Homeschooling & Simple Living

[Laura Weldon]

Many homeschooling families seek to live simpler lives. When we reject excessive materialism and seek out ways to do more with less this leaves us freer to focus what is more important to us. It also reinforces where our values lie. We make conscious choices, and that helps our children learn about ethics in a natural way.

I think my children have benefited from our choice of a simpler lifestyle. They've never had up-to-date clothes, but now they have little fascination with the attention given to appearance by popular culture.

They have eaten home made, from scratch foods even if they insisted that buckwheat flour made their muffins look more like wood than bread. Despite their insistence that other kids got to eat Twinkies, packaged mac and cheese, soda and other substances remotely related to food, now that they are older my kids notice that they don't feel well when they eat such items.

They've learned from library books, real life experiences and conversation instead of expensive purchased curriculum packages. When they have had occasion to see the sort of commercial tie-ins that schools often use such as videos on climate change by petroleum corporations, posters on nutrition by snack food companies and hand-outs on health by athletic shoe manufacturers they are appalled at the blatant propaganda in the name of education.

I think that the sort of simple living that many homeschoolers practice is related to sustainability. We think for ourselves. We rely on one another and seek out resources in our communities. Our choices are often good for the planet in part because we have become accustomed to thinking about our ethics as a natural course of decision-making.

Have you simplified your lifestyle or spending as you homeschool? Do consciously made choices allow you to focus on what is important to you? Do you think homeschooling choices are related to sustainability?

[Betty Kramer]

I started consciously living simply back in the early 70's when I was still in high school. I think my life choices lead me to home educate my children, rather than the other way around.