While reading Mr. Clements’ middle grade fiction title about a school in New Hampshire that has a program called “A Week in the Woods” where all the fifth graders in the school spend a week camping and studying in the wild, I found myself thinking, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be great if homeschoolers could participate in a program like this one! Karate Kid could learn so much from a week in the woods. Yeah, that’s one of the drawbacks to homeschooling. The kids don’t get to take advantage of neat programs like this one.”

Then, I realized how utterly stupid my thoughts were. My kids have been camping numerous times, with Engineer Husband. (I’m not a camping type person.) They studied wildlife and botany with Dad out in the wild of a state park. Because my urchins are homeschooled, Karate Kid takes canoeing on Tuesday mornings. He collected plant specimens all year last year and pressed them into a notebook. He can identify most of the plants along the bayou in Dickinson. (I can’t.) And, as far as I know the school district I live in doesn’t even have a week-in-the-woods program, anyway.

Comparisons are odious. But it’s almost impossible to keep oneself from them. Spunky recently wrote about homeschoolers comparing themselves to each other and to some idealized version of homeschooling. And I found myself this morning, even after twenty years of homeschooling, comparing my homeschool to some idealized program in a fictional public school in New Hampshire. To quote another imperfect homeschooler:

There are no perfect homeschool families. There are no perfect home school mothers. There isn’t a perfect method or curriculum. But there is a perfect God, who takes all this imperfection and somehow turns it into something good. To God be the glory.

I would add that there is no perfect and wonderful public school program that all of us homeschoolers are missing out on. There are just people trying to teach children and finding it rewarding sometimes and difficult sometimes and probably worth all the work and worry in the end. Probably. By God’s grace. No matter where you go to school.

Oh, and by the way, A Week in the Woods is a good story of one boy who went to a public school and met a fine but flawed science teacher and learned a lot. I think you’d enjoy it whether you go to public school, private school, or home school.