💎 This Week's Instagram Picks

1. Ninety percent of homeschooling is about flexible thinking and a positive mindset, which sets the tone for everything you do. (link)

2. You do not need all the answers to homeschool. All you need is the willingness to explore. (link)

3. Homeschooling is not about avoiding the negatives. It is about giving more of the good. Her oldest tried school for a year but it could not give her what she truly needed. (link)

4. Her reason for homeschooling has shifted over time. In tough moments fear creeps in but focusing on the good brings joy and freedom. (link)

🛠️ Tools & Resources

Drawing Around the World
A geography curriculum by Kimberly Garcia using two workbooks to teach students to draw states and countries from memory. Focuses on outlines, positions, and requires extra resources for basic data.
Type: Book – Ages: All Ages – Info: Secular – Cost: $22.95–$25.95

Extra Math Learning
A program that helps students master math facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with extra worksheets for practice. Offers detailed reports and concepts to improve math fluency.
Type: Program – Ages: Elementary (Grades 1–5) – Info: Secular

Learn to Play
Offers quality resources for learning music, making education enjoyable for any musical goal. Suitable for aspiring professionals, teachers, or those learning for personal enjoyment.
Type: PDF/Online/CD-ROM – Ages: All Ages – Info: Secular

Exploration Science
Year-long physical science courses with hands-on activities covering force, energy, magnets, and sound. Includes materials, 36 lessons, experiments, projects, and online text with guides.
Type: Online Schools – Ages: All Ages – Info: Secular

Before 5 in a Row
A collection of classic picture book lessons and creative activities to gently prepare children for a lifelong love of learning.
Type: Books – Ages: Kindergarten – Info: Faith-based

Schools Are Creating Conformists, Not Thinkers

Remember when you first walked into kindergarten?

You probably had a thousand questions, wild ideas, and an unstoppable urge to explore everything around you.

Fast-forward twelve years, and somehow that spark has been replaced with something else entirely: the ability to sit still, follow directions, and give the "right" answer on command.

This isn't an accident. It's by design.

The Assembly Line Mentality

Think about your typical school day.

The bell rings, and you stop whatever you're doing—even if you're in the middle of something important.

You move to the next classroom like clockwork.

You sit in rows, face forward, and wait for permission to speak, to move, even to use the bathroom.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It's exactly how factories operate.

As educator John Taylor Gatto, who was named New York State Teacher of the Year three times, bluntly put it: "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges."

Yet our schools do the exact opposite.

Gatto observed something troubling during his decades in the classroom: "The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders."

He noticed that the institutional structure itself—the bells, the rigid schedules, the constant surveillance—was designed to create compliance, not creativity.

The Research Backs This Up

This isn't just one teacher's opinion.

Research has consistently shown that our educational system is "excessively focused on getting right answers, rather than promoting creative responses."

Studies indicate that "teachers claim to value qualities such as independent thinking and curiosity, yet they reward behaviors such as obedience and conformity."

Here's a startling fact: students take nearly 2,500 tests, quizzes, and exams during their school years from grades K-12.

That's roughly one test every few days for twelve straight years.

With this much emphasis on testing, is it any wonder that students learn to play it safe rather than think outside the box?

The research shows that "about 80 percent" of the approximately 72,000 questions students hear each school year "were literal or simple recall questions."

In other words, four out of five questions demand students regurgitate information rather than think creatively.

Your Daily Reality Check

Let's get real about what this looks like in your life.

Remember the last time you had a genuinely original idea in class?

What happened when you shared it?

If you're like most students, you quickly learned that "thinking outside the box" often means thinking outside what's acceptable.

You've probably experienced this: You raise your hand with what you think is a brilliant insight, only to have the teacher redirect you back to the "correct" answer they were looking for.

After a few of these experiences, you stop raising your hand altogether.

You learn that creativity is risky, and conformity is safe.

The Hidden Curriculum

Schools teach much more than math and reading.

They teach what researchers call a "hidden curriculum"—the unstated lessons about how to behave in society.

Here's what students really learn:

Dependency: Always wait for permission. Never take initiative without approval.

Hierarchy: Some people's ideas matter more than others, regardless of the quality of the ideas.

Competition: Your worth is determined by how you rank against your peers, not by your unique contributions.

Intellectual passivity: Consume information rather than create it. Accept rather than question.

As Gatto warned: "Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing."

Breaking Free

The good news? Once you recognise what's happening, you can start to push back. You don't have to wait until graduation to reclaim your natural creativity and independence.

Start small. Ask yourself: "What would I do if I weren't afraid of getting the 'wrong' answer?"

Question things that don't make sense, even if everyone else accepts them.

Pursue projects that genuinely interest you, not just ones that look good on college applications.

Remember that your education doesn't have to end with school—in fact, that's where it should really begin.

As Gatto put it: "The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives."

The world needs your unique perspective, your original ideas, and your creative solutions.

Don't let twelve years of conditioning convince you otherwise.

Your job isn't to be a perfect soldier in someone else's army—it's to be the architect of your own extraordinary life.

What conformity habits have you noticed in yourself? How might your life look different if you trusted your own judgment more than external approval?