicated that the now-teenager and Quinn are planning to go to Italy for an educational trip this year.

Quinn on Wikipedia 

 Quinn on the IMDB

 

This is Quinn Cummings in 1977 as a Child Actor. She was nominated for an Academy Award (yes, an Oscar) for the Movie -  The Goodbye Girl.