Homeschooling and the Sorting Hat

by Celeste

As many of us know, Harry Potter’s fictional boarding school, Hogwarts, “sorts” its incoming students into different “houses” or residences. Children in a particular house eat together, sleep together, study together, and take many of their classes together for the duration of their seven years at school.   

The sorting is done by a magical “sorting hat” which sits on each student’s head and decides which house best suits their talents and abilities.  Brave students go to one house, brainy students go to another, earnest, hardworking types to a third, and crafty, sly students go to the fourth. (Harry lives in the house for brave students, in case you were wondering.)

Homeschooling parents sort themselves too.  As newbies, one of the first things we learn is to categorize ourselves into types of homeschoolers, such as “school-at-homers”, “eclectics”, and “unschoolers”, based on how much “structured learning” goes on at our house.  This single choice often affects the curriculum materials we buy, the activities we choose, and the friends we make for many months or years to come.

Sorting in this manner definitely has its advantages.  Whether you’re a Hogwarts student or a homeschooling parent, you’re more likely to form strong, long-term friendships with people who share your philosophy and outlook on life. These friendships and affiliations also tend to reinforce and foster your beliefs and special talents or attributes, and may help keep you on the right track when times get tough.

However, there are many dark sides to sorting.  In both Hogwarts and homeschooling, segregation often leads to excessive competition and divisive behavior, often separating people at times when they should be united.  The sorting process may not be fair to people who have multiple strengths or inclinations, like a Hogwarts student who is both hardworking and brave, or a parent who finds herself attracted to multiple educational philosophies.  Finally, there’s the question of whether it is wise to typecast oneself so early in the process; preteen children often change greatly over time, and so do newbie homeschooling parents and their children. 

As a beginning homeschooler, I embraced the sorting process, which helped me create a sense of identity in a strange new world.  However, after over a decade in the homeschooling community, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with labeling people as “school at homers”, “eclectics”, or “unschoolers”.  These labels are both confusing and divisive, and often create far more problems than they solve. 

Perhaps the ultimate problem with the structure-based labels is that they force us into the wrong boxes for the wrong reasons.  It’s unfair and misleading to categorize some families as “more structured” or “less structured” than others, because all of us rely on varying amounts of structure to give meaning and form to our lives.   Every homeschooling family I know engages in “structured learning”.  What makes us different is not how much structure we have in our lives, but the many ways in which we choose to structure our days and our experiences.

I have a friend who structures her child’s education primarily around textbooks and distance learning courses.  I have another friend who structures her children’s education around a dizzying array of extracurricular activities outside the home.  Yet another friend structures her children’s education largely around “playful learning” from toys, games, and family chores and activities.  Each of these friends has created a homeschooling structure that works well for her family.  And ultimately, that’s far more important than labels or sorting. 

Maybe we should look at homeschooling styles the way we look at recipes.  If you mix up water, meat, starches, and vegetables in a big pot, you’ve got soup or stew.  The soup could be meat-based, starch-based, or vegetable based, depending on what you like or want to eat.  Put in lots of beef, and you’ve got beef stew.  Reduce or eliminate the beef and increase the starch, and you’ve got potato or noodle soup.  Reduce or eliminate the beef and starch, increase the number of beans and vegetables, and suddenly you’ve got bean soup instead.  The ingredients haven’t changed, but the proportions certainly have.

We homeschoolers often look very different in our approaches, but deep down inside, we’re all making educational “soup”, using the same types of ingredients in different proportions and amounts to create a unique curriculum and learning experience for our children. Rather than sort ourselves into restrictive categories like “bean soup eaters” or “potato soup eaters,” we should just learn to appreciate each other’s ingenuity, do a lot of recipe sharing, salt and pepper to taste, and cook up whatever works best for us. 

And instead of writing books about sorting homeschoolers into different categories, maybe we could write some new how-to-homeschool books, with titles like “Chicken Soup for the Homeschooler”…..or not.  Just as long as the book doesn’t have a title like “Harry Potter and the Sorting Hat of Homeschooling Discord”!

Celeste  has been unschooling her kids for well over a decade. She does homeschooling advocacy work for her state homeschooling organization and spends way too much time on the computer. In her spare time, she does tae kwon do, plays the piano, and plays a glamorous, powerful, purple lady bunny in an online virtual reality game.

 

Comments

[moxyjane]

Thank you so much for writing this! I have struggled with all the various labels as well, seeing them as divisive and limiting. I feel that support of one another is so vital within the homeschooling (and parenting) community and it helps no one for us to focus only on what we do differently (or what to call ourselves!).

My husband has never cared for the term "unschooling" as it sets up a negative attitude towards "schooling", which we don't want to do with our children. We don't want to set up any sort of "us and them" mentality, be it between ourselves and traditionally schooled children, or with other homeschoolers. I love "delight driven learning", "child-led learning", "world learning"...but why waste time making up names for it...just go DO IT!

[Mary Nix]

What an excellent essay, Celeste! Thanks for writing it!

[Cindy]

Awesome analogy, Celeste! I think that's why so many are going to the word "eclectic" . . . so they can be any kind of soup the year or child or circumstance desires or needs at the time.

Thanks for putting words to an important topic!

[Michele K]

Yes! I think every family has their own unique style of homeschooling. Furthermore, we can learn from interactions with anybody, perhaps even more so from those who we consider not our "type." We miss out if we try to only associate with certain types, and it's frustrating to try fitting into a label.

[Bea]

I don't know. On a day to day basis I don't mind associating with other homeschoolers, whatever label they attach to themselves (or not.) But when I look for information online or in a book, I am definitely looking for a particular label... not all advice is equally valuable to me.