Beyond the Curriculum Wars: Creating Sacred Learning Spaces Wherever You Teach

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The homeschool-versus-public-school debate has become exhausting. Parents defend their choices as if their child's entire future hinges on this single decision, while judgment flows freely in both directions. But watching my eighteen-month-old explore the world with unbridled curiosity has clarified something for me: the real question isn't which system is superior, but how we preserve that natural love of learning wherever education happens.

I loved school as a child. As an only child, it was my social lifeline beyond church—the place where friendships formed and life happened. Yet I struggled academically, not because I wasn't capable, but because the system wasn't designed for how I learn best. My interests didn't align with the curriculum, and there was little room for deviation. This is the inherent limitation of institutional education: a single teacher cannot reasonably create individualized learning paths for thirty different children, each with unique rhythms, interests, and developmental timelines.

What troubled me most, though, was the conformity—the subtle and not-so-subtle message that there's one right way to learn, one acceptable pace of development, and if you're not "on track" with your peers, something must be wrong with you. That narrative follows children into adulthood, shaping how they see themselves as learners long after they leave the classroom.

My background in early childhood education has shown me what's possible when we honor how children actually learn. They're naturally curious, instinctively drawn toward discovery, and deeply capable when given space to follow their interests. But somewhere between preschool and middle school, many children lose that spark. Learning becomes something done to them rather than something they do—a series of hoops to jump through, tests to pass, and tasks to complete within arbitrary timeframes.

This is why I'm choosing to homeschool. I want my child to experience learning as naturally exciting, not as a job with a clock-in and clock-out time. I want them to take their time with concepts, to go deep into what captivates them without being rushed to the next standardized benchmark. I don't want their education focused on memorization, test scores, or performing well on paper rather than actually understanding and applying what they learn. I want them to see failure as information, not identity.

The truth is, I have concerns about institutional education—the conformity it requires, the way it can prioritize compliance over curiosity, and how standardized approaches can override individual development. I worry about what gets taught implicitly through the structure itself: that learning happens on someone else's timeline, that there's one correct answer, that your worth is measured by performance. These aren't just limitations—they can actively work against a child's natural way of being.

But I also recognize that not every family has the choice I have. Working parents who rely on institutional care aren't making a lesser choice—they're navigating the reality available to them. Single parents managing survival alongside parenting face constraints I can't fully understand. The option to homeschool requires privilege, and I won't pretend otherwise.

If public school is your reality, you're working with what you have. And there are still ways to protect what matters most.

If your child is in public school, you haven't fully outsourced their education—but you will need to be more actively involved to counteract what the system reinforces. Stay curious about what they're learning and why. Notice what messages they're absorbing about themselves as learners, about authority, about conformity. Create space at home for what the classroom doesn't provide—time in nature, artistic expression, the freedom to obsess over topics that fascinate them, the permission to question rather than comply.

Protect unstructured time fiercely. The system will already fill their days with structure and expectations. What they need from you is space where boredom can lead to creativity, where they can follow their own rhythms, where learning isn't performance.

When something isn't working, advocate—but also help your child develop their own capacity to navigate imperfect systems while maintaining their sense of self. That's a life skill they'll need. And perhaps most importantly, let them see you as a lifelong learner who questions, explores, and doesn't accept everything at face value. This model suggests that learning doesn't end with formal education and that they can think for themselves.

For those of us homeschooling, our challenge is different. We must resist recreating school at home—the worksheets, the rigid schedules, the artificial separation of subjects. We chose this path specifically to do something different. That means trusting our children's rhythms, prioritizing depth over breadth, and following their emerging interests even when it doesn't look like "real school."

It also means being honest about what we can't provide and finding ways to fill those gaps. Maybe it's higher-level instruction in certain subjects, lab sciences, team sports, or simply social experiences with diverse groups of people. There's no shame in admitting we need support or that our children need something beyond what we can offer at home.

Regardless of where our children learn, certain things remain essential. They need to feel genuinely seen and safe, not anxious about performance. They need their developmental readiness to be honored rather than being forced into arbitrary timelines. They need learning that connects to real life rather than existing only on paper. They need space for self-directed exploration. And they need us to treat their whole selves—emotional, physical, creative, ethical—as inseparable from their intellectual development.

What I keep returning to is this: my child's natural curiosity is the most precious thing to protect. Right now, at eighteen months, everything is fascinating. A shadow on the wall. Water pouring from a cup. The sound of their own voice. This is the essence of learning—not the performance of it, but the genuine wonder that drives human beings to understand their world.

My deepest hope is that, whether children learn at home or in classrooms, we can preserve that wonder. That we can create environments where children's questions matter more than correct answers, where their unique ways of processing information are honored rather than corrected, where they learn to trust their own observations and instincts.

The curriculum wars miss the point entirely. Education isn't a battleground where one side wins. It's an invitation to witness the unfolding of a human being and to create conditions where they can discover who they are. That sacred work happens not through the superiority of any single method, but through the quality of attention and intention we bring—wherever we bring it.

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