Homeschool moms do not (need to) know everything

I was talking to a new acquaintance at church, and she asked me what I do. I said that I have been homeschooling my girls for the last however many years. She said, "That must have been a great adventure!--because you would have to research everything that you taught them."

Yes, and go on Jeopardy when I'm done.

I didn't have a chance to correct that at-least-partial-misperception, and anyway it was only after I got home that I really thought about what she meant. No, homeschool moms do not know everything. If we're smart, we do not even research everything; that would be kind of like laying out a treasure hunt for the kids and then answering all the clues before they even finish reading them. Anyway, I've found I rather like knowing less about some subjects (e.g. knitting) than the Squirrelings do. Knowing that Mom is going to be of very little help on whatever it is (and sometimes Dad as well) forces them to find things out for themselves.

Some parents may be afraid to homeschool because they feel they don't know everything, or, as this person said, because they think they're going to spend their evenings "getting up a lesson" (to quote Charlotte Mason) and pass themselves off the next day as experts on snakes or the solar system. They hope that the kids are going to listen to what they say, but not ask any really difficult questions. And that they won't want to learn computer coding or basketball drills or something else we never learned ourselves, because that could be embarrassing.

Most homeschooling parents do figure this out pretty quickly, though: home education is not the equivalent of Mom giving an oral report every day. People who do know snakes or the solar system have said it better in their own books (or sometimes other media).  That's what we use. I am there to help find the books and to see to their ordered serving (another CM phrase). I am there to encourage engagement.  I am both the coach and the cheerleading squad.

I teach what I can. I help where I can. And sure, I do learn a lot along the way. But what matters more is that they're learning. Right?

So what are we supposed to do with our weekends now?

Grandpa Squirrel brought over some Toronto papers last weekend, including several auto sections he had saved up for Mr. Fixit. I don't usually read the car pages, but the front page of the September 16th Globe Drive section stood out: there was a hand holding a wrench, and the headline "The death of do-it-yourself auto repair."

It turned out to be a column by Peter Cheney, with the subtitle "The art of home auto repair has been shuffled to the scrap heap."

"Knowing how to fix a car used to mean something. In university, I studied the classics. My abiding memory was of Odysseus returning home to slay the suitors who had invaded his house. To me, overhauling an engine was a less dramatic version of the same process – I had driven out the forces of mechanical disorder.

"So how could I imagine that the golden age of the home mechanic was approaching its end?"

My own dad was never much of a do-it-yourselfer when it came to cars; he knew his limits and preferred to trust Ernie's garage on the corner. But my mom's brothers were die-hard wrench twisters from way back; I've heard the stories about how, lacking a hoist, they pulled up the front end of their jalopy using a rope and a nearby tree branch. And when I married Mr. Fixit, most of our cars (until emissions testing killed off the Caprices) were still the kind you had to tune up; the kind you COULD tune up. I got used to sitting in the front seat during brake jobs and pressing down on the pedal, while he crawled underneath or had his head under the hood. Vrm vrm...Again...Vrm vrm...Again...Vrm vrm...this usually went on for awhile.

"To [car designer Pete] Brock, a good machine is the elegant, real-world expression of an idea, not just something to be used and cast aside when it breaks. Machines are philosophies, expressed in metal."

And yet times change. Peter Cheney says that he used to be a professional mechanic but now rarely works on his own car himself. It's the same for Mr. Fixit, and that's only partly because of middling-aged back and knee problems. It's more just a matter of, as Cheney says, our newer cars now not "needing us" as much as they used to; and, in many instances, not being able to access the parts or supplies we used to get, or finding newer cars deliberately designed too complicated for home mechanics to deal with.

If cars aren't your thing (they're not mine really--I just pressed the pedal down when requested and appreciated Mr. Fixit's talents), consider this: that's only one example of the general death, or perhaps assassination, of self-sufficiency. At what point will there be nothing left at all that we can fix, clean up, make ourselves? Will we stop even comprehending Bible verses like "where moth and rust corrupt," because there we won't have anything that lasts long enough to get moth-eaten or rusty?

Your opinions?