why schooling when we don't?

Why this bothers me I can't say, but I just don't like any of the terms used to describe what we homeschoolers do that involve the word "school" as any part of it. I honestly can't think of a single word or word combination that I actually like. Home education sounds like a more strict version of homeschooling, sort of a fixation on that "body of knowledge" that we are all supposed to leave school with. Unschooling as a word just shouldn't exist as it is a single word oxymoron. Life learning is a suggestion that Momma came up with, but we aren't hippies, and she agreed.

Honestly, I'm sort of anal about things sometimes, so it just may be that there isn't any thing to call it that I'd be happy with. I suppose that living is about as close as it gets. Maybe being a family and growing and hopefully maturing. But even those tend toward snobbishness as answers and turn us back to those granola hippy moms.

Whatever you call it, a main motivation for this thing we do with our kids instead of the school system is to give those kids a better start. Regardless of our political and religious drives, I think we could all agree that giving the kids a better start is at the end of many of our reasons.

So maybe that's my new answer. Maybe it will go something like this.

Random Person: So, where do you go to school?

Big Brother: We don't go to school.

Random person: Oh?

Me: No, we're giving them a head start by doing the job right.

Random Person: Hmmm?

Me: Don't worry about it. We homeschool.

Random Person: Ooooohhhh . . .(confused look) . . . so you go to school at home?

Me: Ya know, the very concept of school is . . .actually, yeah, we homeschool. We go to school at home.