When we were initially talking about the idea of homeschooling Z next year I was reading everything I could on homeschooling, education, etc. on blogs, websites, online forums and asking people that I knew were homeschooling questions every chance I got. On one of the online forums that I had joined someone mentioned that if we were in the thinking stages of homeschooling we should watch the documentary, Class Dismissed.
Working at a library, I right away went on to our library catalog to request it...it wasn't in our immediate library consortium so I branched out and looked for it to request from all the lending libraries in the state of Wisconsin...it still wasn't available for requesting! Discouraged, I went and requested it for purchase through our library and am happy to report that our library now owns it and it can be requested from anyone in the state now. Whew! :)
On to what we thought about the documentary...
Watching it initially we (all three of us) were nodding in agreement to so many things. It is heartbreaking to think about the large hand that is hanging over the state of education all across our country. What the reality is for some students who learn in different ways, are eager to learn and don't have the opportunities they are looking for is pretty grim. Throw in the reality of standardized testing and what that means for teaching staff, administrators and most importantly, the students and things aren't looking pretty or fair for all involved. With that said...there were some wishy-washy points for me when viewing the film...perhaps wishy-washy isn't the right term and please note that I am the kind of person that when I make a decision (grant it, it's taken years for us to get to this one!), I go full force ahead. It was hard (for me) to see the one main family in the film go back and forth regarding public schooling, de-schooling, homeschooling, working with a public school charter, unschooling, etc. I say this however not having homeschooled yet myself so I am fully prepared to eat some crow if needed! :) I think I felt discouraged only because we are so obviously hell bent on homeschooling now...even more so after viewing the documentary.
Our daughter's review should count for something too here, she wanted to watch it over again immediately after our first viewing of it! She also kept interrupting throughout sharing exclamations of similar experiences in regards to the kids in the film and things that she has encountered. I know it was really good for her to watch it right along with us. I could see that it validated her thoughts (that she has conveyed to us) when it came to her reasons for wanting to try homeschooling.
The documentary also has great suggestions as far as how to navigate the homeschooling waters when deciding to pull out your child(ren) from the (sometimes intimidating) public school system. It also provides the viewer with feelings of empowerment near the end which is something that we all appreciated, this being such a HUGE decision to make.
We all highly recommend this documentary to anyone that may be thinking of homeschooling their children or that may want to learn more about this way of education. Here is the official trailer for Class Dismissed.
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