An “Adequate” Education

“I believe that [Miss Bookworm’s] educational experience will be adequate to meet State Standards,” states the recent letter we received from the Executive Director of Business and School Improvement for our local school district. As a family that home schools some of our children, we are required to notify our local school district each year of our decision to home school and to provide a curriculum outline. Then we always get a response that the education we are providing our children at home is “adequate.” It makes me chuckle a little since I suspect that they think that no homeschooling family in our district can provide an education that is better than adequate. I am not complaining, however. I am pleased that we have the right to educate each of our children in the way that we think is best for them – including picking a writing teacher from Canada, having a heavy dose of two-column proofs in Geometry, and taking a literature-based approach in history. We love homeschooling - even if it is only seen as “adequate” by the state.