Both the New York Observer and cityfile take a moment to poke fun at the wealthy and at homeschoolers as they take a brief look at a new education service in town: Quality Education by Design (QED), a sort of highly paid governess approach to education.
The New York Observer, for example, summarizes the program’s lofty goals thus:
QED “has little to do with earth mamas teaching hippie spawn. Instead, try field trips to Egyptian pyramids. Visits to the Louvre. Harp lessons from a member of the New York Philharmonic.” The New York Observer
Because the rest of us, of course, are earth mamas. And our poor hippie spawn will never have the chance to see anything beyond the patch of organically grown veggies near our earthship home. Nothing like an estimated $30,000 fee to bring “homeschooling” out of the recesses of the press’s imagination to acquire a few additional stereotypes. Now we’re urban elites, longing for the glory days of the British aristocracy to be revived here on our own shores.
For cityfile, the real reasons for homeschooling are obvious.
Obsessive parents no longer have to worry about sending their kids to an expensive private school where, despite the hefty tuition, they still don’t get to handpick every teacher and student their child comes into contact with, personally select the school uniform, or dictate the lunch menu in the cafeteria. cityfile
Instead, they can homeschool. And thanks to QED, “they don’t even have to join a religious cult in Montana to do it!” But, well, cityfile appears to be too posh to capitalize its own name, so perhaps it is a bit much to expect them to distinguish between religious cults up there in Montana and here in Nebraska. I think we both belong to that great swath of the American landscape better known as “flyover country.”
Other than the seemingly irrelevant title, Page Six’s “Hot for Teachers” does a little better job getting at the core philosophy of QED and the inspiration behind it. Something a lot of us can probably identify with if you throw out the stereotype-laden subtitle. And the impromptu move to France…although I can certainly identify with the sentiment behind it.
Melissa quickly realized there was no need for concern. In their Left Bank apartment, “we had our lesson plan for that first day. Within three or four days, we were speeding through. There were no distractions! We realized how much time gets wasted in a classroom. We’d anticipated that we’d be in school for four or five ours—because kids are usually in classrooms for five-and-a-half to six hours a day. It ended up taking two hours and we were done.”
That left time for outings to explore Darwin’s theories in the Galapagos, as well as field trips to Egypt and other parts of Africa—not to mention visiting virtually every museum in Paris. By trip’s end, the family realized none of them—even the kids—wanted to go back to Little Red. “All five of us knew we’d experienced something incredible,” recalls Melissa. “And we wanted to hold on to it.” They decided to continue the children’s homeschooling in Manhattan “for another year. It was really a lark, initially.” Page Six
But eventually, Melissa wanted to go back to being “just a mom,” so they hired a tutor to take over where she had left off. With their children’s successful re-entrance to the private school scene in their high school years, she realized she was on to something and the idea for QED was born.
What all of these articles completely miss is that you don’t need a $30,000 tuition, an apartment in Paris or a personal and very highly paid tutor to achieve the same kind of individualized and rich educational experience this company is offering. And it is available to you whether you live in Manhattan or Montana, and whether you are an earth mama, religious zealot or just an average American who cares deeply about your child’s education.
Like QED founder Melissa Meyer discovered, the school part of homeschooling can go amazingly fast without the distractions of the school environment, leaving you a lot more time for life.
Hat Tip: families.com
Welcome to Roscommon Acres, my little home in the country. I write here about life more abundantly, from the joy of a baby’s smile to the almost unbearable grief of losing a son. I am seeking beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3).
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Who can I write to for the trip to Paris? Manhattan would be fine. Where do I sign up?
Nance
No kidding. We’re hoping to take our kids on an extended visit to Australia when they are older…being half Aussie, it would be nice for them to see the land of their heritage and all. But is that expensive!
What I never will understand is the disdain with which parents are portrayed:
“For $30,000 a year, they’ll dispatch teachers to your house so your kids will never be forced to leave the safe cocoon of your $20 million home and risk catching a cold from some kid whose parents weren’t considerate enough to bathe their youngster in anti-bacterial body wash.”
I know there are dysfunctional parents of both extremes- those that are abusive and neglectful, and those that are obsessively overprotective.
But isn’t this kind of hyperbole a bit tiresome?
We visited many Civil War sites when studying the Civil War. Naturally, my children thought we should study WW1 and WW2 in Europe and in Pearl Harbor.
I don’t think I’ll let them read your post.
Isn’t that why you homeschool? Just in case the other kids at school aren’t bathed in anti-bacterial body wash? & I find that slightly annoying, anyway, because it is a serious concern for some parents. Not in the overzealous way intended here, but when my daughter was on her meds, she had a weakened immune system and exposure to illness was a big deal.
And why shouldn’t you, LOTP? I mean, just because you’d have to mortgage the house and work on the side somewhere, it’s for your kids, right?
Yawn. The stereotypes from the so-called “tolerant” and “enlightened” are predictable and tedious. While a trip to Europe is definitely on my wish list, I think I’ll still be more concerned with my child’s character than filling their passport.
Thanks for always feeding us great stories. We most often get a chuckle out of the craziness out there. Now I’m off to the big box store to get another barrel of anti-bacterial wash. It’s bath day…
I find a bit of serendipity to your posting.
We have recently decided to go back to homeschooling after next month; our Montessori experience has been less than ideal–and not because of the Montessori philosophy, but because the school is a start up and has too many wrinkles to iron out.
However, we have decided to do a bit of what is mentioned here: outsourcing much of the teaching. Why? Because strictly homeschooling with my child and myself left terrible marks on relationshiplast year. My son is very resistant to me having a role other than mom. Maybe my mistake was ever enrolling him in school in the first place; but that did happen and he quickly formed the notion that teachers teach and mothers mother. We became very frustrated with one another, angry at times, hurtful. We both decided it wasn’t worth our relationship.
However, he is miserable in his new, small, Montessori school. Honestly, it isn’t any better than our public school. Our public school probably has more to offer us in terms of resources and community, but my son is very leery of the large setting of public schools and stresses very easily over the dynamics in them.
Our final option? A bit of what this QED offers: outsourced specialized teachers or classes, a personal tutor, combined with our original intent of traveling as part of learning. This allows my son to have highly qualified mentors and tutors without the frustration and negative impact of mom being someone other than mom (an idea firmly established in his mind.) It allows me to know that his education is more personalized and of higher quality than the public school or even his small private school… but it allows time for all the other stuff we feel is part of learning, living and being: music classes, theater workshop, language learning, chess club, wilderness exploration, travel, family functions, and whatever else piques his interest.
It is a personalized design and it will include quality mentors and tutors–something HE craves, but it will not be through an outside organization or source. It is something we are designing together within our community, our time frame and our budget. Records and curriculum do not concern us, and neither does the orchestrating of it all. I am capable of that.
So I don’t see QED being such a bad thing for parents/families that wish to homeschool or be outside of the institution of education, but are not comfortable or feel qualified enough to do it all themselves.
And for the record, we don’t have a $20 million home and won’t be spending $30,000 on tutors or mentors. We live paycheck to paycheck on one income–the tutor/mentors will be less expensive than his Montessori school. Traveling will cost, but it is something we have been throwing into our children’s lives all along!
Shawna, I have nothing against QED, tutors, governesses or any other approach to education. I think it is a wonderful thing for those who can afford it and who can make it work financially or otherwise.
I just found the stereotypes in the articles a bit amusing, but what QED is attempting to do is capitalize on exactly what most of us are trying to do in our homes. Highly paid professionals are not an absolute necessity…and hey, we’re more likely to be able to afford that trip to Australia without their fees!
I’m sorry your experience in the Montessori school were less than pleasant, but hopefully this works well for your family! My daughter has been homeschooled her entire life, and yet she is more receptive to other people instructing her than me. Maybe it is an age thing, or a personality thing, I don’t know, but I do understand what you are saying with that!
Hmm…braces for three versus a trip to Paris.
You’re tempting me.
You know dental work is pretty cheap in Mexico, don’t you?
Sure, if you can afford to get there with their teeth! (and back, and rinse and repeat)
The only reason I even thought of it was because it was a big deal amongst my fellow teachers when Mexican dentists were approved for our insurance plan. And I couldn’t help but wonder why on earth you’d want to do that.
Viva la U.S. Economy. Support your local dentist. I am.
Boy, am I.
This made me laugh. We had a German tutor when we were getting ready to move to Germany. She would frequently ask us to describe our family. One day we tried to explain that the kids were homeschooled (I think dh said, “Wir machen Unterrich zu Hause” or something similar. She corrected him, “Man sagt, ‘Wir haben eine Hauslehrerin” obviously thinking that we had a governess.
And, we did do field trips to Athens and Rome, walked World War I trenches and World War II beaches and knew Pearl Harbor very well. We’ve been blessed to have the most opportunity filled military assignments, that we capitalized on shamelessly. Now our study of the Eastern Hemisphere is matching up with an assignment to Japan. But I despair of explaining this to either school folk or homeschoolers. Outside the military community, most people just can’t conceive of what we’ve been able to see and do.