Free Love in a Time of Homeschooling by Laura Brodie Page A

three daughters, so many questions relate to ballet and Barbies and training bras that John gratefully allows me free rein. This decision, however, involved an important, gender-neutral subject, and he wasn’t going to acquiesce with his usual “Yes, dear. Just tell me what to do.”
    â€œLook,” he began, “you’ve got to remember that I started out as a public school teacher, and the first time I heard about homeschooling, about twenty years ago, my instant reaction was ‘Oh hell no!’ That’s like a slap in the face, to say that a parent with no training can do my job. I know homeschooling has come a long way since then, but I think it’s going to be a lot harder than you imagine.”
    â€œI know it will be hard,” I said, “but I think Julia needs it.”
    â€œYou’re thinking about what’s good for Julia,” he replied, “but I’m worried about what’s good for you. Teaching kids is exhausting. A few months at home with Julia and you’re going to be miserable.”
    I sighed. “Her school situation already makes me miserable.She hates the routine; I hate the boring SOLs. We can’t do any worse.”
    At which point he turned back to the computer. “You’re the one with the Harvard degree.”
    John only mentions Harvard when he thinks I’m doing something stupid. Whenever I let the oil in my car run dangerously low, or when I’m careless with the laundry and all our underwear turns pink, John’s response remains the same: “What school did you go to?”
    But after nineteen years of marriage, he knew it was useless to argue. Of late he had embraced the motto “Happy wife, happy life.”
    â€œBy the way,” I said as he clicked through some YouTube clips. “I’ll need your help with Julia two afternoons each week, when I’m teaching.”
    He didn’t even reply.
    Wow, I thought as I lay in bed that night. This was not going well. I had expected to encounter some skepticism, some questions and curiosity, but not the direct, in-your-face, “you’re a naïve idiot” variety. I decided to lie low for a while and shield my fragile vision from any other potential naysayers.
    Julia, however, had no inhibitions. She raised the subject at our local dance studio while her fellow modern dancers were donning leotards and kneepads.
    â€œMom’s going to homeschool me,” she announced to her instructor, Ms. Sellers, who turned to me with eyebrows raised.
    â€œOnly for a year,” I added, feeling defensive and apologetic.
    Ms. Sellers’s face broke into a broad smile. “That’s fabulous. Julia is the perfect child for homeschooling.”
    God bless Nina Sellers, our town’s creative diva. She’s a fiery woman with red hair halfway down her back, who stood lastAugust at our community festival under the shade of a Japanese parasol (“A prop from our last recital,” she said, laughing) wearing a batik skirt rustling above Greek sandals, trailed by an entourage of adoring children and equally adoring fiftysomething bachelors.
    Now, as the modern dancers began to congregate in her studio, she smiled at me. “You know, I homeschooled my two daughters.”
    â€œReally?”
    She nodded. “I took them out halfway through middle school, and let them study on their own until college.”
    â€œWhy did you do it?”
    She frowned and issued a guttural noise of disgust: “I can’t stand our country’s industrialized form of education; these assembly-line schools that just ruin childhood.” Then she laughed, as if the cloud of public education had lifted from her thoughts. “I’m not the best model for homeschooling. With my oldest daughter, I just left her alone to read anything she wanted. And she read everything . Novels, history, biographies, newspapers. When she got to the verbal part of her SATs,