An Overwhelming Undertaking?

I think too many parents are put off from homeschooling because it seems like an overwhelming undertaking. The truth is, it isn't, especially nowadays with that new-fangled Internet thingie.

"I need your support in this," I told Eric, my husband, after we agreed that this would be the best route for Bing.

"You got it, babe," he said leisurely. Eric says most things leisurely. He's a sort of real-life Baloo the Bear, focusing on the bare necessities of life while I, the polar opposite, need to be yanked out of the downward spiral of minutiae before I become mired in its ponderous goo.

"I really mean it," I reiterated. "I need you to be a real hands-on parent with this. One hundred percent."

"I will." He spoke of taking his son kayaking and fishing, taking him to work, and playing chess with him. These are all good things.

The common perception is that homeschooling must be done at a desk, or that it takes six to eight hours a day, neither of which are even remotely true unless that's what floats your boat. Also that it is a lonely, solitary task, and also that the majority of homeschooling families are religious right-wingers or paranoid survivalists waiting for Armageddon. None of that is true either.

Sure there are nuts in homeschooling. There are nuts everywhere! But, according to The New York Times, "homeschooling is the new chic." Over 1.5 million kids in the U.S. were being homeschooled in 2007, a number that had grown 11 percent each year for a decade. A lot of the homeschooling families are devout in their faith, and you know what I say? Good for them! This is still a free country, I think, so as long as children are getting the education they need to succeed in the world, it's still up to the parents as to how that information will be disseminated.

But many parents are simply torn, as we are, between a public school system made up mostly of terrific, dedicated educators whose hands are tied by mandatory state testing, and private schools which now ask for tuitions higher than the Ivy League school I attended and which are filled with entitled, apathetic brats. Not much of a choice there.

We look at this as a blessing...and a possibility, as we say in Buddhism, to "change poison into medicine," take a potentially bad situation and turn it into something good.

For a few hours a day with a computer program, punctuated by reading at the library, special projects, group physical activities, and a little extra effort, you can homeschool too.

Stay tuned.