Ignorance.

Ignorance is a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge) The word "ignorant" is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult.>

When you start homeschooling your children, as in the rest of life, you will have to deal with ignorance. I'm not talking about the insulting meaning of the word. Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge about something. There is, of course, your children's lack of knowledge about things in general that you are trying to remedy by schooling them. You will probably worry that you cannot address this completely and they will end up in the world, ignorant of something they need to know, but hey, didn't we all grow up lacking some knowledge? We just thought we knew everything.:-P The truth is, we keep learning what we need to know throughout our lives and not just in school.

Unfortunately, we didn't know everything and we still don't and that is the second type of ignorance you will have to deal with as a homeschooling parent. Your own. Eeek! When your child comes to you and says that for their foreign language, they want to learn Chinese, you're going to have to figure out a way to make that happen. You don't have to learn Chinese yourself to teach it to your child, but you'll need to find someone to teach it. Personally, I have used instructional DVDs to teach 2 of my kids how to play the guitar, a skill that I don't have. I could have also employed a guitar teacher, but it was less expensive to get the DVDs. If my husband was not able to teach Algebra 2 and Geometry, then I'd have to hire a teacher. As it is, we got Teaching Textbooks, which has a computer program to explain how to do the math problems and then if my kids still can't understand it, they can ask Dad.

The last place that you are going to face ignorance is from friends, family members, people you meet everywhere you go, the media, politicians, etc. A lot of people do not understand what homeschooling is, why anyone would want to do it, how you homeschool, etc. Since public school has been the norm for the last 150 or so years people seem to have forgotten that it hasn't always existed and is not the only way. They mightl ask your kids why they aren't in school. They might quiz your kids to see if they know what they think they should know. They might talk about how weird your family is. They might even call social services to report that you are homeschooling (but it is legal!). The media writes articles that make it seem like homeschoolers are ignorant, but show themselves as ignorant in the process. (This time maybe I do mean the insulting meaning of the word!). Last of all, there are politicians who will try and pass laws to make homeschooling either more difficult or illegal.

So there you have it. Ignorance. It's not going away any time soon.