As my son goes to school today after 4 years of homeschooling, I am tempted to look back and wonder if it achieved anything. At first sight, it seems that it was not a great outcome as it did not achieve anything that I had promised myself and other stakeholders. The primary responsibility lies with me as I turned out to not be as involved as I had wanted to be. I have not spent time with him, as I thought I would, for I realise that I don’t have the temperament to deal with kids, let alone teach them. That was the first wrong assumption I had when we undertook the journey. 

The second assumption was that he would be self-motivated to study. It turned out that this assumption was flawed to the extent that he became good in things that caught his fancy like military hardware, but things that were difficult for him, like writing English, he ignored completely. The discipline of a regular curriculum brings in the ability of doing tough things too, I guess.

The good thing that got achieved though is that he knows how to learn, when he is interested in something. He has read a lot of history through different sources, has interned at the museum, learnt woodworking, Japanese, Sanskrit. Things others have done alongside school surely, so not an outstanding achievement, but nevertheless skills that will come handy as he goes through life. He doesn’t think he knows it all and that is something I am proud of. He is curious, knows that a lot of things are not as they seem at first look and multiple perspectives exist. And he had a good time, slept enough and was available for anyone who was free during the day :-).

As he starts school again, I hope this new chapter in his life is a happy one and keeps him curious for more experiences.

Week 52 - a year in review

This week marks a year of our homeschooling effort. So here is an attempt to summarize my experience of the past year:

- Everyone homeschools for their own reason and all the reasons are right
- Intellect and persistence are over-rated; curiosity and patience are more important
- Uncertainty is a part and parcel of our lives - you can plan for everything but then some curve-ball will change the circumstances and you have to improvise on-the-fly
- Things will work out eventually - just keep the faith!

For the coming year, there are a few things that we did not follow up in the last year that I am keen on pursuing now:

- Asking questions daily - encouraging him to maintain a blog around being curious
- Keeping a journal - the ability to document things
- Developing a plan to respond to the next "black swan" event better as a family

It has been an amazing journey, with its ups and downs, and I am thankful to everybody who helped us in different ways, known and unknown, throughout this year. I continue to look forward to your cooperation and help as always this year too.

Week 51

Covid-19 has become huge and we are all stuck at home. Lockdown has been implemented across the world. And what that means for us - return of the introvert. As a homeschooler, my son has not been as social as some of his other friends. Now that we are all locked down, it is business as usual for us with only some extra precautions in place.

A bigger challenge will be to understand the changes in business models across everything and explain that to the kids. They will become comfortable with a lot more technological tools, will need to dig deeper into themselves to keep engaged and keep learning new things.

Week 50

I heard something that I do not know how to react to "You had foresight to homeschool your child. With the Covid-19 shutting down schools and colleges, we have to learn it too". Yes, this pandemic is going to change the way a few industries operate - expediting the introduction of online courses and tuitions, for one, but I guess it was only going to be a matter of time any way.
But more importantly, this self-quarantine being observed in many areas is a good opportunity to really connect with your family in a less-distracted manner. The kids are home and with limited opportunities to mingle with other friends, are more likely to engage with you. Take this opportunity to inculcate some basic family ideals in them as you might not be getting another chance of such distraction-free engagement soon enough.

Week 49

We are at the grandparents' house and his cousin has come over. So it is a lot of fun time and the one thing that grandpa has been insisting is to show patience with the kids. We tend to get aggressive with them as we are not in control of our own emotions - the need to control is high and anything that seems out of control brings out the worst in us. But honestly, patience is needed in all walks of life and is necessary for us to do well.

Week 48

This week was dominated by Covid-19 (Wuhan coronavirus). The stock markets around us crashed, people became worried about its impact and it became evident that no one knows what to do when a pandemic is ravaging the globe. In a connected world, these kind of things will become the real brakes to the global economy and growth, rather than physical wars. Whatever biology does not achieve, technology will - the same kind of connectedness ensures that any digital outbreaks will also cause big mayhem - viruses all around. So one of the subjects our kids need to know is handling viruses!

Week 47

Another week passed by and what was achieved in this week is difficult to pinpoint. The one conversation everyone seemed to be having revolved around CoVid-19 and the causes and impact of the same. Some of the theories were plausible and some were extended based on the beliefs of the people. The only thing I seem to really believe is that the impact would be more severe than we anticipate and we are underestimating the impact irrespective of whatever we think it to be. Most of the commentators are not taking into account the second and third-order impacts of the disruption of a global supply chain - a country impacting one-third of the global economy virtually shutdown for a month more than planned, will in the worst case affect global economy by at least ~1% (1/11 months). But given the impact on travel, meetings, fairs, conferences, etc. this will get exacerbated and that also needs to be factored in. We will wait and see how it plays out.