Rebecca Rupp, Ph.D., has homeschooled her three sons for more than ten years. The author ofbThe Complete Home Learning Sourcebook/b,bGetting Started on Home Learning/b, andbCommitted to Memory: How We Remember and Why We Forget/b, Rupp writes a monthly column foriHome Education Magazine/iand produces and hosts a local homeschool television program. She lives in Shaftsbury, Vermont.”Don’t panic.br”– Douglas Adams,iThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/ibrbrKids, as any parent knows, are determinedly individual. Interests, learning styles, attention spans, growth rates, developmental progress, and food preferences vary wildly from child to child. One learns to read at five, another at seven, a third at ten. One is a natural athlete; another falls flat while walking across a room. One is fascinated by rockets, a second by insects, a third by Greek mythology. One thinks math is cool; another loathes the very sight of a number. So where do standardized curricula fit in here? What course of study can possibly fit all?brbrThe answer is a resounding none. There is no effective one-size-fits-all mode of education. The public school system, which has to cope with some fifty million school-age children annually, does the best it can to meet the needs of the many, targeting its content and goals at a hypothetical average child. On a large scale, it’s unfeasible, inefficient, and downright impossible to create curricula tailored to meet the needs of fifty million idiosyncratic individuals. In large-scale education, therefore, kids have to adapt to the decreed norm.brbrOne of the primary advantages of homeschooling is the ability to bypass the decreed norm. Homeschoolers can design their own curricula, assembling resources and using approaches that best suit their own children’s needs. Your child is enthralled by marine biology? Invent a curriculum that builds upon this interest. Read books, fiction and nonfiction, about the oceans; pla

 

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