Homeschooling

I've heard of homeschooling, sure. But my frame of reference is off. The people I have known to personally homeschool their kids have been whack jobs for various reasons, like the guy Bjorn used to work with who got his wheelchair-bound brother's girlfriend pregnant and ended up moving to Hawaii and living in his van with her, her daughter, his son from a previous marriage and their new kids. Yeah, that guy homeschooled his kids.

With that as my reference point, I was surprised when my super nice neighbor told me she might not be sending her kids to kindergarten next year at the public school, but instead might homeschool them instead. She's perfectly normal and nice. Her kids seem well-adjusted and sociable -- they even go to preschool in the neighborhood. It just so happens that she's interested in homeschooling. When she told me, I was trying to ask questions without revealing my own ignorance about the whole thing. She explained that lots of people in the neighborhood do it and start rattling off names of families and kids that I don't know all within a few block radius.

What's particularly funny for me is Fairfax County is known for having really good public schools. In fact, in recent reports in Newsweek and others, it usually ranks up there as some of the best. I could understand homeschooling more if you were in a rural area or in a place where the public schools weren't great. So I'm totally intrigued by her decision and I'm very interested to talk to her more about it. I personally can't imagine doing it, but now I'm really interested to find out what motivates someone to do it.